LittleBird1996

She learned to not feel so she wouldn’t get hurt. The numbness almost seemed unbearable, yet in the most addicting way

You take off the mask in the middle of the night when there’s no one but you and the moon; that’s when I want to see you the most.

And how did I know that I was in love with her? Because nothing consumed me and my thoughts the way she did.

I cried oceans for you, hoping you’d swim back. But all you did was drown me further.

1) I still have to learn how to love without staining my hands from the blood of the people I loved, scarred from the broken edges of my skin. Smile. Until your cheekbones get stuck in your own lies. Smile. Until your lips curve on their own with every sorry. Smile. 2) It’s been sixteen years since my parents married and my mother is still making space for my father’s habits. Shrinking herself so that his voice can occupy more room. Throwing off her pieces to fix his mistakes into her ribs, making amends with his fist and the angry syllables, which roll down his tongue. 3) I’m my father’s clone and my mother’s failed lesson in history. My fingers picked my father’s tendency of running. Run. Before they know you aren’t healing. Run. Before they realize you never intended to stay. Run. Before they realize you never were worth loving. 4) I’m sitting next to him in an empty room and spoke twice each time. Each sentence began with the words “sorry for interrupting,” we were alone though. And he laughs and keeps his giant hands on mine and says your mother taught you well and I clench my wine glass praying I won’t break it. 5) My mother wears her engagement ring like ropes tying her to a monster she once loved and my father still isn’t sure if he ever loved her. 6) I’ve spent my entire existence loving boys with mouths like oceans tasting sea water with every kiss while they mistook my hands for band aids, expecting them to heal their wounds but my fingers have only learnt to cut through the people I love the most. 7) I notice how my mother’s heart drops to her stomach clogging her voice in her throat whenever she speaks about love and I can’t help but wonder if I too will fall in love with a man who kisses and kills me at the same time. 8) My father always talks in screams and my mother always responds in tears. Cacophony ringing in her ears like the ghost from the night she said yes to his proposal but regret always tastes bitter and she isn’t good at confessing. 9) Boys search for hand me down hearts between my broken ribs, extending their hands like a ladder to take out what’s left of me and I never seem to stop them. I warn them my ribs are made of leftover chalk and my heart is already burned in ashes. They still search and find nothing.

Tell me how to love without breaking my heart.

1. You are not bad. You haven’t done anything wrong. You are lovable. You are worthy of being who you are. 2. You are not bad because you couldn’t fix someone. 3. You are not selfish when you think of yourself or act on your own behalf. You have a right to your own voice, your own body, your own things, to know what you think and want, and to speak up and ask for it. 4. You don’t have power over, control over, or responsibility for other people’s lives. 5. When you make the well being of others your responsibility, when you try to change how they feel, no matter how positive your intention, it’s invasive and cripples them. You undermine those you try to fix as well as yourself. 6. You should not abandon yourself when you most need your own support. 7. You don’t have to depend on others or wait for them so that you can live my own life.

She wasn’t a work of art, I mean, how could she be? She was too complicated and sharp to be locked away in some frame or book. She was messy and too far gone to be contained. She wasn’t art; she was like the earth. Way too vast and beautiful to be trapped in my arms.