I listen to songs I wish I wrote about you because it seems like other people can at least describe you a bit better than I can. You were such a bright idea for so long, but now that I’ve lost you I’m starting to recognize all of the flaws in our plans. And I wonder how I could have missed them the first time around. I wish I could be alright with this. but I’m literally tearing myself apart from the inside out and I’m timing how long it takes you to notice.

I’m burning pieces of the past to somehow keep up with the present. As if that would change anything, as if you’d save a part of me instead of help yourself. Your voice is the sound of a thousand papers being crumpled up and thrown away for something better. Everything I’ve ever wanted was written there and now it’s gone. 

And what’s worse is I know at some point it was different. As small as it might have been, I knew it existed. There was a room in the back of your mind that I lived in. And now I’ve sunk to the bottom of your heart.

There were words for me once. Half of what I have for you. 

I wrote about parts of you I missed. I wrote about the pieces of you I hated, the pieces I wanted to change. The parts I wanted you to realize wrapped me up in you.

I wanted you to realize you had me. That I was trapped in the palm of your hand. Wrapped around your finger. Stuck behind the bars of your rib cage. And I’d swallowed the key before you decided to let me go.

I started saying things like “I know this like the back of his hand”. I knew you better. I knew parts of you by heart. I memorized degrees of your laugh lines and the color of your scars. I sunk myself into the scent of your skin and the brush of your hands. 

I wanted you to notice.

I wanted you to realize I was sick with the thought of loving you.

of losing you

I get so caught up in routines that when they break, I do too.

I’d made a routine of you. The sound of your laugh and the way your eyes smile at me sometimes. When you’re angry and how every word sounds like breaking glass. How every letter could kill me if I let it. 

And now I live on the fault line of me and you. And one false step could break the world into pieces.

Into parts smaller than the clock in my chest that’s ticking down until you realize what you’ve lost.

Its knowing that the words I thought were meant for me were taken from someone else..about someone else..for someone else. I thought it meant something for a long time. I saved it under my skin for months. For the days when you were dead. You might as well be gone now. You’re never around, and honestly I’m glad you’re not something I have to work with anymore.

To be honest I get lazy with keeping in touch with people who don’t care for me.

I’ve always been the sand that slips through your fingers

and no matter how tighly you clasped your hands, parts of me were bound to fall. And I’ve been falling for over a year now. And I’ve landed in someone else. 

I ripped apart every single word you’ve ever said and used the letters to write to you about how much I hate the way you’ve made me

I’ve discovered jealousy creeping up from between my teeth and hiding under my tongue just waiting for the alphabet to circle back around so I can construct something to hurt you just as bad as you hurt me. But I buried it all under the floorboards of unfounded feelings and I’ve got a graveyard beneath my feet that I walk across every time I was with you. But words are words are words and words are nothing more than just words when you can’t back them up anymore

I’m pretty sure every sentence you wrote can collapse at the slightest breeze because you and me aren’t anything to be proud of　

just a bunch of mistakes piled into nice words and metaphors about the ocean because water can hold up a ship but I can easily sink to the bottom. 

and that never seems to add up to much other than more words more words more words and less us

less me and you

less of anything really

Because words only mean so much until they’re forgotten and written over with new feelings and blooming paragraphs about something other than what I’ve allowed myself to believe for so long

I promise you I never wrote one false word

not one single letter was foul play

and I find it incredibly hard to believe the same about you

Tonight while everyone was watching the sky, I thought of you. I thought of the way we count constellations and number the stars across the sky. I missed eclipses but I have the whole universe above my bed.

It’s starting to smell like rain again. And I stood outside barefoot stealing the sky from everyone else. And since I can’t hide in sweaters and big blankets anymore, I’d rather get tangled up in you. I wish it were colder so you’d need me to keep you warm. I wish I could roll you up in me. 

But summer is rolling in and the sprinklers wash away any part of me that’s still bitter from the winds of last season.

You drifted away about the same time last year. It’s like as soon as the warm rolled in you were gone. 

I can say I never cared but if I didn’t would I still be here? I still watch you before I sleep and go over times I don’t remember having. And I should tear you down, I should get rid of you. I don’t need you anymore and you’ve made it so clear that you don’t need me either. 

I stopped writing about you because it made me angry. I wrote about rolling waves and seas I’ve never seen. I wrote about the coasts and ships and skylines and all of it made me heavier.

So I went back to writing about you.

I wish I could lie and say I don’t feel the same way anymore. I wish you were something I forgot I’d forgotten

Today it rained in between the sunshine and I felt like nothing could touch me

and I wondered if that was what it’s like to be content with the world and everyone in it.

And I thought about not thinking about you

and as I passed the concrete fault line between 191st and 30 I thought about not needing you

and by 80 I’d lost you entirely

its like thinking underwater. hoping that the back of my mind will swallow you up so I don’t miss you anymore

so I don’t feel like I need you

so I dont want to 

need you

I wish the world would break in half

All I want is you in your entirety. Your fullness and halfness. Your parts and pieces. The sides you hide from yourself and the halves you hide behind. I want you in badness and wellness and in happiness and sad. I want your laughter and anger. Your breaks and scars. Parts you’ve left behind and pieces you’ve yet to find. I want to pull apart the pieces of you and wrap myself up in them. I’d be all you if you’d let me tear you apart. I want to trace the thoughts of your heart and the pulses of your mind and pull them out thread by thread until all that’s left is you and me. I want to learn the way your veins carry you. I want to figure out why parts of you scare me. I want to wake you up and watch you fall asleep. I want all of you all at once and then pieces of you scattered into days after you’re gone so there’s always a piece of you that’s part of me.

