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

by Halsey

A beautiful woman is a car crash.

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 want to walk away from the burgundy bags under my eyes and the periwinkle veins in my hands.

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

And it was on my first day on Earth that I realized I didn’t measure up, and I never would.

It is not a want. It is not a wish. It’s simple. A demon waiting at the foot of your bed to grab your ankles while you sleep. It’s a gnat burrowing into your ear and laying eggs behind the socket of your eye. It’s sitting in your own filth for days, staring at the shower across the room while minutes become hours. It’s six months since you’ve talked to your dad, And whining like an infant to your lover begging to be spit-shined like a piece of silverware, “I have given so much to the page, please tell me I am not worthless.”

To find the world not worthy of your words, and to find yourself unworthy of the world.

enjoy the silence in your kitchen. been watering all these plants made of plastic and you think they’ll grow.

I am a worthless smudge On the floor, in the rug In the kingdom of the almighty God who will judge Me as hard as She can, ’Cause I won’t love a man Unless he is angry Because of my father.

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

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.

There’s a love/hate relationship with noise in my brain.

I could fall asleep here. Crawl inside the sleeping bags under your eyes. But I stay awake to memorize.

I hide behind a strangled mind.

I don’t hope that you’d die; just live to 75 And you spend every waking moment Wishing you felt alive.

I hope your brother turns out to be nothing like you. Hope another year passes and you hurt even more than I do.

I sing in the shower and I walk around naked. I love my whole body though you once made me hate it.

Like meeting myself in a mirror. The way you take over my entire body and mind like you’re putting your own personal 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.

I’m pulling funny faces in the mirror, wiping down the glass so I see clearer. 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 sorry I’m having another bad day. My bones are creaking And my eyes leak Like a broken faucet. My mind is a bullet train And I can’t stop it.

I’m half of everything I hate, and half of anything I create is you too. So I start to hate the music when I hate you.

I am not allowed to want to die anymore. Believe me, I have tried.

Peter Piper picked a peck of people he could utilize.

He never ever spoke a word when we were feuding. Major to minor like the color of a mood ring.

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

We met in a studio and I couldn’t break the silence ’cause he was raised a Socialist and I was raised on violence.

I had to be the best and he was fine with trying. Sometimes he built me up, sometimes I was declining.

The only time that it was easy was in transit. 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. I took it all for granted. The summer killed me, skin was crawling, couldn’t stay still. A suicide inside my body (went onstage still). I hear it echo through the arena, “Du er et minne.”

I got no space in my memory Just some pics of a friend and me

That house has haunted me for centuries Should take a rock and throw it at the windows but they bend for me

I spent a lifetime trying to wake up and be mean.

I’ve got: Cellophane in the place of a windowpane A mixtape where I used to keep my brain Daydreams running like an Amtrak train

Can you hear the silence of being alone? The deafening stillness of everything you’ve ever known?

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

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

My mind is the only place where I can take you on.

I’m half of everything I hate, and half of anything I create is you too. So I start to hate the painting when I hate you.

in the master bedroom detached from the home, I became a lighthouse. Dim glow beaming from my eyes, a man in my arms, kerosene running low in the tower. Praying the gods would unleash their fury and send waves so strong they’d crash through the hills of California. And the ground would collapse and bury us both in the rubble.

It was a dream that was separated from me by a dark staircase that bled into oblivion like a nightmare where you couldn’t move.

But artists love what is forbidden to them, a fact I learned too young; too early.

And in all of these things I could finally see the difference between what is the blood and what is learned.

You know I’ve got a way with words. I’d put a million in a verse, but still can’t bring myself to face what I feel. I’m scared of something real.

I find a million dandelions blowing through my head and they are beautiful But when they come at you like one furious wave (a few times a day) They stick in your nose and eyes and ears You explode from the inside out Like a time lapse of a decaying animal.

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?

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.

I only use my armor when you frighten me. Stuck in the middle of “I love you” and “I can’t take this anymore.”

I’m half of everything I hate, and half of anything I create is you too. So I start to hate the poems when I hate you.