How can it be so wrong to love you?
When being loved by you is possibly the best feeling in the world
How can they tell me that my love for you is just a phase,
A mistake that they can pray away
When you and I are the only ones who truly know just how strong our love for each other is

At night I lie awake in bed
Tears streaking my cheeks
Like raindrops streaming down the stained glass windows of the church
As I pray for God to paint us into something holy

And when I finally fall asleep
I dream of your touch
Of your arms wrapped around me
I dream of how your lips would feel against my cold skin as you whisper sweet nothings to me  
Oh how lovely your skin would look in the moonlight
And to just be able to listen to you ramble on about anything and everything
Your biggest regrets, your proudest moments, your darkest secrets and in return I tell you my own
And we won’t even care because it will just be the stars listening in, collecting our secrets like tithing
Your voice is by far my favorite melody
Perhaps even more beautiful than the church hymns that I grew up singing
So my love, please do not wake me
For in my dreams is the only time that I can truly be with you the way that I long to be.

I want this number etched onto my skin
as a permanent reminder of what once was
to remind me of both the pain and the beauty
the way ‘I love you’s fell from your lips so reassuringly when I needed it the most,
the future that we talked about sharing together so often that I was certain it would happen
the beauty that was us
as well as a reminder of the pain
of all of the broken sobs that shook my entire body
of all of the sleepless nights
of having to accept the fact that I’m no longer the one you long to be with
I want something to remind me of all of the promises made on this day
the ones that were never kept
as well as the ones that I still hold close to my heart
I want a tattoo to remind me of this day
the day that I accepted who I was
the day that I realized loving you was worth giving up everything I once believed to be true
I want this number etched onto my skin to remember the pain and the beauty
but not as a scar,
never a scar
I want it as a beautiful reminder
because you my love, are something never to be forgotten
I will not allow myself to act as if our love never happened
I will not treat it as a mistake
and when someone asks about the ‘XV’ carved onto my skin,
I will explain the meaning of it to the best of my abilities
and though they may adequately understand my words
they will never understand the importance of it
I want ‘XV’ etched onto my skin as a reminder
a reminder of a once great love.