We were drinking
and by now I should know
that Jack and Coke
do not mix well with me
you start talking about her
again
I start talking about him
and it's weird but it isn't
because anything feels natural
with you
"I just wish she wasn't my first,"
you'd said
I nod because I know what it is
to feel like that
I tell you about the time
I went to his house
crying like a fool
ending each subsequent sentence with
"I was so stupid"
and I was
I turn to you and say,
"Once you love someone like that,
you never love anyone else like that again."
You nod
and it's quiet for a little while
Thinking back on that conversation now
I meant what I said
I do not love you like I loved him
just as you don't love me
like you loved her
and that's hard to swallow until
you realize
that I love you so much more
than I have ever loved anyone
or anything
so much more
than I even thought
was possible
So no
I don't love you like that
I love you more
than I can comprehend.

tomorrow was never promised. I know that, I guess I always knew that. one day too many yesterday's ago you told me that eventually, one day, we'd be waking up to each other in a bed two sizes too big for only two people but that was okay because your voice always had a way of filling every empty space, the void in the air or the empty between our sheets. a bed two sizes too big can quickly become two sizes too small when all you want to do is fall into a set of arms that are no longer laying there. too many yesterdays ago we spoke of tomorrows and forevers, of sunday mornings and tuesday brunch and kitchen counters and coffee tables. we spent days staring at globes picking out all the places where we knew we'd never go, and I couldn't breathe when you finally decided to pack your bags and leave.
part of me hoped you'd come back.
part of me still does.

It's got me wondering how many
more times I'll have to fall apart
before all the pieces of me are gone

why is it that every single day
I am stuck in this catastrophe
of missing you
and the thought of me is one
that never bothers to cross your mind

I want to ask how you're doing
and while I'm at it I think I'd also like
to ask how the hell you think
you've managed to move on

the cat we never owned has had my
tongue for the past two months
but now I am volatile

irrational
with the thought of showing her the ring
you had plans of putting on my finger
just weeks before everything was
shot to ****

it shouldn't matter
and maybe it doesn't
but do you think of me?

when the sun shines through your bedroom window and catches
against the glass
throwing rainbow prisms on your wall
when you see a stray dog
or breathe a stanza of poetry
when you've been working on something
and your hands are stained with paint the way
mine always seemed to be
back when I was in love and inspired and
always had something to make for you to
look at but never see

and when you look at her
do you see me?

are you haunted by the memory
of everything you promised me?

or is it all just a messy pile of nothing
years worth of everythings that you
shoved into a day
hours of kisses that you erased
from existence
and a body beneath you that all
you had to do was replace

when you're about to fall asleep
can you ******* name on your tongue
telling you goodnight?

when you wake up
do you ever wonder where I am?
whose bed I'm sleeping in
who's kissing my neck
and taking my socks off with his teeth

do you think of me
wondering
or is it nothing more
than just a memory?

It's the kind of loss that shakes your soul
makes you miss all the things
that made a quiet home in your heart
and lived there as tight-lipped tenants
for so long that you forgot
the weight of their existence until they were gone

you, all of you -
your fingertips on my skin,
your eyelash on my cheek,
your mouth on my neck,
your hand in my own -

now you're no more than a skeleton
of recollection from the broken bones
of memory

now,
I feel the loss of you everywhere

I identify with rainy skies,
broken hearts and
sorrowed cries
loud, noisy sobs that splatter along the walls
of hospitals like paint

my heart aches for everyone
whose heart is aching
whose bones are breaking
who is doing their best at simply making
it through the day

I feel every fake smile,
every forced laugh and
every wiped away tear

all of the world's pains
are named after you, dear.

I am not scared of the dark anymore.
I no longer have the need to check every closet and corner of our home before I feel safe and certain that no one else is here.
Sometimes I even leave and don't bother to lock the door behind me.
And maybe I'm becoming careless. Or maybe my fears have simply shapeshifted into nameless beings; feelings rather than things.
I am afraid of losing you. I am no longer afraid of the dark, but now when the phone rings, before I even have time to think, I am worrying that it is the call. The call saying that something terrible has happened to you. The apologies. Strangers saying your name and me falling to my knees.
I am no longer compulsive about investigating the possibility of an intruder in our home, rather now I am compulsive about investigating all the possibilities in which you never make it back home to me. The thoughts fall through the cracks in my mind like quicksand and I am left standing with a blank look in my eyes. I am obsessive over every detail, I am consumed with every second of time we have left together, it's all I can think about.
And I no longer lock our front door. Maybe I am careless, or maybe I am leaving it open for the possibility that at any given moment, you might come walking through it, as nonchalantly as businessmen do at 5pm on a Tuesday. Regular, normal, routine.

