i.

a swelling sadness

growing deep within my chest

(pulling, pressing, pushing)

seeping into everything i

touch

ii.

i should have expected less

(i should have been hurt by less)

i know it’s not your fault

(it feels like it is, though)

why did you keep

pushing, pressing, pulling?

why did you keep

going, even beyond the initial wound?

iii.

why did the disappointment

curdle in my stomach,

grab me by the throat,

twist the knife in my stomach?

iv.

i tried so hard to

not expect, to not

hurt at the absence,

but i did! my silly heart

aches.

my silly heart—expected

too much, wanted

too much, and it aches—

too much.

(WHY COULDN’T I LET IT GO! WHY CAN’T I LET GO?)

v.

it’s

five days until

my birthday. i want to

rip my heart out, set its beating

aches and wants and wishes aside

for the week. i want to let it go,

i want to stop expecting people

to do what they’ll say and

say what they’ll do and

care enough about the

silly, inconsequential date and i

want to just!! stop feeling so awful

about it all.

vi.

can’t i just have a birthday

and have it be nice?

vii.

why am i so sad about this!

i should have expected this!

i shouldn’t be hurt by this!

(five days)

(five days—)

(can my heart)

(just take a break)

(for five days)

viii.

i’m going to love and enjoy and

cherish deeply each day of

september. i’m going to love and

enjoy and cherish deeply each

day of september. whether i like it or

not, i’m going to love and

enjoy and cherish deeply

each day of september. i have to i have to

i have to! i must to survive,

i.

i texted you last night.

the friends i asked about it

said i shouldn’t.

i told them i wouldn’t, and then

i tried to sleep, but i couldn’t stop

thinking about how close we were.

i couldn’t stop thinking about

the things we shared and the

things we said and the things we did

and then i got all nostalgic, and nostalgia,

that horrid beast, it clouded my hurt and pain.

it colored you pink, and white, and blue (the color of my love for you).

and then i opened my phone and

opened our conversation and i looked, one last

time, at how long it had been

since you last responded

to one of my texts (over a month).

i typed out a text and pressed send anyways.

i felt the regret swell deep within me

the second time i checked

to see if you had said anything back (you hadn’t). (you still)

(haven’t) (i doubt you)

(will)

i’m tired of being left behind i’m

tired of being left behind i’m tired

of being left behind i wish i wasn’t

left behind every time.

i love you (i wonder if you love me back still)

i wish i didn’t (i wonder if you don’t love me anymore)

i wish i could stop (i wonder if you ever did, and when).

ii.

i doubt that you’ll text me back

but i can’t help but wonder

what it would be like if we

started over, if you texted me back more often.

i can’t help but think of

the things i would

change about myself, the things

i would say, and then, well—you

might be angry at that, actually, i think.

you were never fond of the way i

destroyed or hid the parts of myself that

other people didn’t like

or that might have been offensive.

and once upon a time, you did

love me. and you loved the girl i was,

and not the

girl who destroyed herself to

please others. and you may not

love me anymore, but you loved me

then. (this makes me want)

(to text you back)

(even more than before)

i can’t help but

love you, it seems, even as

you don’t text me back

and leave me hanging for days, weeks at a time.

one of my friends said that

it was impossible for you

to be busy for almost two years—

so busy, in fact, that you couldn’t

respond to a simple “how are you?” for

several days. she also said this about all

of the other relationships i’ve

had that have ‘ended’ (stopped)

(stagnated) like this. she says that

i have to raise my standards.

but man if i didn’t, if

i don’t,

love you still.

how do i ever

get over that? how do i

ever stop? will i ever

stop? can i ever

stop? is there an end

in sight? is there an end

at all?

