laura-nebbaki

i'm sorry, but the number you've been calling for a straight week cannot be reached, & you're reaching. the only noise coming from your phone is the dial tone & your number's unknown, anyway. you know you could hit the emergency call, & through it all, i still wouldn't answer. you can try "star six seven," but you won't reach heaven because god's too busy with me. so maybe stop calling, & we'll both stop falling into this mess that we can't leave.

stir apathy into your pot & watch it simmer. soon, what you do eat will be tasteless & what you say will mean less, but at least you'll be thinner. the spark in your eyes is dull; the contract on your feelings is null & void. instead of being scatter-brained, you have nothing to say in any worthwhile conversations, but that's okay, because you don't feel like talking anyway. you don't feel like anything. at most, you feel a little cliché, writing as if you're empty, when if you really were, you wouldn't have words to put on a page. but you're close enough, & you can feel the unfeeling; it's like your skin is peeling, but you can't be bot

i lie awake & i listen to the rain & i think that if i could choose one person to be here right now i'd still pick you. i tell myself, you're allowed to miss people. and i ask, even people who hurt me so badly i couldn't breathe right for six months? i don't have an answer; i just have the flicker in my heartbeat that murmurs i miss you. i miss you. i miss you. time blends together & it gets harder to understand if i miss you or if i miss me or if i miss the way you & me loved the other like a soulmate from the stars. i've heard more rain tonight than i've ever heard truth from your lips, but i guess in the end all that means is that i truly

tell her to keep writing poetry, because she never saw the way she dances with language, pulling the metaphors close & whispering all the words she won't say aloud, but i did. remember her favourite colours: cherry blossoms in the spring, light, cloudy days in the winter, & forest streams gleaming in the summer sun. never take her blinding light for granted: she chose you, a tail without a comet, from a universe of stars. don't forget her love for sunshine, or sunglasses, or cherries, or you. she is a hurricane, & she made you the eye of it. treat her better than i ever did.

if i could, i’d take your tears & make liquid eyeliner out of them; wear it every day to show i don’t give a fuck about you or the fact that you don’t care about me. i took chance after chance on you. it was like walking in a magic-eight-ball pit, but all i ever got was “ask again later.” there was a point at which i got tired of waiting. there should’ve been some kind of warning when i met you. you should wear caution tape like a scarf: something to tip people off and tell them they’re playing with fire. you walk around like you’re made of glass. with a flick of your wrist, you light a match.

i wonder how you can even look at her without thinking of me. the truth is, darling, you burn worse than the watered-down whiskey i only tried because i was trying to forget her & you for just one night. i couldn't even do that right. i'm having a hard time sifting through the memories & separating the past from the present. at this point, it's not even cutting you off; i am cutting you & everything you stood for out of me. i stumble across pictures of you & it's like tripping over a stranger. i've never admitted it, but i can still see every detail of your face when i close my eyes: the way you bit your lip when you were nervous or the w