You can sleep in my bed tonight.
I'll light candles and we can talk about why all of the strangers stare at us.
They think we look funny
standing by ourselves
but so do they
because they board buses that haven't moved in who knows how many years.
We can laugh at them if they do
and we can follow them
if you want to
and even if the sun comes up before we've figured out where we're going,
I promise I'll kiss you goodnight when we have.
(b.r.o.)

It's torturous. It's pain.
It's the best and worst thing you've ever felt at the same time. Sometimes they separate and it's one or the other. It stings. Your callouses fall from your fingers the way I imagine hunted birds do from trees. It's being vulnerable and letting that other person know. Telling them they could destroy you if they chose to. Trusting that they won't. It's pure, unadulterated trust. It's being restless without them. It's cramming your hands in your pockets when they're gone because you don't know what to do without them anymore. Your extremities are foreign and new when without theirs. They no longer belong to you or to anything they do.
Each movement scatters the shrapnel of their words as you implode.
It's sacrifice. It's worth it. It's waking up at 2:30am reaching for them in your bed, whether they're there or not. It's sleeping more soundly with them than when you're alone. It's laughter. It's wanting to kiss the deepest crevices of their mind and blow the dust from the places you've only seen second hand. The black parts. The parts that haven't been without a shadow for days. It's wanting to memorize the feeling of their fingertips against your skin; to trace their fingerprints onto your lips in hopes that when speaking their name it will be yours again.
It's beautiful. It's hideous.
It rears its ugly head and charges at you, and you trust it not to hurt when you're sent flying backward. It's finding them in everything. It's having fun when you're lost in the rain and having the worst day. It's watching them reading, and feeling them take hold of you while only using their hands to turn a page. It's wanting to hold them so tightly to set all of their broken bones and maybe a few will fuse to yours. You crave nothing more than to be their surgeon. Their vaccination. The one to prevent what's to come and fix what is already done. It's knowing you would give anything for one more day of it. Just one more anything.

Love is being scared shitless and still not pulling the cord, because you trust them to catch you when your parachute fails to open.
If you fail to open, your parachute will follow suit.
I promise you.
(b.r.o.)

Fall in love with an artist
Allow yourself to become their medium
Because I can feel the winter through the humidity of summer

It falls all around me
(b.r.o.)

I do not need you
or your gross misunderstanding
of what it means to love
and be loved
because I have sat here before
and with a stranger
peering over my shoulder
I will describe in detail
my sheer adoration
for the consistency of the moon
and the tides loyal lapping
at my feet
and I will be able to compare
you
to neither
(b.r.o.)

That's what I feel like.

You stare me right in the eye
and instead of eluding you,
I freeze
so fast it sends a shiver
from my shoulders
to the base of my spine.

Although it feels wrong,
what could be right?

I just can't ******* move
for fear of losing you
if I do.
(b.r.o.)

Most conversations I have
are on a bench
at the train station nearest where I live
about the birds return
or you

and we all just want to go home
but I hear the train
and I'm not sure
if I should move

so I wait for the next one
and soon a stranger sits beside me
whose clothes smell of mildew
then the birds begin to sing again
and I think they know
they have always reminded me
of you
(b.r.o.)

There is a you-shaped void in my stomach that I regularly fill with alcohol
and the last time I checked,
my veins still curled
in your handwriting.
(b.r.o.)