You were drunk and I could smell the cheap bottle on your breath even over the phone and I remember I was trying hard not to cry, my fingertips pressing so hard onto my lips I felt like I was bruising myself, and my fingernails were cutting into the skin on my lips and you whispered, "I love you so much. Please listen. Please listen to me, okay? I love you. I need you so much right now." no you don't. You don't you don't you don't.                   Even as I repeated this in my head, your voice was there again, intoxicated and wobbly. "Please I need you—" and then the line cut off and I should've done something—
God damn it.
And I was too late and I should've but I didn't and I’m so sorry.
I’m so so sorry.

There is one voicemail I will always remember.
I let you go to voicemail, once again. We were fighting. (But what else was new?)
I kept my face close to the answering machine, so I could hear all of your shaky breaths before you spoke.
“Hey fuck you,” you said first—your voice shakily joking, sarcastic, but then it broke and, and—then “You hurt me a lot, and I want you to know that god damn it—” You coughed. Cleared your throat out twice. Vulnerability was not your strong suit. “You don’t just do this to people,” you said and when your voice cracked, that was my undoing.
I picked up the phone. You knew, but still went on like I wasn’t there. Your heavy breathing kept my body still, but my hand was trembling like a motherfucker.
“I want you to do something for me.”
Anything, I thought. I’d do anything in that moment.
“When you see me,” you said and then stopped.
I was expecting anything else, I can tell you that. Anything else.
Began again. “Don’t. Don’t talk to me. Just, when you see me again, stay away from me.” And then I was hanging up the phone, stumbling away from it, like it had hurt me, like you had hurt me when it had been me, all along. Like it always was. I was only hurting myself.
And I cupped a hand over my mouth, made it to them bathroom. And I threw up two times.
You don’t just do this to people.

Then I put my head under my pillow, and I allowed myself for just one time to feel sorry for myself. And I wept into my mattress with my nose pressed against it, and I wept and wept because I just wanted to grieve for one second only for myself and what I'd lost, not what everyone else had. And I shook and my whole body was being torn apart from the inside out and my breathing became nothing except for gasping and shuddered shoulders and sounds that didn't sound like me. Because I had lost more than just my dad, and I thought that just losing him would be enough punishment, but I Iost what was left of my childhood and what was left of my blind hope that bad things didn't happen to good people. Because bad things happen to everyone, whether they deserve them or not, and I really wish I hadn't had to learn that so soon because I was just a kid and I'm still just a kid. I just don't feel like one. And I just wanted to feel sorry for myself because I'm always feeling sorry for everyone else because they'd lost so much and they never deserved it, but I had lost so much too and no one ever seemed to feel bad about that. I lost my sleep and good grades and so many friends and my childhood and my memory and a mom I could trust, and my ability to talk to people about how I felt, and the way I let people so close without a second thought. But now I'm scared that they'll die or leave, or just eventually give up on me. Because everyone lost something. But sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who lost everything.

And I felt you in the breeze that blew through my window at night, the one that made me shiver and shake and pull the blanket up further. It didn’t help I was still cold. I felt you in my sobs, when the clock said 3:32am and I knew I would not sleep. I felt you in the way no one could hear my crying. The worst kind of cry; the one that has happened so many times before. On the floor, my face pressed into a pillow muffling the mess I had become—shaking and shaking and shaking—in the room I had once called ours, curled up in a ball rocking back and forth I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. The cry that you must press a fist up against your mouth so the scream that is fighting its way up will not be let out. The worst of all I was on my own, missing you, hearing your voice even though you were not there, whispering to me in a voice that was harsher than your own, “You were not there for me so I’m not going to be there for you.” But the very worst part—I deserved it. I deserved it all.

I’m always asking myself; how do I deal with this? How do I ignore this pain? The dull never ending ache in my chest, in my heart, in my mind, screaming, he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone. How do I get through this? How do you cope with this loss? But I’ve found the answer is very simple. How do you cope? The answer is that you don’t. It will always hurt.

