hundred & fifty

She hears the fire alarm as she calmly applies another coat of her drugstore mascara. She blinks twice slowly and step back from the mirror as she puts in her last pearl earring—determined to escape the flames unsheathed. 

hundred & forty-nine

I wonder how much of it was circumstance. Clearly you were drawn to me, but how much of it was close quarters and strong whiskey and how much of it was captivation and intrigue? I’ll take genuine lust over circumstance, but tell me, is there such thing? 

hundred & forty-eight

Your healing in front of me has left me even more torn than I ever was before.

hundred & forty-seven

There’s madness happening outside my window as the sun goes down behind the city skyline. I would pick lying in bed, scrolling through Pinterest wedding boards and laughing at Jimmy Kimmel with you every time. 

hundred & forty-six

He was a little cute; I was a little single.

hundred & forty-five

It’s the nights we try to blend in with the world and fail miserably that I re-realize you’re my very best friend. 

hundred & forty-four

You saw him laughing, eyes gleaming. But be aware: he’s only smiling because he knows the ghosts in your eyes will play nicely with the demons in his. 

hundred & forty-three

She drove a little too fast; she loved a little too deep. She learned the hard way that only on the very brink of death do you feel the most alive. 

hundred & forty-two

My lips have become a catalyst for words you will never say. I recite affirmations softly to myself: you are beautiful, you are loved, you are enough. And just before sleep overcomes me, I almost believe them. 

hundred & forty-one

We are so quick to yell at the Lord; so quick to deny Him in His great plan for us. Sometimes God doesn’t change your circumstance. Sometimes God changes you, instead. 

hundred & forty

A note to the side chicks: there is no winning. It’ll drive you mad if you don’t have him, but you know the second you do, you won’t trust him. You’re competing, baby, but there is no competition. This isn’t about respecting yourself or fighting for what you want. This is about realizing you’re worth honesty. And with this, what you’re doing at 2am, there is no winning.

hundred & thirty-nine

Trust me, I’m just as sick of writing sad strings of words as you are reading them. I wonder, then, if when the hurt is gone, will I even be able to write? Perhaps only colorful words will slip from my tongue like a million rainbows with no hidden intentions.  

hundred & thirty-eight

Just know when she’s stopped playing games, it’s because she’s stopped caring who the winner is. And when that’s the case, man, you’ve lost her.

hundred & thirty-seven

I’m trying to rub clean the words engraved in my mind; consider my walls built and my heart incarcerated. 

hundred & thirty-six

Are the highs ever worth how deep the lows get?

hundred & thirty-five

I swear I’ll write you a rainbow as soon as my skies clear.

hundred & thirty-four

She sits alone in a cluttered art room painting canvasses, sitting cross legged, wine in hand, observing her work with quiet triumph. One acoustic cover fades into the next and the hours slip away. Truly, sometimes all you need is a long uninterrupted afternoon and a pencil to find that the only one who needs to love you is you. 

hundred & thirty-three

Wipe tears I didn’t even know were falling and kiss another 2am goodnight; I swear one of these nights I’ll sleep without hugging the phone, memorizing words you already forgot you wrote. 

hundred & thirty-two

The what ifs will exhaust you. The untruths will bind you. And the realizations will leave you shattered. Why even try, girl, why even try.

hundred & thirty-one

For three hours a night, you’re mine. The world is silenced with sleep, but we’re wide awake sharing intimacies in the secrecy of the dark. Truly I know that what we reveal under this cloak of night is just for us two. I have to admit, though, I didn’t realize how shitty that was until I realized how shitty you were.  

hundred & thirty

She probably reaches for you as you return to your side of the bed. She probably rests her head cozily on your chest. Automatically, I bet your arm hugs her; I bet your hand rubs her back. Hell, you might even kiss the top of her head. She probably readjusts a little, smiles innocently and moves in closer. I just hope as you pull her in and text me goodnight, you fall asleep hating yourself in a way you know I won’t. 

hundred & twenty-nine

Midnight has become our goodmorning and 4am has become our goodnight. What daylight lacks in fantasy, dusk makes up for in secrecy. 

hundred & twenty-eight

I sipped on poison and thought it must be an acquired taste. I was dead before I realized it wasn’t love.

hundred & twenty-seven

You’re gonna get what you pay for, so it’s time we change our currency. It’s time we invest in our futures and it’s time we value our dollars. If we keep throwing pennies into the hands of the greedy, we’ll be left with nothing and they’ll be left with everything. It’s important to recognize when their fortunate becomes our poverty. Promise me that before you take care of the world, you take care of yourself. 

