To Write

I am seventeen years old and the written word means more to me than the spoken.

[bucolic-y]

Dear you,

You should have called me. Why didn't you call me? You were the only thing between me and a drug habit, between me and a hospital bracelet, between me and a headstone. You were not my everything. I am too strong for that, I do not depend on men or love or the nuclear family. I depend on Klonopin and Bacardi and MDMA. 

I didn't visit your grave for a month after you died. Then I visited it every week. Now it's every month, or whenever I need the wind and the clouds and the too-green grass to scream louder than I can. I haven't said your name in months. Tomorrow, you will have been dead for longer than we dated. I knew you for fifteen years, dated you for seventeen months, loved you ever since that first date on the hill with the sunrise and the blueberries.

You fucked me up.

You fucked me up.

[bucolic-y]

and just because I said I couldn't be with you doesn't mean I can't fall head-over-heels for you so please take your dreamy eyes and your can-do attitude somewhere else

[bucolic-y]

Love won't leave me alone.

I still love the boy who treated me like an illness, who treated his own fists like a cure. I love him despite the eighteen times I've told him to fuck off in the last two weeks. I love him despite the fact that it's taken me three years to admit that I ever felt anything for him in the first place. I love him despite the broken bones and the black eyes and the covered wrists and the anxiety he left me. I love him but I cannot love him. I love him but he is bad for me.

I still love the other boy, the one who came after. I love his 6'3 sandy blond California. I love his 2 am Skype dates and his quiet understanding and his "I don't understand but I support you." I love the way thinking about him still makes me smile a little. I love his stupid puns and bear hugs and first-rate date ideas. I love his questions about things I loved and he didn't, how he tried doing everything I loved to do. I love how being with him made the entire world quiet down. I love how he still manages to do that. I love how the quietest, calmest place I know is in front of his grave. I love how he still listens without interruption.

[bucolic-y]

We laid together under your favorite willow and I listened to you tell stories about the "good ol' days" before the diagnoses and the psychiatrists and the hospitalizations. And, when I looked back at you, I realized the true meaning of change when I saw it, raw and undisguised, in the depths of your eyes. And just as hazel is an "in-between" color, you are an "in-between" spirit, caught between what should have been and what came to be.

[bucolic-y]

I drank the last of the Four Loko at 3:17 a.m. on Wednesday. It tasted like you; like cracked lips and broken sunrises and dread. There are sixteen empty cans littering my floor.

You would have scolded me, trying to convince me to stop drinking or at least brought me better alcohol, alcohol that doesn't choke me on its way down my throat. But you have no say anymore. I will drink as I see fit. And tonight, I want the world to spin. I want to fall to my knees and cling to the grass and hope I don't fall off the planet.

I want to fall into bed and call my brother and tell him I don't think I'm ever coming home. I want to get on a plane and wake up in a different part of the world. I want to find a place that doesn't remind me of you.

I'm not trying to drink myself to death. But if that's what it takes, I will.

[bucolic-y]

I don't remember the exact date of the first time I was terrified of you. It was only two and a half weeks into our relationship and I still had plenty of time to run. I didn't. That first time wasn't bad; just a black eye and fractured hopes. This was before you learned how to carefully place the bruises where they could be hidden by a sweater.

The second time, and the third time, and the fourthfifthsixthseventheighth time, you apologized. You called me up, crying, begged my forgiveness. It was the last time, you promised. Always the last time. I'm not proud of how long I stayed with you, how long I chose to believe that each time really was the last time.

The ninth time, I hadn't seen you in almost two years. You called, told me you were clean, said you wanted to have lunch and atone for past sins, invited me to your place. I went, but when you learned of his existence, your fists hardened into steel. Again. Another black eye. Another half-assed excuse. Another goodbye.

The tenth--and final--time was three weeks later. We happened to be at the same New Year's party (though it was at my apartment and you were carried in, blackout drunk, by my well-intentioned friends). 12:00 midnight, your drunk ass goes in for the kiss. I push you away. You get mad. This is nothing new for us. Two broken ribs, a concussion, and a sprained ankle. I told you goodbye. I meant it this time.

[bucolic-y]

It has been eight months and five days.

Eight months and five days ago I lost the ability to laugh wholeheartedly. My eyes stopped dancing and my heart turned to steel. Since then, I can't look at the sky for fear of remembering the color of your eyes, and all my friends are brunettes because being near blondes hurts too much. I find your cheekbones in how my drapes puddle on the floor and the curve of your shoulder blades in the body of my guitar.

It's been 250 days and my breath still catches when "At Your Door" comes on the radio because the first time I kissed you that was playing in the background and since then it has been our song. I see my ex crossing the street and my heart stops because I can't help but to remember how gently you hugged me after he beat me the first time and every time after that and how you stayed up with me all night when I finally left him.

