before we knew how to break

trigger warnings for mental health struggles, gore, s/h, cursing
did i mention this is my first napo
the april/napo pad pls join

i. hurricane season had just begun
ii. supposed to do great things
iii. you said i'm the love of your life
iv. rip currents are alluring this time of year
v. somehow you always find me
vi. addressed to fair lady sunshine
vii. tidal requiem
viii. flickering
x. a letter for laura
xi. there is salt in every wound
xii. your eyes search mine for any sign of spring
xiii. you have undone me
xiv. ceramic heart
xv. drag me through the sea

march sticks like honey to my chubby hands
cradling your cheek. three months. three months till you leave.
i'll tear these memories like paper in my mind in years following,
trying to make you disappear before i have the chance to cry.

i wake up with a start in august. you disappear before i can
make it home in every dream. i always run through the woods
and ring your doorbell, sticky hands staining the doorknob with red.
they forbode, sticking like pines in my torn-up throat.
have you died or only left to the west coast?

these sinking feelings keep clinging to my chest after you leave
and i tell my mom i'm scared something's happened. "silly girl,
don't you worry about things you'll never know the answer to."
that was my closure, i think. the lack of any answer would have to be the end.
i can't spend years looking you up on the internet, trying to figure out
if you're happier now. of course you're happier now. there can be no doubt.

you run along both shores and my mind can never quite catch up. that was
what you wanted. to abandon this forested pain before it could stab
you with its thorns. i am scared i tie you to this place with my palms like stones,
forever reddening your wrists, indents of my fingers like rope-marks on your skin.

tell me, do i haunt you like you do me? always creeping through the woods
in your strangely nostalgic dreams. we make fairy houses in the field before they
pave it over with death. we love the sky and the rain before love was a curse.

she'll leave fingerprints on my ribcage
in the back of my old chevy
and lose me in every walmart produce aisle
just to find me by the berries again, the ones that remind her
of that sun-sweet morning where kissing me was strawberry shortcake.

and i'll pretend i've had a heart past the age of ten
fuck things up just to tell her she's my favorite mistake. tear myself to shreds
so i can have another story to tell.
i've always been rainwater in the treeline and a hereditary deviation--
these berry farms are always lined with red--
so i reveal my citrus-sour truths to ward her away
but this butterfly keeps on flying home.

i'm tired of pretending life has given me anything less than diamonds,
how could i say so when she curls up in my arms.

[removed for submission]

last week, my mother's aunt's grandson died miles from his home.
she tells me he had a heart soft as cotton and eyes like a typhoon--
he survived the cyclone in 2018 just fine, picked up squirrels on the way home
to make sure they didn't suffocate below seawater.

apparently, he was the smartest four-year-old in the family with
dreams of lighting up the world, creating the pinpricks in the sky on earth.
she could see it in his eyes--every hope and every love.

last week, he drowned in a river.

third-year college student studying mechanical engineering who
was an only child very much loved by his parents and many friends
who let him dip below water, he learned every country on the map
but never learned to swim, every last bit of his soul has left his empty body.
his lungs filled with water where there should be breath, heart
blank and unbeating.

his mother's cheeks are stained with tears. she is on the phone
with my father, asking--how do you grieve someone who was supposed to plan your funeral?

from beyond the grave, he reminds me life is fleeting--
those plans you made yesterday might not ever be completed
and who knows if you'll die before you get your diploma,

in the car with my father, asking--what is the point in all my dreams if i might die before i see them bloom?

inspired by the taylor swift song "loml"

is it bad that i can still see everything we used to be?
because your face is a thermal imprint on my dreams,
these unassuming smiles of mine are all painted-on.
i'm still sketching your portrait in technicolor, every bit of my
greyscale life gaining light for a moment in time.
i'll never know if you thought we'd be forever,
or if you thought you'd hold my heart
even when i could do it on my own.

was i supposed to cry when you walked away?
because i'm still standing in the doorway, mouth half-open
and skin longing for yours.

i still feel the cold tile on my back,
calling you when my world was falling apart--
whispering your name like i had nothing left to lose.
your voice like piano keys wrapping me up
and fingers plucking at my heartstrings like a violin.
i drew quarter-notes on the curve of your jaw,
tiny beats of time where you admitted i was yours.

you said i'm the love of your life
all those lovers' lullabies mean nothing now
how did your belief dissolve as quickly as you fell?

the scent of seaside-fog is permanently burned into my throat
the way tears tend to be. rip currents are alluring this time of year,
when the tourists have taken their pieces of our city home and left
us with the rest. september is an odd place to be when the world goes silent.

i want to get lost in the seawater the way so many do, washing up on a shore
unknown and with salt in the crooks of my body.
when i was a child i wanted to be one with the water, to feel the sea's gentle embrace
and be carried off to the world. i don't want to be trapped in this place until i drown,
i don't want to suffocate under all those expectations.

so i'll just let the ocean have her way with me and put my life into past tense
before someone else can do it for me.

we make promises you know i can't keep
and carve our own constellations into the sky. i'd follow you
through the elizabeth any day you wanted, my love.
this freezing cold has always been ours, ever since
i kissed you on icy lips and traced my name on your collarbone.

i know i play hide-and-seek with my heart
and tell you to find me in every scarlet oak, hands cut with bark
and mended in sap. you always do, stringing sweet nothings together
like fairy lights in the backyard. like poetry engraved on my ribs.
the light-bulb glass breaks on the stairs of the deck, but only in my dreams.