15 Texts I almost sent you

I left my favorite pair of underwear at your house. I know your mother hates me, can I come pick them up?
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It’s been almost a month and I still miss you like a fucking limb.
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I didn’t know my bones could ache until I met you.
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You know, a week before we broke up, do you remember? I had bought a book of poetry. You asked why I didn’t read something more interesting and I could feel my insides splinter.
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You said poetry was all lies dressed up to sound pretty. When I look at you these days, I want to ask if sadness sounds pretty to you too.
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It’s 3 a.m. and this alcohol tastes like you.
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I saw you staring at me today during Lit class. I smiled at you and you didn’t smile back. I almost cried.
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The girl who sits next to me smells like you. 
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I miss you.
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I have never had so many bad nights.
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Sometimes I write about you on the internet. Strangers who have never met either of us think you’re cruel – they tell me if they had the honor of loving me, we’d have sex three times a day and they’d scream my name when they came.
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They think it is beautiful, how I am broken. I don’t think they understand.
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You used to tell me I was beautiful. I tried saying it in the mirror the other day, but it sounded wrong without your mouth wrapped around it.
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Everything I say sounds wrong without your mouth wrapped around it.
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We were never in love, but, oh God, we could have been. 
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That’s what people don’t understand about depression. You don’t have to have a shitty life to want to kill yourself. You don’t have to have an abusive mother or an absentee father to be angry with them. You can have a good job and still want to kill yourself. You can have two loving parents and still want to slit your wrists. You can have a faithful lover and still want to chase a bottle of pain killers with a bottle of vodka. You can have bright eyes and a sweet smile with perfectly straight teeth and still want to thrust your face through the mirror every time you look in it. You can have a full bank account and a full stomach and still feel so empty that a gust of wind could knock you down. Depression has very little to do with what people have in front of them and more to do with what they have (or don’t) inside of them. You can have a good day and still want to kill yourself. You can laugh so hard your sides hurt and still want to fasten a noose in your closet. You can be loved every way you ever wanted to be loved and still feel your bones gnawing at your flesh from the inside out. It doesn’t need to make sense and believe me, we know. The guilt eats us alive. We don’t always have it the worst. We don’t all have repressed memories of our uncles touching us or hidden bruises from our alcoholic step-fathers. Depression isn’t that simple. Your cards aren’t always the worst, but sometimes your best option is still to fold.

There are bones in my body that were already broken
before I even slid out of the womb. The doctors had to rearrange my limbs
inside the walls of my mother’s stomach to form a makeshift splint
out of my own fingertips; that’s how I came out knowing
that love is a lot like healing with the cast on backwards.
The first girl I ever slept with said I loved like a bundle of knives
and every time we kissed
she had to check the inside of her mouth for stab wounds.
The second girl left when the forest inside my body
evolved into a forest fire and tried to burn through the silences
between her sighs whenever we were in bed together.
When I tried to swallow every secret hidden inside the crawl spaces
of her marrow like love notes, she said it was time to go.
To this day bone scans always remind me of unsaid things.
And there will never be anyone else who tests the waters of love
the way I do: no temperature check, just a headfirst dive straight in.
Maybe I’m in the process of learning how to dip my feet in first.
Maybe I’m not, but maybe that’s okay too.
There are snowflakes tucked into the inner lining of my ribcage
that melt whenever someone brushes my hand,
and I just want to figure out how to blizzard without turning into a puddle.
The third girl l ever loved was afraid of how I occupied
my own body unapologetically. She kept wanting me to say sorry
for taking up space, unless it was inside her.
So I tried to take up the universe instead
but it was no match for the way my love threatened to take over the stars.
I just want to find someone who will swallow me whole
so I can stop trying to bury them inside me.

I stopped going to therapy
because I knew my therapist was right
and I wanted to keep being wrong.
I wanted to keep my bad habits
like charms on a bracelet.
I did not want to be brave.
I think I like my brain best
in a bar fight with my heart. 
I think I like myself a little broken.
I’m ok if that makes me less loved.
I like poetry better than therapy anyway.
The poems never judge me
for healing wrong.