and so, here and then, i realized that i didn't want to wait to feel like myself again.

take me back to that city where nobody knew me, where i could pretend and pretend and be so achingly close to being myself.

remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. live it, feel it, cling to it. i want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.

what is mercy? what is kindness? what is this but blood on our hands?

if only that night filled with chuckles and little screens inside and raging storms outside lasted forever.

take me back to that city where nobody knew me, where i could pretend and pretend and be so achingly close to being myself.

won't you stay with me, my darling? / when this house don't feel like home - the crane wives, "curses"

darling, my darling. you love like a god, and yet you desire like a human.

you never get to stop. no matter how tired you are, how confused. you've just got to keep living... and you've got to have faith that, eventually, you'll be glad you did.

i want to change my bones to match the silhouette of me in your head.

you're a poem left unwritten, a scab left to infect, fungi grown beneath the weeds. you're stuck to my soul, in one way or another.

i am fire / burn those who dare to care for me - mili, "iron lotus"

i’ve thought for a long time that / gods might reside in your fingertips - yorushika, "parade"

i get mean when i'm nervous like a bad dog - mitski, "cop car"

you never left me when you died. you're still here, with that scarf you gave me when i was sick. you're still here, with my shoulders wet with my mother's tears. i'll be here, waiting for you to come pick me up from school again.

i wish you, most sincerely, a love that you will live for.

hold me, tender like a mother. tender like a wound.

there’s some things you hold close / and things that you keep sacred / you cannot be both - madds buckley, "paper and ink"

i am afraid of a lot of things, but mostly, most sincerely, i am afraid of being completely unraveled by you, and you finding nothing you want in here. - l.m. dorsey, "she is made of chalk"

mom, am i still young? can i dream for a few months more? - mitski, class of 2013

i love you. i'm glad i exist. - wendy cope, "the orange"

is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance? or is love itself the disturbance? and what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back? - maggie nelson, "bluets"

my love for you drips heavy, like the blood from a butcher's knife.

do you ever think of me like i think of you? does the rain above ever think of the churning lava beneath the soil?

i get it. this won't stop until I die. but when i die, i want it to hurt. [...] because that means it meant something. it means i am something, at least... pretty amazing to be something, at least... - mae borowski, night in the woods

you think you're hanging, suspended in the air until your body hits the pavement. it turns out you've just been falling and falling your whole life.

the poem begins not where the knife enters but where the blade twists - hanif abduraqqib, "the prestige"

home, warmth, etc. these words sound so trivial and overused but that's you. every bits of good and love baked into a person.

metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound. when i die, i promise to haunt you forever. one day, i’ll write about the flowers like we own them. - noor hindi, "fuck your lecture on craft, my people are dying"

i chew on your words, my last supper before your sweet betrayal.

she said being human is lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. we don’t have to be. - ban gilmartin, weak heart

i find you in everything i do. i wish i can tell you that.

[..] there was no kiss, no sparkles, no life-changing parties that ended up with fire and limbs entangled in sheets. then i went back home and told you all about it. you laughed and I was captivated and i realized i didn't need any of it.

the fact that, even in a situation like this, i was relieved to be alive... struck me as absolutely disgusting. - noé archiviste, the case study of vanitas

you, who are so kind to others, could never understand this loneliness of mine / i don't want to die, but i can't go on living; that's why i write songs. - yorushika, "thoughtcrime"

tell me more, about what words mean / tell me more, when summer will come - yorushika, "ghost in a flower"

i believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do. - angus, night in the woods

looking into an endless pit makes me think of the mirrors i have surrounded myself in. i don't want to look at the me reflected in your eyes.

please know my actions are not motivated only by envy - the buttress, "brutus"

if i'm the only god, then you're the proof of my existence. - mili, "world.execute (me) ;"

there’s some things you hold close / and things that you keep sacred / you cannot be both - madds buckley, "paper and ink"

i need a father. i need a mother. i need some older wiser being to cry to. i talk to god but the sky is empty. - sylvia plath

i’ve thought for a long time that / gods might reside in your fingertips - yorushika, "parade"

you who filled every morning with rush and chaos. you who broke my vase and stole the lonely flower on my balcony. come back, and scream as you want and break all the vases. steal all the flowers. come back. just come back. - khaled juma, "oh, rascal children of gaza"

you feel like you should be dead but you aren't. you feel like you care for this person a lot, like you want to hug them and comfort them, but you don't know them at all. you're not the person they knew and you know that. you still try. you still try.

"in my dreams, i have already killed you thousands of times." "that's alright," you say. “i torment you in wake a thousand more, anyway.”

if i am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man. - althea davis

i get mean when i'm nervous like a bad dog - mitski, "cop car"

it’s a myth / that love lives in the heart / it lives in the throat we push it out / when we speak when we gasp / we take a little for ourselves - kaveh akbar, "heritage"

i attempt to seal your essence in amber and keep it in my heart through living. it weighs heavy enough to ground me.