hundred & twenty-six

Our fairytale turned into a ghost story the moment I realized my favorite nights, were your favorite lies.

hundred & twenty-five

I fall asleep to goodnight texts, and she wakes up to goodmorning kisses. There’s tragedy in this story but I’m not sure where.

hundred & twenty-four

If I could spin her words into stars. I would stare up at them every single night. There's gotta be some kind of magic in the tales she's whispered to you, as she's the one you've chosen to lay next to every night, and I'm just the one you think about.

hundred & twenty-three

Nothing but soft earth below our feet and endless sky above our heads. You reach for my hand and make me feel like the very poetry I'm bound to write about the way you make me feel.

hundred & twenty-two

Poetry is just truth, void of all bullshit, come at from different perspectives, fueled by different experiences.

hundred & twenty-one

She’d rather be kissed by the stars than kissed by the sun. Her days were a blur and her nights were specific. You see, when your eyes were heavy with sleep, her mind was wide awake. She knew there was something comforting about only needing yourself in the shadows of night and not the many faces the daylight offers.

hundred & twenty

You don’t love her. But I know you want to. We kissed and before I could find my breath again, it seems she called dibs. So, according to cul-de-sac rules, you were hers. Confused, I handed you over just as quickly as you handed me yourself.

hundred & nineteen

It’s dark out and I’m bargaining with fate again. Though both may leave me unsatisfied, were we an abundance of lies or an absence of truths? 

hundred & eighteen

You wrote a story on my skin and sent me adrift like a message in a bottle. And now I’m waiting for someone else curious enough to carefully make sense of the words I’ve been covered in. Perhaps this time, they’ll write new secrets in permanent ink and keep me for themselves. 

hundred & seventeen

I don't miss you as you are. I miss you as you pretended as to be. I miss the potential, the inspirational, the curiosity. I've seen you now, and I don't recognize it. I'm missing the parts of you that were always missing.

hundred & sixteen

Flashbacks come in strings of sentences you once said. One lays on my heart. And then the next. And then the next. Stacking and stacking until my mind is overwhelmed with uncommitted intentions and my eyes are overwhelmed with tangible sorrow. It's an all-consuming weight being pressed deeper my only whispered plea is for sleep to come quickly. 

hundred & fifteen

My phone vibrates on the sheets beside me and I'm suddenly full energy. I see the sun come up as my battery dies down and the playful conversation comes to an awkward halt. Maybe we'll talk soon. Maybe we won't. But until then, tell your girl I'm sorry. 

hundred & fourteen

I'm not entirely sure what it is about a dark room and an open flame but as of late it has felt more inviting than your name on my phone and I am proud of that.

hundred & thriteen

Though I wonder what it would be like to wake up confident and courageous I do believe there is something beautiful in the humility of the shadows I've found myself in. 

hundred & twelve

What if instead of looking at our precedents as precautions we look at them as ammunition? What if instead of looking at our mistakes as losses we look at them as progression? Maybe then we’d learn to redefine our limits rather than redefining our goals.

hundred & eleven

I woke up in a cold sweat realizing that this is how it’ll be now: living in daydreams and resting in nightmares. My only reality lays in reminisces I dare not revisit. 

hundred & ten

It's between the heaviness of my eyelids and the anxiety in my chest and the chills on my skin that I find all the love I harbored slowly surface.

hundred & nine

3am came up slowly behind me and wrapped it's ice cold fingers around my neck. It squeezed so seductively I barely felt 4am force feed me your words I swear I already threw out with 2am.

hundred & eight

It’s hard to walk sober when you’re being led, disillusioned, onto blurry paths. This road feels familiar but your hand in mine feels new. I’m sure I’ve been here before. I’m sure I’ve laughed like that, flirted like that. And I’m sure it didn’t end well. I’m sure I was crushed, spent. But what if this is different? What if this is a new path you’re guiding me along? What if I let my guard down just enough to feel the fairytale, wisp around me? I’ve done it before; what’s the worst that could happen?

hundred & seven

It breaks me to see you broken. I’ve seen you smile a million smiles: sly smiles in class, sarcastic smiles in bookstores, genuine smiles in cars. Whoever is responsible for your smiles no longer reaching your eyes has done us all a disservice. They have robbed the world from true beauty. Distance yourself, pretty girl, from anyone who has you exchanging fake smiles for honest tears. 

hundred & six

There’s this girl I knew, she was tall and blonde with a quick wit and an open heart. She loved until she couldn’t love and then she loved a little more. All she wanted was whatever you wanted and she’d have search the ends of the earth to see a solitary smile.

There was this boy I knew. He was an entirely perfect. But he wasn’t her perfect.

