pounding my brain is pulsing it hurts your words flood in one ear out the other a drug that isn't addicting yet just as awful eyes droop heads sink “pick your heads up and pay attention” how can i when i’ve spent all night doing the work you assigned me the ink of my pen smeared with my sleepless nights and strangled breaths crushed by the weight of my backpack and you expect me to focus? the only sleep i get is against my textbook as a pillow waking up at 6 to make myself look presentable because otherwise i look sick i am, we’re not ok but if they see that then they won't be able to escape what they're doing to us their denial hangs heavy in the air so thick i could swim in it yet at the same time i can see through that very thin veil where they’re hiding the truth
even in my dreams i see red marks on my essay B+ haunting the corner of the page like the ghosts i used to fear under my bed at night when did average become failure? boredom battles any will i had college is the only motivator study hard to get there once a star but by then you’re burning out still you study harder to get a job working a 6-9 at a call center scraping by to start a family, hoping to give your kids the opportunity to live the life you wish you lived while you were too busy buried in your homework by the time you realize all that you missed, all that you could've done, your bones are cracked skin weathered and rather than smile lines against your lips there are creases from hours of crying under your eyes you’re just as tired as your youth
close your eyes to sleep and you may never wake up stuck in a nightmare cycle where you’re back in those wooden desks you worked so hard to escape you’re not writing with ink but with blood, waves of sick down you you scream but “you’re being dramatic” “you're just ‘lazy” It’s in your heard and when you finally open your tired eyes you’re greeted with a grating voice telling you school isn't about grades its about learning yet really all anyone ever sees is if your gpa is a 4.2 or 4.0
breathing blends with everyone else as you shove your way down the halls to cramp your hands for an hour writing notes you’ll never use we don’t go outside we’re chained to these chairs and you have the audacity to laugh and complain about teaching 2 periods back to back i learn 6 periods back to back every day
gray walls and tiled floors this place is a prison disguised as a school our orange jumpsuits in the form of navy polos and too short skirts you talk and talk and talk at me try talking to me for a school so focused on well being, you sure as hell don’t care about mine as long as i don’t cry its fine you’re still able to deny keep up with your lies and it might work with my parents but you and i both know your words go in one ear and out the other
i know every detail about every version of herself she has ever been and ever will be i know the way her hair is smooth and shiny in my hands i know the way her eyes crinkle when she smiles and i know the way her heart runs across the world dancing miles around yours, wishing the bubbles of you typing would appear on her screen even if she says she doesn’t care i know she does because we’re the same, me and her thats how i know it all every curve in her waist every line on the palm of her hands the lines on our palms fit together like pieces in a puzzle sliding perfectly where they’re supposed to be like your arms around my shoulders
i know every detail about every version of ourselves we’ve ever been i’ve never been more in love with a girl so platonically before everyone on this entire earth all 8 billion people should love her as much as i do because she’s so perfect, so messily put together and chaotically happy and she’s real to me because she’s jsut like me
know one will ever get to know her like i do because she is me and i am her we will never lose each other because we are each other and you can’t lose a piece of your soul that’s what she is a piece of my soul
who are we when no one is watching? as for me, does my bubbly facade fall? is it a facade or is it true, do i cry in my room tears that stain my pillowcase from nights late with anguish or do i smile to myself thinking of you? maybe i would, if i had anyone to think about no, rather i lay on my bed and stare up at my ceiling, wondering questioning thinking why can no one seem to love me properly? is it me or do i simply keep chosing the wrong people, the people who don’t like to love to show emotion the people who find it unnatractive to care i try to be who they want but reality slips in i care so deeply for so much i laugh so hard tears stream down my face and my smile radiates so much love for these people, a smile that they don’t return i can’t bring myself to feel sad now that there is an emptiness in my heart where your name used to be because it feels as though mine hasn’t been in yours for a long time
i’m not sure who i am when no one is watching for it feels as though someone is always watching i wish i understood the freedom to know my worth, know who was going to give me the love i deserve know which boys i’m not going to have to lie to my mom about because he never told me i was beautiful but i tell her that he did because it’s embarassing my own boyfriend doesn’t even think i’m pretty or at least can’t express it to me if he does
i wish someone would love me in the way i love others but i’m worried i’ll never find someone who wants who i am when no one is watching because how could they when i don’t even know who i am when no one is watching