(it almost makes me sick)

(that i want to text you, to ask you)

(this question)

iii.

i had a dream this morning,

where someone loved me so

much. they loved me in a way that

made me ache, they loved me in a way that

brought me to tears when i woke.

i know it’s

impossible but

i wanted that from

you, somehow.

i’d probably just be happy if

you talked to me more

iv.

does it mean anything that

all these other relationships that have

ended (stopped)

(stagnated) like this haven’t

left me feeling so lost and wanting for

it all back with that person

like this one is?

i think my

brain is just grasping for straws, now.

but it makes me want to text you a little

more than before. does this make me

someone who enjoys inflicting

pain and sorrow on themselves?

does this craving for the chance to talk to you

make me a masochist? why won’t

this feeling go away? i want it to go away i

want it to go away

i wish you hadn’t left me behind i wish i

had some control in this i wish that maybe i

had been the one to leave you behind i wish

i wish i wish i didn’t love you so much i wish

i didn’t want to text you back all the time i wish

i didn’t feel sick to my stomach at the thought that

maybe it’s just because my birthday’s near and it always

made me feel so sad each time you forgot the date i wish

i didn’t feel this way about you i wish

i could let this go i wish

i could let you go i wish

i didn’t love you anymore i wish

i knew if you still loved me i wish

i didn’t care i wish

it didn’t hurt so badly to say that i don’t want to love you anymore i wish

that i had left you behind, so maybe this could be a little

easier to bear (than wondering what i did)

(than wondering what i said)

(than wondering if it was really you and)

(not me)

as my birthday (and the milestone) nears, i find

myself worrying, getting

preemptively sad, panicking

about an event

that hasn’t even arrived.

birthdays are like a wound to me—

a shard of glass in the hand, a knife

twisting in your

stomach, a bullet through the

chest. the entrance of the wound

is the growing pains—the

anxiety at the

thought of growing

old, of being someone new

and someone you’ve always been

until the next year.

but this time, there’s—

well, there’s an exit wound, too.

the glass slides through the top of the hand

and spikes through the palm; the knife

twists until you can see it

on the other side; the bullet

comes cleanly through your back.

let me write this out again, be a little

clearer. there’s the date, which is the glass, the knife, the bullet,

then there’s the growing pains, the entrance wound—

and then there’s you. and then, on the other side

of things, there’s the glass again, the knife once more, and the bullet,

come to bite you again, and there’s this feeling

that you won’t be happy

when that day comes

and on the days that follow. there’s this feeling

that no one’s going to

remember, that they’ll forget, and, for some reason,

this feels like a last chance—that if they forget,

if they forget this time, that that’ll be their

last chance. that there’s not going to be

anything else

on the other side.

(but does the glass, the knife, the bullet, do they have to)

(go all the way through? can’t they just)

(rot inside of you?)

and before, all the years before, you

used to be so sad, so anxious, so worried,

and when people forgot (or made like it was)

(any other day, like it wasn’t)

(you being markedly unthesamed), it felt like

glass through the back of your hand,

a knife to the stomach,

a bullet to the chest.

but the wound was only one-sided, and

all you had were growing pains (that healed) and

the memory of being forgotten or

dismissed (that rotted, rotted, rotted, continued to rot inside of you)

again and again and again

each year.

and, yeah, maybe it’s

healthier to have the

glass go all the way through,

or the knife come out on the other side,

or the bullet wink back at you from behind,

but, man, if you don’t feel so sick

for so much longer before. how do you cope

with the thought of it never happening again

when you’ve collected all these scars

from all the years before? how do you cope

with not having the people

who remembered every time

show up again?

this year feels like a year of

lasts and ends and stops and brick brick brick walls. i

feel like, at every turn, i am told

that this is my last

chance, my last turn, my last

time, that i’ll never

feel this way again, that i should

enjoy this while it lasts, because

it’s the last i’ll ever have—and i can’t help but

let any joy i could have had

rot, rot, rot inside of me, clutched in the

grubby hands of anxiety and panic as i

face that this is the

last. the last of it. the last time, the

last point, the end, the stop, that

a brick wall is being built

right in front of my eyes as i’m

told to enjoy the inside, because i’ll be

stuck outside of this wall

for the rest of my life

and i won’t have another chance.