I saw you later that day. You were with another girl; I believe her name was Maria. Brown hair, brown eyes. She was so stunning and beautiful. I wished I was as pretty as she was. Maybe if I was you wouldn’t have left me. Maybe if I was beautiful you would love me still. Maybe.
I traced every word you said last night in my head. “Don’t talk to me. Stay away from me.” That’s what you said. But you didn’t tell me I couldn’t stare at you.
So I stared. I stared at your face, how perfect your smile was and remembering how your soft lips tasted when I kissed you. I couldn’t help but miss it. And I continued to stare. You were wearing a tank top and so I could see how beautiful your collarbones were. So perfect. I wished I could just run up to you and you would catch me and we could hug for hours upon hours and I would feel so safe. I wished you were mine again.

And I went home that night, and sadness was sitting on the chair again—see how he hovers, like a ghost, drifting between my world and someone else’s. I wanted to push him hard, shove him up against the fridge and get my hands inside him, hit my body against his. Like a car crash. I wanted to tell him, “You will not ruin me. Not this time. Not this time. Or ever or ever or ever.”

And there are tears in my eyes now and I just want to tell you somehow—show you—that all I can think about is the absence of you and the way it makes me feel so damn empty, so empty that I am left hollowed out, hunched over, panting panting—"Please come back. I need you to be here again, please, just—"
And no one can possibly understand.
And I am left here alone again missing you so much.
I miss you in the morning.
I miss you all day.
At night it is the worst. Because I can feel you in my room. Feel you scratching me and hitting me again and again and there are ghosts dancing around my head; laughing at me, your fault your fault their voices sing. You're worthless. And who could love you? Who could love a person like you? And I am crying, because the answer is that I don't know who could love me. Who could love me?

I was eleven when I learned that people die and they do not come back. Even when you beg, even when you cry. I was twelve when I spent my birthday alone in a crowded room full of people with empty smiles—"I'm so sorry for your loss, I know what you're going through," no you don't no you don't— And I blew out the candles and everyone clapped; not knowing I was wishing that I would die. I was thirteen when my mind and my wrists started to scar. My wrists weren't clean anymore. Red pooled on my arms, scratches, thin lines that are still here on my arms scarred forever. I was fourteen and struggling to breathe through my lungs—I'd seen too much. Known too much. You were gone and I couldn't breathe couldn't breathe couldn't breathe. You were gone, and you left me and I was starting to realize I wasn't worth anything. And maybe that's why you left me. There was more scars too many scars they haunt me they haunt me. I was fifteen and another person left
and I watched him go with a smile, because I knew it wouldn't last; the boy with hair in his eyes. He knew I was scarred inside and out and I loved him. But not enough, and that's why I let him go.  “You never cared so why don’t you just go?” I didn't expect him to fight for me, and he didn't. Now I am sixteen and breathing. I am sixteen and alive. I am sixteen and maybe it's not so bad. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I still can't breathe. Love isn't always enough—but I will always love you enough. I am sixteen and I'm alive, and I appreciate that so much.

I am so hungry for the way your spine wrapped around me and I know, I know, I know I’m supposed to hold my tongue, but you’re hammering away at the locked door in my chest and the caterpillars in my gut are sprouting wings and I’m a mess of fluttering nerves and skipping beats and—I, I am so tired of the way my fingers never really fit right into yours.

I'm having nightmares that scare the living shit out of me. I wake up screaming, sobbing, shaking all over the place. I want someone to listen, but I've got fucking nobody. When did I end up all alone? Why did I let everyone slip away? Why did I think it was easier to be alone? The ache in my chest won’t leave. I’m alone and it hurts. I’m alone and it hurts. I’m alone and it hurts.
I just can't anymore.
I don't want to live in a world where you don't exist. I can't stop thinking about that night when he found me, fully clothed, sitting under the shower spray, soaked, just completely soaked, and my bottom lip was trembling and my teeth were chattering, and his face crumpled, and he just sat next to me and I heard him weeping, and his sobs were loud and sharp like a tidal wave, and that was the first time in my life when I truly              wanted to die. And I heard him whimpering, “He’s gone, how—I can't—I can't do this, how do I live anymore?” I'd never sobbed louder. How could you leave us like this? How could you do that?

“I can’t—I can’t trust you anymore. What we had is gone. We can’t get it back.”
“Yes, we can. I know we can.”  His shoulders shook with each breath.
“You’re not who I fell in love with.”
 He was sobbing, and sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” his breath hitched. “I love you.”
 I walked away with stiff shoulders, thinking hold it in, hold it in. Just a little fucking longer. When he wasn't in sight anymore my knees gave out. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. “I love you too, I love you too.”