I spent the larger part of my life
waiting for the other shoe to drop
with everything
maybe that's why I'm still stuck
in this rut of waiting to find out
what your catch is

maybe it's something as insignificant
as the fact that you take your eggs
over easy instead of sunny side up
or your coffee so black we won't be able
to share a mug on the mornings we
don't feel like braving outside the bubble
of our future bedroom

or maybe it's something as fatal
as not believing in things like
second chances
or true love
or miracles

because is it not miracle enough
that in this sick cosmic joke the universe
has been playing on both of us for years
we are here now and we found
each other

              is it not miracle enough
that we are here together today
here today tangled up
in my bed sheets and each other
sharing secrets and kisses and writing
love letters in the sign language of
your fingers dancing along my spine or
your teeth grazing my bottom lip

              is it not miracle enough
that you love me like I've never
even been broken before
like four weeks ago I wasn't a disaster
unraveling in the palm of your hand
looking to you for solace
for answers we both knew you
couldn't give me
even if you
wanted to

                is it not miracle enough
that we've made it this far
and no atom bombs have gone off
when we're alone with each other at
3 in the morning
doing anything
but sleeping

that the skies don't open up into black
holes when you leave me
              that you leave me
      and that you come back

               is it not miracle enough
that I love you
after swearing on every god anyone ever
believed in that I would never love again
that I love again
because of you


it is.

I could never quite understand why you wanted me
why you chose me when you could have had her, or her, or even her
it perplexed me to think that you
genuinely loved me,
because I had yet to learn to love myself
but it warmed my heart to say
that you were the best story sitting on my bookcase,                  
that you made me feel like the sun was something you had built for me
or to remember all those tear stained nights when you had begged me to stay
and I have finally figured out why now,
because I had made you feel the same way

I've been subconsciously stumbling over the memories for quite awhile now
the remembrances are few and far between
lacing across the insides of my eyelids in a near instantaneous fashion
the creases on your palms
the wrinkle in your shirt
your exhale on my neck
it isn't enough to make sense of it all
quite yet
to put the pieces of us back together
to fully comprehend
the vague recollection of your mass atop of me,
the kiss you plant behind my ear,
the words I speak but cannot hear
it's killing me
knotting my knuckles up with dry wall and
melting into the cotton of your old t-shirt
my bed sheets will whisper his name in the moments among dusk and dawn,
and my fingers still ache for hands that I know
are lifetimes too far gone

Whenever I hear a car roll down my street, I stop and think for a second that it might be you. I know it's just my brain playing tricks on me. I know it isn't you. It never is. And still, when I hear the engine stop and a car door slam shut, my stomach ties itself in knots. I know it isn't you. It never is. And here I am, looking out my window at the empty street, pretending not to acknowledge how absolutely ******* pathetic this is.

If I had to define the word love
I guess I would start with the way
after so long has passed two people
are able to converse by means of
squeezing hands or sharing glances
But maybe a better place to begin
would be how for as long as I had
known you, I could count the number
of times I had ever witnessed tears
fall from your eyes on one hand
None of those times including when
your older brother left to go over seas,
or as you held a pole on your
grandfather's casket
But today I watched your eyes fill
with tears as I spoke your name
and told you that I loved you by means
of nonsense metaphors
and ammature poetry
So I guess in the end
it doesn't really matter where i begin
to define the word love
As long as I have you by my side

it has been one hundred and forty one days since I've seen you
since the day I decided to break all the rules
          the day that wasn't even supposed
     to happen
but I happened to find myself standing in your basement
staring at you for the first time in what felt like centuries but was only weeks
shaking like the ground had begun to quake beneath my feet
hoping
like a fool
that the desperate look in my eye
                                           or my trembling lips
               or the urgency in my voice
would be enough
to pull you back out from this person you've become
like a twisted form of reincarnation
that I do not even believe in

one hundred and forty one days later
and now
you only use me for ***
there are prettier ways of saying it
but there's nothing pretty about this
so I can't decide which is worse
the fact that you are using me for ***
or the fact that I am letting you
because it's been so long since anyone
has felt this close to me
since I've seen these beads of sweat condensating on your brow
the look in your eye
when you lose control
when you reach for my hand in hopes to
bring you back to this moment you
have lost yourself in
  you lost yourself in me
and see
a long time ago I lost myself in you
except the difference is
I'm not forming search parties
you can keep the pieces because I don't want them back

one hundred and forty one days later
I would much rather believe
that eventually
we can share them
again

