image of a dream high school love: she wears his jacket and he
walks her to class holding her hand. his jacket collar is high
enough that people don't notice the bruises.
observation #4: the boy in the black pea coat is in love with the
girl one row over and two desks up. he stares too much.
observation #5: the girl does not know that she is loved like she
is, at least by him. why should she? he never talks.
observation #6: some bruises are too dark to be covered up with
concealer. people are starting to notice.
observation #7: a student keeps a bottle of adderall in her
backpack. the prescription is hers, but it's not for her. it's
almost finals, her friends say. they can't study without it. she
knows it's wrong, but she could use the money.
observation #8: the couple enters the room, except they are
separate. she doesn't have his jacket and he doesn't hold
her hand. she moves away from him, next to the boy with the
black pea coat. he checks the bruises every time she sits
down. after a week, they've faded.
observation #9: the boy with the black pea coat won't stop
staring at the girl one row over, two desks up. one day, she
turns around and catches his eye. she smiles. there is hope.
observation #10: the girl with the backpack sells adderall to
the boy who beat his girlfriend. he tries to flirt with her, and
she tells him to fuck off. he hits the wall as he walks away. she
wonders how the girl didn't see it coming.
observation #11: the girl looks back at the boy with the black
pea coat more often. he has pretty eyes. she can see the blue in
them from here.
observation #12: sometimes she must talk to her ex boyfriend
and the places he hit her burn. the boy with the black pea coat
is always there. he says nothing, just watches, and makes eye
contact with her when he leaves. silence is the loudest thing at
times.
observation #13: the boy with the black pea coat does not love
the girl one row over and two desks up anymore. which is sad,
because she was just starting to love him.
observation #14: the girl with the backpack uses the money
from selling adderall to buy christmas presents for her family.
two days later she is caught with it in her backpack and is
suspended for three days. no medication on campus, they said.
she thinks about the toy she got her little brother.
observation #15: on christmas day, the girl with the backpack
helps her little brother open a new lego set. the boy with the
black pea coat starts looking up more and the girl one row over
and two desks back stops looking back. she never gets to tell
him he has pretty eyes. the girl next to him does it for her. there
is kissing instead of hitting. but what once was lingers. it always
lingers.
-c.h.
eulogy of a broken heart
everything falls apart
everything dies
your hands crumbled to dust
and fell through my fingertips
i lost you oh god
i lost you
i thought that
you would stay
but you blew away with
the wind and faded from
my eyes i wonder
where you are now
you used to
tell me i was
something otherworldly and
i told you the same
but you went on an adventure
and never came back
they say that
graveyards are the
scariest of places but
for me it is the mirror
because when i look into it
you are not by my side anymore
and nothing
is scarier
than that
-c.h.
metaphorically speaking
it's impossible to describe exactly how you made me feel but
you were like a cold drink on an eighty degree day, you were
like freshly shaven legs, you were like feeling the beach sand in
between your toes and the waves lapping against your shins, you
were refreshing, renewing. i don't know how to describe exactly
how it felt when you touched me but it was like a hot towel
pressed against my skin, it was like the slightest of
electrocutions, it was like feeling the warm sun beat down on
your back, it was intense, warm. i could never explain exactly
how it felt when you broke me but it felt like stubbing your foot
on the corner of the table a dozen times over, it was like having
a cough and not being able to swallow your breath, it was like
chopping vegetables and cutting your finger, it was sudden,
painful. i don't know to describe any of this properly but i guess
i'm doing the best i can given the fact that when you left you
took all of me with you.
-c.h.
succubus
i’m still waiting
for the bite marks
to heal.
