Love you.
Love you?
The **** is love anyway?
I care about you.
My fear for you makes me cry sometimes,
when you                   can’t see.
You have to be here.
You have to be here.
I don’t need anything from you but that you’re here, walking this earth.
I want you, all of you, every flawed thing that makes you who you are.
I want you in my arms where I can keep you safe, protect you from the world that makes you unable to breathe.
“I love you.”
The words sound true,
Even if I don’t know what they mean.
Do they form an anchor, holding you to this plane?
Then they might actually mean
Something.

You are quiet.
Not when we are outside, then that becomes mine.
But when you belong to me.
All I can hear is the sound of your breathing, and of my lips on your skin, the press of our clothing in the front seat of my car,
Knees on either side of your waist
Knees on either side of your waist.
Then I tease noise from you,
With less than others have asked,
Or taken,
And my spine is gripped by electric hands, nerves lighting up that are threaded beneath my skin.
Because I teased noise from you
And I want to hear you make it again.

Polar opposites, polar opposites, polar opposites.
Because you wouldn’t date someone like you.
In your self-loathing, what feels like an indirect compliment, the first I can remember you giving me in 134 days.
And you admitted we were dating.
Which nearly made me blush.

Polar opposites, polar opposites, polar opposites.
The words ricochet around in my head, repeating as I try to parse out their meaning.
Yes, different, our shared thread the secret sign language of the unhappy.
But there are other things for me.
Aren’t there for you?
I love your dumb differences, what you are.
And me? Is what I am not enough when it’s so contrary?
Should we die then?
Accept defeat as inevitable when we are impossible?
Do we attract, volatile and painful and strong while we last?
I have always known this would end badly for me.
You are worth the risk, worth the pain.
I knew this too, instantly.
Didn’t you?

I have moved in on your front lawn and called it home.

You let me stay, climb in my tent, and spend nights in my arms, the world outside muted by the glow of where our skin touches.

I don’t need anything from you, capable of standing on my own two feet, carving out my own curve of the world, but I want you, hope for you, long for you, think of you.

You need someone to stand, balanced and still, a beam holding up your house. But me, the individual?

Your want seems so much less than mine, but then Anhedonia holds you too close. You don’t want anything, not even yourself.

If I could pry her fingers loose, if I could fight your war, but I’m incapable, can only stand outside offering what I am to you.

My feet bleed from walking barefoot down your road, and I know that even if you decide to love me, so much worse is yet to come. But I can’t turn away, when you feel just like—