and maybe that’s the exit wound—

maybe it isn’t their last chance,

or yours, but

mine.

maybe this is this year’s

wound: the date, the glass, the knife, the bullet,

then the growing pains, and the entrance wound, and then—

me. and on the other side is the exit wound,

the glass shining back at me, the knife twisted through and

pushed too far, the bullet come back to wink at me, and my

last chance.

maybe that’s the exit wound,

maybe that’s the exit wound,

maybe that’s the exit wound,

(how do you cope)

(how do i cope)

(with the exit wound)

i.

we were just friends but the

hurt the hurt the hurt

(i said it was fine and i meant it but it hurts)

(why does it hurt so bad)

i told you it was fine and i still mean that,

because if you’re busy i don’t want to keep you

or make you feel bad, but some

part of me that i wish

i could kill (oh, she says i should keep it alive) wishes

(wishes wishes wishes) that you’d

want to be kept, want to waste

time with me.

and we were just friends but the hurt doesn’t

hurt any less because of it. i wish i wish i wish

i knew how to say this

and not make a fool of myself. i wish i could

tell you in a way that

wouldn’t hurt you and would say what i mean—i want

to say: honestly it’s

fine if you’re busy, and it’s fine if you

didn’t want to talk to me, but some part of me

(i wish i could kill this part off) (i am ashamed of this part of me)

wishes you made the time or the effort to waste

time with me. and also, i want you to tell me if you

didn’t want to talk to me at all, actually, and i

want you to tell me if i was

annoying, or clingy, or too too too much. and i promise

that i’ll be happier if you respond to that honestly (even if it’s

a yes, you were, or, yeah, things changed and i don’t love you anymore) than

if you tried to apologize or talk to me more.

can i say that? i don’t want to lose you.

(it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. i wish it didn’t hurt so bad.)

ii.

sitting in short shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt,

in my bed, from where i haven’t moved

in about a week (i got sick, i got weak, i can’t stand),

and i’m trying not to cry

as “supercut” by lorde comes on—

i’m reading the business textbook, writing up

the vocab, just sitting here, contemplating

texting you

and reaching out

and asking how you’ve been.

and i remind myself of what a friend said—

that i’ve got to up my standards,

and that if you don’t reply for days at a time,

for months and months on end, that, maybe,

i should just

let you go

(i don’t want to let you go) (i don’t want to let you go).

and then this song comes on, and i suddenly

feel like crying. and i just.

i can’t help the feeling that rises up in my chest,

that makes me feel like i’ll explode, that

makes me want to cry and ruin this

expensive textbook. and i can’t even

focus on the vocab, i’m so—

i’m such a wreck

over you. we were just friends but

damn if that didn’t mean just as much for me

as anything else could have.

“’cause in my head (in my head, i do everything right) / when you call (when you call, i’ll forgive and not fight) / because ours are the moments i play in the dark / we were wild and fluorescent / come home to my heart”

and i can’t help but wonder—

i’ve been wondering for days, now,

weeks, months—what i did wrong.

you said, at the beginning, that it was you and

not me. (but at least seven other things)

(just like this)

(have happened to me—they stop talking,)

(they stop responding, they say it’s)

(them, and not)

(me,) SO RIDDLE ME THAT, HUH? tell me

why this has happened so much—is it

coincidence? because i thought

coincidence was when it

happened twice. when it happens

over seven times, is it really

you and not

me? whose fault is it then? i

have this feeling that it

might be mine.

but my friend, she says that i have to raise my standards.

i still find myself unlocking my phone and navigating to our long-dead

conversation, and thinking thinking thinking

“’cause i my head / in my head, i do everything right / when you call, i’ll forgive and not fight / all the moments i play in the dark / wild and fluorescent / come home to my heart, oh”

they ask me what it is that i’ve

got. they ask why i have to wear these

braces. they ask me why i’m so

tired, why i don’t play like i

used to, anymore. they ask me why i can’t

stand, why i can’t walk very

far.

