i am so scared of you leaving.

on that day there will be no hot air balloons bobbing against the sky; momentary children of the clouds. there will be no rain nor sun- only the thick, gray gloom. the children won’t play during recess games with cooties or swings. pens won’t feel like pens. they’re already starting not to as i skid my hands feverishly across paper. they feel like blobs of my discontent, slowly inking without my consent and i’m scared. that day, my mother will yell more than usual about dings in the floorboards or my failure to turn the lights off before sleep. the bugs will stay underground, or maybe there will be a drought so they’ll just die anyways. white will turn red- black no longer opaque. asteroids will scream in the sky, crashing into all they can and on that day all spaceships will implode. earth may even lose a letter. textbooks will change to all new material, babies will curse and old men will lose all of their back problems.

earth will explode.

everyone will die,

as we slowly slide our hands to our sides. fingers unlacing, fingers unlocking. a key in my hand. and you’d think that two magnets could not leave each other but we are, we will and already did. like you said, all we have is the present, so make the best of it. but what if without you, we lost all time? that day, reality and fiction will collide and life and death will be the same. we will float like one hologram, one small picture in a blankness.

when you leave, i will forget this part of us. i will forget this part of me.

(i am so scared of you leaving)

 i am scared of and repulsed by and want to experience everything and I don’t know what that means.

excerpt number one from four months ago-

you are an illusion. you’ll leave. you’re stuck in a trap of social anxiety; you’re scared.

no. no.

you’ll stay. you’ll kiss him. you’ll tell him you love him and in turn, make love to him and you’ll be happy for once and you’ll like roses for once and you’ll want to go on hikes for once and you’ll stop wanting to die for once. and you’ll find out what love is through palms seeping with sweat and fingernails and bites and the yellows and purples scattered across your skin and the way he smiles at you and the pictures on his ceiling and the way he feels without a shirt and his stubble and the way he laughs. and then,

when you’ve moved away from the bed,

you’ll fall, tomber,

tomber,

tomber,

for the way he walks and his sympathetic eyes and the way he holds his pens and how self-conscious he is about his hair and the way he kisses your cheek when you leave and the way he says “what?” and the small appetite he holds and the white skin and the flushed cheeks and his arms across your back and-

tomber, tomber, tomber.

“in my garden there is a large place for sentiment.  my garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams.  the thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.” -abram l. urban

…but while i was gone you cut your vines, you singed your spine.

i must have forgotten to tell you, ‘i’m a terrible gardener.’

…but i’m alive, and you’re here. and i love you.

i tried. i tried so hard, i fought so hard for hours upon hours and days but i just can’t do it. i said i was ready, you said i was ready, you said you’d still love me without the little purples and pinks for everyday consumption. and yet i can see it fading as i complain about my abnormal leg size and the way you’ve looked at me ever since ‘that’. and your scabbing knuckles and my throbbing tonsils are too weak for this. not right now. i can’t do it right now. we were once floating, once shimmering, glittering. an everlasting thought imprinted upon my skin like what i once said was a scar. but now we’re just echoes and you’re a ghost and i’m a ghost and this ghost that we’ve formed needs to hide. and we were wrong.