the problem with

being in love

when you’re 13

is that you have no clue

how to love somebody

without placing your entire

self-worth on them.

if they love you,

you love you.

if they leave,

your self-esteem

goes with them.

—i learned the hard way

you gave me

sonnets and soliloquies:

an entire ocean of words.

when you left,

you did not take them

with you.

tell me,

what else was i supposed to do?

—the beginning

poetry became my crutch.

with tears all wet and silver on my cheeks, i would devour poetry like it was a fuel source. the words would run over my tongue like heartbreak’s own chicken noodle soup.

i still can’t tell if i started writing so much because i needed to have somewhere to place everything, or if i only did it to have a part of you to hold on to.

that’s the strangest thing about first loves: no matter how much you make something your own, there are parts of it that will always have their fingerprint.

i’m not sure if i should blame you

for the parts of the breaking

that you could not control:

like how i kissed three boys

i didn’t give a single shit about

because i had let myself be defined

by who i had or didn’t have at my side,

and then left them spinning because

they didn’t feel like you

(but then again, no one did/could/would),

or how i kept talking to her

because she would give me updates

on how you were doing and i just wanted to

hear that maybe you fucking missed me,

even just a little, and i never did

but i kept on hoping that one day

you might admit it,

or how i started to hate how i looked

in the mirror, and it was hard to eat

but i didn’t work to fix that

as hard as i should have. but these were

things that happened after, not during,

and i could have stopped, couldn’t i?

yes, i could have, and i know part of me

wanted to, but when you’re starving for the feeling

that has been so brutally sucked out of your body

you become desperate to find a new source.

but it wasn’t coming from anybody, not them, not you,

certainly not myself, and how dare you make me into this,

how dare you just walk away with barely a speck of rubble

on your clothes, how dare you make me feel ashamed of my own skin, how dare you leave me, how dare you break me, how dare—

i can’t blame you for this part.

i know i can’t; it isn’t the right

thing to do.

but they say to trace a problem

back to its source.

and so i follow the red string back to the point

on the map, and it’s your face. so what does it mean?

maybe it means you loved me too little.

maybe it means i just loved you too much.