i don’t think you would fall in love with the person i am now.

if you did, i don’t think i would love you back, at least,

not in the way i loved you before.

there’s that question, ringing in the back of my mind:

maybe all we needed was time to grow.

i don’t allow myself to think of it for long.

there is no point in believing i will ever

get an answer.

time travel

send me back into the body

of the naïve girl i used to be.

let me look at you with eyes of wonder

once again.

some days, i long to remember

only the good things.

this weight has been so heavy

on my shoulders.

god,

if only we could have been

simple.

you made me feel sorry for being unhappy.

when i stopped feeling sorry for that,

you made me feel sorry for leaving you.

when i stopped feeling sorry for that,

you made me feel sorry for loving him.

when i stopped feeling sorry for that,

you made me feel sorry for finally being happy.

but now?

i am done apologizing.

bloodlust

i think a lot about all the boys i said forever to, handed over my

heart on a silver platter and spoon-fed them my arteries. i wonder

if they ever think about where it went wrong, where the dinner

turned into massacre, where they dug in with tooth and nail, too

deep, too hard, too cruel. i wonder if they ever felt sick after. if my

blood boiled in their stomachs.

do they read what i write about them? do they know how i painted

the end of us? have they read about the bloodshed i made out of

their goodbyes? i wonder if they understand why i write so much

about them, even in the months and years after.

i would be surprised if they did. it’s so easy to put up a front, you

know. to smile, tell them i’m doing fine, and turn the five-second

conversation into a war between my throat and his fangs when

my pen hits the paper. they wouldn’t have known my lungs had

shriveled. they wouldn’t have tasted the blood in my mouth.

i think a lot about the boys i said forever to. i watched them gnaw

through me with a smile. now, i like to picture what their hearts

might look like on a plate and stab my pen straight through them.

you were my greatest lesson,

but by no means my greatest love.

trust me, i hate writing about you, too

i want you to know this:

when people ask me about you,

i do not speak of you

with the same bloodiness

as my poetry.

if they want to know

my pain, my aching,

they can find it there.

when they ask me about you,

they see a smile,

albeit sad, and rather lonely,

but a smile nonetheless.

i tell them

nothing more

than this:

i loved you,