im not mean, i promise.

i want someone new to kiss, someone new altogether.
someone that doesnt like the same things as you,
or maybe did but grew up, out of it, over it.
im tired of making the same mistake, twice, three-
thousand times, you.
i was going to stop smoking but decided
dying of lung cancer would be better than the
broken heart ///

time doesnt make sense anymore
staying at home and hiding the whiskey bottle behind the toilet
noticing how people still dont understand the story
how they still come up and tell you
that there is just something about you,
i've run out of answers to tell them
it's in my blood
it's the mystery you can't solve
im not like everyone else.
usually i just tell them its not me its you or
you're drunk.
but lets be real here if we could for a minute
or two
its because i dont talk to everyone, its because i dont smile all the time, its because im not loud and obnoixious, it's because i will break your heart and warn you first.

he calls you a bitch and you still
want to drive to his house,
drunk--
he tells you he hates you and you
tell him you love him
him
him
him
it was never about you.

there's a rejection slip
from a boy
hanging on my wall
in my room, by my bed
where we made love
one night, i poured wine on him and laughed
trying to be sexy but being too drunk to pull it off
the rejection slip is still there but
the boy isnt
he doesnt call or come over and i know it shouldnt
matter
but rejection is like getting wine poured on you
by a drunk girl who is laughing

fucking crybaby

and you told me once "i'm only mean like that to you",
and i didnt know how to take it and i still dont
ive never told someone i loved them only for them to be mean to me,
afterwards and forever.
but i guess,
i guess this is how it happens sometimes
youre getting older but its all still there so
you hold your breathe when he's close,
or you watch his hair grow back, slowly--
wondering if maybe he cut you out of his way before you did
the same to him...
or the fact that maybe its all bullshit, that you dreamed it all up..its all one big fucking
daydream.
you never kissed, he never held your hand, he never tried to make you laugh, you never danced together, nothing good ever happened
he's always been a jerk to you--
this is what you tell yourself everytime the wind blows by you, there was always something
about him and the wind.

i havent seen him look that way in a while and he hasnt seen me smile like that ever. i let my heart run away sometimes and get overwhelmed and wonder what youre doing. what song you just listened to or what kind of beer youre drinking tonight. if you ever think of me as i do of you. and these always seem like mini love letters to you but always, never, without, replies///i always hoped you would fall in love with me, i always hoped that there was something you could love about me. like my long hair, or my blue eyes, that mole by my right breast or the one right underneath my eye, the way i would sometimes look at you while we danced, or maybe the fact that i always remember when your birthday is without being reminded. you told me once to never have chipped nail polish, and just because you broke my heart i cut my long hair and always, always wait till my nail color fades///

not every living creature has to die alone

i imagined how this would be. me hurting you for the last time and you leaving. never talking to me again except maybe a phone call on christmas, your favorite holiday, not mine. we would eventually get over one another and move on, you would buy antony and the johnsons on vinyl for a new girl and i would buy another grown man his first tea kettle, hoping that he would let me smoke cigarettes inside his house during the winter while i drank the tea he made. she would take over my tradition of buying you a new christmas ornament for your tree each year but they would never mean as much to you, there would never be as much thought put into it. she would always trust you and never go through your notebooks or your phone. but you would lie to her when she asked if you ever thought of me, if you ever missed me. and you did both of those things and you always would. i would find someone who wanted to marry me and i would eventually call you up and tell you the good news, asking you for advice, "do you think i can actually love the same man.. forever?"  you'd be in your late forties, trying to hold on to what youth you still had. she'd actually be your age though this time. You would hear the excitement in my voice, the smile. you would never put a ring on anyone's finger. The closest I got to that was a ring with a moon stone that you gave me on some holiday or birthday. I would still wear it, switching it from finger to finger, making room for the ones he would buy me. You both would sit in the same apartment, you finally giving in and letting her move in with you. You at your desk writing, her bored and wondering what her old friends were up to or reading marie claire or some other trash magazine wondering when the next touch would come. and i wish i could tell her that it won't ever show up, that things dont change with people. they stay the same they just get older and more set in their ways. and when i invite the both of you to the wedding she silently cries in the shower because she knows that she is stuck unless she leaves, unless she breaks your heart, unless she becomes brave. she doesnt know what being brave is so she breaks your heart instead, the only way she knows how to get out, the only way anyone knows how to get out. this is what i imagine, sitting with you, watching some horrible television show that we've both already seen. this is what i think about while i fall asleep on the couch and you crawl off to my bed not waking me, not putting an arm around me at night, not kissing me or touching me. and i always imagined this is how it would be.

sometimes it is just about having them there. about letting them see what your room looks like. or that arm on your chest or your back, your thigh. sometimes i just want someone breathing in my ear. or someone else's cell phone alarm to go off in the morning. i wanna know what beer and cigarette breathe smells like. i wanna have to get up to find that sock that you cant seem to find. sometimes i actually do want to know what you wanna do with your life, what you imagined you would do when you were little. i wanna hear what your voice sounds like when youre not around your friends, what your laugh sounds like. its not always about fucking.