You've always been the one for me. I said before that we have many soulmates, but if there were only one love for all our lives I know it's you in every one of them.

I know I'd choose you every time. I'd know you from one glance, one laugh, one touch; I'll always recognize this yearning. As it follows me through the years like the ghosts of all our past lives whispering to me, "Stop wasting so much time." It's an unmistakable weight.

But it's so hard to reach out and take what you want when you're content with just the crumbs of presence and you're too afraid to gamble away today for the uncertainty of more. Why gamble away today for tomorrow when that could be the day I lose it all?

I don't have the luxury of gossiping with ghosts. Not when I only live this life once and I can't have it without you. As a friend, a spectator or a lover— so long as I see you happy I am content. Even if I yearn for more, nothing compares to the safety of certainty you'll be there, because I love you more than I'm willing to lose you.

I told my sister our story and she started to cry.
"How can you both be so stupid?"
She said it was too sad for two people
To love each other so much, yet be so dense.
And I just laughed, because what could I say?
She was right.

But what am I to do?
Our love was once young and dumb.
We met as prepubescent fools,
And now we're just grown up jesters.

I may mistake many things,
But what I do know is:
My name never sounds more right
Than when you're the one calling it.
My heart never races more
Than when you're the one teasing it.
And I never anticipate a message more
Than when you're the one sending it.

So perhaps we are stupid,
Maybe we're exactly where we started.
Call us young and dumb,
But even after all these years—
it’s the only way I know how to love you.

Time ticks by
One moment it's
December snow
Then suddenly;
April showers

Then the May flowers came
Those secret devourers
September was a sigh,
Relief from August terrors

October bloomed regrets
November numbed them
But regret doesn't leave
It turns into something vast

And then we're left in June
With nowhere to run
Nowhere to hide
Left with mistakes
That eat us up inside

When you bought me flowers
every petal felt like a debt,
a heavy weight in a fragile vase.

Sunflowers, because they were yellow
I said they were my favorite like the color—
perhaps just to comply, to appease.

But truly, I like roses
in all their simplicity,
no hidden promises.

Will a bouquet ever feel the same
or are all flowers
just silent obligations?

I shy from kindness offered too quickly
wondering what it's meant to buy.

It was never a necklace that I wore—
but a bruise in cursive, spelled out by teeth,
a coerced surrender, etched in violet.

Often, flowers bend toward the sun—
not from longing,
but because they have no choice.

And like a flower’s petal,
each refusal fell—
until none were left to fall.

Not all blooming is voluntary you see,
some unfurl only to escape the dark.

Lightning is a destructive force
It is not a curse to never see
It's fury strike the same spot twice
We should take it as a blessing

In tarot, the tower card has lightning
It symbolizes truth, necessary lessons
The upheaval and destruction that follow
There is a beauty in it's violence

In it's crashing fury, we grow
It's a shock back into reality
When we fall too hard, sink too deep
A slap that wakes us from the siren lures

You called on Valentine’s Day,
out for dinner with friends.
Their confused laughter in the background,
a soft ambiant noise of the world around you.

You said, Let’s pretend, just for fun,
that you’re here, sitting right across from me.
So I smiled, and I closed my eyes,
letting your words paint the moment.

I imagined the clink of glasses,
the soft rustling of menus,
I let myself be transported there,
as if this was a reality we could share.

And for a while, I let myself believe
that this was what it could feel like,
if we ever crossed the line between pretend and real,
between the almost and the never.

But as always, the laughter faded and the call ended,
I was left with the ache of what could never be.
Just another moment of ours,
in a world of make-believe.

And so, I sat in the silence
after we hung up, I felt trapped there
still only in the realm of "what if"
where love always lives just out of reach.