I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry

by Halsey

For 25 years I have flipped spastically from FM to AM inside my head. I am, still, unaffected by the abrupt static punching through my ears. I don’t mind riding along to fragments and pieces of the different stations.

You know the sound, right? An indecisive radio? I have found a home here amongst the chaos. The constant.

I want to walk away from my bones and set them down on a counter like my keys after work. Let my skin sink into the armchair and lose its shape. Lose its form. Collapse into a sigh.

I hope you’ll stay. But I would leave me too, if I could.

To find the world not worthy of your words, and to find yourself unworthy of the world.

Girls who weren’t sad and tired. Girls better than me. Who had learned to turn their trauma into adventures for him to stumble blindly through. Instead of wallowing in their brokenness and breaking everything in their path as penance.

I hide behind a strangled mind.

My insecurity hurting me all these boys gonna flirt with me

FUN GIRL I am the fun girl. I am the spit hanging down from your tongue girl. I’m the choke me as hard as you can girl. I’m the give it all up for a man girl. I’m the plaid skirt and white knee-high socks girl. I’m a pistol that’s loaded and cocked girl. The don’t mind when you call me a slut girl. I’m the smack her real hard on the butt girl. I’m a swallow my feelings and lie girl. I’m a lie there and let him inside girl. ’Cause I don’t wanna make him get mad girl. I’m the better off being bad girl. ’Cause then nothing hurts when they leave, girl. Except with his grip on your sleeve, girl. You say yes to the threesomes and drinks girl. ’Cause you still really care what he thinks girl. You’re not boring or mean like his old girl she was crazy, or that’s what you’re told, girl. So you’ll get further if you are the fun girl. But you’ll never be the only one girl. You’ll get older and wish you had known girl. ’Cause you gave way too much of your soul, girl. Now you don’t expect men to be kind girl. You just use them and leave them behind girl. It’s so hard to grow up as the fun girl. You’ll be trapped in your days as a young girl. A memory, for men you loved girl. “Oh! That fun girl!”

I will make permanent residence right here in your acquaintance.

They tell me that it’s art I make, in all this chaos I create. They tell me that it’s much too late. To rectify all my mistakes.

I wonder what I’ll ever have control of. Rejection breeds obsession, so they say.

What will be left when I have broken all of my favorite things? When the glue of sweet apologies and bat eyelashes no longer repairs them? What will be left when I have shattered it all? Carelessly, it will evade my grasp. And I will have nothing.

My mind is messy but it’s beautiful