I'm not used to the silence
I don't know that I'll ever get used to that
Sometimes I curse this life for
being the way it is
I am envious of those
whose husbands are only
a work day away
When they've had a horrible day
and can dial his number and talk to him
until they feel better
There are times we go weeks without
knowing if the other is even
alive
those are the bad days
On good days
I get an email from you
and tears well up in my eyes
as I read it
in your voice
and oh, how I miss your voice
I swallow my sadness and put on
a brave face
and tell you that everything
back home is great
I'm doing okay, really
but what I want to say
is that I miss you so much it hurts
and I can't ******* breathe
this distance is too much right now
and I'd beg you to come home
until I am blue in the face
I count the number of times
I get through work without crying
as successes
Each day I am able to make it to my bed at night
or through my front door
or to my car
or even
to the public restroom
before losing it
is a win
But I say none of these things because
they won't do any good
you're still gone for however long and
I am still a mess
but I'm your mess
and when the ocean between us
is drowning me
I will remember that.

It's been three months since I moved here and you've been here for two of them and it's got me thinking about how in a world without you minutes feel like hours and hours feel like days, and don't even get me started on the days, our time together feels like quicksand running through my hands. It's a mess all over our spotless kitchen floor. The mop finds its way into the grasp of my fingers every day that you are gone, which is often, because honestly I just need something to hold. Something to occupy the time that we should be spending laid up on the couch hours deep into a new Netflix series tossing off the blankets we wrapped oursevles up in because our bodies have generated so much heat from being so close to each other for so long. Most nights I find myself wrapping up the idea of you into a neat little box that I carry around with me in my chest. Occasionally someone knocks to see how you are doing, how we are doing, and I tell them the same things I tell you. I miss you. And they're confused, because we live together, and don't I know that I should have stopped having to miss you months ago? Only I haven't stopped and I never will. Closing the distance between our states will never compare to closing the distance between me crawling into bed hours after you've fallen asleep, and you crawling out before the dawn breaks, kissing my head goodbye as I sleep. These are our interactions and they do not understand. Our bed is warm but my hands are cold. You kiss my knuckles in your sleep and I take a deep breath, hoping to remember the way you smell; the warmth of your skin; the sounds from your throat as I kiss your cheek; this moment. Every night I spend next to you I thank whoever is listening for giving us this simple pleasure- knowing you are safe, you are here, you are mine. I ask for more time but somehow we always come up empty handed. I knew we would have forever since the moment I met you, and in the vows I've been piecing together since the day we fell in love, I say to you this: falling asleep next to you is one thing I will never take for granted, the days I spend without you are nothing compared to those we spend together, and together... together, we have everything we will ever need.

all of the sudden its hard to breathe and I can't think straight and my throat wants to ******* scream but my vocal chords are knotted up with your name and I swear to god if I hear one more person ask me about you my ear drums are going to explode and the blood won't stop pumping to my brain and through my veins and I wish that I didn't wish that it would stop I can't feel my fingers and my hands are going numb at the thought of you holding hers and every time I close my eyes I see your face and you're smiling. you're ******* smiling but I'm sitting here at 3:27 a.m barely able to breathe because I love you and I ******* hate myself and somehow that's always been okay with me.

What you don't know

is that I was from a place far, far away from here
That I had no intentions of staying
Or ever coming back
That I was perfectly content with
Hiding away in my own shadow of the world
Alone

What you don't know
is that I've fallen in love with everything about you
That I've memorized the curves of your shoulders and the ***** of your nape
That I've counted every freckle in your sleep and took tune to the beat of your heart

What you do know
is that you saved me from a
Dark, unforgiving place
That I'm willing to spend the rest of
My life trying to repay you for that
and that my heart now beats for
you

I miss you. I'm out of fancy, poetic ways to say it any differently - to make it sound prettier or less desperate. sometimes I drive past your house late at night just to satiate this burning nostalgia inside my chest. I convince myself I'm not going out of my way but I am and every part of me knows it and none of these parts care. it's been five months to the day and this hollow in my heart has never felt so empty. I am in class and my professor thinks I'm taking notes - maybe I am. I don't want to forget these details, I don't want to part with this pain - not yet, anyway. this ache is all I have left. I know you don't care anymore and I'm sorry I can't seem to let go, I'm sorry for going down with the ship that's been sinking for years. they say too much time has separated the two of us but I say that's *******. we can go back and I can find you again. I know you don't want to be found. I know you do not even think you are lost. you said I couldn't accept the fact that you didn't love me anymore. you were right.

