dear interdimensional space traveler,
it's been both an honor and a privilege to watch you traverse far and wide and maybe you will find your way back to the year and 4 months when you filled the space on the other side of my mattress
do you miss the gravity that pulled you to me?
do you miss linear time and when we were on the same wavelength?
maybe when you finally "came home" you forgot where that even was
is her apartment floor your new safe haven?
212 miles is too close for us to have given up so easily and you were still light years away
time has stopped here since you left, interdimensional space traveler
i hope our time and space aligns again

i hope you never told anyone the way i cried during *** that one time i was ******* in your dorm room
i didn't know i could look so beautiful with nothing on my body until you showed me that polaroid
i have since ripped it up because the people we were in that picture were never meant to weather the storm that was 212 miles of highways and backroads and the ******* distance between us  

we listened to a playlist that we didn't make
we were actors in a scene that we never should have set
staring at the broken mirror in your bedroom showed me only fractals of myself and i could see exactly the versions of me that you would leave behind

it's been almost two years but
do you still think about me when you get high in your bedroom?
do you ever think about that night?

i need a phone call
i need a rain coat

i stay up most nights these days wondering if you would be proud of me
maybe we needed to fall apart so i could put myself back together and be whole without the pieces i thought were always meant to fit

i wonder if your mom is proud of you
i wonder if she wishes i could have made you stay and i wonder if she knows i miss her
why did you drop out of college?
did you forget how to put yourself back together?
are you happy where you're sleeping?
do you ask yourself similar questions about me?
i wonder if the new versions of us would fall in love just as easily
and for all it's worth
i hope you know you can be so much better and do so much more and you were always meant to travel through space and time and i don't think i want to wait for you anymore

I find myself doing the things you used to do.
The way you'd bite your lip when you were thinking.
The way you'd put your hands together
During a scary movie.

I find myself mimicking the little things
That I loved about you.
And it breaks my heart to feel this;
That I can't get you out of my head.

Your actions, your smile, your voice:
They're imprinted in my brain.
You became a part of me
And I think that's what made it hurt so much
When you left and took that part of me
With you, away from me.

Everybody tells me
"Just get over it"
"Move on"
"It was just a stupid summer crush"

But you were everything to me
And I don't think I'll ever be able to feel that again.
I steeled my heart and closed off my mind.

I'll never let anyone in like that again.
Never.

But sometimes... I want to

in the landscape of you
I am a wandering soul
with but my words
                for protection
as I make you my goal
in the expanse of your vista,
I wear the cloak of our depth
your heartbeats in mine
as we breathe
           the same breath
I feel your rugged peaks,
your valleys that sink
your core's wildflower essence
that stains me with ink
I bathe in its fragrance,
a tattooed poet's imprint
in the primal spheres in my being
enveloping my core
all the clearer
          for seeing

and when your rough
                 tempest storms
are afar, yet in view
I dive straight to
                  their center
into the magnet of you
for
     I will water your deserts
infuse fresh creeks
                        in your dry
I will run through your forests
as I call to your wild
as I straddle your cliffs,
festoon your tundra
             with blooms
steam will rise from
                your earthcore
and fill up my womb
Through the dew on our lashes
through my lava that flows,
the stars in your eyes
make my universe glow

these geographic measures
                                 I take
as you let me inside
our bloodstreams merging
as we get lost in the tides
electric pulsed woodlands
that spread iced wildfires
slaking the loops
  of floodgates' desire
and I will hold you together
if you fall, torn apart
bonded forever
in this map of our
                    hearts

it's embarrassing but it's true.
i just googled "how to fall in love".
and i googled "how to fall in love" because i am not in love right now and i really, really want to be.
my google searchings were inconclusive and i am just as unsatisfied
mind, body, and spirit
as i was when i started typing "h" into the search bar
there is nothing in my heart right now.
my mother knocked and no one was home.
it makes me anxious:
how did i go from someone so overwhelmed by the enormity and ever-presence of her emotions
to someone so void of them that i feel an echo in my chest when someone says my name?
i've also googled sociopathy,
but apparently i'm not one of those.
so here i am, somewhere on a sliding scale
between all or nothing.
and i report from the field that it is not, in fact, all or nothing.
i know i'm not alone out here,
but it sure does feel like it,
when i reach out and even shadows don't reach back.
it's not like i've already accepted dying alone but it's not looking likely that i'll be marrying my college sweetheart, either.
i just want my feelings back.
is there a link to that in the first page of google results?
i'll even pay for shipping, i guess.

now when I think of love I want to puke,
the thought literally makes me sick to my stomach because I know now what it does to a person

how you lose yourself in someone else and then all of sudden you can't breathe anymore without them

I am promising myself to never be that stretched again,
to give myself a try for once, relying only on my intuition and will to power through life and relationships, never getting too blind to see things as they really are

I wanna know what it's like to be so good alone that the earth shatters when I take a step,
electricity radiates from my skin and my soul is so loud it shouts through my eyes