I haven’t caught feelings in 4 years and it’s just as terrifying as I remember it.

You drive me ******* crazy. I can’t sleep, I can’t work, I can’t focus.

But **** I don’t want to be without you. I don’t ever want to leave you.

You don’t think you’re pretty and I don’t know you any other way. You’re fantastically funny and caring. You care about me, you listen to all my crazy banter.

How did you find me? How can you call me yours so easily?

I don’t deserve that.

I’m drowning in Frank Sinatra songs and sugary coffee, I am on cloud 9 with a stomach full of knots.

I have all the confidence in the world and none at all.

I’ll write all my best music for you.

Being lovestruck is as much about being struck as it is about being in love with you.

I’m scared to be crazy about you.
I think I’m more scared of you being into the train wreck I am.

But **** it you’ve got me.
They say love hurts, but I don’t really mind right now.

It almost kills me that I gotta keep you a secret. Crushes are weird like that.

I’m stuck looking at you, not knowing what to do, but incredibly happy to be where you are.

You make me better.
Stay with me a bit longer.

I love you.

And saying that terrifies me.

But I’m willing to risk being scared for awhile.

I am so neck deep in this, I might pass out.

I love you so much, it might **** me.

I feel crazy. This might be crazy.

But you say you love me anyway.

And that’s good enough for me.

6 months you say.

That’s how long you’ll be away. You leave today actually, maybe in the next 6 or 7 hours. You’ll be saying goodbye to your family and your home and I will be here.

I haven’t seen you since last Sunday’s church service and I think I won’t see you until these months are over.

To tell you the truth Baer, I’m scared of being by myself for that long. Most days you’re the sister I met too late, and I do and don’t wish we met sooner, but as for right now that’s not a big deal.

So I’ll count the hours in 6 months. 4380 of them to be exact.

I’ll get through how I can, if I can.

You remember what you said to me before I left the church that morning?

“Call me, text me, I’ll make time for you.”

It still seems funny that you’ll make time for me like I’m incredibly important or something.

I still haven’t even texted you. Part of me believes you’re too busy for me to barge in.

But I will wait out these hours. That’s something I can do.

Before you go...

I just thought you should know... you know..

I love you always. Come home safe.

Some days, I'll just sit in my room and listen to one song on repeat.

I'll slowly make my way to my poetry, and find myself feeling more empty than poetry needs me to be.

Poetry is the letter someone spilt water on but you can still read whatever was written on it because for whatever reason the world decided to be nice for a minute.

My sister is nice too. I think you can say I've only really known her for 7 or 8 years. We were too far apart in age for me to even care she existed for the beginning of my life. And just as I get comfortable with her being here, being home...

She moves to another country.

I guess one way or another, your heroes do fly away.

My best friend is a girl named Baer. Although, I cannot tell you if I'm her best friend, she is mine.
I always seem to latch on to people who seemingly don't show a lot about how they think of me.

Maybe I just don't look hard enough, but isn't that what all self-deprecating people do? Avoid mirrors and self-image until they come to scourge it? Punching out mirrors either cuts you up or picks apart your reflection, and hey, whatever.....

It's just you.

Baer's sister is a whole other story, funny and open, far away from time to time, but wanting a hug when the time comes.

I've always been the type of person to idolize others who treat me well. Perhaps it's because I think so much of them compared to myself. But it's okay.

I would do anything for them.

I'm so full of everything for the people who are everything to me.

And for myself... I'm no hero.
Capes just aren't my style.

I will love you as much as you need.

Which is always more than you want.

Over the past year, I’ve convinced myself that I am some kind of villain, because I don’t exactly hold the redeeming qualities of a hero or protagonist.

I have no idea how to combat this thought, so I decided I’ll just confess my non-redeeming qualities until the sun sets on my lifetime.

I change the subject a lot, I can never stay focused, and I never stay in one spot, I’m always trying to run somewhere, while trying to get away from something else.

I’m not really a good person, but I'll go my entire life believing that something is incredibly wrong with me. No one is good all the time, and no one is really innocent either. A lot of what I say doesn’t really make any sense to anyone but me, and I’ve come to accept that when I realized that I am pretty crazy and a lot of other people would rather be crazy pretty.

I’m simple, I don’t want much, and I gain very little, so like an actual villain, my desires a pushed away until I need to make someone hurt like I do.

