I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry

I hope you’ll stay. I hope you’ll stay. But I would leave me too, if I could.

I'm half of everything I hate, and half of everything I create.

My mouth tastes like all the things I should have said.

And it was on my first day on Earth that I realized I didn’t measure up, and I never would.

I see all things in this world as more beautiful than I, and I spin the details of their atoms in every paragraph and brushstroke.

Be a voice for all those who have prisoner tongues.

How strange to write about "having" when for so long I've drawn inspiration only from longing?

I can't remember what it's like to face a mirror And not hate the person staring back at me

Stuck in the middle of "I love you" and "I can't take this anymore.

I don't say it often, but I'm proud of the woman that I turned out to be

I keep a pistol when I sleep -inside my mouth so I don't fight my tongue -for saying all these things, like how I saw you in my dreams.

They cry, “But I WANT to be a writer!” And my head hangs. You are asking to be shot square in the head. You know not what you seek. You ask for bleeding brains and carnage that stains your pillowcase. You ask for jelly in the place of the cartilage in your spine. You ask for kindness that is never returned. You wish to burn alive in the flame of a love unrequited. It’s simple. Write.

But mostly poetic I'm whatever I've seen on a movie screen

I won't let anyone down, If I crawl tonight But I still let everyone down, When I change in size And I went tumbling down, Trying to reach your height But I scream too loud, If I speak my mind.

I want to walk away from my bones and set them down on a counter like my keys after work. Let my skin sink into the armchair and lose its shape. Lose its form. Collapse into a sigh.

I love the coffee for staining your teeth, and warming your palms in the morning. I would protect you till the end of time. I would lie down, in the middle of tornado, and cover you.

I spent a long time watering a plant made out of plastic, and I cursed the ground for growing green.

I am not allowed to want to die anymore. Believe me, I have tried.

To drop seeds into my belly. To spit a virus in my throat that grew into a giant “you” plant. The branches crawling up the walls of my insides and begging to claw my mouth open and make me say things I don’t mean. The dying leaves flaking off and swaying to the pit of my stomach in an imaginary breeze landing with a deafening thump. Echoes that bounce up between my teeth. And remind my tongue there is no more watermelon. Just empty space.

A beautiful woman is a car crash. Shiny asphalt and smoking rubber. Melted plastic and metal edges. Glimmering glass shrapnel iridescence scattered across the road. Haphazard beauty. Dignified and slightly terrifying.

I wonder what I'll ever have control of. Rejection breeds obsession, so they say. I left my heart and all my hope, my vindicated tales of woe in Sweden on a freezing winter day.

can’t carry all this weight, so I must put it somewhere and somewhere is with you. You will take good care of it?

A beautiful woman is a car crash

You've been singing on your own all along Writing records in your room since 15 Drama queen Well you're older now it seems

The year is 2018 and I've realized that nobody is safe as long as she is alive and every friend that I know has a story like mine.

When all your lovers start to die. You wake alone and wonder why they left you here to document the wreckage. They tell me that it's art I make, in all this chaos I create.

But artists love what is forbidden to them, a fact I learned too young; too early.

cause I won't love a man Unless he is angry Because of my father

SUMMER FRUIT I spent springs and summers as a child eating the fruit from a watermelon. Grainy sugar bites and juice slick up my cheeks like a Chelsea smile. My mother used to warn me if I swallowed a seed it would get stuck in my belly and grow a watermelon plant. My stomach would expand till I’d combust. I always spit them out in horror. I spent a spring and summer eating the fruit from the flesh of your lips. The bounty of two round mounds, hard like pink sugar. Your grip on my cheeks with a firm hand holding my mouth open.

I love you more than I love anybody