more matter, with less art

six years ago i wrote a poem that danced around the fact that i wanted to die. i wrote about the way my hands tell stories that i’ve never been able to speak, echoing, i don’t know how to tell you this and maybe i never will. i am twenty-six now and i still have never told anyone. i’ve never told anyone about how, as a teen, i tried cutting myself but i was too scared of the blood. it was out of control, and i needed that— control. i’ve never told anyone that i took that control by taking the eraser end of a pencil and dragging it across the knuckles of my thumbs, the back of my hands, and erased the skin there, as if doing so could erase all the rest of my pain. but this pain, i could control. it didn’t hurt until i stopped and then the pain was mine. i still have the scars but they’re faded now. i don’t remember the last time i hurt myself, though i can’t say i haven’t wanted to. but i haven’t. i’ve gotten better, grown older. i’ve learned how to love the life i have despite the pain it carries. and maybe that’s why i’m telling you this now— because the first injury i got in my new apartment, living on my own for the first time and falling in love with life again, was when i accidentally burned my thumb right in a spot i used to rub my skin off, and i thought: i used to think i’d be dead by now. i’m so glad i’m not.

i am twenty-six and becoming myself for the first time. in the mirror, the reflection is someone i recognize, someone who is genuine. i don't always know what to do with myself: after five years, i am reforging myself into a singular entity. at the karaoke bar with my friends someone shows me the sunset, rose-hued over the mountains. my friend and i face our fears together and sign up for a song each. i laugh and i laugh and i laugh, arm flung over the back of a beautiful person's chair. we sing, full-throated, and do not feel ashamed. for the first time in five years i am not afraid to drink. i discover trust again: when i am on that stage belting pink pony club, i know my friends will join in the chorus when i yell sing it! and hold out the mic. when harry baker said there is no better place than in a room with all my friends, this is what he meant. i am twenty-six and becoming myself for the first time. i am discovering what it is like to be loved.

next year, my body will have remade itself / will no longer remember her touch / but your echo will be etched into my soul forever

there is a box in my closet full of memories i wish to forget. i hide you away like a bruise or a scar; i pretend you do not call to me. it has been over a year, now, since i packed you away. and yet some days i uncover something else forgotten, reread your words and feel that old ache start to settle in my chest. i hate that i will never be able to walk away. but i have removed the knife, stopped the bleeding. you are a wound that will never quite heal; you pain me in bad weather. the sharpness of the blade in my heart is but a memory, tugging like a phantom limb. i look in the mirror and see only myself. when i'm ready i will throw you away without opening the box. i am proud of the person i'll be then. but i still have a road ahead. so i'll buckle my seatbelt, give myself rest when the weather gets rough. i will read your words until the pain eases. i will read your words until i can let them go.

relentlessly, the thought resounds: will it ever stop hurting? will the memories we never made release me from their haunting? i've wasted enough of my heart on you and the lives i wished we'd lived, i lost you once, then over and over, went through grief and back again. i don't blame you for how things turned out or that we were never really friends, but all i ask is that you leave me be, and let us reach our happy ends. someday i will learn to heal and how to leave us all behind. i hate to lose such a part of myself, but for you -- i bleed every time.

in a world where i am a better person, less caustic, more gentle, i forgive you for this, for abandoning me when i moved away as if happy to see me go. loneliness and i are old friends but now she visits at your insistence, settling between the unsent texts and cancelled invitations. she wishes me happy birthday and reminds me of yours, and i try so hard not to be bitter: after all, she is my only companion. sometimes i hate that i still miss you but when your friendship was all i had it was all i needed, giving me home and healing when i was always searching for both. but beneath my hardened heart there is a place that always loves you, and it screams out pride and joy at your successes on this day. when our roads diverge please take that with you above all else: the happiness that what once was mine has grown to highest heights, and you, fully and beautifully yours, have brought me such joy.

