too much - never enough

in march i’m seventeen and starving for something i can’t name. all bones and bad decisions, my lungs full of cold air and my hands full of nothing. 

i don’t know when it started—maybe the first time i saw myself through someone else’s eyes and didn’t like what was there. or maybe it was before that, when i learned that love comes with expiration dates and fine print. 

you press your lips to my forehead and i wonder if i taste like a last attempt, like a wish that didn’t come true. you love me, sure, but love is just a house with open windows and i can feel the wind picking up. i can feel the floor tilting.

i think you might leave and i think i might deserve it.

and i don’t want you to, but i can feel it, something inevitable, something circling overhead just waiting for the right time to land. i don’t know how to tell you that love is not insulation, that you will freeze here if you stay too long. i wish i were better. i wish i were softer. i wish i could peel the worst parts of me off like dead skin and let you hold what’s left, but what if there’s nothing underneath? what if all i am is the damage? you are good, too good, something pure and untouchable. and i am covered in mistakes that won’t wash off, i am a body built from crumpled up apologies i never got to say.

i’ll burn out, burn up, burn everything around me. i will ruin. i will rot in the sun. i will be too much for myself before i am ever enough for you my dear.