When you look at me
I'm not sure I understand what your eyes are trying to tell me.
But
Please don't stop looking at me
because I'm afraid I'll stop trying to understand.

When you stand so close to me
my knees turn to water.
But
Please come a little closer,
the distance between us
makes them weak anyway.

When you speak
the butterflies in my stomach flutter wildly and seek for an escape
But
Please don't stop speaking,
when you are silent
they grow stiff and turn grey.

Please
gaze at me a little longer,
stand a little closer,
& utter words of poetry
For my heart only beats and pumps without those things.
But
with them
It starts and it stops.
Beats and thuds and flutters.
Smiles and laughs and cries.

Breathes.

Your name burns
at the base of my stomach,
it tastes like flames
when I say it
but I continue to swallow,
big gulps
that drown out the ringing in my ears

I wonder what it would have felt like
to kiss your lips,
taste the fire in your heart
blood red lust
like innocence dressed in her mother’s lipstick
to trace the outline of your freckles
on soft uncharted skin,
I wonder what it would have felt like
to be your cartographer
to sail the high seas in your iris
and find sand in between my toes
after every visit

I keep imagining the things I would say
if we had met at a different time
I could have started by throwing matches
into your puddles,
and noticing how you smile like sunlight
glinting of the ocean

you are across the world
exploring,
mapping your own skin
and sailing with a crew called options,
they beckon your name
and make you forget that our hands ever brushed,
that we ever exchanged smiles
like two preschoolers
making engagement rings out of fruit loops,
you’re standing tall and brave
shrouded in the peace of letting go
while, I,
wait at the port
for you to return
knowing at the base of my stomach
that you will pass me by on your way home.
“land, **!” means refusing to
acknowledge my tedious “hello”
you will step on my apologies
like the creaky old boards of a ship,
and I will become the tide
lapping at your bare feet

i bet even after all this time
that if my chest were to
ache with emptiness enough
like it used to i could go to your house
and find the outline of our bodies
on your dark blue bed sheets
i have spent the last year
both trying to run from you
and find you at the same time
but i left everything i knew
about falling in love
on that mattress and
it's still settling there
like dust and
all i can do is write about you
until it comes back to me,
or by some kind of miracle,
you decide to.

Tonight I realized that
you weren't the one
who wrecked me,
ruined me,
or destroyed me.

It was me.

Because only I
have the power to
do that to myself.

                                        I destroyed myself
                                        by loving you.