“i’ve got hypermobility,” i say. “and something

“else, but we’re still looking into that.” i look them in the

eyes, with an easy, careful

smile.

“what’s that?” they ask. “hypomobility,” they say, as if just

by saying it (and incorrectly), they’ll be

granted some great knowledge. well, i guess they will.

“hyper,” i say. “hypermobility. i’m too stretchy.” i

pause. i watch their blank

stare. “there’s this thing,” i continue, with that same practiced,

easy, careful smile, “in my dna—it makes it so that i stretch

“t o o f a r

“at my joints. i hyperextend things often—fingers, thumbs,

“knees—among other things. it causes

“a lot of pain.”

“oh,” they say, blinking

owlishly

at me. “so when do you

“get better?”

(my smile stretches, t o o t h i n , and it breaks)

i laugh, and it makes me

sick. “i won’t,” i say, smiling a little

wider, a little more carefully, as if

this will take off the edge. “i’ll have this my whole

“life.”

they quiet, and they look at anywhere but me.

“but,” they flounder, like a fish

out of water, “can’t they make it better? give you a pill,

“give a transplant—”

“no,” i cut them off. my voice is tired. “there isn’t

“a pill, a cure, a transplant. it’s a forever thing.”

they sit there, thinking, stewing.

and then their face lights up.

“have you tried tylenol? ibuprofen? gabapentin?

“what about acupuncture, herbal teas, or aromatherapy? have you—”

i laugh, cutting them off. something in me tries to

sour, but i hold it

tight in my hands, unwrinkled and

untwisted—hoping, for the love of God, that i don’t

let go, and have it twist up and

let me be angry. “i’ve tried just about everything,” i say.

“all that i can do at this point is

“strengthen the muscles around my joints

“as much as possible, and wear my braces, and

“accommodate.”

they pause, flounder a little. they open their mouth,

close it, open it again, and—

“so when do you get better?”

i stretch my practiced, easy, careful smile across my face.

i stretch it far t o o t h i n , and i change the subject.

“but how have you been? i’d like to hear about you.”

and i would—it’s true. i’d like to hear about them.

i’d like to hear about them.

i’d like to hear about them—

anyone but me,

and anything but

how they would fix

what i have.

i.

i feel as if i have

run out of time

(i’ll be back soon)

(but i can’t help but)

(preemptively miss this)

(and the routine)

(and the jokes)

(and the understanding)

(i hope i get to work)

(with you again)

ii.

i’m going back to fourth grade,

or sixth, or second, or seventh,

or first. i am left and leaving and

gone and going and you

are being left behind. i will

miss you. i don’t know if i’ll

ever see you, again. i don’t want

to leave you. i don’t want to

leave you behind.

my therapist asked me why

i’m afraid of growing up.

i told her that it was the

rituals. at my age, it is

expected that i know

how to drive. that i have

a job. that i am ready

to move out, and to

move on. i told her, “but,”

”the thing is,”

”i can’t even do the dishes.”

”i know how, but i can’t even”

”wash a pot, or a plate, without”

”this awful pain.” i laughed.

it made me sick. i wanted to

cry.

but i think that i will

have to remember

to tell her that i am also

afraid of leaving people

behind.

and that i am afraid

of being the one left behind.

iii.

i don’t want to grow up.

i’m afraid

of the

rituals, and the

expectations.

i’m afraid of being

left behind, in a childhood

summer, with orange juice

dribbling down my chin,

eyeing the lemons, while

everyone else

steps forward into

a cold and brisk winter,

where they drive in their

adult cars to their

adult schools and their

adult offices

on adult streets, and head home

to adult homes with

adult lonesomes and

adult plants and adult cats

and forget about the girl

who can’t walk very far

or go to their adult bars

or drive an adult car to

an adult place of adult fun,

who is trapped inside a

child’s life, always

stuck staring at the sun

and watching it set into

childish pinks and oranges, but

never seeing it rise

into adult skies.