-c.h.
schoolgirl's lament
i want to kiss you
but you like the hard girls
with rough teeth
and dry hands
the wet girls
with slick tongues
and untied laces
the girls who
suck the life out of you
like they shotgun cigarette
smoke into your naked chest
i know your fingers
make a mess of her body
i know your eyes gloss
and your mouth gapes
as she makes a mess
out of you
she's beautiful
in a chaotic way
i will never understand
i look at my buttoned blouse
and toothpaste teeth
and i know
i am beautiful to some
but it's just a shame
i'm not beautiful
to you
-c.h.
i wrote this the day before you left me (i wonder how i knew)
enough is enough
is enough
and i told you
we couldn't
but you always said
we can
you've always been
a believer
in fate and us
but now
we've reached the end
of everything
you told me
that you
loved every part of
my broken
soul and that night
i cried
enough is enough
is enough
we were wrong to
think otherwise
because time will always
run out
-c.h.
the poem that got me death threats
she let him touch her;
she's a whore!
but why is it your business,
what she does behind closed doors?
she showed some skin,
such a slut!
it's simply a shoulder,
that doesn't spark lust.
her breasts are covered,
barely even exposed,
but you all shame her
like she's wearing no clothes.
slut, whore, and skank,
all unnecessary titles,
used so frequently,
we don't see them as vil
e.
if a girl is unpure and dirty
because of what she did in bed,
maybe you should backtrack
and start looking at his hands instead.
-c.h.
in rewind
after you left,
i was told
to try to replay us
backwards
because then it's not
falling apart,
it's coming together.
i think that
us in rewind
is still just as
painful
because it begins
with you rebuilding me,
and us being happy
for a while,
until one day
you just forget about me.
but then again,
isn't that how it happened,
anyway?
-c.h.
the saddest thing
in the weeks after,
i traced my fingers along
the cracks in the porcelain
in my heart and i could
still feel the imprint
where your hands
used to rest.
there are chips missing,
exposing the bleeding red
beneath, and i know
that those pieces
rest in your pocket.
of course,
you had to leave
with some sort of
piece of me.
i'm not angry
that you took
a part of my heart.
i'm just sad,
because even though
you have it,
it won't make us
any less of strangers.
-c.h.
some people will say this is a prostitute (others will be
reminded of themselves)
the girl on the corner
of Main Street waits
for someone to say
they need her again
she has golden hair
and dull green eyes
but she is beautiful
even though she is
horribly broken
she spends her nights
at bars with her
brittle hands quaking for
something more than gray
cigarette smoke and dirty
sheets with dirty men
in them
she aches for you
and hopes you will come
back soon but alas
you have been gone
for so long and
gone you shall continue
to be.
-c.h.
i guess this means i'm moving on
you were here
and then suddenly
you were gone
in the blink of an eye
i still miss you
even though i can no longer
recall the color of your eyes
or the texture of your hands
all i know is that
you loved me
but you never loved me
enough
we were together
but i've gone
and forgotten
the rest.
-c.h.
galactic
you called me a galaxy.
you played connect the dots with
the freckles on my arms
and called them constellations.
you told me i had stars in my eyes
and celestial matter in my veins.
you said falling for me was like
falling into a black hole;
endless, exhilarating.
but your words struck me like meteors,
and your glare burned me like the sun.
it occurred to me that, like the moon,
you were only with me at night,
and i never saw all of who you were.
we ended like a supernova,
in an explosion that was slow and fast
at the same time.
-c.h.
boys i've loved and the end of the world #2
“they say it’s a solar flare, the biggest one they’ve ever seen,” he
says with a sigh.
“are you scared?” i ask.
he runs his hand through his hair. “i don’t think so. it’s
inevitable, right?”
“sure. but aren’t you scared of death?”
“why would i be? sometimes i try to get there early.” there is a
smile on his face, but the weight of his words is still so heavy
in the air.
“you never take anything seriously,” i mumble, more to myself
than anything, but he hears me.
“sure i do. i took you seriously.”
“but you left.”
“still. you were my favorite thing,” he says, quietly, as if he is
afraid of what i’ll do when i hear it.
“then why did you push me away? after all that time, all those
memories, and you just… told me to leave.”
“i was made up of a million mistakes already. i didn’t want you
to become another one.”
“but i did anyway, didn’t i?” i press.
“not exactly. because i let you go, you met him, and you were
happy. and even though it wasn’t with me, it was… it was
something, you know? something to feel good about.”
