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 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.

Thank you for warming the industrial gray of my concrete foundation and turning my bones from cement blocks to rich mahogany wood. Layers.

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.

My cousin and I had many things in common. The same furrowed brow, the same short temper, charming gummy smile, and aversion to touch. And in all of these things I could finally see the difference between what is the blood and what is learned. I knew my cousin had walked the same stairs, he had smelled the oil and touched the brushes, and now we both sat on an antique carpet, cursing the same thing the painter stole from us. I looked up at the wall, at the little naked child made of tiny tiny dots still held captive behind a glass frame on my aunt’s wall, and I wondered what the painter had stolen from that little boy too.

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 spent a long time watering a plant made out of plastic, and I cursed the ground for growing green. I spent a long time substituting honest with sarcastic and I cursed my tongue for being mean.

The year is 2018 and I’ve realized that nobody is safe as long as she is alive and every friend that I know has a story like mine. (And the world tells us that we should take it as a compliment.)

But we are not free until all of us are free. So love your neighbor. Please treat her kindly. Ask her her story, then shut up and listen.

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.

I’m opening a faucet and I’m scared to let it run It’s been easier the past few months when I would hold my tongue ’Cause when I write it all down I have to face it But when I hold it inside I can pretend it’s okay