iv.

lately, i’ve been

forgetting.

i’ve lost most all of my

memories from the past

seven months, and can

hardly remember what

was just said. and i can’t remember

even half of a memory

about her or him or any of it

(and not that i miss that, but)

(it makes it harder to)

(understand my feelings)

(and anything)

(that could be helpful to)

(healing).

i can’t do more than two things at

once, and most days,

not even that. can hardly

hold a thought

when things are happening

around me. i can’t hold

it together, anymore.

and none of it—this is

the worst part—seems to make

any sense at all. so i

have come to cry

very easily, of late. it is

easy for me to be

angry with myself

and hate myself for making

you repeat yourself.

it is easy to get lost in the

absence of my memories,

of late. i can sit, alone,

and read the same twenty

headlines, again and again and

again, and not feel bored at all,

because i’ve forgotten what the

first one said by the time

i get to the fifth. can you

forgive me for this?

for my absence? for my

requests to rewind, to

repeat, to recap, to have

a helping hand?

v.

the pain has been consistent

for a year now. i do not have

the same level zero

as you. when you ask me how

much pain i’m in, i have to

pull out a scale, with words

and set things for each

number. and only then can i

accurately tell you how much

pain i’m in. i may say a three or a

four without the scale,

but that same pain

is actually a seven or eight. i have

no days where i am in

no pain. i can forget it, for a

while, if adequately

distracted. (doesn’t that sound)

(dumb? sound fake?)

(i hate hearing how)

(silly it sounds in my)

(own ears) (i wish i believed)

(myself) (i wish you believed)

(me, too) (i wish this wasn’t so hard)

i.

your eyes were red

when i saw you today.

you sounded

like you were sick.

(i was worried about you)

but the trouble with

trying to focus

on doing it right,

is that i can’t pause

to ask you if you’re

okay, too. to ask you

how you are.

ii.

i wish i felt less

frustrated

when you ask me

how much pain i’m in.

and i wish even more

that it didn’t make me feel

like i will cry

when i say “i have to think

about it,” and you make

that face. i wish it didn’t make me

mad to think about such

a simple thing. i wish it didn’t

make me want to cry

to watch you try to

believe me and make sense

of what i mean.

iii.

two days a week, every day

for several weeks. i have

learned how to stand

correctly, have learned to hold

my knees apart, have learned

to fall and get back up

again, have learned to

set goals and

overcome, have learned to be

strong, have learned to walk.

i have learned that you

are kind, that you are gentle and

compassionate, that you try to

make things easier, more fun,

more bearable. i have learned

that you are encouraging,

but not to the point of

pushing me past my limits

in agonizing ways.

i have learned that

you are funny and that

frozone is your favorite

incredibles character and that

you liked the first knives out

movie, but not the second.

i wish i knew more

(because you are very nice)

(and you have treated me well)

and that i could master the

ability to count, to do an exercise,

to ask you how you are, and to

listen to your answer—all at

once.

used to

write several poems

a day—in the

margins of my

notes, in my sketchbook, on

study pages, wherever

inspiration struck—but

now i am stopped

up. (foot stuck in a hole,

hand stuck and numb, pulse

slowing down down down) halted

at the fork

in the road, looking back,

checking to see if

another stares back

at me. and even if no one

does, there is a shame that

crawls up my spine and

burrows under the lip of the

back of my skull (pressing

right up against my brain),

waiting,

waiting,

waiting—

always suffocating.

and you ask the question,

the one you know you shouldn’t—

the one that’ll hurt,

the one that’ll scar,

the one that’ll leave you gasping for breath

and unable to move for weeks,

the one that could break you forever.

but the answer

leaves something to be desired—

a pause, then a rushed response

that’s longer than “just in case”

but that hurts, if at all possible, a lot worse.

and you want to follow up,

with something like

“well, i won’t bring it if it’s bad,” or

“but do you think it’s worth it at all,

even as just a ‘just in case’?” or

something that’ll hurt worse to say.

but you don’t say anything at all.

you get in the car, and

hold the dessert in your lap,

and try not to frown.

you try not to give in.

you try not to care so much.

