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

by Halsey

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.”

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.

I spent a long time calling all my parts by evil nicknames, and I told myself they hate me too.

“Swallow your apologies. None of them mean shit to me. And all you have these days are bad days.”

I’m half of everything I hate, and half of anything I create is you too. So I’ll start to hate my future when I hate you.

Your pen will hit the paper like a body hitting pavement and you will scrape your knees red over and over and over again across the fine lines. 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 I’m too young to know why it aches in my thighs but I must lie. I must lie.

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 you can’t walk anywhere if your legs aren’t covered, they tell us “take cover.” But we are not free until all of us are free. So love your neighbor. Please treat her kindly.

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.

Abandonment is a complicated complex. You’re longing for somebody who will leave.

I wonder what I’ll ever have control of.

Schrödinger’s element. It is there when we restrain ourselves from touching it, And it disappears when we reach for it. It looks solid, it holds form, and then evades our grasp as if to taunt us. Not transparent, not opaque. Is it arrogance?

I opened my mouth and Times New Roman print flew out like a plague of moths from its depths.

My mouth tastes like all the things I should have said.

This must be a nightmare. It couldn’t be a dream. I’m washing in the shower, my limbs clean, until they bleed. I sometimes miss the quiet; the chaos of the streets. I keep it all inside my mind and every night I scream. I can’t remember what it’s like to smell the ocean. I can’t remember what it’s like to feel the sea. I can’t remember what it’s like to face a mirror and not hate the person staring back at me. I wish that I were dead or at least somewhere else. I try to keep the riot quiet like a diet for my health.

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.

Because I know you needed someone who was fine with feeling small.

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.

I think my lungs are full to the brim with ink And I can’t get it past my throat to my fingers to the paper

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. That you are an idiot and you are going to fuck up 1 million more times the rest of your life. 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.

The boy’s poor mother cried with screams that echoed through the town. Like a Siren on a shoreline, begging God to let her drown.

I looked through the window and saw the lights flicker like salt and pepper flakes across the Tokyo skyline. I saw the amber glowing from the floor lamp in the corner, warming the room with its thick embrace. I saw the pink in my lips and the orange in my eyes and the blush across my chest. 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.

Be patient with me When my limbs become trees And my roots become reeds

My mind is messy but it’s beautiful

Wish I were a wild child like I say I am Wish I really meant it when I say that I don’t give a damn Wish that I were manic all the time. Think I like me better when I’m all outside the lines. But my colors bleed And they bleed bright red. I keep this pistol near my bed Inside my mouth so I can keep my tongue from tearing up my head.