I am tired.

A smog has been filling my chest for years,

A poisonous cloud—a metaphoric second-hand smoke.

I inhaled too much of the world,

And coughed up all the effort I could give.

My eyes blink blearily with mourning and grief.

Mourning for a girl I no longer am,

And grief for the woman I grew to be.

I'd like to apologize to my mother

Whom I promised I would try to heal.

I'm sorry,

But I am tired.

I used to be fond of the smell of cigarettes.

They reminded me of my father's friends

Who'd sneak me pocket money for sweets.

But now,

Bitterly,

I am reminded of how frail humans are,

And how easily their lungs blacken.

I am tired.

I don't have it in me to continue this life,

And I'm sorry to everyone I am leaving behind.

You are stronger than I ever got to be.

Goodbye.

"You know,

I used to think you were my friend.

I thought, maybe, you just had issues.

You didn't mean to be harsh,

Or rude,

Or unnecessarily nasty to those who cared.

You were dealing with heavy shit,

And I was prepared to walk alongside you

Through that dark, empty tunnel,

Until you saw the light again.

I thought you could come to your senses,

And be the friend I knew you to be.

I saw you change,

And I believed—

Foolishly, I believed—

That you were still the same as ever,

But with a newfound exterior.

Maybe the tough guy persona was getting to your head.

It's all good,

It happens to the best of us, after all.

But good people don't do the things you did,

And I will never know peace again.

I woke to numbness and a paralyzing betrayal,

You slept soundly after a good fuck.

I hate you

For whispering sweetness to me the morning after,

And telling me

I was the best you ever had.

I was taken—stolen.

And I hate you

For being such a good friend before,

And leaving me believing in your safe return.

You came back,

But you came back with a malicious glint in your eye.

In the murkiness of your tunnel,

I held your hand and tried to guide you out,

Only to find:

Deep down, you're really shallow,

And the exit was behind you all along."

There's a key to these things, an insight bestowed in the form of colors: Green, and blue—like grass, and sky. Compost, recycle; follow these instructions to save your summers. That way, nature will never die.

The first time you ever held my hand,

You were brimming with a sloshy, overflowing red.

The kind one can mistake for a bashful blush,

Had it not been for your crushing grip.

I met you when you were the kind of boy

To pull on girls' hair, and tug on bra straps,

In the name of adolescent love.

And you met me when I was the kind of girl

That felt guilty when rejecting others

Because what of their feelings?

And ignore my own—

Continuously.

I thought:

You could change.

People are not inherently bad,

And men are not born evil.

I was right, in the end.

I watched a change unfurl in you,

Like the blossoming of a lotus;

An eternal love, a perservering adoration.

But your love was not for me, but for

The thrill I gave you.

Does submission feel good?

It felt like Hell to me,

But I liked you, I think.

Enough for the palm of your hand

As it collides with my cheek

To feel like a kiss,

Rather than the hit it was.

You grew into a man I believed I didn't recognize,

But I did.

I did,

I did, I did, I did—

Because even as a boy,

You were like sandpaper:

Harsh, and grainy.

Your aggression is no stranger,

And I wish I had told your mother

That you grew into a husk of your father.

I tried to convince myself,

Men are not born evil.

But when does a man become a monster?

Last night, I cried myself to sleep

Thinking of everything I'd done,

And everything I've yet to do.

I am only alive because

You want me to be—you want me.

But holding on is getting tough,

And I have seen life pass me by

For far too many lifetimes now.

I desperately wish I was

Alive, and dead, and alive, and—

I was an adult as a child,

But now I am a child in a

Body that grew faster than me.

How often have I cried lately?

It seems like it's all I know now.

I watch as life passes me by,

Again, and again, and again.

More than anything, I love you.

Juni, I fucking love you, dude.

And I'm so sorry for every-

For everything I have done to

Consistently disappoint you.

I will kill myself by tonight.

Or, kill me if you must, my love.

I want to do right by you, Jun.

Last night, I cried myself to sleep

Thinking of what you'll see when you

Open my bedroom door to find

I'm long gone—I'm long gone now.

Juni, did I ever tell you?

There's nobody I love more than

You, you, you, you. . .

You, you, you, you.

Hands grip my waist—bruising.

I close my eyes, and let myself wash away into

My subconscious:

A sandy sea, with a shallow shore.

Green skies, and blue grass.

My hair dangles as blood rushes to my head,

Realizing all too quickly I'm upside down.

The world has been tilted off its axis.

The shedding of clothes,

Squaking of seagulls,

Hoarse, unfamiliar screams,

Splashing of the tide.

I am there,

I am there, I am in this beach,

I am here.

I am here, I am there,

I am—

Underwater.

Water fills my lungs,

A strong grip squeezes my throat:

Hands,

Boy hands,

Roam atop the sand and build castles.

Digging their digits into the

Pliant, pliable Earth.