And that’s where nature falls.

No matter how much she’d love, his heart would not be receptive.

That’s what stings. But that’s what’s beautiful.

So I told her, take comfort in rejection. Kiss your wasted time and mark the experience. Everyone has been given a vocation; why would you ever want a cookie-cutter fate when yours has been so uniquely and so intricately designed to bring you your own kind of solace and your own kind of happiness. Chase what you love, and the one who loves you won’t be far behind. And when it catches up you’ll be prepared, for when who loves you catches you at what you love, you’ll spend eternity in serenity and there will be nothing else you desire.

The pieces will fall in perfection, if you give them the time to. 

hundred & five

And it’ll suck until it doesn’t suck, darling. Life is hard and it’s fast and it’s brilliant. Regret nothing. Question everything. People will give you individual definitions of themselves in time, you needn’t try delineate them yourself. Setting expectations is different than setting standards. Standards are for and of yourself, and expectations derive entirely from those around you. Don’t you dare ever put that much trust in another soul. 

hundred & four

It’s consumed me. And I can’t even get words out anymore. It’s hilarious how I could write so much about the hurt I was bound to feel when I genuinely thought I was happy with you. And now that all that pain has surfaced and it’s my new reality I can’t even define it. I can’t even come to terms with the situation I predicted before you even proved to be the person I didn’t want you to be. I’m always ten steps ahead of the moment I’m in until there’s nowhere else to run and all I have is the whisper of yesterday to haunt my tomorrow. 

hundred & three

The three of us laid on the bed. Staring at the fan circulate cold air on our sobering skin. Not too long ago we were awakening from long nights of living vicariously through the story lines we gave our Barbies. We only have our own stories now. How did that one play date end? Why did that one play date end?

hundred & two

Words are coming out me again and I finally feel like I can breathe. It’s like every word typed is a breath and every complete poem is the reason for it. 

hundred & one

Sometimes I wish I’d let things harden me. It seems rather peculiar that I allow myself to be wrapped in the same cloths that smothered me time and time again. It’s a strange thing, being addicted to the addiction.

one-hundred

All in good time, dear girl. One day, you'll awaken to the sweet peace of resilience. You'll look about the world sans the dark skies and sans the harsh rains. You'll make peace with the daylight and as you learn to love the sun, you'll learn to love yourself.

ninety-nine

As your fingers find their way under a different chin and your lips find their way to a different neck, I whisper my goodnight to you from miles away hoping that the ghost of my words find their way into your heart.

ninety-eight

My question to you, then, though it’s been asked before, is how can you miss something that was never yours? How do you define a betrayal of someone who never claimed you? How do you let go of a moment you never had? And how, how in the world, do you learn to build walls when you live in vulnerability? 

ninety-seven

Darling, you were not made to walk among the soft earth to seek comfort. You were created to live and laugh and love. The Lord rejoices when we use our lives boldly and beautifully. It was never intended for you to have it all figured out. How could you possibly, when you don’t even know how long you have? If tomorrow was your last day, tell me, how much have you made God smile? Hell, how much have you smiled yourself? 

ninety-six

I guess at some point you have to be okay with simply being okay. After fighting a battle, either within your own heart or on the field with another’s, I think merely waking up to exist for a while can be an adequate adventure. Never compare your struggle with someone else’s; and likewise, never compare your progress. Everyone’s doing the best they can. 

ninety-five

See, then, I wasn’t shaken by goodbyes, for it only meant a sweeter hello to come. But as the months went on the hellos were more infrequent and the goodbyes were less sweet. The comfort f pattern and the pattern of comfort were stripped until every hello became a timebomb and every goodbye became a grave. 

ninety-four

We caught fire rapidly and we burned everything before us, and when our flame went out, the smoke cleared too fast and all we had to blame was the alcohol that ignited it in the first place.

ninety-three

I’m trying to have words pour out of me like I did before and it seems a kiss is only good for initial excitement and initial heartbreak.  Even my poems are sick of carrying your weight; it really must be time to move on. 

ninety-two

And as much as I don’t want to, I can’t help but think of what is so fundamentally undateable about me that repels guys to believe that I am only good enough for a midnight stroke and a noontime smoke.

ninety-one

My eyes start to sting in reminiscence and my head starts to shake in new found clarity. My head is spinning impossibly fast and my words are coming out impossibly slow. That's how we were, though, weren't we?

ninety

I hate the girl who broke you; inadvertently, she broke me too. 

eighty-nine

Lana del Rey spins on the record player and sweet wine makes my tongue feel like velvet. Bless the nights I’m alone, but not lonely. 

