By Yves Kirigayae 

I wrote these poems along the course of the summer about falling in and out of love. The rosy delirium of the first date all through the dejection of heartbreak. I’m inspired by other female writers and poets: Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Lana del Rey, who are not afraid to unabashedly surrender to our innate fragility and vulnerability.

 

 

i.

wifebeater

everyone always tells me that my problem is i love too much

that it becomes something else: obsession

and everyone always tells me that my love is suffocating, a fatal affliction

i only like my body when it's held by you and next to you

i only like my eyes when it's looking at you, even if it's when i'm crying to pictures of you

i'm scared of my mind and how a dark place it can be, but it's never so dark when i'm thinking of you and when all my mind can think about are your i love you's (yet you've never told me you loved me)

i'm scared of my heart and how it's so fragile but i was never scared when it was you who held it, and when the only person my heart beat for was you

i only like my lips when they're being kissed by you, and i only like my cheeks when they're being pinched cherry pink by you or when your hands graze on them like a fawn in a bed of roses telling me everything will be alright

because, and you'll tell me that, i'm with you

you, you, you

is all i can think of

cruel, unloving you

for the past week, i've woken up crying because all i'd dream about is you

i've stopped talking to everyone because all my friends are yours and they remind me of you

i never thought i'd say this or let alone think this, but i think my biggest regret was ever meeting you

and now your smile, and your kiss prints: all but a faded imprint

i cry to God but all i see is a pale, sullen blue

no answers as to how i can forget about you

but maybe this is my fate

maybe my world will never be my world without you

and maybe, just maybe, we'll meet again and fall in love again like we did those love-laced months of may and june

and when people come up to me and ask me what i'm thinking of, i can say "you" without crying

and when my angels ask me for my lifelong wish, i can say "to spend my life loving and being loved by you"

Ii.

sweet alyssum

i don't think i love you anymore 

and i'm glad i feel this way 

around a week ago, i still had flowers to give you, i still had things i wanted to say

my rose gardens set on fire, scorched to the ground by your forbidding demeanor

heaven bled, enter sachiel's calls, and to heaven you said never

i don't think about you anymore

and i'm glad i don't cry at the thought of you not beside me every morning

when we first met, i opened my eyes and you painted them in pink and white

if loving you too much was a crime, i'd pray for God not to indict

the last day we saw each other, i shut my eyes, you're gone and all i see is the darkest shade of white

i don't even know you anymore

i'm slowly forgetting who you were and what we were

you tried burning my roses

but they don't bloom for you anymore

i cried when i gave your shirt away but i kept the book you gave me on my nineteenth birthday

but love lost is time lost

i'm already forgetting your favorite color, words you said lost in the midnight air. i forgot where we first met and i forgot what you named my teddy bear. i forgot how your hands felt, forgot the color of your eyes although i still remember your sister's name

my heart will never love the same

a sad girl's love song, run to heaven's door like i'm insane

and my last wish is to never see you anymore

day by day, i'm forgetting the letters of your name

it makes me cry to be happy that i'm forgetting you

some day you'll find yourself in california again and ask yourself what happened to the girl you once loved

i'll never love the same

i'll never love again like i once did

a month ago i'd spill blood on wine and lull myself into a state of delude thinking in two years you'd walk down 17th and heller, and that day you'd say forever

i hope that day never comes because the last thing i want to do is be the one to tell you never

i hope you find happiness without me, a happiness so great that you forget about me like i forgot about you

hope someone will love you the same

two strangers to each other but we still turn our heads when we hear the other's name

iii.

sad girl’s love song

i stared into your eyes

hours pass and i'm still ensnared by your hazel stares

a twenty minute descent into a heart-shaped rabbit hole 

lip stains like the mark of a witches' hair

i close my eyes and all the world drops dead

i close my eyes and whenever i feel alone, i still feel the ghosts of your lips on mine 

whispering sweet nothings at your heart's behest

i open my eyes and i might have just made you up inside my head

two hands entwined, hearts racing and your fast car at a fast incline

drive fast to silence the ghosts of times past

the night you left me alone in my room was the night i felt the fires of hell

and everyone tells me it'll kill me to dwell

that you'll never come back and i'd never hear white dove's love songs and church bells

take my hand and i’ll show you heaven

i took your hand and you took me to a land of a thousand fires

a thousand roses bloomed for you, roses i planted and kissed and sowed

and a thousand fires you set ablaze, dried up rosebuds you fed to ravenous crows

 

 

I write not only for myself as an artistic catharsis, but I write for the other teenage girls grappling through the thorns of girlhood, of love and loss and of navigating the world as a girl, on the ground and online.