Humans are made of

Blood, guts, and semen.

Hands grip my throat—killing.

It was all becoming real.

The first piece of you I'd ever seen was a drawing you'd made.

 It was extraordinary.

 You've spent a lifetime emulating the artist you loved, until the hatching, the line weight, the values, and the technical theories blending into second nature. I was in awe of all you could accomplish with a mere pencil and paper.

 I was an artist—back when dreams didn't come with expiration dates and minimum wage salaries.

 More than anyone, I know what it meant to give up your inhibitions to pursue such a thing. You love drawing more than anything. You'd give your life to keep doing it for as long as you lived. I admired that in you, more than I can explain without dissolving into tears.

 I love your mind, Juni.

 You're so talented, and clever, and there's nobody in the world who can emulate what you do so young. Whenever I hear you—listen to the quickened slur of your words, you always spoke so fast, and you have the sweetest lisp to your s's—I feel an itch beneath my skin.

The batting of a butterflies wings; the pricking of incissors.

 I bit off more than I could chew throughout my teenage years, and I'm afraid all that I've ever accomplished will look mundane once I'm twenty, but I want to try again.

 You make me want to try again, and again, and until the day I die, I want to try.

 I was an artist.

 I want to keep being an artist—I realize, gasping, and frantically searching the room.

 I find your eyes, from across the room, and you gave me the kindest of smiles. Before I could even speak, tears well up within my eyes, and you seem to know everything I've ever bottled within.

"I want to be an artist, too," I tell you, choked.

 You simply nod.

When tectonic plates shift, an earthquake rocks the other side of the world.

A feeling as strong as love can't possibly be conjured from the first time our eyes met—across the office, tucked into your personal cubicle—but something sparked to life, that much I'm certain. A weak, flickering ember.

I simply knew: I would come to love you.

I didn't know when, nor did I know how, but I knew you would one day mean everything to me.

It takes a while for the earthquake to come. Meeting you was my tectonic shift. Introverted, startlingly snarky girl, whom I will one day have the honor of loving, I'm glad I was fated to meet eyes with you.

Today, I awoke to

The warmth of the sheets from your side of bed,

And I reached over to you.

I found the bed empty,

Yet still blessed with your familiar heat.

Your pillow smelt of ceadarwood and musk.

I inhaled—

Taking in the part of you I could never replicate—

And found comfort in your essence.

Though you were not there,

I found you in my morning routine.

The rim of your designated coffee mug had the

Imprint of your lips

Smeared along the glass, a parting kiss from you.

I drank from your leftover brew,

And enveloped myself in the lukewarm swishing

Of your backwash, creamer, and vanilla shot.

On Sundays,

Sunlight filters through the windows in the

Prettiest ways.

An ombre of oranges, golds, and daisy yellows

Greet the kitchen we share in their

Warm, warm rays,

And—again, like I so often am—

I am reminded of you.

9-5 lover,

Come home to me soon.

I never told you this, but

I used to think you were a loser.

I hated the scrunch of your nose

When you laughed—always laughing,

What was so funny?—

And I hated your fashion sense.

I despised the squeak of your sneakers

Which you never tied, for aesthetic's sake,

And I abhorred your baggy jeans

With your dream university pin stitched at the hip.

I hated everything about you,

But my friends seemed to love you,

And you seemed to like me.

You'd think me as Duke,

Nestled in the heart of North Carolina,

The way you would beam like the

Warmth of a thousand suns were residing

Within you.

I am not your dream school,

Nor am I your dream girl.

I used to think you were a loser

Who would laugh at the witty quips I'd give,

And rushed through crowded hallways to meet me

Halfway.

The loser who needed to do the L-trick to differentiate

Between his left and rights,

And who couldn't quite read a clock,

But can, for some reason, recite the alphabet backwards.

You were a loser.

You were a moron, an idiot, and you had a

Bigger heart than I think you knew what to do with.

You were kind to the wrong people,

People who didn't deserve your pleasantries,

And you loved so openly,

It made me sick.

You remembered my favorite drink,

And bought me one—unprompted—with a nonchalant,

"You said you liked this one, right?"

The world was thrown off its axis,

And I swore my gut would spill with gore and

A kaleidoscope.

You made me sick.

And when I asked:

Why?

Why would you spend your money

On someone who rolls their eyes whenever you're near,

And who was always on the offense when it came to you,

You smiled.

Smiled, and—again,

I felt the cinematic rays of a thousand suns

Filter through the windows of your eyes—said,

"'Cause I like you."

I hated you.

Your stupid pleasantries,

The lack of direction you had,

And how your nose srunches when you laughed—

Between your brows, wrinkled, and upturned at the tip—

At some lame joke.

Your freckles,

They're speckled along your cheeks and nose like a

Drizzle of angel's dust.

And your eyes,

Seafoam green and pulling anyone who dares to dive in

Like the drag of the tide.

I...

Oh.