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

by Halsey

I have found a home here amongst the chaos.

A beautiful woman is a car crash. Shiny asphalt and smoking rubber. Melted plastic and metal edges. Glimmering glass shrapnel iridescence scattered across the road. Haphazard beauty. Dignified and slightly terrifying.

Sometimes I feel like my spine will unfold and explode like a jack-in-the-box doll.

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.

And whining like an infant to your lover begging to be spit-shined like a piece of silverware,

You ask for kindness that is never returned. You wish to burn alive in the flame of a love unrequited.

BATTLES

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY I am not allowed to want to die anymore. Believe me, I have tried.

“Du er et minne.”

Daydreams running like an Amtrak train

Drama queen Well you’re older now it seems Why is everyone so mean?

(I like everything about you, even the things you give away. Like tears and laughs and yawns and lost eyelashes.)

got this bad habit where I don’t think before I speak. I fall in love like every week.

but still can’t bring myself to face what I feel. I’m scared of something real. I should spit it out

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!”

DNA

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

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

THE PATTERN

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

DEVIL IN ME

SOMETHING FOR THEM

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.