seams and stitching ♡ published

A YEAR'S WORTH OF HEARTBREAK

the first day of the year
is filled with glitter and confetti,
and exhilarated, hopeful
kisses. the first day of the year is
loud, it's deafening, midnight
pumps glitter and confetti into
the veins of the new year.
we cannot resist the temptation of
giving the year to each other,
to kiss as the song of the next
three hundred and sixty five days
bursts our eardrums,
we cannot stop our mouths from
making promises we
know we will not keep. but we
do not fight against it. the second day
of the year is hungover and sloppy,
people already have blood
pumping from their veins onto
cold bathroom tiles,
confetti and glitter forgotten on
abandoned tables, another year
someone could not stand
to live through. there are already
babies, sending shock waves
of shrill cries through delivery rooms,
there are already fathers
not present for their child's birth,
their are already mothers who have
already decided to not
name the child they just sent
from their womb so they wouldn't
get attached to it.
some girls are just now realizing
they don't have hymens
anymore, and some girls are just
now realizing they don't
have their house keys, or their
best friends, or what they thought
they couldn't live without.
two people already have noses
filled with white powder, two people
already have hands stained
with blood, two people already
have hearts shattered upon the
clothes stretched across their chests.
people will cry the world to sleep.
there will be birthdays
that go uncelebrated, there will be
murders unaired on the news,
there will be a girl who wonders
what love is besides the hard smack
of a palm of a hand on a cheek,
there will be a boy who wonders
if the girl with the big ears likes
his freckles, there will be
two toddlers who run around a
church holding hands who will
become two seventh graders who
will claim to hate each other.
there will be stolen food and
roadkill, there will be forgotten
stories and nostalgic memories,
there will be swept up
confetti and glitter and kisses
at midnight labeled as drunken
mistakes, there are still
cold tiles in a bathroom forever
stained with blood,
there are still wrists that could not
bring themselves to not
split at the seams and drag themselves through another year.
half-way through February
there will be a girl with big ears
who wants desperately to kiss
a boy with freckles,
there will be two seventh graders
who maybe don't hate each other,
there will be a fire that eats
a whole city but still doesn't make it
on the news, and still,
through the fire, there will remain
a bathroom, with cold tiles, stained with blood by wrists
that could not bring themselves
to not split at the seams
and drag themselves
through another year.
in the beginning of April,
a girl will get caught in the rain,
wearing Champions from the
1990s, who will be teased for
wearing them and the same girl
will want desperately to kiss
a boy with freckles and
an obsession with cheap lead pencils
and basketballs and math,
but she will fear him as if he
is judgment day personified, she
will have a heart that is a city,
eaten by fire, her wrists are like her mother's, jagged with scars, her smiles are like her father's,
fleeting and pained, she will yearn
endlessly for the boy with the
freckles's kiss, she is
swept up glitter and confetti.
by the end of May,
the boy with the freckles will have
told the girl with the big ears
and the 90s shoes
that he hates her, there will be a night
when he writes her name
over and over on a piece of paper,
hoping he spelled it right,
seven letters: m-a-d-e-l-y-n,
m-a-d-e-l-y-n, m-a-d-e-l-y-n,
he will wonder why he couldn't
have just kept his mouth
shut about her shoes, he will
trace the outlines of his lips,
waiting, for the day he can press
them to the side of her face,
her mouth, dear God,
there will be a front-of-the-bus
romance, there will be a girl with
big ears who cries herself
to sleep after she is told she is hated,
there will be remembrance
of forgotten sensations, there will
be discoveries of wounds
that people thought that healed,
there will discoveries of unswept
glitter and confetti.
steel-point harbor will go up and
will be eaten by a fire,
there will be a class full of students
whose fathers are house painters and whose mothers are housecleaners,
there will be a girl who
drowns in late June, there will be
a buried tiara and a snapped halo
that still managed to float,
but somehow, people have still
managed to forget the bloodstained
tiles in the bathroom and the
split wrists that will never
see another year. school will end
and a girl with hazel eyes
and curly hair will move to Florida
without her best friend,
her best friend will have big ears
and an undying affection
for a boy who told her he hates her,
who will always wonder why
the boy with the freckles could not
bring himself to smile at her,
there will be a boy with freckles,
who wants to walk home with
a girl whose feet are slipped inside
Champion shoes,
there will be gunfire, there
will be ducking heads, there will be
low tide and scorching sand,
hemorrhaged laughs and humorous
tears, the summer will
dry out the green and turn
it to brown dust.
the beach will no longer be
an escape, the chill will steal
summer tans and sweaty smiles,
acs will return to the basement,
maybe some will stay
lounging on window sills. school
will start again and tears
will drip down autumn faded faces,
hugs will be thrusted into
people's arms, laughter will echo
down halls, along with anguished
cries as people realize some
people really aren't coming back.
girls will fall in love again,
boys will play more advanced games,
games with larger trophies.
then the leaves will fall from the
trees and wind will take what little
the summer had left, and soon
snow will cover the crunchy leaves
with cold flakes. and by now,
the glitter and confetti
has blown away in the wind,
maybe to the other side of the world, where there has yet to be broken hymens and lost keys, lack of something you can't live without
and deafening music, drunken mistakes and a love affair
between a boy with freckles
and a girl with big ears,
where there has yet to be
wrists split at the seams,
unable to drag themselves into
another year.