don’t let yourself float away to the moon or you’ll miss the flowers under your feet that bloom
you were so loving once, upon my bed i lay, feet kicking as you typed my doubt away as you called me beautiful as you called me yours i miss it
you were so perfect once, so perfect that it was easy to ignore how everyone around me hated you i wish you were still perfect maybe then i wouldn’t have had to say goodbye
you are my everything why aren’t i yours? you tell me that you’re doing your best, but your best was over the summer when i was everything to you when did i become nothing so unimportant that you stopped texting stopped calling
you said you were doing your best you said i just got used to it and now i want more i deserve more but i want you i want you to told me in yours arms and kiss me and tell me how much i matter to you but you forgot how
i took down all your pictures off my wall and it hurts to see how empty it is, that’s how my heart feels my mom tells me she loves me and i hate hearing it because it reminds me of how you’ll never say those words to me again i just wanted to be your everything because you are mine
i’m tired of the tears streaming down my cheeks i’m tired of feeling like this my heart aching my chest so tight it’s like i’ve forgotten how to breath i don’t how to sleep without your goodnight texts at night it was a mistake to say goodbye to you rationally i know it wasn’t but emotionally i crave you hate myself for letting you go
i let myself float away to the moon and now i miss the flowers that once blossomed under my feet and instead now melt to ash
the sun grows weary of seeing men squander its light one man wasting the glow that radiats from her skin waste of space waste of time he treats her like she’s merely a trail of his stardust rather than the blazing glory that she is
the sun grows annoyed at the words the man throws her way, for she is not as important as him, but the sun doesn’t speak as she doesn’t want her burning beauty to scathe his heart away
the sun needs to learn that this man is not her everything the sun needs to learn that her light deserves to be seen deserves to be loved not hidden and muffled in the darkness by a boy, not even a man, who cancels plans as soon as he learns it involves seeing other people
the sun needs to see herself in the beauty in the speciality that she is, she needs to hear all the advices the stars whisper they want her to shine, but this boy is sucking her brightness away and she can’t see it because she is too stuck in the way he called her beautiful 8 months ago, the way he held her face in his hands and stared into her eyes, telling her she was his everything, when moments ago he had been yelling though his voice never left a dull murmur becuase emotion is unbecoming to he who wants to be
the sun needs to see what everyone else does, needs to learn how to grow instead of shrink into the vacuum void that he is
he is ruining the sun but she’s too blinded by love, or rather the fear of the absence of love to notice
i never saw those smiles in the hall that you supposedly gave me with your friends maybe i was the one who stopped talking but you stopped loving me last year when you made me feel like i wasn’t worthy to be in your little group “i just wanted to protect you” bullshit i thought you hated me what’s wrong with me why do all of my friends decide i’m not good enough? i started to question if it was true you can’t make up for all that hurt with a few poems if you wanted to talk we would, i told you it was up to you this time if you wanted to talk you don’t have to wait till we’re finally on the bus together if you wanted to you could we i miss you i forgive you but i need to hear you first i don’t want to feel like this is one sided anymore if you so badly say it isn’t
i didn’t talk because i was scared scared of the pain that i felt last year, scared of how you didn’t text me all summer, didn’t try to see me i felt like a fool, thinking what we had was special, something important to you at least now you know that i still love you, sadness washing over me every time you walked by i wonder if we’re too broken to be fixed but you if you try i will too
you know it would be easier to believe you missed me if you treated me like an actual person last year not some dirt under your shoe maybe i hurt you before too but i made up for it i tried i said sorry and meant it and more than that, i fixed it i made you feel loved you made me feel like im not good enough
my love for you is never gone i just pretend that it is, shoving down as you wisk by me with your perfect friends “this day would be perfect if natalie was here!” i heard you say that last week i wish it was me who made your life perfect
i’m happy you’re happy, my love i really am i wish we were happy with each other i wish i was enough i wasn’t, and for that i am sorry
i’m glad you found him i wish i didn’t have to hear the stories through someone else i miss you running to the bus, talking so loudly the seniors made us be quiet i miss everything i hate that im supposed to hate you
i don’t believe you miss me you never matched my effort you say you’re sad and that you want me back but how come that wasn’t true last year? if it’s true, really true, i would try again that’s how much my heart hurts for you if you really want me as much as i do, tell me yourself make the effort because i can’t do it again i can’t embarrass myself anymore than i already have chasing after the ghost of my best friend who doesn’t love me
