forget cracked lips and broken skin. forget the way the blood tasted on your tongue, trickling from your abused lips; forget the way he kissed you and pressed nonsense about meteorites into the column of your throat. forget evening promises and flower-stem rings wrapped around your fingers like wedding bands. you don’t owe the distressed soil or lost, wind-fluttering seedlings anything; forget every spring you neglected to bloom into a more beautiful version of yourself. forget the meteor showers that you missed, along with the fireworks. forget that you have yet to grow thicker skin and that your knees are still paper mache replicas of the ones you used to run on as a child. forget every childhood memory laced with tears instead of battered elbows and gravel-ridden palms. forget the first winter that froze your spinal fluid and numbed your incessantly-trembling fingers. forget that you’ve written your own eulogy in your head over and over every night your tossing and turning left you lost.
forget that you ever hated him or her or anyone. forget that you ever hated yourself.