It's been 59 days since I've seen you and I'm sitting here thinking about how we say the words "I can't" so casually. So endearingly. I can't wait to see you again. But what is promising about that? Why do we always find those words shoving out of our mouths, flying off of our finger tips. I can't wait. But we can wait, and we will wait, and we do. We always do. Without question, we wait and we wait and we wait, without promise of when it will be that we'll see each other again. Without certainty, without doubt, we wait. And this has been and always will be the case when it comes to you. So no, I can't wait to see you again, yes.
But I will.

This feels like a 3 minute round
in the boxing ring
Only the 3 minutes lasts an eternity
No one wants to tell me that
before I step inside
Lacing my gloves like I actually
stand a chance
It's the battle between your heart
and mine,
and it doesn't even seem to matter
that my heart has always
beat a little faster,
a little harder in your presence.
I get knocked down
time after time after time,
and you keep looking at me with
a face that asks
"why do you keep getting back up?"
I don't know. I don't.
I can't even see straight anymore.
I'm looking into a world where
you and I aren't in love and all I can think
is that I don't want to see any longer.
I want to tell you that I love you,
as if that will make a difference,
but all that comes out of my mouth is
"I don't want to do this without you".
They're all asking me what I mean by that.
I can't bear to tell them the truth.
I can't bear to see my mom's face when I say that I don't want to be here anymore.
I don't want to hear those sounds
of heartbreak escaping from her stomach.
I'm sorry mom. It's just too hard.
I look at you again and
I want to tell you that I love you,
But all that comes out of my mouth is
"please,"
And I can't bear to finish my sentence.

"You're wasting gas,"
you whispered into my neck after
idling in your driveway amongst
the midnight air as our breath
began to fog the glass
"I don't care," I wanted to say,
no, scream because all I knew then
was that it was far past my curfew
and my father would most likely
rip my *** when I got home
but I didn't care
one because I was with you and two
because I found more of a home in your heart sheltered beneath your ribcage and neighbors
with your arteries than I did in his house
Yet I couldn't manage to make my mouth move
Words fell like fireflies dying
on the tip of my tongue as you drew
your fingertips along the surface of
my skin and part of me felt like if this
went on any longer I might explode
Like I was a stick of TNT and every time
you touched me a spark was lit and eventually
my heart would pump itself into amnesia
Leaving you and me and all of our beings
intertwined in it's wake like some twisted
train wreck that led railroad tracks to your lips
And you moved your hands to my hips and all
I could think was that I didn't know it was possible
to fall in love with someone's fingertips and
memorize the way their breathing shifts
when they sleep
And you made me feel like a ship that had been meaning to sink but could never quite
get caught in the right storm
But right now I was sailing through an ocean of torn clothes and warm skin and I couldn't stop myself from thinking that you were an ocean I wouldn't mind drowning in.

all choked up on words that lay hidden in the spaces between your fingers and the color behind your eyes
I found the beginnings to poems within your most worn down belt holes and favorite story books
and it was very close to impossible to pass you each morning and remind myself that gravity is merely a factor of the earth and not human beings
because when I saw you it was as if I knew again what a heart beat sounded like and how blood felt running through your veins
and I swore to myself I was done writing about love
but darling, without you nothing's the same