eighty-eight

Check me off your list, baby. Quickly, though, your new broad’s calling from upstairs. Wouldn’t want her thinking you didn’t care, right? 

eighty-seven

The worst thing you can do is make someone feel a worth they only dreamt of, and then slowly strip them down to less than they started with. 

eighty-six

It’s a shame you checked out before I decided to check in

eighty-five

You messed up my sleep cycle just like you messed up my mind. I blame you entirely for blurry reminiscences and unannounced 4AMs.

eighty-four

I’ll see your douchebagery, and raise you one heartbreak.

eighty-three

Let’s walk on the edge of danger. Let’s flirt with the idea of destruction. Let’s play in the ring of bad ideas. We’ll never be safe; but honey, we’ll be bored. 

eighty-two

Take me there, I beg you. I’ll deal with the bruises later. Guide me to the very brink we both wanna see me jump from. I’ll be too infatuated to blame you when I’m falling. 

eighty-one

The labored breaths between us were enough to make my questions, your promises.

eighty

My heart’s relentless though. It refuses to be caged. That kind of strength is really just weakness. 

seventy-nine

You’re a book I annotated too carefully. I highlighted the adventures and sweet words, and wrote notes in the margins of what I thought it could all mean. I was diligent, in search of grand meaning or profound conclusion. But page after page, the novel of you turned to nothing more than shallow fiction. When I reached the back cover I found quotes from girls past, ones I couldn’t imagine existed, and before I knew it the story had ended and it was my turn to evaluate. 

seventy-eight

We all just want plans to cancel, people to ignore, and messages to delete. The human condition is a strange thing: wanting what we can’t have, only to reject it if it comes our way. 

seventy-seven

Unbelievable. You’re absolutely unbelievable. Give me a moment to define that, though, adjectives can go multiple ways. 

seventy-six

Apathy was a mindset I never once could conquer. Something in the back of my heart tugged at the notion that maybe there was still time. I look so far into the future that I miss what’s right in front of me. 

seventy-five

I'm waiting to ignore a conversation we will never have. How can I be over you when you don't give me a chance to practice my cold-shoulder. 

seventy-four

Let’s get drunk and order copious amounts of takeout. Let’s laugh until we cry and cry until we laugh. I wanna delve so deep into your soul, you have no choice but to stay in my arms forever. Baby, the world is filled with a thousand unpleasantries. Love shouldn’t be one; don’t let this moment turn to ruin.

seventy-three

Someday forehead kisses are going to express humble adoration. Someday handholding is going to express quiet possession. Someday twinkling eyes are going to express genuine intrigue. Someday everything you did impassively by practice is going to be done intentionally by admiration. 

seventy-two

I am disgusted that we both probably fall asleep to the same images of you kissing her in the kitchen and holding her on the couch. 

seventy-one

I want to make forts adorned in string lights. I want to read poetry quietly by candlelight. I want to drink cool wine by fireplaces. I want to watch old movies in fleece blankets. I want to take midnight planes to faraway places. I want to eat ice-cream and watch the sun come up. I want to live and explore and laugh. And I want to do it all with you. 

seventy

Escaping is tricky. Are the memories you’ve made where you are right now enough to be left as the past? If you leave now, if you ever come back, everything will be different. The daily bond you make with your environment will suffer and nothing will be the same. So, if you’re escaping, do so cautiously. Do so quietly. Do so wholeheartedly. 

sixty-nine

There’s no one in my room. There’s no one in the apartment. I crawl under my blanket, curl into a ball, and close my eyes so tightly that I too may be someplace else. 

sixty-eight

As I lay under a cable knit blanket and string lights adorn my bed, I think of how miserable it is that 3AM texts make this room come so alive and when I finally fall asleep the silence is deafening. 

sixty-seven

The lump in my throat, the shiver in my chest, and the shaking in my fingers remind me that sweet, drunken sleep is my best shot at ignorance. 

sixty-six

There’s something deep in my gut, clenching and twisting. I can almost hear it saying ‘stupid girl, I told you nothing good happens after 2AM’

sixty-five

Always good. Never good enough. Adequate for a 3AM Snapchat, but insufficient for a 3PM text message. All I ever wanted to do was love you; all you ever wanted to do was let me; all we ever got was heartbreak.

sixty-four

The contractor’s hitting on me, I’ve broken all the tools, the blueprint is just a mess of pretty symbols, and still people yell at me to build my walls up higher.

sixty-three

Your apologies offend the heavy beating of my weakened heart. 

