this whole review will be done as amanda wrote her book. no caps.

“sometimes

no closure

tells us

more than

the closure

ever

could.

–some people were never worth your words”

i have to say, i don’t usually read poetry. it never seems to strike me in any kind of way, visceral or emotional or anything. but this. this captivated me. it made me angry. it made me self reflect. it made me realize things about myself that i didn’t know i had been holding on to all these years later. i didn’t realize how much that other person had taken a hold on my life, on my heart, until i was reading this collection. i have a hard time letting go, i find myself dreaming of him still, even when i think i’m over it. i don’t follow him on facebook or any other social media. i don’t understand why he still permeates my thoughts while i sleep. i try so hard to get rid of him and he still is there. always there.

i have a new man and i can’t bring myself to love him even though i know he loves me. i just don’t think i do that anymore. i am apathetic to him and some days wondering if it would be best to not be together. then other days, i’m wishing he could come and hang out with me and just watch tv. is it simply because i crave adult interaction? i don’t know.

“‘but my heart-i don’t know if it can love again just yet,’ i warn him. 

‘let your heart take it’s time,’ he replies, his voice surer than any i’ve ever heard before. ‘as it happens, mine needs a rest, too. we’re both here, anyway-we can take them both & lock them away in a box so they can figure things out together.’

–closed for repairs”

this whole book made me question everything i know and everything i thought i knew about myself and my heart. while my old relationship wasn’t physically abusive, i have come to realize how emotionally abusive it was, especially towards the end.

“my body didn’t want to know what it was like to survive without you. for a year after, i watched that disappearing act of a girl from the corner of my bedroom ceiling, where she couldn’t hear me screaming that she needed to stop depriving herself of the things she needed the most. to stop with the numbers, with the counting. even then i knew how fucked up it was, but i started to feel happy when all the parts of me that were still in love with you were dripping like nectar from my bones.

–i’m still rebuilding”

still, this was a hauntingly good book of poetry. i’ve never had such speak to me in such a profound way. i’ll leave you with a few more pieces.

please, go read this.

“i can no longer remember how warm your nicotine laugh felt when it slid through me.

–how to know when it’s really over”

“love does not need to be tragic in order for it to be good. the truth is that i would much rather stir to the feeling of his lips meeting my forehead at 5:30 a.m. every morning for the next eighty odd years that settle for living an eternity alongside someone who can’t even be sure where he left his promises the night before.

–fuck those fairy tales”

” ‘that girl is mine,’ the monster-boy growled.

‘that’s where you’re wrong. that girl belongs to the coffee shops & the bookstores & the treetops – but mostly she just belongs to herself,’ he said, unafraid.

–thank you”

*please see review also on Goodreads.