I have very little patience for anyone but myself. Sometimes I wish my grandfather would just die already just so I can write poetry about it, and part of that makes me selfish, and part of that makes me merciful because not all deaths will result in me making art but that’s how it is.

You have to admit, that whether or not you like Jesus, he was probably the best example of the designated driver. He made water into wine just so his buddies could drink it. You might not like him, but you have to admit he knew how to party.

Every time I drive my brother home from school, I wonder what would happen if I died, does my car just drive without me? And then I realize that dying is probably the most gripping experience I will ever have and it is always going to come for me.

There are people in this school who do not know me, and yet I want to tell them they have the world in their grasp long before I came to tell them. I can prophesize what it will be like to die, but not to live like dying can’t touch you.

I cover up my blunt attitude with comedy just because I can and it’s been working for 18 years. I’m a self-manipulator who somehow just gives away the best parts of myself just so people will listen to me.

I’m not good, but I’m trying, and maybe that’s all death will ask of me. I don’t know what a good life is like, but I know that good people are in it. I don’t actually know tomorrow is coming, but I want to be in it.

I don’t hope that I will someday wake up at 80 years old and realize my life is over. Villains don’t live that long anyway. Villains get to watch everything good happen to someone else they hate, but I have no energy to hate so I just watch.

This isn’t a confession of my sins or my faults, it’s a confession of character and identity I thought I figured out years ago.

Religion might be my last “Hail Mary” before leaving and as much as people want to joke about hell, I’d rather just be at a campfire for the rest of my death reciting stories of my life over an endless night sky.

The villain usually dies first, but the happily ever after is an ending we all forget about. When everything is gone, I can only hope my stories are told forever, and when I’m gone I will finally be able to see… everything.

I'm afraid I'll write this all too fast because of how eager and nervous I am in this moment.

Because you are a million miles away it seems, but all I have to do is say your name and suddenly you are...here.

I never knew how much I needed you until I spent months hearing from you, but never hearing you talk to me face to face.

But my dear, I long for the nights where I will receive an out-of-context text from you at 2 am only because of the timezone difference.

My hands sweating for no real reason.

I guess I really am trying to tell you I love you.

But I'm always to cutesy about it.

Always saying "love ya!" in a text, but I want to say it as though it means so much that the universe will get my words straight to you.

I've never loved anyone more than I love music or God, but I want to come close to that sometime soon.

I don't need a single day to go by without you knowing that you are so beautiful.

And people love it so much they almost hate it.

It is that genuine.

I'm sorry I can't always think of you and remember that I am also a living, breathing person.

I forget myself far too often in the presence of so many good people.

Or I guess...

People who are too good to have me in their life sometimes.

You're probably asleep right now.
Now who's up at 2am?

Ahaa....

I'll just be here.


I love you too much to wake you up.

So just sleep a while.

I'll see you soon.

Or at least I hope so.

Oh!

I almost forgot to say this...

In case you forgot.

I love you.

1.  I want to be able to write a poem on a brick. And then huck that brick through my enemy's window and drop to the floor laughing because the brick was not only a physical metaphor, but it was also a poem that literally broke windows.

2. What if I wrote a poem on a leaf? Watching photosynthesis weave its way around ink and make sun its life source poetry. Word on nature, and art in word.

3. Oh, how about a haiku on a pillow? Like a short bedtime story for those up at 4am and down at 5pm, you need just a few more words to hug your dreams tight.

4. I'd really want to write a poem on a steak... And then put that steak on a grill and taste poetry that I wrote with a steak metaphor... Which is cool because it's a steak metaphor cooked on a steak that I'm eating which tastes like the steak metaphor I wrote on the steak...

Yes...

5. I'd like to write a poem on a helium balloon. Maybe sending up poems to the sky like weary prayers might make me feel hope again.

6. I wanna put a poem on a lock and key. Representing tragedy of a girl I knew. She kept her friendship with me under lock and key... Probably because when we went to France I gave her that lock and key and she didn't care.

7. I'd like to put a poem on the underside of the blinds hanging in my window. That way I'd have more of a reason to keep them down other than wanting to keep my room dark because I want to sleep longer.

8. I want to write a poem on an iPhone screen in permanent marker for no other reason than that I think it would be kinda funny.

9. I'd love to write a poem on a vinyl record. I hope some famous artist does that and get that thing preserved. But if they do end up doing that, I deserve all the credit.

10. How about a poem written on the inside of a sweater. Something so sacred, and so close to you. That it really does have to be hidden away?