take a leaf of paper

“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.” - Ernest Hemingway my name is E. and i'm trying to get the words out from under my skin

[bourbanbrown]

i've survived two weeks without you and i'm still breathing, maybe even better than i was before

i guess i don’t need you as much as i thought

[bourbanbrown]

you broke my heart and you don't even fucking care.

how did we go from everything to nothing

[bourbanbrown]

i am seventeen and we are lying on our friend’s trampoline, sharing a cigarette, half drunk and counting the stars. 

“i love you, you muppet,” you tell me as you pull me closer. i can smell your shampoo combined with the death sticks we know we shouldn’t be smoking. you are so warm, like my favourite hoodie, i just want to wear you everyday. i look at your lips and wait for you to do the thing. 

you lick them like you always do when you’re deep in thought

“how many stars do you think we can see?” you ask, as if i know the answer to all of life’s big questions

(i didn’t, i still don’t, all i knew for certain at that moment was that i loved you and i needed you so much.”

“more than we’ll ever know.”

you sighed, and put the cigarette to your lips again. 

we fell asleep and when i woke up you were gone. 

-

i am eighteen and sitting alone at a party, so drunk i can’t remember my name. 

“i’m sorry,” he said, as if the cruelness of the world was his fault.

(it would come to be, but not right then)

“it’s okay” 

because i always make excuses for people to walk over me. because i do not want to lose any opportunity with any person. 

“are you okay?” he asks, and he knows the answer but he sits there anyways. all night i stare at his lips and finally i kiss them. they tasted like rum and happiness and i thought that maybe life would turn itself around for me. 

-

i am nineteen and sitting along a river on the other side of the world. 

i still do not know the answer to all the big questions you once asked me, but i know that every day i push myself just a little harder to figure it all out. 

like i moved across the world and did me for a little bit, and learnt to fall in love with new places and make friends with new people, and i still had him at home so how bad was life, really?

i’m sitting with a boy who knows all the right questions to ask and he says “why?” and in his question i hear fifty million. 

i say what i have taught myself to say, 

“i don’t know. i just don’t know.”

-

i am twenty and i am okay, i am still exploring and i am growing. i still think about you often, and can still remember so clearly how it felt to hold your hand. things aren’t bad, but they aren’t good either,

-

i am twenty one and i am unhappy. i am still with the boy who tastes like happy-ever-after except it is always too sour and even when we are happy i am sad. we are fighting yelling fucking and loving. it is exhausting. 

i can hear your voice in my head every time i cry for him

“you know how many stars there are in the sky, why stop at him?”

i am scared to be alone, i want to scream to the night.

-

i am twenty one and he is gone. i am left alone every night with my thoughts and they do not shut up. we have gone from everything to nothing. he is probably fucking that girl he told me never to worry about. i am eating ice cream and trying to practice more self love and all i want to do is cry. 

soon i will be twenty two and i will be living on the other side of the world again. 

i will be whole, i will keep counting those stars and i will not have you or him there like i thought i always would but i think that’s okay, there is a whole world out there that i need to give myself to and i think soon will be the time and place for it. 

-

i am seventeen and all i want to do is to be held and cared for. i am eighteen and all i want are answers. i am nineteen and all i want is for life to stay just perfect. i am twenty and i am finding my feet. i am twenty one and i am healing my heart. i am human and i will survive. 

[bourbanbrown]

12/1/17

it is 2:33 am and i am wide awake, having dreamt about being in the middle of times square, spinning around under the kaleidoscope of lights as the snow starts falling down. i’ve never been in that exact moment, but i dream about it often. i think about the things i know, that i have never felt more alive than i did that night i walked through times square by myself and kept spinning around, and that the way the first flakes of snow feel when they fall on your open hands and mouth is the most inexplicable, precious thing in the world. and i’m sure that when those two moments combine it must be like heaven on earth. like there could never be anything bad in the world because that moment is so pure, so breathtakingly beautiful, that it makes you feel so alive you can’t breathe. i woke up in tears.

