sometimes i fall asleep thinking about you

Catarine Hancock

Book Title of sometimes i fall asleep thinking about you

trigger warning:

mentions of emotional and physical abuse, blood, guns, and death.

please take care.

HOW TO BE A POET:

1. rub salt in your wounds

2. watch them bleed

3. call it art

disclaimer

i find poetry

in the most broken things:

crash debris

and shattered glass,

cracked walls

and peeling paint.

i pick letters out

of the wreckage,

try to salvage

something from

all the ruin.

so i make it poetry

and i make it

messy and disjunct

and not always pretty—

not always good—

but always,

always,

me.

always,

every

fucking

piece

me.

an introduction

dear reader,

a few years ago, i met a boy who lit me on fire.

he reminded me of how warm love could be.

so i closed my eyes to the warning signs

and ignored the damage he inflicted.

i forgot all the lessons i’d already learned.

i stopped knowing better.

dear reader,

a few years ago i met a boy who lit me on fire,

stoked the flames and watched me burn.

i have spent the last four years nursing those wounds.

in many ways, he marked a new beginning for me.

as he destroyed my old self, a new one rose from the ashes,

one that was smarter, braver, and stronger.

smart enough to realize i needed to leave,

brave enough to actually do it,

and strong enough to stay away once i did.

he was the fire to my phoenix.

even still, i’ve written about our story countless times.

love can be one of the hardest things to shake.

but i have been working towards

saying, “i am putting this down, now,”

and truly meaning it.

i’ve been waiting for the day

where i could say it was the last time.

i’ve been waiting for the final poem.

dear reader,

a few years ago i met a boy who lit me on fire

and it took so long to sort through the aftermath.

but now i am healed.

now i am at peace.

now i am ready to finally, finally

let him go.

you were in my dreams last night.

you told me, “i read everything you write.”

and so i said, “i’m sorry. it’s not for you to read.

i didn’t write these things to get back at you.

i wrote them for myself.”

i woke up with a feeling of closure that evaporated

once i opened my eyes but,

in case you do read everything i write—

i’m sorry. this is not for you to read.

i didn’t write these things to get back at you.

i wrote them for myself.

stargazing

i fell in love with you

under the stars.

we’d find the big dipper

while we told each other

about the missing pieces

in our hearts.

you would point at orion’s belt

amid telling me about the first time

you fell in love.

i would spot the north star

in between telling you my

deepest secrets.

one of those nights,

you told me,

“i’m just glad i met you.”

i looked at you then,

and i didn’t know what shone brighter:

the stars or your eyes.

“me too,” i said.

funny what a difference a year can make.

i used to try to tell different stories when i wrote:

ones with happy endings,

or ones where it hurt, but eventually, it was okay.

i told stories where everything was so much worse

than anyone could’ve ever imagined,

or ones where nothing really happened at all.

but now,

no matter what,

the story always comes back to

you.

flatline

i feel our love

like a heart in my hand.

every time the beat falters,

i am afraid it will not start again.

sometimes the blood

pools in my palm,

dripping

down my wrist

like rainwater.

i cannot handle a love

that i have to kick-start

every morning,

i cannot carry that unknown of

will he love me when he wakes up?

when the beat stumbles

i wonder if maybe

it would be better

if it never started again,

if maybe holding a dying thing

is so much worse

than setting down the dead.

your love was a hungry thing.

it never quite understood

that it had already sucked me dry,

that i was always going to come up

empty.

they called us star-crossed lovers.

and maybe that was true.

maybe we were doomed from the start.

but it wasn’t the stars that made these wounds.

it wasn’t fate that broke this heart.

it was you.

it was all

you.

breaking down

i watched you take a sledgehammer

to our foundation for months

but couldn’t figure out why everything

felt so unsteady.

i saw the cracks snaking up the walls

and took too long to connect them to you.

you see, a house is only as strong as its base,

and so is love.

i remember telling you

that what we had built

wasn’t as strong as we thought it was,

and you agreed, but what did you do to help fix it?

you were kissing somebody else—

crack—

not speaking to me—

crack—

lying to me about her (and her, and her)—

crack, crack, crack—

until i was standing on a pile of rubble,

staring helplessly at you,

and you were saying,

“i don’t know how we got here,”

but how did you not?

how did you not know,

when you were the one

holding the hammer?

and why were you so surprised

when i decided i didn’t want to

live there anymore?

who was i?

i would love to be able to remember

who i was before i fell in love.