——

and it just hurts,

to feel this way, all while

trapped in the sticky jaws of the heat

and unable to cry. it just

hurts, i say, but there’s nothing

else to say, now is there.

——

and all i’ve got left

is a tiny whisper of breath—

no courage behind it,

not even an ounce.

no apologies, either. just

silence, and

absence.

lack.

——

beat myself up over

all the little things,

crawl inside myself, fold

into my ribs

(like well-trained acrobat)

tuck my head and face

behind pain-riddled hands,

push and push and push, willing

the pain and self-sabotage away

AWAY AWAY AWAY—

but neither leave.

neither waver.

and i turn round and round

in this crooked, gilded

bone cage, until

my eyes peek out from

behind my spine,

wide and bright and glassy

among the bone,

watching the world

from beneath a landslide,

the backside,

the b-side of things—

and, wow, is it dark.

it is bleak.

i read every word backwards.

sdrawkcab sdrawkcab sdrawkcab.

i breathe through

the gaping hole

in my chest,

and expel it all

through the windows in my skull.

i cling to the bars of my cage

and watch the world

through pale flesh, rewound.

i see music through

bloodshot, sleepless, sunken eyes.

and i in no way interact

with the outward world,

except to breathe backwards

and press faster

on the rewind button.

the afternoons were always

blue-green. the mornings were

always a young, summer type of yellow. the

evenings, they were

always

orange-black-yellow.

the orange of the setting sun,

the black of the coming dark night,

and the yellow of the lamplight

and your bedsheets.

i still remember the sounds of the birds

and the way the carpet smelled before

you had it torn up and replaced

with that white, fake-wood stuff.

i still remember you

singing to tom jones,

the grease on the table,

the way you made me mac and cheese,

the way you made me ramen

that i still can’t get perfect

and it bugs me that i miss the way you made it.

i still remember us looking through boxes of movies

and finding the best ones

and watching them while my uncle was at work.

i still remember our walks

and helping you water the plants

and helping you pick the oranges that were really mandarins

(i still remember you correcting me).

i still remember dog sitting with you,

and you sneaking me yorks,

and showing me around the bathroom of the neighbor’s house.

i still remember that halloween

that i dressed up at your house

and we went to the neighbor’s party.

i remember us going to the post office

and checking out the bookcase

of free books together,

and going back to your house

(back home back home back home)

to read them together.

i still remember all the good times

and the bad ones, too.

i still remember the summer i lost you

and the letters i wrote to you

in green and blue pens.

i still remember holding onto the movies we’d bought before

the summer i lost you,

holding on to them and hoping it was enough

that you might want me back.

i still remember all the days and nights and mornings i cried

that summer i lost you.

i still remember the three weeks before my birthday,

just after the summer i lost you,

and how you’d said you wanted to see me.

i still remember needing to take a breather

the night before the fall you lost me,

and a week before my birthday.

i still remember looking up at that midnight black september night,

and hearing the frogs in the canyon croak

and the mountain lions roar,

and sitting in the bed of my uncle’s pickup,

crying alone in the almost-cold warmth.

i still remember how you found me, and hugged me, and cried,

and said that i’d come back and it’d all be better.

i still remember that i came back,

two years later,

and it wasn’t all better.

i still remember the good times,

and the bad ones,

too.

and i still remember all of the plans

written in my poems

and i still cry

because they can’t work

while i still love you. and even if i thought

i’d ever stopped, i never did,

and i don’t know

how i will. because i still remember

all of the bad times, but the good ones, too.