And they don't know what it is to kiss the better half of you goodbye far more often than one should ever have to
That heartache
These empty hands
Throbbing temples and tears that surprise you at midnight when you allow yourself one moment to miss him
To really miss him
To smell his clothes, to lay your head on his pillow, to crawl into the memory of him.
To relive your last moments together
They don't know what this is
And some days, neither do you.
What are we doing? And what do you say to someone who you haven't spoken to in weeks? Months?
There are no words for this type of longing
No string of sentences that make up for months of silence
No amount of time could hope to make up for all the moments missed
All the memories stored for tabled conversations, forgotten
They don't know what it is to feel this pain
How you used to hate public places and now, for some unexplainable reason, you find yourself drawn to them
Constantly searching for him
Any face could be his if you miss him hard enough
The feeling in your gut when you're driving and your muscle memory directs your right hand over to the passenger seat
Grasping for something that is not there
And what was it, love? His hand?
Your fingers fell through the air and landed on cheap polyester instead
The feeling pulls at your heart, is now our moment to miss him?
the tears ready at the flood gates, but no, love, now is not your moment.
Because there are things to be done and places to go. There are sights to be seen and people to be spoken to. There is sunshine to be felt, and rain too. There will be rain. Love, some days, there will be so ******* much rain.
They do not know this pain.
But they could not possibly imagine the flowers that bloom in your chest; the summer air that fills your lungs; the culmination of every last one of their best days all made into one; the feeling of knowing, of being absolutely certain that every last bit of this pain is worth it all.
Because, love... there are brighter days ahead.

We were all that we would ever be
A hopelessly long list that consisted of maybe's
And someday's
I loved you in ways that resembled sunshine on winter days and rays of light passing through foggy window panes
I had grown accustomed to faces painted with tears and lungs tainted with cigarettes
And the only known cure for things like insomnia and disconnect was found folded in between your arms
A place so warm and filled with thorns
that made my heart resemble something like a thunderstorm
With your voice shaking me with a swarm of unborn feelings and words I couldn't bring myself to speak
I loved you despite the fact that I was dying on the street
Screaming your name at the raining sky to make my voice seem complete

I can't sit here and write pretty poems
about losing you
because the truth is that there's no polite
way to write about this pain
about the complete lack of pride it takes
to try and pretend that this isn't happening
to lie here and pretend
that I can't feel you slipping through my fingers
sliding away from my heart and out
between my ribs
I can feel this pain in every part of my body.
this pain of losing you.
but I will lie here
and pretend
that it isn't even happening
at all.

You never answered my question*         2:51 AM

2:51 AM                           What is your question?

Are you happy?                                       2:53 AM

2:54 AM                                                          I am,

Good                                                     ­     2:55 AM

Your eyes. I think it started with your eyes. It was unexpected, like most things in this life are, but it was definite. That moment. The back of a warm car on a cold winter day. Your head resting sleepily in my lap and the tired January sun peeking through the fog of afternoon clouds, illuminating that small corner of our universe. My fingers ran through your hair like muscle memory as if I'd been doing that with you every day for years. You tilt your head up to look at me and that's when it was. That's when it happened. I've never fallen in love with someone's eyes before. Having met you makes me wonder if I've ever really fallen in love with anyone else at all. And I haven't written in months, because part of you still feels like a dream. A random phone call waking me up from a nap, an email when we haven't spoken in weeks, a nine hour car ride to be in your arms again. So many things separate us but none of these things matter in the grand scheme of me loving you relentlessly. I've said it before and I will say it again, again and again; it's you. Have you ever loved someone more than you know how to? I swear, it started with your eyes.

this is not a love letter.
I watched you breathe your last breath and stood there in silence as every last ounce of life left your body and I waited in the room as if still in silent hopes that your soul would condensate around me and fill my lungs with your voice and my hands with your heart and I can't ******* breathe because my brain doesn't know how to operate properly without your constant presence in my every day life.
this is not a love letter.
I have no idea what love is when you can't be in it with someone else. and as you left me I had half a mind to invite you to take my old notebooks and crumpled up papers and broken pencils and my love of poetry with you because now what the **** am I supposed to do?
you're gone.
you're gone you're gone you're gone and
oh my god I am alone.
I am alone, and this is not a love letter.
*This is not a love letter.
(I love you)

today
some part of me decided
that the lilac sky reminded
me of you
pale November blue
and a chill in the autumn air
the orange sun hides behind
the morning moon,
you wouldn't even know it was there
if you weren't looking for it
I think that's a little like how I fell for you
the first day I saw you,
you were like the moon I'd never bothered to pay attention to before
but one morning
you look up
its 7 am
and you know the moon isn't supposed to be there
but it is
and it's beautiful
it was a little like that
I looked up one day and I saw you standing there
I'd never noticed you before,
but once I saw you,
I found myself always looking;
always averting my gaze upwards
towards the morning sky
to see the beauty of the moon.