“so in a way, it was always about me, wasn’t it?”
he looks at me then, and his blue eyes are sad, like they always
are.
“until the end,” he says.
-c.h
a poem on how i realized i still love you
there was something about the way
you told me you loved me that sounded like a song,
and it's sad that i never got a chance to memorize it,
for the melody reminded me of my childhood.
you were so gentle in the way you treated me
that it's no wonder you were so gentle in leaving, too.
i guess you really did mean it
when you said you'd never try and hurt me.
i think i'm going to miss you for a very long time.
and i know i'll be okay,
but i just wish i could be okay
with you.
-c.h.
the truth
they say that all love stories end in tragedy. no happy ending lasts forever. in the end, there is only one way out, and you must go it alone. but i thought, for some reason, that you wouldn't leave until you had to. i thought when you said you weren't leaving, you meant it; that you'd keep your promise as long as you could. i thought that you would stay.
the saddest part is that i know you, and i know what to expect from you when you're broken. i know that when they ask you about me, you'll tell them i was too opposite of you, that my smile held too many secrets and had tasted too many lips. you'll tell them my heart was like ice but my words were like fire, and they burned your skin. you'll tell them i laughed enough for 1,000 drunken men but that i was always laughing at someone else. you'll tell them i'm cold. hard. you'll tell them i left, and you'll say you were glad.
but you won't tell them how you told me you loved me through tears late at night. you won't tell them that i pulled the stitches from my lips so i could bleed my story into your hands. you won't tell them i wrote you letters, essays on my soul. you won't tell them that you kissed me like i was water and you hadn't drunk in days. you won't tell them i never wanted to leave, you won't say that you were the one who told me it was over. you won't tell them how my heart was ice, but it melted for you.
when they ask me about you, i will tell them that we said we were in love, and i will tell them you lied.
they don't need to know anything else.
-c.h.
ivory
i wonder if they notice
/> how i touch piano keys
like they can breathe
-c.h.
a princess poem
cinderella, cinderella,
she lived her life in shame.
it wasn't until a man saved her
that she finally tasted fame.
"rapunzel, rapunzel,
just let down your hair!"
Prince Charming is upset,
he actually needs her help, how unfair!
belle, belle,
would have been content with her books,
but she had to be kidnapped
to change a man's looks.
aurora, aurora,
what kind of curse is this?
that the only cure is the touch
of an unknown man's lips?
snow white, snow white,
what a housewife you are.
you're much more than cleaning,
this role is so subpar.
princesses, princesses,
what a repetitive story.
all about needing a man
to achieve glory.
women, women,
you're not alone.
no longer do you need a king;
you can be a queen on your own.
-c.h.
i swear one day i'll be able to smile by myself again
it's hard; not seeing him anymore. i try to remember everything i can, but it's never enough. i can feel the smallest of details, the little things, fading away. i'm reaching, grasping at silver strands of memories as they float away. i want them to come back; i never want to forget him, but he is so far away and he cannot kiss me from where he is. he can't kiss anybody from where he is. the last time i saw him, he looked tired but he smiled anyways; he touched his fingers to my mouth and told me to try my hardest to smile, too. i smiled only because he told me to, only because he made me happy enough for it to not feel stitched on with needles. he was stargazing and fingertips brushing in movies and a time bomb. he was ice cream and a fuse that was lit from the very first day. we were always counting down, there was a clock inside of us and we were just counting down the days. even when it reached zero we never believed that time had actually run out. when i got the phone call, i hung up as soon as i heard the doctor tell me, "i'm sorry," and i grabbed the photos of us on my bedroom wall and held them tight to my chest. pictures don't do him justice, but they are all i have except my tired mind. my mind is always running to find him; i am always trying to find him out there, somewhere. is he happy now? i pray that he is, i pray to a god i don't believe in that if he does one thing for me, it is that he is happy, now. on the worst of days i remember how it felt to kiss him and how he told me to smile. he told me it was okay and even though it never was and never will be, i smile because he told me to.
the boys i've loved & the end of the world Page 3