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

by Halsey

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

I was born 5 weeks early. I couldn’t wait to join the rest of the world, and that is exactly the moment my enthusiasm ceased.

The average baby is 20 inches long. I was 14. And it was on my first day on Earth that I realized I didn’t measure up, and I never would.

I hope every girl unites and they decide you’re a joke But if they are anything like you then I know that they won’t

My new house is clean and the sky’s always blue. I sing in the shower and I walk around naked. I love my whole body though you once made me hate it. I eat lots of pancakes and drown them in honey. I’ve made lots of handshakes and made lots of money. I smile and sigh when I crawl into bed ’Cause there’s no more scar tissue inside my head. I heard what you’re up to I’m glad that I left. I feel like myself again deep in my chest. Signed: Sincerely, Ashley I wish you the best.

So we leave for one night and it turns into five mornings. Waking up and staying in bed for a couple extra hours so I can see what color your eyes are in that special light we only see at 6 a.m. That silver peeking through the cracks around your blackout shades and bouncing off your brown eyes that send me into a fully caffeinated rush. Like they’re soaked in coffee grinds and I can see the steam rising off of their surface when your gaze sets me on fire.

filter over the lens of my life so that I see it in your colors. And my hands shake and I swallow hard when I realize how much nicer life looks in your saturation.

Looks like you always seem to get what you want. Even when it goes against the natural odds. ’Cause it’s 7 in the morning and my bathroom’s flooding hard… I never knew what made you do what you do. Tuck me into bed and then you sneak off to be somewhere with another who’s more like your mother and doesn’t expect as much of you.

Can you hear the silence of being alone? The deafening stillness of everything you’ve ever known? Put on pause like a VHS tape A full-on heartbreak And you whine and cry and it echoes through the static of a television set.

ANTAGONIST Does a ghost know that he’s a ghost? Does a saint know that she’s forgiven? If no one knows, then I don’t know if I might be the villain. I don’t trust the author anymore.

Stuck in limbo, I’m bent backwards. Crooked spine, and broken plaster. Tell me, do you know the password? We’re denied by heaven’s master.

I thought I knew what a muse was until I met him. I’d been inspired before. I’d been intrigued. But I had no idea what a muse was until he put his pink lips to my neck and spit parasites into my ears.