Falling in love with him was
as easy as collapsing into bed
at night and taking comfort in
all of your own familiar scents

And as routine as waking up
and expecting to see sunshine
peeking in through the cracks
of your blinds

Falling in love with him soon
evolved into finding solace in
his arms and serenity in his graces

And eventually you found yourself
subconsciously reaching for the
warmth of his skin and the
mess of his hair in your sleep

As you began expecting less
and less sunshine in the morning
because you took more comfort
in the knowledge that he would
always be at your side

Even if you awoke
before the sun

they say our sense of smell
is by far the most powerful
in revoking tucked away memories
and I'm not quite sure who they are
or who gave them the right
to unveil these monstrous moments
stored away in my head

but I remember
your bed smelled like cigarettes
you said you didn't smoke in the house

maybe that was true

but the last time you told me
you loved me
was on a piece of loose leaf paper
taped to my television set
three years ago
and I bet they were up there
placing bets on when I would drive you back
to the point of madness that
my mother had once put you in

three years later
have felt like a nicotine free eternity
of their own

but you're back

back planting cigarette butts
in ***** flower pots
filling your lungs with cancer and your
blood with toxins that I can only imagine
are named after me

and everything we used to be

I guess I don't know why coming here brings me peace. The obvious answer would be, it's the beach, what isn't peaceful about that? But it isn't the calming slosh of the shoreline or the gentle breeze through my hair or the warm sand between my toes. It isn't even my new tan I'm sporting from coming here for hours upon hours nearly every day.
It's the thought. The possibility. I look out over the waves onto the horizon of the endless sea of blue. And I think of you. Part of me finds it unbelievably frustrating that I have absolutely no idea where you are in this world, but when I'm here, I am free to imagine that you're here, too, just outside of my reach.
And it's okay to be lonely here. There are plenty of people here by themselves. Reading a book, taking a nap, or simply doing nothing. That's the thing; no one looks at you strangely when you show up to the beach in a military town toting your bookbag and your flip flops in hand. Everyone is missing someone here.
And it was here that I decided I wanted a sailboat. Someday. With you. Someday when we would be able to use it. Both of us. Whenever we wanted. No sea schedule or training or deployment stopping us from waking up one morning and deciding that today, we're sailing away from here for a little while.
But that day is many, many days away, and today, I'm simply sitting at the beach, alone.

I love the way your lips say my name and how something about your tongue tastes like sunshine on mine and your voice sounds like summer during the day and star dust at night and I aspire to make you acutely aware of how incredible it is to lose myself in your laughter and find myself in your veins I want to wake up each and every morning on the wrong side of the right bed with your sheets tangled around my ankles and your fingers intertwined with mine and I want to look at you through sun kissed bedroom air and tired eyes and tell you how ******* beautiful you are

We spent the summer between
old libraries and book stores,
coffee shops and rock concerts
We were rebellious
in a sense that no one else
ever bothered to understand
How freely we would plan
for Eventually
and Some Day
with our feet in the sand
of a shore on some secret beach
somewhere that didn't even exist
And I did my best the resist
the constant urge to kiss you
as you sat shot gun in my car
with all our windows rolled down
And the nights we spent in town
were where I first found that
when you laughed your eyes
told stories of nights spent crying
and I never wanted to buy more time
on a maxed out credit card
than I did right then
It was hard knowing that dying
was becoming less of a verb
and more of an adjective
And I'm so sorry that I couldn't
Bring myself to tell you
Because part of me wanted to
but a bigger part didn't want to let go
of the girl that time
would force me to outgrow

I miss the way you'd grind your teeth
in your sleep
driving me to the near brink of insanity
every night
as you crushed all your words into
a fine powder of white noise
and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness
of our black hole bedroom
that exists in our own small infinity
of the universe
I'd find myself staring at you
marveling at your stillness
wondering
where your mind
might have drifted off to
I'd press my body against yours
in a futile attempt to feel every inch of your skin
wanting so desperately to envelope myself in the warmth of your slumber
zipping our fingers together under the ocean of covers
anchoring your body to mine

you came and you went
just like that
you were here
and then you weren't
my calendar reminds me
that we spent 18 days together
but every bone in my body swears
it felt more like 18 hours

i remember seeing your face
across that enormous room
for the first time in months
and everything inside me
set itself on fire
there's really no words to explain
the way that feels
no way that makes sense to someone
who hasn't experienced it themselves

but let me try

it was a little like breathing
for the first time
in a very long time
waking up from a nightmare
and gasping for breath
the comforting realization
that it was only just a dream
it was kind of like that

