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

by Halsey

And now 50,000 war cadets would cower at this small brunette. To my surprise, not 6 feet high, who’d reach and grab the moon, if I should ask, or just imply that I wanted a bit more light,

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

’cause I have found somebody who would build life, then demolish it.

to watch it from a different height (and we’d comment how the sun shines)

I searched the world to find you hiding inside me the whole damn time.

You will shut your eyes to the world and retreat within yourself. You will wait there. Patiently. Languid in the wake of your potential. And then one day You’ll explode. You’ll shake your head and laugh and scream

You will have them in your grasp. And your fingers will fold around them like shelter; a dark ceiling closing in, and you’ll keep them there, in your kingdom. One day you will explode. And your pieces will scatter to far corners of the world never to be found again. You will trade these pieces for that thing. That thing you wanted. You traded Everything to have it.

Tell me, do you know the password? We’re denied by heaven’s master.

The stars soaked in the sidewalk spell the message.

You wake alone and wonder why they left you here to document the wreckage.

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.

How strange to write about “having” when for so long I’ve drawn inspiration only from longing?

Your eyes are static electricity. You’ve missed me.

Remind me this is the beginning, it’s not the finale. And that’s why we are here, and that’s why we rally.

But we are not free until all of us are free. So love your neighbor.

LISTEN. And then yell at the top of your lungs. Be a voice for all those who have prisoner tongues, for the people who had to grow up way too young, there is work to be done, there are songs to be sung, Lord knows there’s a war to be won.

Or is it fear? The remnants of something we need to survive, but could die in the thrashing embrace of.

I reach out to touch her, But she rolls over and her mind escapes to an empty corner of the ceiling.

Why can I love him, only when he leaves?

I knew I was ready to forgive you When I wrenched the knife from my back I held it up high

held the weapon retrieved from my own back. I gripped it once, twice, and then I put it down.

Grip my face and scold me for taking more than you wanted to give, and I can feel my smile rising

the back of your head is a mossy sheltered cave when there is trouble in the wind and that my cheek just fits the depression in your shoulder and that is all I need to know.

My mouth tastes like all the things I should have said. I don’t want to be this way, but I have been since you left. I should have never counted your eyelashes when you slept.

What will be left when I have shattered it all? Carelessly, it will evade my grasp. And I will have nothing.

sometimes miss the quiet; the chaos of the streets. I keep it all inside my mind and every night I scream.

But does she scream at the top of her lungs praying you don’t leave her? Does she scream from an open mouth begging you to feed her?

Does she answer all your calls? Because I know you needed someone who was fine with feeling small.

But I scream too loud If I speak my mind.

’Cause when I write it all down I have to face it But when I hold it inside I can pretend it’s okay

This is to remind you that you are a lover. That you melt at a glance at a touch. That you are a baby. You are soft and fragile and you need someone to tell you that everything is going to be okay.

But this is to remind you that you are a statue, gilded in marble, and there is white lightning in your eyes. Change shape. Give in.

There’s no battle in our history book compared to how he feels.

screams that echoed through the town. Like a Siren on a shoreline, begging God to let her drown.

And I wondered how could I have not noticed the ways in which you dulled my senses and stole the color from the world right before my eyes. Of all the wrongs you committed, the worst was keeping me from the beauty in anything that wasn’t you.

My mind is messy but it’s beautiful like I’m in utero I don’t say it often, but I’m proud of the woman that I turned out to be