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

by Halsey

I can’t carry all this weight, so I must put it somewhere and somewhere is with you. You will take good care of it?

I want to walk away from my bones and set them down on a counter like my keys after work.

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

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.

Been biting my tongue till it bleeds cry over things I don’t need. My mother told me pick your battles wisely but you made me angry at the world so I chose them all.

I have too much sex. I say it’s ’cause I’m anxious and I’m overly stressed. I can’t take blame. I funnel through liquor and spit up my pain. I’m no good with fame. There’s a love/hate relationship with noise in my brain. Except for when you speak my name. Because you take it in vain.

THE PARTY Your tongue is in my mouth in the kitchen at the party. Why the fuck am I at the party? My dress is too tight for you to get your hands under, but I left my panties at home tonight and I’m dripping down my thighs. My lipstick is smeared and there are people probably staring but fuck them anyway. It’s been a year and a half of throwing glances in hallways, and my hair standing on every end when you appear and breathe down my neck (so tell me, how the fuck I’m supposed to keep my cool) 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. So we turn up the heat again. And your sweat is dripping off your chest and your open fist is around my neck and I’m grinding into your lap, rocking my hips against your weight to match the ins and outs of your breathing. (Can you tell that this is the pattern I’m following? Your breathing quickens…) Your teeth are in my skin and you’re pulling fibers of tissue from my lips and I wonder, If I bleed, will you like the taste? Now we’re driving down the highway and my head is in your lap. Tasting the salt of your skin and feeling you g...

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY I am not allowed to want to die anymore. Believe me, I have tried.

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.

But you spent a long time, tending to a home that’s burning in flames and your patience made me love you.

Grip my face and scold me for taking more than you wanted to give, and I can feel my smile rising push my cheeks through your fingers like a handful of clay, malleable in your grasp. I’ll miss your lap and the heat between my legs and showering off my sticky thighs in the quiet when I get home. Oh will I miss the stern, saccharine voice melting from your lips hovering over my open hungry mouth.

Feed his hungry mind from my open mouth.

THE PATTERN 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.

I would leave me if you’d let me I would leave me if you’d let me I would leave me if I could.

DEVIL IN ME I won’t take anyone down If I crawl tonight But I still let everyone down When I change in size And I went tumbling down Trying to reach your height But I scream too loud If I speak my mind.

Of all the wrongs you committed, the worst was keeping me from the beauty in anything that wasn’t you.