you see, sometimes i’ll be walking through the streets of my sometimes-boring city, drinking good coffee and complaining about how the weather is never too right, when i’ll stop, and notice the shape of the clouds - have they always looked so incredible? has the sun always made them shine in such a way? have they always brought so much joy?

and sometimes i’ll be stumbling home drunk, and the rain will start - slow at first, and then heavy, and i’ll look up and open my mouth and try and swallow the world whole - has the world always been so capable of such simple beauties, like the sweet taste of rain after a scorching summers day?

sometimes i’ll just be lying in my bed, reading a good book that just hits me, and i’ll start thinking about all the moments in my life that add up and those that don’t. like the night i lost the most important person in my life, like the night i met the best thing to ever happen to me. and i wonder how it all went wrong. how i could be kissed goodnight and walk inside feeling so empty and lonely. like how an ‘i’m sorry, i wish i was better’ didn’t have to mark the end of a beautiful life.

sometimes i just have to stop and take it all in. loss is a funny thing. you feel it everywhere and then even when you don’t anymore it’s still there. and then you start feeling everything else so fucking deeply. like raindrops are kisses from god and good books are a key to the soul and the clouds are speaking to your heart, and the snow in your hands as you twirl around is like the only dance that ever really mattered.

i’ve heard about collateral damage - don’t attack in case there are civilians harmed, but i’ve felt collateral beauty almost every day for the past four years. sometimes you have to bleed to know you’re alive, and sometimes you just feel it.

(you were there in my dream too. just you and me and the rest of the world).

[bourbanbrown]

i feel like i’ve been sitting at the keyboard for months, trying to get the words out before they eat me up inside.

the truth is i am feeling a hundred different things at once and yet sometimes i feel nothing.

like, i was sitting at the train station waiting for Belle to get off the 6:08 from central, and she didn’t come and i was so worried that for a moment i forgot to breathe because what if she did it and then i felt happy because that’s how she almost always made me feel like i was on top of the world and there was nobody above me and because i was the one she loved the most and then i felt so fucking angry because how fucking dare she and then i felt guilt because why didn’t i do more and then i felt betrayed and then i felt sad and then the next train pulled into the station and there she was with her big stupid smile and her beautiful eyes “why are you crying Em?” she said and I couldn’t even look at her straight and we walked home in silence and when he came to fuck her later on i just lay in the next room over staring at the ceiling and waiting for something to feel real

and like, the other day i was blowing out candles celebrating another year around the sun and i felt so stupidly happy - that i have a boyfriend who kisses me in all the right places and parents that go above and beyond and friends who make me laugh but when i came time to make a wish all i could think was “i wish… i wish… i wish i knew” and then all i felt was a big, black wave of sadness hit me like a tonne of bricks and all i could think about was the next time she kept me waiting at the station and she never came home and the boy i loved who left me to lick my own wounds and the girl i poured my soul to who left it out in the cold with her dirty laundry and and then i just felt numb. i’ve got a countdown on my phone that’s counting down the days until i can get the fuck out of here.

it’s 12:43 am and i haven’t felt this restless in a really long time

[bourbanbrown]

i feel the need to write about beginnings as much as i do about endings.

so like, we know the world is fucked and everyone is different colours and apparently we don’t know how to just be people

and, it’s so hot i want to rip my skin off, and actually i just want to rip my skin off because l still look in the mirror and don’t like what i see

and, i still can’t step onto high balconies

and, sometimes i can’t stop tossingandturning and teethclenching and fingernailbiting and tossandturn and groanandmoan

and, sometimes i just don’t sleep, thinking about all the things in life that have ended

(innocence, true love, faith)

but like, today i just stopped for a second, and even though i was sweating, and stressing,

i just smelt the fresh air and like,

there’s a lot of shit going on in the world

and you can’t see love everywhere

but you gotta remember that caterpillars don’t know they’re going to become butterflies,

yet they still manage to fly

and that, once upon a time things we take for granted were just dreams.

seasons change and you fall in and out of love but you can never be so busy that you don’t stop and smell the roses

i always feel the need to close the book on you, but i think i was going about it the wrong way all this time

you’re my finish and my end,

there is no me without you.

