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Poem
when I met you, I was dying. for the very first time in my life, but certainly not the last- you made sure of that
when I met you I was dying. I hadn’t eaten in three months and my body was a vandalized ruin of jagged broken structures and you told me you thought I was beautiful.
when I met you I was dying, a starving dog looking for a warm house and a lap to rest its head on rather than food. 
you fed me scraps of your life beneath the dinner table and I begged for more.
one night I called you, and we spoke for hours. reading to each other and laughing so hard my mother scolded me for waking her and I did not care.
my journal was a collection of  mumbled words too sharp to speak so loudly but still, 
I told you I was in love with you first. though you never remember it that way.
I remember everything. 
my memory is the nagging younger sibling with nothing else to do, barging into my room whenever it feels like it.
when guests are over it peeks in through the crack in the doorframe, quietly lurking in the hallway to get a moment to poke at me when I’m alone
I remember pink stationery and your handwriting, the scent of strawberry incense and how you tore out an entire section of poetry from your favorite book and highlighted the expanse of the cover and back page, save the mis-match stapled spine- and while it kills me inside that these pages will never see Kentucky again like we planned, my stomach flutters with hope like a broken flashlight, flickering so I could not see what was right in front of me. 
you spoke to me in poetry, my favorite language and I drowned in my love for you- swimming farther out instead of heading back to shore while I choked on embarrassment when you told me you hoped this wouldn’t affect our friendship
friends do not love like this; I was a starving dog who would only eat if you fed me. when I run away, you do not look for me. and I always come back by sundown to an empty dish.
 if friendship is a shelter in the storm then love is storm chasing. 
even if my clothes are soaked, if you can’t hear my voice over the thunder, if I’m struck by lightning and the electricity leaves me as nothing but ashes buried beneath the tree that I climbed into for the first time I listened to your favorite music with the same ladder I used to slither out of the second story window. I would find you in the next life and love you twice as fiercely. 
now, I am going to college in three weeks
now, happiness is a firefly, and I am the toddler grasping at it with a mason jar.
now, I stumble over my words like gravel on a blacktop
now, you are still in love with her and only answer me every other week. 
now, your silence is my favorite tomb.
now, I don’t play guitar anymore but the moon still reminds me of you- this is not about you. 
there is nothing I can say that will make you look me in the eyes again but there is still a part of me that chokes on the words “I love you,” when you hang up the phone. 
a june wedding, I said.
bologna sandwiches, you said. 
I told you to I was sending back the wire ring- I lied. It is lost to the contents of my bedroom, eaten up by a hole in the feather pillow I used to hold at night to feel wanted. 
your love, like nicotine, the sweetest poison I ever tasted
your love left me needing you like a missing organ- when I welcomed you back home into my body you rejected me
your love left me sobbing alone in the school staircase wondering how many pills you’d taken
your love is my favorite record. I love you, but somehow, I always end up crying…
this is not about you…is what I would say if I were whole again but your love left me missing an empty stomach because the feeling of being empty reminded me of you
I want to love again. I want to forget you ever existed and know what it’s like to hold an unfamiliar body and want to crawl inside of it to learn all you can- my heart is just another dog you deemed too old to keep around for very long who visits you from out of the blue every couple of weeks. 
but the lonely dog never learns- her eyes still light up like the city of Manhattan when she sees the girl who used to love her. 
I promise myself I will not run to you- that is, until you beckon me.
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