I miss you when it’s late at night and I’m tired or sleepy, and I want someone to cuddle, i want your arms wrapped around me and to crawl into bed and have your scent wrap around me and feel your warmth. I want to hug you to my chest and ask you to stay, don’t go. Stay.
I miss you whenever I see love and adoration. I miss you when I see their PDA or their laughter and I think of your smile and how even if I cause it, I can’t see it, because you’re there and I’m here. I see them smiling and laughing and holding each other and I’m sad, I’m jealous and sad and I wish you were here.
I wish that was us.
I miss you when I’m frustrated. When I’m angry and lost and near tears, when I hug my stuffed animal to my chest and wish it was you and that i could bury my face in your chest or neck and exist on a plane that is only us. Exist on a plane where when I open my arms you come, when you hold out your hand I can grab it.
I miss you when its raining, and I wish that we could watch it together. Cozy up and watch a movie, listen to the sky weep.
I miss you when I’m relaxing, when I’m sitting in my loud as hell chair and watching a show, and I want to tell you everything, complain about the protagonist and her obliviousness, rant about the misogynistic boss. I want to tell you my little thrills, lean over your shoulder and peek at your game or video, poke you with my cold toes, fall asleep on the couch to the sound of your little outrages and victories.
I miss you when I stare out at the night sky, and imagine a future where I can turn over in bed and see you there, asleep, and know that when I wake up, you won’t be gone, and this isn’t a dream.
I miss you when it’s cold outside, when I can see my breath, and I’m shivering, and you’re not here to tell me I should’ve dressed warmer, you're not here to pull the hat off your head and put it on mine, not here so I can protest and try to give it back, chase you down the sidewalk.
I miss you when I see a funny animal or a cool building or a small flower, and I have no one to turn to and say, look!, no one to share my small thrill. Maybe someday I can tell someone, I can tell a friend, but for now, I tell myself, and smile to only myself.
It hurts when you’re happy without me, it hurts when they get to see you and I don’t.
It would hurt so much more if you were struggling, if you were lonely like I.
I know you miss me. I know inside and I see outside that you miss me. My own insecurities only tell me lies, and sometimes they can be mean, and I have to stop and think how hurt I would feel if you thought that kind of thought of me. That is the evil of insecurities.

When I miss you, sometimes it’s fleeting. Sometimes I wish you were here, acknowledge you’re not, and continue my day. Sometimes I tell you I miss you. You always say it back. Sometimes I think and think on what could have been if I was closer to home, and I have some regrets, I do.
But I don’t think I want to be anywhere but here, if I had to choose.

They say long distance is hard. I think it is, and it isn’t.
It’s hard if you stop communicating, if you stop sharing little things.
It’s hard if you stop thinking of each other, exist only in your visible reality.
These are things neither of us do.

But it’s hard when I miss you, when I’m *****, when I long to touch you or listen to you laugh.
It’s hard when I feel the word clingy, when I want to be wanted, when I wish you would miss me and miss me, so that we feel the same. But I don’t want you to hurt, because when you hurt it hurts me. Is that selfish self interest? Perhaps. But it hurts to see or hear you hurt. It hurts to know you’re hurting, and I want to fix it, I want to solve. But I am here, and you are there, and it is your hurt to bear. I can’t take it away or presume to know how to fix it, if it can even be ‘fixed’.

I miss you. That’s really what I came here to say. I miss you.
I hope you miss me too.

If I close my eyes
You exist.

I see you in the darkness,
Bursts of light and music and colors,
Oh wondrous reds and greens and yellows, stardust and fireworks raining on my face and outstretched arms.

Coat me, cling to me.
Love me from the outside in, until nothing exists for me but you, bright and soft and warm and gentle and-

Behind my closed eyelids.

You told me you loved me but I broke anyway
You told me you loved me but the middle fell out and I splintered on the rocks below
You told me you loved me but it's so hard to believe when you say nothing and I have nothing to trust but the voices in my head telling me that you're disappointed, that I annoy you, that you miss her, that I am not what you want.
How do I trust you when I am always ******* up. How do I trust you when I always push you away, or you push yourself off the cliff and don't look back as you fall fall, fall down and leave me behind, alone and cold and empty as always. Empty but full of empty thoughts, empty drawers of you and you and more and you, empty as you fall
How do I trust you when I can't trust myself to make you love me?
How do I trust you when I can't tell if you love me or my warmth, my voice or the comfort my words used to bring, my laugh or its validation, my body or the space it takes up next to you. Sometimes when the sky falls and your eyes turn from brown to black and I wish I could see your face and hear your rhythmic breathing, I miss your body and your scent and your voice, and I remember that you don't miss me.

