I try very hard to be good.
At everything.

But often I just want to be happy.
Happiness often feels like the string of a balloon slipping from my fingers.
So close to being captured as I watch it flutter away into the sky.

Loving after you is like rewatching a stand up special. I feel obligated to laugh because the room is, but the jokes no longer feel funny.

Loving after you is like rereading a book. I already know all the good parts. I reread the lines but they do not bring the same feeling. Only the memory of how I felt the first time they leaped off the page.

Loving after you is like Wholefood’s peach cobbler. A ghostly whisper of another thing. A should be delight immediately compared to a better memory in my grandma’s kitchen. Making me miss the creaking wood floors and her presence even more as I wonder if it’s worth the calories.

I am lonely.
I need to love someone.
But I am only lonely for the right love.
The good love.
The kind of love I know exists.
The kind that makes even the most basic of tasks feel magical.
The grocery store shopping joy love.
The can’t wait to just do nothing all day with you love.
I do not need a body to fill the void.
If anything it will make the void more obvious. Impossible to fill the entire hole.
It only serves of a reminder of how much better things could be.
It’s like a Wholefood’s peach cobbler.
All you do is compare it to your grandma’s and it makes you miss her more while you wonder if it’s worth the calories.

Maybe it’s for the best.
It probably is.
Just letting go of any hope of you.
Even the hope I don’t admit to myself.
I need to shut it all out.
I know logically you are wrong for me.
Now I need it to sink in.

Is there a world where you and I exist together?
It feels like there must be.
Somewhere in the dimensions of reality similar to this one.
In some, I stay in movies.
In some I never leave home.
In one, I’m married to Jason and we raise 7 kids in a Baptist church.
In another I’m an equine vet.
Another, a professional golfer.
And in another -  I am with you in two lawn chairs by a lake, cooking dinner over an open flame as we watch the sun go down & I kiss you good night.

Just not in this one.

So I must admit, you are not the first man I have written poems about. I know, I’m sorry to burst the bubble but I am in fact a hopeless romantic and have been writing poems in a journal online since I was in high school. The lack of emotion is actually just emotional suppression.

But the funny thing is, with all of the other men, I wrote about them like I started in your entry. Poetic. For me. Somewhat wistful. A romanization or dramatization of events. Full emo.

But what I have never done, is write in this style about a man. Like a journal entry I am assuming you are going to read one day.

I’ve always thought about giving the poems I wrote about my partner to him on our wedding as a gift.

But with others, I never wrote it in a journal entry or note style like they would actually someday read it.

Maybe that was my subconscious or intuition knowing they never would.

I just remembered one of our first conversations about relationships.

We were on the treeline ski lift and had just passed the chalet bar. I had just finished telling you about how I had broken up with everyone in relationships. Somewhat in a braggy way - like the “I don’t get dumped I dump thing.” (Gross and cringe looking back.)

You responded with “Well that’s not a good thing.”

And I started justifying it and how I struggle with relationships telling you, I just always feel like I’m losing something in a relationship- reducing myself or just possibilities of the future. Like I’m losing freedom. Losing potential.

You responded again “Well that’s also not a good thing.”

Which of course I agreed was bad but had no hope on fixing.

You continued, “A good relationship should feel expansive, not contracting, that just means you have the wrong person.”

Which, I also knew people in healthy relationships feel like it is additive, not subtractive but I didn’t know if that could ever be me. If I’d ever feel like if I wasn’t settling or compromising in one way or another.

I think that’s one of the first ways I realized I was in love with you. I imagined our life together, growing together, and I didn’t feel like I would have to fit myself in a box. It felt like you could take all of the possibilities of me. It felt like the world would get bigger.