#illuminosity

I carry in my hands

Forests and selenium 

And the way my hair twists on my fingers

I will pour into

This

Into us

Into you

This is the investment 

Worry makes a bed in my spine

Though numbers look green

I'm not naive enough anymore to believe in the color

I pile my heart at your feet

Behind your back 

On your chest

I pray that you will take care of these pieces

They're all I have left. 

When I lose faith in myself

I grab onto words

The piles and collections of letters

Fingers against hot pressed paper

Anything to feel less afraid...

There's a constellation,

In my heart

I keep thinking if I connect all the stars with string

Maybe it'll fix me

But I forgot how to sew...

When you save me I just want to stop staring at the hinges, but

I can't stop focusing on how the screws could fall onto the floor, 

At any second 

I don't feel worthy of what I've been presented with

No matter how hard I've worked

I never seem to 

And you call me an angel and you shower me with things I don't know how to deserve 

Trying to comprehend things about me that even I don't even know how to grasp.

I want to tell you I am an airplane with no pilot

That this territory is uncharted

And I don't understand it either.

And I glanced over my shoulder towards you, leaning back just a few feet away. And I wanted to sit by you, peacefully and euphorically. And I wanted to lay my head on the peculiar curve where your shoulder meets your neck. And I wanted you to be the one I fell in love with

Your words have bled into the ink, And now it’s all spilling, Slowly.

You left your music in my playlists- Sent a cutter a song about addiction, asshole, But my nightmares weren’t having nightmares anymore, They were just sad, the poor things, The monsters and the teeth that I curated under my bed, They were all covered in tears, they wouldn’t stop crying.

No, the floodwater wasn’t clear, but it also wasn’t mud, It was the inky red of spilled blood, Do you know how many bloodstains I’ve had to clean up off my bedroom floor? Do you even care?

I’m setting fire to my head now, Or maybe it was my pillows I set fire to, I just didn’t want them to smell like you. And now I’ve spent more money on condoms and alcohol, And concealer to hide hickeys, Than any sixteen year old should have the right to- No, I don’t have the best coping mechanisms, but that’s something you already knew. At least you kissed your knuckles before splitting my heart in two, At least you got that right.

Is this second-person point of view accusatory enough for you? You, you, you, it’s all you. Am I getting under your skin yet? Am I still there? Did I ever leave? Or do you still read our conversations from time to time, Look for me in the hallway and canteen lines, Or break a little when you see me smile? Catch my eye, and see our history play out in double time?

I can’t wait to get drunk this weekend and have an excuse to message you again, See, I don’t deserve you in sunlight, Daytime sheds too much light on my sins, And I think you have a girlfriend now, not that it matters- No, I already loved you in guilt, In that secret space between Alcohol and 2AM, And old habits are hard to break.

But no, I don’t quite love you, No, I don’t quite miss you, Now you’re just a bad habit- You’re just a scratch I can’t quite itch, An ache, burrowed in some bone the doctors can’t reach, A piece of fat dissolving in the bloodstream.  There, I’ve said it now. There’s nothing left in these pens now, I can throw them away now, I’ve sucked them all dry, the ink’s out.