it was a little like holding your breath
underwater
and finally coming up for fresh air
filling your lungs with sunshine and summer
and being happy
it's simple
it was kind of like that

you think you'll cry but you don't
there is no time for tears
you spent months crying them and
there's simply no place for them any longer
there is only room
for happiness

you'll wake up the next morning
if you ever even fall asleep
and he will startle you
because for months you slept alone
and this body feels unfamiliar and strange
but you love it
and it is home

you will try to find the right words
just as i am now
to tell people about it
how amazing it is
was
and you will fail
you will fail every time
but you try anyway

so yes,
it was a little like that
and a whole lot
like nothing
i have ever experienced
before.

I often times forget that this life
is not someone else's dream
And I constantly find myself
tripping over things and failing to realize that
I did this to myself
I am not who they all aspired me to be
I was never the flower girl tip toeing down the carpeted aisle with a bouquet of red roses in her hands
Rather I grew up the quiet girl sitting alone
in the back corner of the church
Scribbling on her wrists with ink
and wondering how this life ever even came to be

When you were mine, I always wrote about this day and how it would inevitably come for us. I wrote about losing you before it even happened as if I was a professional at living with only half of a heart, walking around with infinitely empty hands and an ache in my chest that never seems to leave. I wrote about how you would leave and I would be devastated, but no string of words could have ever prepared me for this catastrophic mess you've made of everything. I would write about the day you would find someone else, as if writing it down could eliminate the possibility of it ever actually happening. I'm not sure which world that logic even begins to make sense in. I would write about seeing you with her - the girl who undeniably serves as my replacement; although she is only a shell of me - never bothers to pick up a pencil to draw or write and as hard as I try I can't seem to find where her beauty even begins to compare to mine, but I guess that doesn't matter. Your eyes never looked at me the same way again. I would write about her, the girl I was so sure could never really exist, and how I would smile because even though it wasn't with me anymore, you would be happy. But honestly, your so called happiness makes me ******* sick. I want to write about how I looked at you and saw the rest of my life, how despite every single one of our irreconcilable differences and in spite of all your flaws - which were plentiful - I loved you to a fault. You leaving split me in two like a tectonic plate shifting away from its other half on the face of the earth. And despite either of our best efforts, being separated is only proof of the undeniable fact that at one point, we were together.

I miss you
And I'm sorry that I don't have some
beautiful and mysteriously depressing way of stringing those words together to make them sound like more than what they are
But I'm so drained without you that
I can barely manage to make
myself function properly
There was a particularly spectacular
sunset tonight and I wonder if you saw it
at the same time I did

I wonder if you thought of me
As I thought of you

Very quickly, almost all at once
i found myself falling in love
with everything about you

With the way your eyes lit up
when you laughed and how
your dimples showed when you smiled
I fell in love with the way
your lips moved as my name
eased it's way out of your mouth
and stuck onto the skin of my neck

How your kisses felt like
butterflies landing on my cheeks
and every tear drop was a waterfall
that planted reason in my stomach
as to why I would always need you

I noticed, despite your subtly,
the way your eyes fell to the floor
every time I told you your laugh
was my favorite sound, and
your eyes were my favorite color

But everyday I continued to fall
more in love with you and
all these little things
Even if you could never see
yourself the way I did,
I knew that you would always
be enough for me

Even if I was never enough for you

7:22
and I'm thinking of you
and all the things I would do
to
forget

I fell in love with the way he flicked
a cigarette and tasted death between his lips at midnight
And took an immense amount of comfort in the fact that his tongue tasted like black coffee and vanilla
and when he smiled I felt like maybe
I wasn't as lost as I believed to be
And every ounce of me despised smoking and pumping the only lungs you would ever get full of nothing but negative years and future tears that would streak the cheeks of everyone you never knew loved you
but ****, there was something so beautifully intoxicating about the way
you cursed gods name
and gently gripped another cigarette between your finger tips
And your eyes were tired but they screamed of stories left untold
like how you died before you were ever even born
and I think that's when I first knew that your heart would never beat quite right,
it would always be half way torn.