You’re a soft color, almost a sound or a smell, instead
When you smile, something breaks in my chest
A rib, I think. A scapula, a clavicle, perhaps my manubrium.
Tiny earthquakes, in my veins and tendons,
When you press your skin to mine.
Hold my hand, poke my side, lay a wrist on my forehead-
It’s an earthquake with an epicenter,
Expanding waves of zipping electrons and firing nerves
Somewhere between fiery ant invasion and electrocution-
That is your touch. Zaps and sparks that hurt,
Nips and bites that sting long after sustained
The worst part is when you realize, when you give me that
Slow, half-apologetic, half-self-deprecating, half-pleased lip twitch-
And then you smile, and you eyes crinkle and sparkle and I
Forget why I never told you that I love you.

The world is a great whirling place.
The wind is always moving,
Jets streams, high and low pressure,
Hurricanes and tornadoes and sweet-smelling,
Gentle afternoon breezes accompanied by sweet iced tea and
A smooth, southern belle accent.

It’s all a reaction, a string of effects that affect another
Effect.
You sneeze, you end world hunger.
You cough, you **** a man in France with a
.22 that you stole from your mom.

The Butterfly Effect
An interesting movie, that one
Though the only scene I’ve ever seen
Was Ashton Kutcher waking up and somehow having
Spent the night with his boyhood crush as an adult
In her college dorm.
(Did I imagine that?
Who knows.)

Regardless: I’m curious
What each of my heartbeats does to the economy of Taiwan.
What the smell of my shampoo does to the eruption of a volcano in Hawaii.
What the cut of my dress does to the graying hair on an old man living
In a flat in central London.
Excuse me, I meant greying.

It’s also funny: what does one random smile from me
Do to a stranger for the rest of the day?
What does my stumble up the stairs
Do to a Spanish teacher as they come back from their lunch break?

If we’re all connected, then shouldn’t everything we do determine something else?
And isn’t everything we do determined by something else?
So was everything determined by one singular action at the very beginning?
Can there be an origin action without an action to originate that, and one to originate that, and-
Well, I’ve heard that’s God: he’s the hand that tipped the first domino,
The only thing in existence that defies all science and reason;
Whether that’s true or not is for a different day
With a different girl with a decent amount of sleep.

He thought a bone shattered
A rib, perhaps
Something in his chest, at least.
It shattered, or just cleaved right down the middle.

She was abrupt, rude, almost
Straight and to the point.
If her words were a symphony,
She’d be staccato, short and sharp and
Leaving you wondering if there was a point to that repetitive noise.

He was a chorale, smooth and savory and lagato
A long soothing soak in the tub
A gentle wash of waves over the sand.
His words were rounded stones
His tongue felt-lined and soft.
When he spoke, his notes serenaded you
And you found yourself leaning forward to catch each
Harmonious line and shifting melody.

Together, she clanked, cursed
Destroyed anything pleasant around.
She crushed him, overpowered him
Distasteful dissonance and an F sharp where the
Key signature clearly called for F natural.

Either way, she broke him with one clipped,
Short confession
As sentimental as her usual tune
Despite its overarching message.
She loved him?
Inconceivable.
Things like her didn’t love
They clanked along, out of tune,
Tone deaf, a child banging on a piano
Violently punching and spasming over the keys.

She broke him, in half
A crack down the middle that slowly scritched and scratched its way
Until he was only connected by lungs and a heart in the very middle.

Love?
No.
She did not love him.
She could never love him.

Momentless
If the blur of colors never stops how do I tell where the rainbow ends and the rain begins
If you pull hard enough maybe the stuffing will come out, if you tear strong enough maybe I will split open and pour out onto the pavement
Stretching, always stretching
Time is a melted clock, puddles puddles on the floor at your mangled feet, I broke them, I crushed them in my haste to leave
You say forever is false and that the ending will one day come
But how can I trust you to be present-ever when you plan for death
When you tell me the apocalypse is near and you are leaving without me, no, that I will leave you to love another, leave you and never return
How do I trust the middle when you denied the beginning
How do I trust the middle when you swim to the cliff, see the depth of the water, and tell me we'll drown.