sixty-two

So yes, I do care. I care deeply. I have the kind of fragile heart that simply will not give up. No matter how battered or how wrenched, it’ll give and beat. Even for you, even though this is no longer your problem. It’s becoming offensive that you think yours can possibly care as much as mine.

sixty-one

You stood outside and lit cigarette haphazardly hanging in between lips that should've been on mine. I stared. I couldn't do much else. You were so approachable. And so unapproachable. A walking contradiction of everything I wanted so desperately to figure out. All I wanted to do was walk up to you, place myself under your arm, and have you look at me like I was something to be admired. I thought about this as she found herself wrapped around you.

sixty

These poems are really no longer about you. They’re more about the person I wish you’d be. They’re no longer moments we had. They’re more moments we’ll never see. These are no longer words of reminiscence. These are words of resilience. 

fifty-nine

That’s what’s wrong. You take twelve steps forward, eight steps back and before I catch up you’ve ended up six steps sideways in bed with a different girl. 

fifty-eight

There’s this hole right in my rib cage, right under my chest. It’s deep and it’s hollow. And every time I see you it feels like a wind is sweeping over it, tickling it, causing it to ache and shiver. It’s heart throbbing, it’s weakening. It’s you. 

fifty-seven

It’s madness really. The stirring inside my heart. It’s eager and anxious and scared and angry and hurt. It’s an absolute whirlwind of every feeling I’ve kept hidden and measured in the past month. I’m dizzy just thinking about how dizzy letting go will make me. 

fifty-six

'Can we just go back to being friends?' you asked. Was it regret? Was it innocent? Always good, never good enough. I never saw this as friendship; you never saw this as anything but. 

fifty-five

And I’m gonna have to sit there and take it. I’m gonna have to pretend we’ve never had 4am conversations. I’m gonna have to act like I’ve never touched your skin. I’m gonna have to be okay with not dragging you into to hall or up the stairs before the party is even over. She’s gonna be tucked under your arm on the same couch you told me things apparently irrelevant now. And I’m gonna have to watch my heartbreak play out in front me and masquerade like I didn’t see it coming. 

fifty-four

Caught in between wanting to stand up for myself by lashing out in hate and hurt and rolling with the punches by letting go time after time; both reactions make me crazy. Where do you find a solution to a problem you didn’t even know was upon you?

fifty-three

No one’s fault, love. Any maleficence you could embody was powered by my own ignorance. Words and kisses couldn’t have played their part if I wasn’t thinking we were flying instead of falling. See, anytime your eyes said ‘yes’ was because mine never knew ‘no’ was an option. 

fifty-two

I’m torn between being cynical and cold and being positive and hopeful. There comes a point where you’ve stepped on too much shattered glass to ever accept the mosaic as a whole. I believe strongly in fairytales. I believe strongly in happy endings. Be optimistic, but be smart. Be lighthearted, but be cautious. Be so much better than the being you were yesterday. 

fifty-one

It’s inconceivable to me that lips and hands and skin and hair can be so interchangeable to some. I spent so much time memorizing your words and now I can’t even remember your voice. How are you so okay.

fifty

It doesn’t ache that your lips have been on hers. It only aches that they’ve been whispering a different name. I may be crazy in that way. You can touch all the bodies in the world but what’s always going to hurt more is the way you’re touching their soul, too. 

forty-nine

I’m irresponsibly in love with being irresponsibly in love

forty-eight

The whole world keeps spinning like nothing happened. But something did happen. Does it not understand that a girl has been left shattered? Does it not understand that everything she hoped to believe in was a formulaic lie? Does it not understand that once again she’s been cast aside, a check marked off a sick list? Perhaps it does understand, perhaps it simply does not care. 

forty-seven

Keep your standards high, darling, but your expectations low. Not everyone will hurt you, but not everyone will lift you up. You know what you deserve and you know where you want to go. Sacrificing those things for the easiness of a moment will never be worth it. You wouldn’t give up a hundred dollars for a nickel on the street. And you shouldn’t give up sincere affection for a drink at a bar. 

forty-six

Lazy Sunday afternoons with Netflix and beer and blankets and hands is the only fucking thing I need. Come back, I’ll be fine. If you pull at my heartstrings when I’m with you, I’ll take mend them back together on the drive home. 

forty-five

I didn’t think I wanted this ‘friends with benefits’ relationship and I probably still don’t but honestly if this is the only way I get to feel your beating heart against my cheek then I’m game. Your hands are something to be remembered and once I’ve felt them on my skin, there really isn’t a way for me to go back. 

forty-four

Some girls want to be showered with roses. Some girls want all of your time. Some girls want a knight in shining armor. Personally, I’m good with lazy forehead kisses and drunk texts at 3am.