“Uh, I’m kind of a bitch. Just like, so you know, before you get involved.” I said that to him when he asked me out. All he did was smile at me. While I was questioning his sanity, he was like, “Well, I’m an asshole, so doesn't that make us like... a perfect match?” I held his hand the whole way home.

Imagine a world where everything was drained of its color. You are limited to 100 words a day, after that, you are unable to create sound. There is no art, there is no music, there are surely no seasons. The town you are born in is all you know. There is nothing else out there. Ambition, there is no such thing. Creativity doesn't exist. Animals have vanished, no longer there to comfort you. You eat the same meal every day. Breakfast, lunch, and a small dinner. Your career is chosen for you, as well as your name. Holidays are out of the question, including your birthday. Your family and siblings are chosen for you, also your home. Imagine a world where you could only smile twice a day, and frown once. You have no choice, you obey. Now forget all of that and think about how you've been spending your own life. You have more freedom than you think. Take advantage of it.

There isn't a word for certain nights when you feel spineless, like you need an evening under the stars surrounded by nature. There isn't a word for when your knees feel like they were hammered and you can't get up, but you're just pretending you're in pain because if you have to stand up, you have to go somewhere. There isn't a word for when you taste a new carton of milk and in seconds your weak little bones already feel thicker. Certain feelings and places and spaces in time cannot be named, which I am perfectly okay and content with.

My teeth embedded into my tongue, my thick, sleepy tongue.  What exactly were you? There are so many words in the English language, which one could I paint across your back in a way that would be fitting? You're fiery, you popped and sizzled with courage, but of course all of that is curtained beneath your tangly hair. Only I know this, so it doesn't exactly count. You have a sense of tranquillity, you're endearing like a small wild animal strung up in daisies. Nobody wants to scare you off, poor little thing. Mystical, perhaps. Perhaps, but not quite. You are a very pretty tessellation of things. Hauntingly beautiful (striking, even!) with the way you scurry everywhere, to each corner of my bedroom. Like you've never even seen light before. (What an odd thing?) They say that the eyes are the window to the soul, but you're so opposite. Your eyes are so caesious it's like I'm staring into a waterfall of really fragile, delicate secrets. But you're not exactly fragile and delicate, just your eyes. Just your soul. Your spirit is hardened, a warrior inside, though. And I can safely say your heart is empathetical, often kind. I guess maybe you don't have a word, so maybe neither do I. But I would like to say that together, never apart, we are eternal, ethereal. We are like winter, always there, but hiding. Hiding underneath flowerbeds and a whole lot of lucid dreaming.

The fact that you wear sweaters in winter is kind of prominent to me, like your hipbones, too. Prominent, protuberant. The way that you bite your tongue in your sleep lets me know how daylight makes you shrink, but in the night you are endearing, no longer cast away with strangers gobbling you up on the sidewalks of really big cities. Your little pink lips are like flower petals, the kind you find oddly lying around in winter, not out of place but meant to be buried underneath secrets. Your proportions may be small, but like that flower petal, in the scale of the whole entire cosmic universe composed of matter and forces and really beautiful strange energetic lights, you matter. To me, at least.
      “You're so desperate for people to love you, you know that? You want and you want and when people actually do love you, you just—how can you do this to people? How can you ask for love and when you get it, you don’t want it anymore. It’s cruel. You’re cruel.” —oh god the way you looked at me. I never meant to be this way. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.


I take pity on the people who have no clue how to be as ambitious as I am. I live in a place where people are so set on the present and beating themselves down that they have lost all drive to move forward. Some people are so blind that it angers me, because they have no imagination or optimism of what life could be like in the future. They believe that their "higher power" has forced this upon them, though they have not been sinful. The truth is, nothing brought this upon them. Their true problem lies within themselves, underneath. They're stuck and feel like they can't get out, because somewhere in their mind something got stuck. It's not impossible to get rid of, but they need to find it themselves. They cannot feed off of sympathy from others for the rest of their lives, they need to take control and stop complaining about it, because that gets them nowhere. You control your own life, so if you don't like it, change something.