[bourbanbrown]

11pm

I saw a trailer for a horror movie last night. It’s made me too scared to turn off the lights and go to sleep. I can feel it waiting for me in the shadows of night, preying on my fear, waiting to come and get me. I can feel it standing above me as I lay paralysed, silently laughing as a I pull the covers higher, smiling with a twisted smile as I hug my stuffed animal that I am too old for a little closer.

I spend days walking around with a smile on my face so big it could tear it in two, I am happier than I have ever been, my scars glow in the sunshine that I surround myself with, but tonight I couldn’t turn the light off, the smile can’t save me from what happens when I close my eyes.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about lots of things, about where we got the idea of being afraid of the dark from, about why people jump off bridges if it isn’t to swim, about why we do stupid things to people we love while living in constant fear that we’ll push them away, about why people exist to different extents.

Every time I open up a blank page in my notepad, I think about writing you another love letter. An ‘if you were here’, an ‘I miss you so much sometimes I could saw myself into pieces’. But tonight I couldn’t stop thinking about the thing in the dark, which is going to grab me, and then I realized it was you.

I can go through whole days without thinking of your name, whole weeks without thinking about your smile, months without hearing your laugh in my ear and a year without remembering what it felt like to hold your hand, but tonight I turned the light off and there it all was – waiting in the darkness of a non-suspecting June night, waiting to grab me.

Everyone has demons; I just thought I’d spent long enough trying to exorcise mine in that perfect form I wish I could still call ‘mine.’

[bourbanbrown]

the future is not your now

a six letter story i wish you had heard.

[bourbanbrown]

21

hey, 

so in a perfect world, today wasn’t so hot it made my blood hurt. in a perfect world, it might have stormed to break the tension. what i would have done to hear a clap of thunder as i thought about taking off my skin and throwing it in my swimming pool just so i would stop swimming. 

in a perfect world, the vanilla latte i drank today would be yours, and i’d have the caramel. although, maybe we shouldn’t be having so much sugar, but we don’t have to be perfect in a perfect world. i’d still be driving you around and you’d still be laughing at me the whole time.

in a perfect world, i wouldn’t have woken up wanting to throw up and cry. in a perfect world i wouldn’t be going to bed wanting to throw up and cry. 

in a perfect world we’d still be holding hands, i wouldn’t have to dream of your laugh, or close my eyes to try and picture your smile. we could hug, i could feel you in my arms, i wouldn’t have to draw pictures behind my eyelids or smell your favourite perfume. 

i wanted to tell you something about this perfect world - it isn’t real and that’s what hurts. today was so hot i wanted to swim to antarctica just to feel cool again, i wanted to lie underneath my airconditioner in the middle of the day in my underwear just to stop sweating. 

in a perfect world today you’d be turning 21. i’d be telling you to cut your cake and kiss me, we’d be sharing stories about all the stupid shit you did and about how much it always made us laugh. you’d be laughing that high pitched laugh of yours and getting drunk off vodka way too quickly. we’d have a slideshow of all these photos of you over the years - from the day your parents took you home to today. 

in a perfect world you would have lived past seventeen. 

hey, 

the world isn’t perfect and neither am i but i wish you’d stuck around just a little bit longer to give it a chance. 

anytime i dream of a perfect world, you’re there. 

happy twenty first to the most beautiful seventeen year old there ever was. 

[bourbanbrown]

hey, 

so i picked up my pen with the intention of writing you the same words over and over again, “i love you i miss you i love you i miss you” but instead i think i’m going to tell you about some things i’ve been thinking. 

i’ve been thinking about how every night, without fail, the sun stops shining so the moon can. and about how no matter how cloudy, or how bright the city is below, the stars are always there to sparkle, always there to make wishes on. 

i’ve been thinking about how every second of every day, a wave will do everything it can to break itself trying to kiss the shore. about how it brings seashells to the sand, about how it caresses the feet of witnesses. 

i’ve been thinking about how trees spend six months flowering and growing, making themselves a beautiful green, only for the leaves to turn orange and fall to the ground, so that the snow might just get to kiss the bare branches. 

