i wanted to write you poetry but my hands haven't stopped shaking since you told me you didn't believe in love but you believed someone would one day put up with me and i can't tell whats ending and whats beginning im sure i'd like to say our relationship began last night but it would taste sour in my mouth to lie like that and i like how you say youll never grow up and you want to throw away what you have and kiss people and taste like alcohol all the time youre not realistic and your head is under water i can't even try to make myself write about you because every adjective is risky and i am on thin ice between hating you and caring too much what you think

1.) I never liked how I always felt like I was suffocating under the conviction that you were counting down the days to leaving an equation of your life that included me in the numbers and I never liked how I brushed it off under the false pretense that you were terrible at math.

2.) Every word you said was so lucid and real it felt like putting out a cigarette on my skin after asking for an ashtray a hundred times you're the one who pulled me out of my poetic dream-state so hard that I choked on condensation ice crystals from the clouds below me and now I am tied to the ground like a dog and I miss flying like that.

3.) I tasted her in the way you kissed me since the moment we met and I wanted to lock down every word I told you and erase everything that's been written for you but I didn't say anything because I was scared that I would float away without you.

4.) You came back and expected me to be fourteen and looking for someone to love me so hard that they fix me. Since your absence I had learned the hard way I don't need to be fixed. And even if I did, you would have never made a merciful god.

5.) I could sense the way you wanted control over me like a lion to its prey and feeling like I was being stalked by someone I tried to convince myself I loved was almost as exhausting as pretending I didn't notice.

6.) I was only beautiful on days you were drunk and wanted to outline the shape of my hips and I tried so hard to leave my consciousness in the other room while you never showed the decency to stay after you were finished with me because being used is better than being replaced.

7.) I shared the small things that brightened my heavy rain days with you. You made me feel like I was trying to plug in a nightlight in the middle of the dark.

8.) You devastated me and told me that's what love feels like; I still have moments of panic at sincerity and kind words seem foreign against the misery soaked syllables you broke me down and replaced me with.

9.) You did all of it because you were bored of watching the clock tick and you figured passing the time by ruining me was easier than repenting on the ways you've ruined other sad girls with cold hands.

10.) I was so used to throwing coins in the air hoping they would give me a heads or tail answer if dying would be easier than missing you forever that I didn't even notice when I ran out of money.

Maybe it's because
No one helped me up
When I scraped my knees
On pavement
And every
"not good enough"
I receive feels like
An avalanche
And I ponder
Moving words
From present
To past tense
Maybe it's because
My hands shake too much
And my mouth moves faster
Than my brain allows it to
Maybe it's because
I'm too focused on myself
And write ****** poetry
That doesn't compare
To car crash love stories
Maybe it's because
I dream about change
But hide in
Blankets and
Behind baggy clothing
Trying to find a source
of this
Unhappiness
Maybe it's because
I was dealt a ****** hand
I was treated unfairly
Or maybe it's because
I allowed myself
To take these things
And scream
About how miserable I am
Without trying
To change them

I've tried to record
The way your name falls out of my mouth
When I drop glass onto the floor
Like my mothers list of forbidden words
In spreadsheets
Counting with fingers and letters
Every time I pass a red pushpin in a map
Of where you told me
"You're so young and immature"
Like a compliment traced with
Sobriety and melatonin
I've picked up pencils
That end up in pieces
After scrawling your dialogues
Onto "it's your own fault" paper
I've scrubbed myself raw
With people who wont
Look me in the eyes anymore
With your goodbye words
With the flashbacks of
Your hands manifesting
The uncharted areas
Of my brittle hips
How my ****** syllables were
Dinner party jokes
There's nothing that can hurt
A god of power
And business suits
Someone who's never told no
Holds a child
In a way that erases the thought of comfort
And now
I lack the maturity to refuse requests
And you tell me
I'd make a good corpse
At a funeral catered towards
Twenty-nine year old men
Who never learned the difference
Between property and personality
And my promises
Tighten around my throat
Gratefully
Like your hands
Fostering the
Aurora Borealis of love
In a way that
Makes me choke on
The things you've shown me
The things you've ruined for me
The words I will never get back
And I sit
With you surrounding me
In and out of every crevice of my body
You've claimed for yourself
Helpless
And defeated
Like a child
Just how you like me