Things I Learned in the Night

by Emily Byrnes

because she still saw value in something so broken.

We held hands with our fingers laced like corsets that fit so perfectly so snugly I could hardly breathe. First Date

Dying not to be alone, they won’t even regret the innocent hearts they feast on in the night.

I miss you, I miss you. I miss the way the sky looked before I grew tall and the sound of my voice before it grew tired. Take me back, just take me back.

and I am still a little girl fighting off sleep,

yet we look in the mirror and try to convince ourselves we’re not pretty anymore because the magazines tell us our soft and our stretch marks aren’t beautiful.

and I finally understand that karma isn’t magic, it’s the action of reaping what you sow.

and believe you when you say I love you, I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything.

How to hide the tears in my eyes when I learn that’s just something boys say in the moment and how to pretend to be okay with that when I’ve given you all I have to give.

And finally, how to tell when boys like you use sweet little lies like skeleton keys to get inside of girls like me when all we want is to be loved and feel special and not so very alone.

because you cannot feel a rainstorm when you’re already wet.

(There’s a reason you’re here. There is meaning in your journey. There is recovery. There are better brain days. There are fewer tears. There are smiles that aren’t so forced. There is happiness. Believe that.)

No, I couldn’t see anything but you.

Please don’t blame me for running; the universe has lit so many fires under my feet I’ve been conditioned to flee at the sign of a spark.

It could be worse doesn’t make it feel any better now, does it? Unhelpful Help

it doesn’t matter whether it was real to them if it was real to you

I look at him and he looks right through me, as if he is trying to unsee me. As if I never even mattered just because I do not matter now. As if girls just give away love like a pile of worn clothes to charity, expecting nothing in return.

staying together after high school started to feel a lot like being caught in the sticky web of a spider who wasn’t even hungry for my flesh anymore.

You stuck a feeding tube down my throat and into my gut the day you said I think we’re better off as friends.

I want you to know how it feels to have my name seared on your tongue but not be able to do anything about it.

He may have gotten the dog

I love too hard and watch it die and never, ever understand why.

Clocks and calendars are for fools who think they have any control, so I just let time slip by and pretend everything was “just yesterday” so I don’t feel like I’m speeding toward the finish line,

You held out your hand and said I’d never see the beauty in life wearing glasses made of fear, but I didn’t take it. I’ve been hurt enough to know that when the storm alarm sounds, I’ve got to put up my walls or get out.

Maybe it will be ten breaths or ten months or ten years but eventually, if I just keep counting, the pain from you will fade away and you will be a tiny scar or a little mark or if I'm lucky, nothing at all. Count to Ten

Why are you sad? I asked him with heart remembering how hard it is to feel torn apart.

And years later, Alice returned to Wonderland to find that nothing was quite the same. Because growing up and moving on can do that to a person. Alice