i’ve been thinking about how birds will fly halfway around the world because they know it’s the right thing to do, but that something always pulls them back home.

i’ve been thinking about how sunsets are only as beautiful as the people you watch them with, and walks along the beach are only as romantic when you’re holding hands with the person who will collect sea shells with you. 

i’ve been thinking about how i’ve spent so much time focusing on growing myself that it’s time i let some leaves fall so that you might kiss my branches again. 

i’ve been thinking about how i like being a bird, and i like knowing that you’re still my favourite nest. 

i’ve been thinking about how “i love you i miss you” will never be enough to say just what i want to say. 

i’ve been thinking. 

all my love.

[bourbanbrown]

03/10

“what do you want to do tonight?”

we were sitting on my roof, a half empty bottle of red wine between us and a packet worth of cigarette butts everywhere. 

i looked at him like it was a silly question.

“exactly what we’re doing i said.”

“oh”

“oh?”

“oh.”

things are getting strange between us. 

-

15/02

today i took the 7:23 am train to central station. places to go, people to see, all that kind of stuff. 

i sat next to a girl who was scratching at her wrists. 

she was all perfect makeup perfect clothes perfect hair perfect nails and i just wanted to hold her and tell her that pretty girls don’t need to mess up their perfect wrists and that perfection is a dumb concept. 

my psychologist says i’m doing well. 

-

21/03

every week when i call my mother i always get the same thing. 

“are you okay? you holding up alright? need me to come down and help out for a few days?”

i won’t tell her that all i want is for her to scoop me up in her arms like she did when i was a child, sing me lullabies and make me forget about the fact that real life is really shit, sometimes. 

-

22/05

things haven’t been the same since we lost her - miff and bels never talk any more, and no one knows what happened to cat. 

it kinda makes me sad, the way life works. one moment you’re there living it and the next you’re not. 

sometimes i wish i had a rewind button, or at least a pause. 

i want to freeze time to memorise all the faces and laughs i’ll never see again.

-

03/12

i ran into him today. i was sitting at a table drinking red wine by myself and he was standing outside under a tree with a cigarette in his mouth. 

i wonder if he still stares at stars the way that i do. 

-

27/10

time heals all wounds. 

[bourbanbrown]

some things -

1. the thing about the city i grew up in is that it never quite was until it was too much. by the time i realised that it wasn’t actually too bad, i was too caught up on leaving i didn’t take time to make friends with the back streets and coffee shops and bars. i’m a bit scared to go back, is the thing, i think maybe we’ve outgrown each other - maybe we did before we even knew it. 

2. the thing about the city i live in now is that it is everything all at once, even when it is nothing. i cannot see stars most nights because there are too many lights, but that’s okay, because when i ride my bike along the river and i can hear the sounds of the midnight city, i don’t mind. i think maybe this place makes me feel more alive than any drugs ever could. 

3. the thing about the person i am now is that it is not the same as it was three months ago, or three years ago. i am so in love with feeling alive i do not want my feet to touch the ground - i am breathing new air and filling my veins with pretty words and beautiful people and every night i dream in technicolour and it still isn’t as wonderful as it is to spend evenings getting drunk off cheap wine with people who know me so well it’s like they don’t even know me. 

4. the thing about the person i want to be is that i have no idea who she is. 

5. the thing is, that once upon a time i was a silly sad girl who liked to carve sadness into her body, and then didn’t put anything but cigarettes and coffee in, and somewhere along the line i got messedmessedmessed up and it took a lot for me to get back on track. now i am older and not so silly and not so sad, i just have scars and too much stomach and thighs sometimes, but every day i learn to fall a little bit more in love with myself. 

6. the thing is that, things are just things. i’m just trying not to get too caught up in it all. 