what you don't know
is that amongst the midnight hours of slumber
my fingers still subconsciously reach
for your skin
and I want to dive down under
twelve blankets and a comforter
with you
and do some 2 a.m soul searching
what you don't know
is that your name still manages to fall out of my mouth every single morning when the six o'clock sunshine streaks my face
its almost as warm as your touch was
and when people ask my how I've been I feel like the biggest compulsive liar on the planet as I more or less continuously state that I'm okay
I'm not okay
its getting harder every day to put the pieces of your face back together in my head
I'm not okay
and your voice sounds a little different each time I try to replay it in my mind
its been years since I've heard you say my name
I'm not okay
I miss you every day
but you probably don't miss me at all
and no, I am not okay

maybe it was when I saw my room for the first time in six months
bare walls
no bed
empty closet
almost as if
I had never slept there at all

or when I never got the invite
to Thanksgiving
because you already knew
that I wouldn't bother to show up
when I realized

that your life
her life
their lives

had all gone on without me
from the outside looking in
your glass castle had never known
I ever existed
I didn't anymore
my room was not my room
the tomb I spent my nights in
does not even begin
to remember me

luckily
I'm half way okay with this

because as much as I would love
to write about how
when push came to shove
I know
that I did this

to myself

And I indulge in the thought
as to know how it would feel to be
meticulously and irrevocably in love with you,
my dear

So I yet again find myself
drifting far away
    from here

Evaporating into stardust all throughout the      
                      atmosphere

I used to hate the word soon
I despised it
In the beginning it brought me comfort
It sounded promising
Calming enough to still even the most destructive of wars I waged against myself
Soon
I wish I'd counted the number of times you spoke this word to me
The first word that entered your mind when you had no idea what to say
When you were confronted with questions that weighed more than the burden of guilt that lied on your shoulders
Broad enough to carry the world
Yet you crumbled into a puddle of uncertainty at the inflection of my voice
That warranted immediate answer
Questions that mattered
Questions that would define things with a higher magnitude than you wished existed
Questions that would determine the prolongation of my heartbreak
Soon
At first it satiated me
Lifted my heart a little higher
And warmed the blood in my veins
With tingling fingers
I threaded my hand into yours
"Okay" I would say
And lay a kiss upon your cheek
Soon
The days turned to weeks
And when the weeks turned to months
I began to grow angry
Impatient
"Soon" you would say,
And my questions changed to those charged with rage and fury
"What the **** does that mean?"
Soon
There were no answers
Futile attempts made to cure this breaking heart
You knew it all along and you didn't care,
Not in the beginning, not now, not once
I was nothing more to you
Than an empty promise
A warm bed to crawl into when you
Grew tired of your own icicle sheets
Careful hands on a body that refused to accept that this was over
Hands that would have spent a lifetime molding us back together
The anger turned to sadness of course,
It always does
Inconsolable
My throat burned at the taste of that word
Soon
I never let anyone use that word
As a form of measurement again
I became precise in my actions
And clear with my intentions
And I accepted nothing less from anyone else who dared enter my life
The word was not spoken,
It was not thought of,
Nor written
I demanded certainty from everyone around me
And there were no pardons granted, no excuses accepted, no exceptions great enough worthy of bending the rules
And these were the rules after all
For years, this was how I lived my life
Until I met you
You, who made time stand still
You, who made my heart forget what we went through
The tears we endured, the innocence we lost, the walls we built along the way
You, who held wary hands until they did not shake
Who spent night after night ensuring that we went to bed feeling safe, feeling loved, feeling valued
Who transformed feeling vulnerable into beautiful
You, who strengthened the walls of my castle
You, who built the mote
Hung the drawbridge
And walked into my kingdom with open arms
Always standing at the ready for battle
And after years of hardening,
After heartbreak and skepticism
And everything in between
The first time you spoke the word
Soon
To me
My fists did not clench,
My jaw did not lock,
My memory did not revert back to him
And his lack of everything a man should be
But instead my eyes grew lighter,
My heart lifted higher,
And everything in me agreed that you are exactly who we have been looking for
Soon
Now
This word serves as a token of good faith
A promise that eventually, we will be where we want to be
Each time you say it I close my eyes and see the day you come back home to me
Each time I know that you will
Smiling with the knowledge that we've made it once again
Carrying the weight of that word in our hands
Until we are face to face once more
Locking our fingers, threading the memories, forgetting how heavy that goodbye felt all those months ago
Knowing now that all that matters
Is the fact that soon finally came
And today is the best day of our lives
So for now we will store this word away
This piece of us that comes into play all too often
For now you are here with me
And we have everything we will ever need

Soon

(thank you
from my heart & me)