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

by Halsey

I have found a home here amongst the chaos. The constant.

I so badly want to be liked. Scratch that. I want to be loved.

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. Let my skin sink into the armchair and lose its shape. Lose its form. Collapse into a sigh.

I see all things in this world as more beautiful than I, and I spin the details of their atoms in every paragraph and brushstroke. I wish I had 11 hands with 55 fingers so I could paint and write and fuck and feed and grab grab grab everything. I. Want. It. All. It must be mine. 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.

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

You are asking to be shot square in the head. You know not what you seek. You ask for bleeding brains and carnage that stains your pillowcase. You ask for jelly in the place of the cartilage in your spine. You ask for kindness that is never returned. You wish to burn alive in the flame of a love unrequited.

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

I can hold a grudge like it’s a hand.

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.

A boasting contest with an inferiority complex. I can’t make friends.

I can’t take blame. I funnel through liquor and spit up my pain.

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

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

ANTAGONIST 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 spent a long time substituting honest with sarcastic and I cursed my tongue for being mean.

(If I could disappear as quickly as I appeared, I would.)

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.

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.

It takes me 7 minutes to run a mile And 7 seconds to run from my problems

SOMETHING FOR THEM 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.