[bourbanbrown]

so lately, i’ve been thinking. 

about how there are always stars in the sky, no matter where you are, but sometimes you can’t see them because the world is just too busy. 

and about how no matter what day it is, i will always find my mind coming back to the same damn analogy - ‘your eyes are like the stars i cannot see anymore’

(like, what a fucking cliché, but it never stops being true)

and about how sometimes i forget that the world is always moving - i am never in the same place i was the day before, and sometimes that is just a terrifying thought. 

and about how sometimes i’m so drunk off the motions of being alive i forget how to spell my own name. 

i’ve been thinking about the pretty boy who broke my heart before i even knew i’d need bandages, and about the girl who stole my secrets and disappeared into the night without so much as a second glance. about the boy at home who has my heart and tells me that he loves me, but also about the boy who held my hand the first week in my new city and who i can never get out of my head. i’ve been thinking about how i’m 19 and life is for living and how every day i wake up is a gift and that i am so lucky to spend every night searching for stars and even luckier for every night i find one

(although, if we’re being honest about my thoughts - i still wish for you on every first star i see)

[bourbanbrown]

one starry night one year ago

imagine, boy meets girl, boy insults girl, boy kisses another girl, until boy realises he has been kissing wrong girl, finally rectifies situation by asking girl out on date. girl says yes, of course, have you seen his eyes?

"hey, are you okay?"

there's a half empty bottle of vodka to my side, and i am slumped on a chair. I haven't felt so alive in a really long time. I'm wearing a strange man's hat and my good friend's jumper, and there is music blasting and my friends are all smiling and i am happyhappyhappy

"hey, yeah i'm okay, just need to sit for a while."

mumford and sons starts playing, and i can tell that you want to go and turn it up. 

"okay, i'll just leave you be then."

you're back in less than two minutes. "i can't leave a pretty girl sitting by herself at a party, that's just like morally wrong."

you smiled at me and oh my gosh, i have been falling more and more in love with that smile every day for the past year. 

here's the thing, right, you knew all my deep dark secrets from that night, and i knew yours. maybe we still can't remember everything that we said, but i don't think it's necessary. i trusted you with my everything without a hesitation. i know there's been things i haven't been so easy to talk about, but i have honestly never felt more safe and comfortable than i did that night when you had your arms around me and you smelt like rum and you kept calling me beautiful and good fucking god i don't know what i did to deserve someone like you. 

"thanks, that means a lot."

and so we spent a starry night telling secrets and drinking from the bottle. i've still got the burns on my skin from where you left your hands, and i can still taste the rum on your lips when i gave you our first abrupt, drunken kiss. 

i'm still learning how to love you properly, but i promise, i have been falling in love with you since that night. 

"tell me your secrets," i said. 

"tell me yours and i'll tell you mine."

here we are then. 

(there's not a cloud in the sky tonight and all i can think about is the way your eyes sparkle when you smile.

let's just keep falling.)

[bourbanbrown]

There are claw marks on every inch of my skin.

I want to rip myself apart and explode in a messy supernova of everything I used to be, and everything I don't know how to be. 

Restlessness sits in me like a disease I don't know how to treat. I cannot sleep anymore, I spend my days thinking of too many things all at once and it exhausts me. 

Today I thought about what it must be like to step in front of a train. What leads a person to make that decision? How much does it hurt? What comes next?

I am not a suicidal person. Sometimes I think the world would be better off if I wasn't around to take up air, but I have too much to give and haven't learned enough yet, so I'm staying selfish for a while. It's just that I've been thinking. 

The sky is blue and it took me twelve years to find the proper answer as to why. My brother is half the size he was six months ago and I cannot understand the way his mind works. My boyfriend calls me beautiful one moment and selfish and crazy the next, I am both I guess, I just wish I knew how to be what he wanted me to be. 

I've been thinking about traipsing the world - leaving marks on my map and not looking back. I want to drunk fuck in Prague, smoke more pot than is good for me in Amsterdam, eat more bread and cheese than I should in Paris and make friends everywhere I go. 

I cannot make my mind stop working and I cannot stop people from feeling certain things about me no matter how much I wish to. 

I was trying to write a nice piece of prose but really this just came out a mess. 

(I've been a bit of a mess lately, I think the explosion might be imminent.)

[bourbanbrown]

I hope you find someone who calls you beautiful when your face is flooded with tears.

[bourbanbrown]

never make somebody else your number one. learn to be your own main priority