the first time you told me you loved me was in a tiny hotel room by the river in limerick and i remember your ankles hooked around mine, our bones clanking together under the starch of the sheets. the second time your voice was warm from several pints of guinness and you were playing me fairytale of new york on your old piano that will be forever just a step out of tune. i could only laugh in response because i suddenly forgot how to use the words that i’ve spent years trying to comprehend. the third time you were out on your back patio, smoking a cigarette before heading to bed and the fourth on a freezing night out on a busy street in galway. i know you can hear the hesitation in my voice, the mild fear that shakes at the end of every exhale. you never mention it but you still keep using the words i love you as if you’re attempting to teach me a phrase in a foreign language in the hopes that one day i’ll pick up on what you’ve been trying to say to me all this time.

28 nov, 2012

i have decided that my favorite sound in the world right now is the boyfriend calling me on his way home slightly drunk from a night out at the pubs and i can barely understand him through his slurring accent and his feet dragging on the cobble-****** street and i can hear him smoking a cigarette and he just keeps going on and on about how beautiful he thinks i am and how much he misses me. his compliments are usually sporadic and i am never prepared for them. they always carry a tone with them that is unbridled and heavy, as if he just lost a hard-fought battle of containing them all in. all i can do is laugh sometimes and appreciate everything we have that much more before whispering, "i miss you too."

12 oct, 2012

you mentioned in passing today how there are times when i will give you a look and it sets you off balance and you don’t know why. i rambled on about my innate awkwardness and lack of control over certain ****** expressions because i was too afraid to tell you how those looks are me trying to keep it all in. you bring out a side of me i have never seen before, someone who is happy and steady and settled close to the warmth of the ground. it’s exciting and nerve-wracking. at night i have these dreams of us in your sitting room with you banging away on your piano and we’re both sweating from the heat from the fire in the fireplace we put together ourselves. i have these dreams where we’re back on grafton street, our palms pressed tightly together in the pocket of your coat and it’s so real that i wake up with my hands still tingling from the cold dublin air. you are thousands of miles away and you are everywhere at the same time and i am ready for whatever comes as long as i get to keep you with me at the end of it all.

23 sept, 2012

i’ve been losing sleep lately plagued by dreams of strong arms tightly wound around my ribcage like kudzu and an overwhelming scent of musk and dried paint that lingers like a heavy shadow in the breaking of morning light. i stumble through the routines ripping my nylons and bruising my hands along the way. all i can think about are the mistakes and lies i’ve scattered across all that i once held dear to me and how i’ve burned every ******* bridge i ever built in the gold light of vulnerable youth. i don’t know what i want anymore and every man i’ve ever loved ultimately never adds up to the man i imagine them to be. i fill in the empty nooks and black holes within yourself you don’t even know you have and i build you into the man you never have any chance of becoming and it’s just downhill from there, babe. i’ve got my back up against a wall with my spine so firmly pressed into the surface i wonder how hard it would be to just simply fall through and disappear entirely. i look into the eyes of hundreds of strangers everyday knowing i will never see them again and all i can think is how in god’s name are people ever able to find each other?

15 june, 2012

there are times when the words pour out of me from the darkest, deepest parts of my body and they just keep flowing and my lungs ache with the need to breathe but i just have to get these words out of me before they **** me. and then they’re there. a ****** jumble on the ground at your feet and you don’t understand, can’t sift through the mess i just gave you. sometimes you don’t say anything at all and you stare into my eyes waiting for the punch line that never comes. sometimes you say the completely wrong thing and it’s like a punch in the chest instead. i desperately want you to understand what goes on in here, why i do the things i do and why i am so awkward even at the best of times. i want you to understand that i come from a place of debilitating integrity with a dash of self-loathing that clings to the outlines of my shadow everywhere i go. i can see you trying to read my lips and listen to my words but somewhere along the way they get lost and wander off and it’s like we’re beyond speaking a foreign language to each other — we’ve become two separate species entirely.

5 mar, 2012

i find myself slowly waking up these days in the early morning light reflected off the fresh snow fall on my window sill and a warmth on my skin that echoes the touches of your rough palms. if i lie there still enough i can almost feel the staccato beat of your kisses across my neck and the vibrations of your laugh deep in my own chest. i’ve only read about moments like this and have always considered them a myth, a legend, an unattainable bliss only reserved for those who are worthy enough. the words that persistently tumble from your tongue are unreal, boy, and i fear i may gladly drown in their depths one day soon.

20 jan, 2012

i’ve recently started spending all of my money on boots that have a heaviness in them that keep my feet firmly on the ground and allow me to feel every step with my entire body. i spend all of my money on hats to hide under so no one will see all the millions and millions of white lies that come tumbling off my tongue that have now started intertwining into an intricate web of my own insecurities.

i wake up in the morning with a purpose to fit firmly inside my skin and by mid-morning it’s all gone to **** and i don’t know who i am anymore. strands of my hair can be found everywhere these days, as if my body is purposely leaving pieces of me behind across the vastness of this continent in the hopes you will find me and put me back together.

i need your steady hands and the rough skin of your jawline across mine that leaves a burn even when you’re gone. i need your words of piercing scrutiny and for you to make me look you in eye because you know my fear of this fallacious species of ours is irrational and just *******, ******* ridiculous. i need you to tell me about your dreams where the sun was setting and no one was there but us and everything was going to be alright, everything made sense.

i need you to come on already.

i’m going blind with all of these halfway points and men who touch me like i’m nothing after tonight, men who speak to me with that hideous glint in their dark eyes as if they speak the word of Jesus Christ himself.

i need you to come on already so we can be the two happiest people on this godforsaken earth.

2 dec, 2011