Teenage angst.

I’ve been feeling worn with limbs that fall like the loose threads at the end of your sweater, the one you keep tugging closer to keep you warm. But you stop once you realize that the cold always finds a way inside. Maybe I am just bracing myself, I tell you. I am curling into myself until my ribs hold my head and my knees disappear into my chest because winter is coming. And we feel it even when we laugh and sigh against each other’s mouths, breath that tastes like cigarette smoke. We laugh because we know it’s coming and we know we can’t stop our hands from shaking.

Hair swings.

I’m forgetting. And that’s the last thing I ever wanted. Between sips of gas station coffee and the melody between the tips of my fingers and the keys—I kept finding your brown eyes, staring back into mine. Even when the paper had ran out and the typewriter ribbon didn’t have any ink left to give me, there was always you. I jotted down your name in the corners of notebook paper and the napkins that jumbled together on my nightstand, wondering how something so beautiful can build me up and destroy me with no mercy. Maybe you liked the fragments of me underneath your fingernails to keep. Now, I’m forgetting. The way my name curled up against the inside of your lower lip and the taste of your tongue. How it feels like to have you open your door for me without having to pry it open myself. Knuckles to hinges. This is not what I wanted.

I hate sleeping alone.

I never asked for diamond rings. I never wished for the moon or for the stars.
I just wanted somebody who'd hold me, even just for a while, someone who'd tell me that everything's gonna be alright.
I don't want beauty, because it doesn't last.
I don't want perfection because I'm not myself either.
But when the dusk sets and everything goes to death silence and the whole world shuts off around, I just want that somebody to be by my side.
A kiss, a touch... gently to settle down to sleep in someone's cozy arms.
I don't think that's much to ask for since I'm not high standard when it comes to love.
Sincere, loving, caring... that's all I am, that's all I want.
I'm one of a kind because I give everything and I don't expect much but for that.
Time has come when I really feel bleeding needs and cravings for body warmth.
I hate sleeping alone.

Bleeding raspberries.

There was grass there, grew to where our kneecaps rested and we could see each blade like when we caught glimpses of our eyelashes that pressed against sunsets and light that glowed golden. We were still fresh, still young, and still burning. We had swallowed embers that sizzled into the hair that melted into our necks and into our backs. I have been seeing your eyes, all dark and full of mud in places where they don’t quite belong like when we found birthmarks in the bend of our knees and we were wide-eyed, surprised at the sight of them. Some days I think I might break, split in half or wake up and find that my limbs had snapped off like the twigs underneath our shoes, that my neck won’t hold my head. There are water bottles half empty and wrinkled white sheets and I’m trying to figure out where exactly it all went wrong, why you rubbed my fingers until they were bleeding raspberries, until they looked like summer afternoons just to fade behind all the dust in my pockets and under winter’s breath. Why you waited until I let the sun light up our cheekbones and uncover the shadows I kept in clenched fists. I’m turning my cold shoulders at the way the traffic lights twinkle the same way you did. Green, red, and yellow whispers in the dead of night: blinking and blazing like shivering fires. The running water still holds your gaze inside it’s droplets and I watch them until the tips of my fingers turn into raisins and the bath smells like december again. Maybe I’m still getting used to seeing you where you don’t belong, turning walls into haunted homes and draping over my eyes like cobwebs I can’t get rid of.

old eyes and something beautiful.

Your eyes were brighter than I said they were, they were glassy and wide but still quiet like the calm before the storm, the breeze before the hurricane. I could spend hours staring at them but I could only ever catch glimpses of them like dust in my palms, a moment before they would scatter and disperse. I had ghosts dancing in front of me once, coming in colors like they were made of pomegranate seeds and cherry blossoms and their limbs were awkward and young, fragile and made of milk. They had your eyes so I inhaled them like cigarette smoke and sewed them into my lungs, feeling their bones rub against my ribs as I turned gold in the sun and they explode at the ends of my fingers when I want them to. I hope your ghosts melt into your eyelids like our sweaty shoulder blades in mid-summer, like old fruit and when my hair still tasted like sea-salt. I’m starting to peel the tangles from my insides, realizing that sometimes we can’t help falling apart. And that we can hold our bones until they rattle loose but we can’t hold them once they crumble. There is something beautiful about the way we break, like cities that couldn’t hold up but they cause fires that blaze for miles, red with orange specks against blue skies and green eyes.