There’s something to be said about the way your heart keeps mine beating. 

I used to write in paragraphs.

Now I write in spaces

in lines farther apart than the stars

or the sun and the moon and the waves and tides

and definitely farther than you and me

I write across lines and blank pages

across anything that will let me

I write on my wrists so it washes out in the rain and I write betwe　en my fingers so I pass the words to you when I’ve wrapped my hands up in yours

I hitch words under the tires in my car, so when I hit bumps in the road I lose you’s

I lose half of love and all of no

hopefully most of enough and enough of us

I’d rather lose all my words than not use one that describes you perfectly.  

I wrote you a letter last week

A hypothetical admission of every feeling I’ve ever had

telling you all the things I’ve kept deep inside,

and revealing all the times I wish I would have said them

I wrote about the night I ran away

and when you found me

half across the city in the early morning 

when the moon and sun battled it out for the color of the sky

or the week when we did nothing

holed up in a dark room so we wouldn’t have to face anything else but each other

I wrote you a letter last week

and I listed what I’m afraid of

the fact that you’d leave me if you ever knew

or you’d be afraid of things never being the same

I wrote about how I’m scared you don’t mean it anymore

how the pages I read every day are just empty feelings now

I tore up the letter I wrote you last week

and I scattered parts of it across the state

so you could only find it in pieces

that way I’ll stay in pieces

in places I can never be all at once 

in places you’d never look

and on pages you’ll never read 　

I often wonder when I’ll stop missing you

When it will stop coming over me in curling waves, or when they’ll stop drowning me in yesterday’s plans and feelings.

I wonder when I’ll learn to swim and stop thinking you miss me back

When the words you wrote changed with the months and the days and the hours you’ve been gone.

I don’t think you write about me anymore but I most definitely haven’t stopped writing of you. 

The currents are relentless lately and I’ve found it so hard to keep my feet on the ground and my head above water, but you wouldn’t seem to know much about that would you?

you grace every sentence and you hook onto every word. And there isn’t a speck of punctuation that doesn’t match a freckle on your face.

I’ve memorized them so I can show everyone else who’s been missing.

I’ve stretched you across state lines and interstates and through every vein in my wrist that writes of the way you make me feel safe. 

You’re part of the cracks in the walls and the creaks in the floors, and the shifting of gears while I drive and the breeze in late winter

You surround the faces of who I don’t want to see anymore and you frame the world with the corners of your eyes

You’re every you I’ve ever written to and you’re every wave and sea and anchor that sinks me to the bottom of the sea

There are so many different infinities but all I want is yours.

and I’ve waited for the day I’d write of someone else

but it doesn’t seem like that’s coming any time soon

I hope more than anything these words burn a hole right through me and hopefully through every thought I’ve ever had of you so I don’t have to feel them anymore in the back of my mind and at the bottom of my heart

because it hurts more than you feeling them back

ever could

and maybe if the hole is big enough I’ll let everything go. It can breeze its way out of me on the spines of spring breezes and follow winter out the back door and hopefully I’ll never have to feel what it feels like

to lose the part of you I thought I had a pretty tight grip on

And what scares me more than anything is the idea that maybe you don’t feel the same way anymore. That the keys I’m holding so close as to not let them lose me don’t really open much of anything anymore

and you’ve changed all the locks and I open different doors and you never bothered to tell me why

or tell me at all.

I’ve convinced myself that you’ve moved on past me and sealed me in a place far in the back of your mind so even the hottest fire in the universe couldn’t burn a hole in you

like you did in me

but it could rip me apart faster than you could ever write it down and you’re not allowed to go away because

you promised you would stay

and now everything I’m afraid of revolves around you walking out the door along with everything else I’ve been counting on and locking up no matter if the keys fit or not

and the heavier they get and the more I’m weighed down to the ground

it seems like the easier it is for you to go

all I’m made up of is fear and anxiety

and its funny

because I’m afraid I’ll feel this way forever.

I used to send you flowers

every time you cried

and when you saw them,

you cried some more.

and eventually,

I sent so many flowers

you were always crying

so I kept sending them.

and it wasn’t until you were buried in orchids

and pinned to the walls by petunias 

strangled in sunflowers

and buried up to your nose in roses

that you told me you were very much allergic

to flowers 

theres a lot of things I want to say but don’t even want to admit them to myself

there’s a lot of things I want to admit to myself but don’t know how to say

or if I want to say them

or what words to use

or if there’s words at all

I’m so confused

and I’m lost and 

I dont know

I dont know how I feel 

I don’t know how I want to feel

I don’t know how you want me to feel

or if I’m stopping myself from feeling it because I’m afraid of how they could turn out. 

and I can’t convince myself that there’s some sort of mutualness between us

because there’s no way four letters can express how I feel

or what I want to say

or what I want to portray or project onto you

and there’s not one person who can mirror it back to me,

I’m convinced of it 

and there’s a thousand miles between compulsions of my head and heart and ten thousand reasons why absolutely nothing makes sense.

I can’t decide what I want from you, or if I want anything at all.