what did i think it was like?

how did i think it felt?

was i wrong? was i right?

i would love to be able to remember

who i was before you broke my heart.

i think i was less careful, more optimistic,

less likely to fly and more likely to fight.

and that’s the part that gets me:

the fact that once, i was more willing to stay,

and i think maybe that was a good thing,

sometimes—not always, but sometimes.

i would love to be able to remember

who i was before you came storming into my life

but all i can recall are glimpses of somebody

who thought they knew heartbreak but really didn’t.

not even close. not even a little.

i lost myself in our story. i wrapped myself tight in the happy

ending we were supposed to have. it kept me warm when you were

nothing but ice.

i said, “we’ll be married one day.”

i said, “this will all have been worth it.”

it took me far too long to realize that all this pain made our happy

ending impossible.

yours is the first name

that comes to mind

when i think of how powerful love can be,

even after all this time.

it’s like some habit i’ve yet to break.

but i guess it is true:

you were the definition of a powerful love.

so great i would have done anything to keep it,

so magnificent i forgot myself

entirely.

sometimes i love you really means help me: a rambling

one time, i told you i would love you forever,

and that i would always find it tucked away somewhere

in my heart to forgive you. upon some self-reflection,

i have discovered what might have been unknowingly

hidden in between the lines of that promise:

the saddest thing is that i will love you even like this,

even when it feels more like suffocating,

even when love feels more like a synonym

for denial or being a doormat or

letting somebody hurt you over

and over

again.

i will love you even when you hold me

by the throat.

when you’ve manipulated me into

letting you choke the self-respect out of me.

i will love you even then

because what else is there to do?

what else do i have left?

i will love you when i am drowning

beneath your hands

and when i am burning

from your matches.

i will love you when i am bleeding

from your snake bites

and when i am bandaging

up the wounds.

because you will be there.

you will always be there

to clean up the mess you’ve made.

you will never let me down.

you may hurt me every day but you never let me down

not once not ever not ever will you let me down

at least not like that.

you may lie to me and cheat on me and

tell me that i’m crazy and that i told you it was okay

and that i’m the reason you kissed her and then

left her crying i’m the reason you broke her heart

it wasn’t because you couldn’t control yourself

or have an ounce of loyalty it was because of me

it was all my fault and you may completely rip apart

my sanity and make me believe you are the best

i’ll ever have because nobody has ever loved me this much

or at least like this i am so lucky to have somebody

like you love me don’t i know how lucky i am and all i do

is keep saying yes and i forgive you and i love you and i think

he doesn’t hit me he doesn’t hit me at least he doesn’t hit me

but if you were here more would you if you were closer

would you hit me if i stood up to you would you hit me if

i left you would you hit me and i think no you would not

even you couldn’t find that cruelty inside of you but i still wonder

is this normal to love somebody yet fear every word that comes out

of their mouth is this normal to be perpetually stranded in this in-

between of apologizing or ignoring because i’m either apologizing

for what you did or ignoring it because i love you it’s all because i

love you so is this normal to love you even like this is this normal

can somebody tell me if this is what love is supposed to be oh my

god can somebody please tell me if this is fucking

normal?

what made you think loving somebody this way

was an okay thing to do?

what made you think this

wouldn’t eventually break me

into pieces?

just another moment with you

i loved you

in the fiercest way,

all guttural and snarling,

the way you only love

someone you would die for.

i would have taken a bullet

for you; could you say the same?

would you dive in front of me

when they pulled the trigger?

would you cough up blood

around the words “i love you”?

i asked you once, i did—

would you die for me?

and you said,

would you want me to die?

which was code for

no.

i said,

of course i don’t want you to die—

and you took that as your way out

of admitting that you wouldn’t,

that it was not like that for you,

that i was not worth a bullet

or a drop of blood.

i know now that a sacrificial love

is hardly love at all,

but that doesn’t change the fact that

i would have taken a bullet for you,

and i think i would have taken a bullet for myself,

too, because that is how i loved you—

would you want me to die?

no, my love, my heart, never.

but would you want me to?

LOVE SHOULDN’T FEEL LIKE A PRISON CELL IT SHOULD FEEL FREE

i did whatever it took

to keep you calm and happy.

even if it meant

breaking my own heart.

even if it meant

letting you do it for me.

i saw your happiness as my own

so i never had to face the fact

that i didn’t really

have any.

sometimes i fall asleep thinking about you

You've reached the end