just breathe

I knew what I wanted to run to. But it didn’t exist, so I didn’t leave.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.

When you choose to be a poet, when you choose to spill like this, bleed like this, cry like this, your pain becomes an exhibit. A place for people to walk through and then leave when they are ready. No one ever asks a museum if it’s okay.

I’m still learning to love the parts of me that no one claps for.

You’re going to do something terrible, you’re going to kiss someone else with that mouth. And I will not forgive you, because I will not know how to forget that my skin is mine but mostly it’s yours. We were charting another Atlantis together on the map of my body, And I’m taking it back now. Your knowledge, my secrets, my gasps when you touch me there, and there, how these new worlds were for you. So you’ll kiss another mouth, and maybe you’ll enjoy it, maybe it’ll taste like new summer or wild berries or something you’ve never had on your tongue before but when you come back for me with your hands wide open I will not come, I will not look for you, and I will not forgive you.

They kept asking me, ‘What does the poem mean? What does the poem mean?’ And it was frustrating me because poems don’t mean. They suggest. They enact. They provoke.

But what do I do with all this leftover love? My hands were built for crawling on. How do I write myself gently. How do I not worship the shipwreck that stranded me here?

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

It’s kind of funny, how the worse I feel, the more I want to write. It doesn’t really make me feel any different, but there’s just something about putting your mind out there for all to see that is actually calming, in a ‘take it or leave it’ sort of way.

You know, you spend your whole life feeling like you don’t quite fit in anywhere. And then you walk into a room one day, whether it’s at university or an office or some kind of club, and you just go, ‘Ah. There they are.’ And suddenly you feel at home.

I want to care, but I don’t. I look at you and all I feel is tired.

I’ve been taught that love is beautiful and kind, but it isn’t like that at all. It is beautiful, but it’s a terrible beauty, a ruthless one, and you fall-you fall, and the thing is- The thing is you want to. You don’t care what’s coming you just want who your heart beats for.

You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.

If you’re lonely, bored, or unhappy, remember you are mad young. There is so much time to meet new people and go to new places.

The worst thing in the world can happen, but the next day the sun will come up. And you will eat your toast. And you will drink your tea.

I hope that in the future they invent a small golden light that follows you everywhere and when something is about to end, it shines brightly so you know it’s about to end. And if you’re never going to see someone again, it’ll shine brightly and both of you can be polite and say, “It was nice to have you in my life while I did, good luck with everything that happens after now.” And maybe if you’re never going to eat at the same restaurant again, it’ll shine and you can order everything off the menu you’ve never tried. Maybe, if someone’s about to buy your car, the light will shine and you can take it for one last spin. Maybe, if you’re with a group of friends who’ll never be together again, all your lights will shine at the same time and you’ll know, and then you can hold each other and whisper, “This was so good. Oh my God, this was so good.”

And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this! And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, No. This is what’s important.