every morning for seven months I have had to work up a storm and get the wind to blow hard enough to rip my roots from your front yard, I know I destroyed your flowers but you weren't letting me grow, you kept cutting off the same branches I have had to rip myself open every night to try to drain out everything you told me when I was intoxicated by blind, cloudy thoughts of you. you always find your way back in through the same wounds and that's probably why I can't feel better, it never heals if you keep touching it and you always touch me, but not when I ask you to. when I'm crying you turn your back to me and fall asleep listening to me sob like it's the sound of the rain, when I held on to you as tightly as I could you didn't grab me back because you knew I was so attached and I tried to hang on enough for both of us but it's hard to breathe, I breathe all this air into you and it makes me lightheaded, it makes me so dizzy and for the longest time I thought that's what it was supposed to feel like when you loved somebody but when I don't give you all of the air I have you blame me for your choking, if I don't envelope myself in you until I'm drowning it's my fault that you drift away

I loved you the way you feel when you fall asleep during a thunderstorm or the way it feels when you lay in the sun and can feel your skin start to burn up, I could feel my skin start to burn up the first night you looked at me. I loved you the way honey tastes while it rots your teeth, I loved you the way the flowers you brought me smelt after you ripped their roots from the earth, I loved you like the sound of the highway and the glass on my floor from when you broke my window and the pressure on your chest when you inhale water and the burning when you couch it back up, I'm still coughing up water from when you held me underwater and told me "tell me what you want, tell me you want to be with me or I'm going to leave", I tried to scream but all I could do was keep breathing in water

I never felt safe with your hands wrapped in mine or gripping any part of my body, I never felt safe when you drove slowly or wore your seat belt or told me "it's okay, you won't hurt me, I'm over it", I never felt safe with your eyes covering my body or looking at me while I cried, you couldn't hold my hand hard enough to make me feel anything or hold me down when I was shaking and I never knew why I felt like running every time I saw you but you were building a fence around me, you were planting flowers in my lungs and expecting me to love you, you were filling my bloodstream with syrup and expecting it to make me sweet.