You’re Still Replaceable

Before you pride yourself on being so hard
for me get over, remember that you broke the heart of a girl
who: falls in love with
sticks and leaves, and keeps her favorites
in the backseat of her car.
cries at crimson sunsets.
tiptoes around insects on the
sidewalk.
feels too much and not enough.
sees beauty in everyone
but herself.
does not understand the concept of loving
halfheartedly.
jumps in puddles and digs
her toes in the mud.
lies in the middle of the street at night
just to feel her heart race.
was never taught how to
put herself first.

You broke the heart of a girl with emotions like
rain drops in a torrent,
an ingenuous heart that still hasn’t learned
that hardening is much safer.
A girl reckless enough to tear open
the stitches, to risk bleeding out
to love you.
You sawed through the tissues
that never had time to congeal.

You’re hard to get over because
I opened my wounds for you, and
every time I pick my scabs, they take
a little longer to heal; they leave
a deeper scar.

‘Sometimes’ she said, ‘I fear the dry days will become weeks and my insides will turn to desert.’

excerpt from a book i’ll never write

I Loved You Like

i loved you like taking
showers in the rain and rolling
in mud. like jumping in
puddles.
like skydiving, cliff jumping, squishing
three people and some swimming noodles
on a moped with one helmet.
like exploring the jungles
in your eyes.
like running through
the forest barefoot.
like cutting the sole of my
foot on a piece of glass, like
continuing to run despite the
bleeding. like the infection
that developed afterwards.
like the scar that remains.

Poetry is being able to see a story in anything.

we are storytellers

I Am (Nothing Without) Poetry

I am nothing
besides a collection of poems waiting
to be experienced, waiting
to be written.
I am an urn of emotions, a vessel for verse,
an undulating piece waiting to be
completed.

Losing you is something I was born to do.

it doesn’t make it hurt any less, but i know it had to be this way.

You’re Where They Were All Born

If all my other loves were the twinkling city skylines
of my heart, then you,
my dear, are the capital.

If everything I’ve ever felt before
burned with the intensity of a star,
you, my love, are
a nebula.

I Don’t Miss Your Hands

The sky was so
incredibly clear tonight.
It was one of those nights where you would have whispered:
the stars look so close you can touch them.

Tonight, for the first time
I don’t miss seeing your hands reach up to the sky.

It’s hard to settle for bits and pieces of someone you used to swallow whole.

how am i supposed to be okay with small talk when you used to live inside me?

Paralyzed

I could see the words
in her eyes
long before she wrote them–
long before she read them
on that stage.

I could feel her pain in the way
her spine curled into me at night–
long before the melancholy weighed
upon her lips (her cherry smile).

I knew she was breaking long
before she shattered, but
all I could do
was watch.