6,000 hours have passed and you're still the first person I want to text when something ridiculous happens. Your old phone number is still in my phone and I still have the last three voicemail messages you left me. The first was a pocket-dial message you didn't know you were leaving but I can hear you laughing on it and that sound makes everything hurt and everything stop hurting at the same time. The second was a simple "I love you." The third you were crying and apologizing and slurring and I've tried to delete it thousands of times but it's the last thing I'll ever have of you.

Eight months and five days have passed and it still hurts more than anything and I miss you more than anything and I'm sober now and I quit smoking and you'd be so proud of me please oh god please come back it's been 21 million seconds since you died and every single one of them is another knife in the wound

i miss you

[bucolic-y]

it's 9:28 pm and the walls are bulging the walls are shrinking the walls are screaming i am screaming i think i drank too much i am fine i am fine i am fine don't touch me. i don't need your help. i didn't understand before but now i know! i know that this is what they've all been talking about! me! imagine that, people talking about me! they're worrying about me! this does not bring the comfort i'd hoped it would. this just brings purple-tinged desperation. i am alive i am alive i am alive i am alive.

[bucolic-y]

Throw away the dead bouquet, dear. The flowers have wilted faster than you ever will. The redolant languor has faded to the cloying smell of fear and loneliness; and you spend too much time comparing their sickly-skinny stems to your own wasted form in the mirror. The colors have faded to sepia. You have faded too. You envy their vase of water, the way they require nothing but sunlight and love. They're already dead, dear. They've been dead since they were plucked from their roots. They died long ago, dear. And so did you.

[bucolic-y]

I've never associated Halloween with candy corn and ghosts and jack-o-lanterns. To me, Halloween is sawdust; Ray LaMontagne, the color blue. Fall is golden lockets and clouds shaped like worry. Pumpkin spice lattes are second only to the internal ache of girlhood. (Is it womanhood yet? Only the spider plants on my front porch know that answer.) Pet rats and crystal pendants and number-2 pencils and watercolors all find themselves in Halloween. So when you set your clock back an hour, remember that I still only sing at midnight.

[bucolic-y]

Leave me a note and flowers when you decide to go.

Write the note in flawless calligraphy on personalized stationary. Don't write the word 'goodbye.' Write about when we were in Cabo and I was still enough for you and we were happy. Write about how peonies are always going to remind you of me and how hard it will be to forget the sound of my laugh. Write about the way you know my lungs will shatter like glass when I pick up that note and write about the mercury in my eyes and the fluorine in my soul. Write about the fact that the stars are dimmer now than they were in Cabo.

And you'd better leave me a lavender flower because you know I know they mean distrust and you know damn well I'll appreciate the sentiment but that I will always remember Cabo.

[bucolic-y]

We were young and stupid but we were also the smartest people we knew. That summer we left behind girlhood in favor of this new and exciting maturity, testing it out with our suntanned bodies, slick with the salt of the ocean. We tried anything and everything took anything, drank anything, smoked anything. We flirted with boys we knew we'd never see again. We dyed our hair, wore too much makeup, showed too much skin. That summer, we took on the world headfirst and expected to win. That summer, we learned more about ourselves than we ever had before. That summer was the turning point.

[bucolic-y]

I tattooed your face on the backs of my eyelids. I burned candles that smell like you and read books by authors who share your first name. I learned guitar just to write songs that turned ineffable emotion into a linear progression of chords and lyrics about roses. I told my friends you were on vacation, gone to Alaska to spend time with the family I wanted to share with you. I refuse to admit you've moved on. I poured my heart into a flask and mailed it to where I thought you might be. You sent it back full of bourbon and moonlight and broken promises.

[bucolic-y]

I think the stars crash into each other when we're not watching them. I think the ocean gets lonely and the mountains think they're too old for this. The rain doesn't taste like freedom anymore. It tastes like sorrow and regret. They say there could be holes in our ozone layer, that in a few years we may have nothing to breathe at all. I say bring it on. I say maybe we've had this earth for too long. I say maybe it's tired of us. It's probably time to give it a rest. The stars might appreciate a little privacy. It's time for the ocean and the mountains to get reacquainted. The rain could start falling again.

[bucolic-y]

i. His eyes remind me of Tahoe. The snow on the mountain and the snow in my heart are one and the same. His heart is made of steel and his liver is made of iron and his eyelids are heavier than lead. He is the man in the moon and I am stardust.

ii. The dates on the backs of the pictures say January but I could have sworn it was June. White yarrow was blooming on the side of the road and I corrected you when you called it queen anne's lace. I don't know why it offended me.

iii. The bruise your lips left on my collarbone turned into a scar when you left.

[bucolic-y]

everything is too flat and everything is too vivid and everything is too bright. i can't hear anything except for the ringing in my ears. i don't know if i'm screaming. i don't know if anyone can hear. the world is tinged with green and the world is spinning too damn fast and i want to get off. the contrast is too high and the saturation too low and everything is second to the buzzing in my head. i need help but i don't know which way is up and i'm pretty sure my car is out of gas. i want to be with you and i want you to love me and i want me to love me and i want you to love yourself and i want us to stop.