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

by Halsey

I’m trying to feel safe inside. My body doesn’t feel like mine. I look at who I am. I think I fear her.

I’m stuck in the middle of an avalanche and I’m not moving.

The new mailman showed up a few days in a row The kids in the neighborhood said The old one had a heart attack in a bowl of spaghetti And died with noodles up his nose I cried

I say, “Where have you been?” You answer, “Where do I begin?”

Emotions come and go, they’re either lovely or abusing.

I’m quiet in a car ’cause I was on another planet. Felt like he didn’t listen and I couldn’t understand it. It was more than different languages.

Money-hungry Prideful country Grass is green And is always sunny Hands all bloody Tastes like honey But we’re finding it hard to leave.

I got a mailbox and a mansion But no letters that you send to me That house has haunted me for centuries Should take a rock and throw it at the windows but they bend for me I want to break some. Ache some. Feel like I’m awake some.

I finally killed my pride. I saw you yesterday and felt a funeral inside. Like someone I love died, and they asked if I wanted to see the body.

I’ll choke on your name. But how could I let this go? I love you more than I love anybody.

I’ll watch you in the shower I’ll rub all your limbs clean. I’ll rinse off all the wounds we caused when we were being mean. I’ll dry you off and hold you and kiss you in between.

Can you see the darkness of this void? Bewildering emptiness of knowing that he had a choice?

And you scream and cry and it shakes through the static of the radio waves.

Loneliness never made for a movie No blockbuster Oscar, no silver screen beauty

He’s got big dreams like you can’t believe Been mean since 23

Missed calls ringing to the tune of dark tones in your attitude

Chartreuse like an aging bruise He speaks soft words but it’s still abuse I forget when you sweet-seduce We’re in love but it’s no excuse

I’ll yell and scream and tell you things like “I hate you.” My mind is the only place where I can take you on.

like a static handcuff holding my hand hostage to your skin.

I will hold your hand till my fingers are cold and bluer than a Picasso till the blood has left them.

I will wipe every tear. (I like everything about you, even the things you give away. Like tears and laughs and yawns and lost eyelashes.)

I will listen to the same sad songs over and over and over again till they vibrate in my skull when the volume ceases. I love the sun for shining on your skin, I love the wind for blowing through your hair, I love the coffee for staining your teeth and warming your palms in the morning. I would protect you till the end of time. I would lie down in the middle of a tornado and cover you.

I used to love being far away from everyone else in the house, because it meant I could keep him to myself longer. Keep him from being distracted. But by the final days, I cursed the distance and would silently pray that the earth would cave beneath us

he would stare at the space between my eyebrows, too cowardly to make eye contact, and say, “I’m going to fucking kill you.” And I would believe him. So I would take his hand off of my neck gently, and wrap my arms around his head like I was cradling a newborn and stroke his hair and whisper that it would be okay and again he would cry

I would stare at the ceiling, too afraid to let a single tear escape lest the subtle movement be enough to wake him from his docile state. When he was sleeping, he looked beautiful. Like an old Hollywood star.

And the ground would collapse and bury us both in the rubble.

I drew what I wanted to be, and what was forbidden to me. I wondered if all artists did the same.

but I’ve been hurt before so I can’t tell you that I keep this image in my mind of you sleeping late at night. I count the lashes on your eyes,

I could never tell you, even though I’d like to.

Your rose-colored cheeks and green eyes and tan nose and chestnut freckles and blue-violet veins beneath the skin; all the good colors of some angel in a Renaissance painting.

If only I could be so small to lie in your eyelashes as a hammock. Swim in the whites of your eyes. Dive off the Cupid’s bow of your lip. Hang with two hands from the corner of your smile like Peter Pan from a clock tower. Dance and splash in the tiny brown puddles of every single freckle. Crawl into the lobe of your ear and hide in the seashell cavern where I can hear the ocean and whisper it back to you.

Your face brings me all the joy of the entire world,

It’s not hard. It just hurts.

I find a million dandelions blowing through my head and they are beautiful

the silence of Hollywood is deafening and I will die if I keep eating every meal purchased from the store. I feel like I’m made of plastic I breathe and it doesn’t reach my lungs I eat and I don’t taste I cry and there’s no burn in my nose anymore I’m standing in the middle of a 4-way intersection and a car is coming at me and I have no idea which way to go. Is this how it was supposed to feel?

And then one day, I had Everything And Everything was over too soon.

I asked him how he did it. How it didn’t rip his heart to shreds. “I really do love them,” he told me. “All of them.”

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.

my words come out like venom. I only use my armor when you frighten me.

There are ordinary boys. And then there are boys who stick an arm down your throat and grasp your heart.

There are boys who you will write poetry for as an offering a gift an insecure gesture, to say “Please like me, for I have gilded you in gold, and therefore you should love me for the sheer fact that I love you.” Then there are boys who demand poetry. Who keep you awake at all hours of the night, purging your brain of their details. Hoping you can capture them on a page and then capture them in the world. You are choking with his hand in your neck and his fist around your heart.

You write to calm the craving. To corner them in fiction And say Finally, I have conquered you.

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.

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.

All great conversations seem to start in a king-size bed.

My heart swings in the balance of this longing. it is suspended here, anxiously awaiting sweet release.

I tumble weightlessly through daydreams of your skin. the surface of which bleeds seamlessly into visions of your bottomless eyes and the curve of your mouth matching perfectly the curve of the small of my back.

I will stay here, patiently, comatose in the wake of your everything-ness. Your all.

It’s only been 3 days but I’m told that Jesus did a lot over the weekend when we thought he was dead.

I spent a long time watering a plant made out of plastic, and I cursed the ground for growing green.