i should have left a million times, but i’ve always been too stubborn to give up and walk away. your eyes that shone bright like warning signs, and all i did was stay. sometimes i think i didn’t know better but sometimes i’m sure that i saw what i wanted to: a version of you that loved me enough to stop running. but i have a new place to stay, now. new arms that love me, new lips that keep no secrets and tell no lies. i leave my memories of you on the doorstep. instead of closure i have guilt, but i’ve stopped asking for  permission to heal. i should have left a million times sooner, but now i am gone, gone, and never coming back.

a girl on a corner smokes a cigarette, exhales a cloud of half smoke, half it’s-too-damn-cold-for-this-shit, eyes water over something more than the boy she loves’ bad habit. a train rumbles by and it echoes of tainted memories in another life; the same life, too far gone. a girl on a corner smokes a cigarette, the sixth empty slot in a package she took off the girl who broke everyone’s heart, called it retribution. she’d promised him payback,  hadn’t she? a small price for love. a girl on a corner smokes a cigarette and hides bloodied knuckles  beneath a sweatshirt, hers this time, and wonders when her hands  became a staple in all her battles. thinks that there’s something real cruel about three people loving each other when nobody can stay; knows that one never really belonged, anyway. a girl on a corner smokes a cigarette, and under the light of the stars another flash of fire makes its way toward her, smoke mingling with hers. his tired eyes meet bloody hands meet her electric gaze, and there’s a story here, one for morning, maybe, but he offers his hand and she thinks that it was all worth it, to end up here, together.

no, i don’t want to speak to you anymore. but there will always be a part of me sitting on your bed every november, when it bleeds from midnight into your birthday, singing happy birthday to you. and in february i will watch you unwrap a book and another painting. and in march i will pretend it’s not your birthday, and i will give you another bear and something sweet. i will not text or call you, but i will remember you on your birthday. you will get twenty seconds of my most cherished memory. and maybe, on my birthday, you will remember twenty seconds of me.

sometimes i think i would give this all up if it meant i could have you again— but who would i be if not for my pain? i would undo every step i’ve taken if it meant having you, only you,  and happy; i’d walk away from a hundred other paths that ended up with a hundred other people. but every movement i’ve made has caused everything that’s ever happened—  butterflies in my stomach causing hurricanes in your skies. if you asked i would say i want us, happy. but if you asked me to choose: i do not know how to live without my pain. i could not love you happy, nor could you love me. so i stand in the rain and i cry, and i do not tell you that i wish i could redo all this and love you happy. i will flap my wings and cause a few more hurricanes. and someday i will become someone who can love without sacrifice, who can be happy and sad and okay. i will love someone who is not you and you will love someone who is not me and we will not talk anymore, but it will be okay, and we will be everything that right now feels impossible— ebbing and flowing, not drowning.

and i say i’m okay, i had therapy today, which isn’t so much an answer  as it is a way to say that i’m not doing very well, but someone listened to me, so i haven’t killed myself yet. but no one wants to hear that. those are the kind of thoughts that leave therapy, but are never spoken in that quiet beige room because admitting to it makes it real, and i prefer only throwing stones down that road. my scars are my own  and i pick at them when she asks me if i’ve ever wanted to hurt myself. my mouth says no but my body says, look at my hands. my body says, i want it to end, sometimes. my body says, i don’t know how to tell you this and maybe i never will.

you once asked me what did i feel shame about because i had just bought a new book of poetry and said shame is an ocean i drown in you were watching me in the dark from the passenger seat and i whispered i am ashamed of what i carry and the people i’ve disappointed and the things i could’ve become you replied with something quiet a reassurance that i didn’t deserve it wasn’t until much later that i realized you had to ask because you were not ashamed of me and that was when i knew i loved you too

i bought a pair of fuzzy socks in your favorite color and some nights i still can’t sleep because it’s too quiet sleeping alone. it could be okay a thousand times over and i’ll still cry when i think about you because your name is a wound i can’t stop picking. sometimes i wonder if you feel the same, choking on the ghosts of who we used to be. i don’t think i’ll ever get rid of the feeling.

--boats against the current.

--and from the water we return.

--no matter where you go, you’ll never be alone.