Do I love you?

At night, I dream of everything we could have been.
I sleep on my side with only the moonlight framing where you could be, where you should be.

I think of every part of you as deeply as I can because even though I can't be with you in this life, I can at least console my mind and pretend I ever had a chance.

My eyes remain unfocused and dazed as I imagine you because if I ever did decide to concentrate the few fragments of you I have left in the crevices of my mind would shatter.

I hold out my hands and rest them in front of me so I can pretend that you're there and I'm holding you in the bleary distortions created by the blinds on my window.

I no longer see my hands as my own and bring the backs of yours up to my lips, which are either dry or smeared in lip balm only to be chapped but still dripping in the sunrise that would come in mere hours.

I open your palms and run my thumbs over the wrinkles and lines, massaging the softest part just above your wrist. I run my fingers over your fingers, where they meet your palms, and the lines that run along the sides of your hand and between the webbings of your skin before stopping at the tendon. You tense because you don't like your wrists. They're a reflection of darker times.

In a manner I'd typically deem over-romanticized, I place a kiss on your fingers first, trailing chaster touches down to your palms. I ask for your permission first before I kiss your scars, and I hear a soft sigh once I do so.

I pull back and meet your dark eyes, which face away from the window so a halo of light wraps around your hair. I lean forward and press my forehead to yours, the sound of our breathing syncing in the background as our noses touch.

You kiss me. But it's not the kinds of kisses you usually give me like the ones we shared in front of your friends. It's the kind I can only get in moments like this, too tender for the rest of the world to ever really understand and too precious for me to ever really explain in a competent manner.

Our lips part and I feel your hand cupping my cheek, tilting my head up slightly. I never really got over the subtle touches I'd receive from you, from the feathery skims over my collarbones to the slight squeeze I'd feel when our fingers intertwine. I think you know that.

I think you also know that this is usually where it stops. Whether I intend for it to or not.

My eyes refocus, and I quickly close them so I don't need to meet my windowsill and bedsheets that mock me. I think about what you might actually be doing now, instead.

You may or may not be sleeping, just as you may or may not be thinking about me. But I know without a doubt that you're thinking about him, and how all the things I'd love to do with you you'd love to do with him if you haven't already.

I decide to let that be the last thing in my mind as a drift off, only to be greeted by more thoughts of you as the sun rises.

the distance between us felt further the moment i was in your arms. your words were as empty as the wine bottles on your mantle, your kisses were needles filled with lidocaine.
laying in your bed felt like laying in a coffin. i wasn't really there. you weren't really there, either. the streetlights illuminated these lies we told ourselves in a soft, yellow wash.
i remembered as your breathing slowed that you didn't know my last name. the exposed brick walls taunted me with the whispers of pasts until dawn. the sun rose patiently. you didn't say a word when you walked me to the door.
i've realized love does not exist within the confines of your bedroom. it might not even exist within the confines of your heart.
you told me you were afraid you could never love anyone again. i took that as a challenge like a bird to a glass door. smash, blood, regret.

Two o'clock sober
might still be hungover
you're begging for my tongue while I beg for your love.
I never thought I'd love like this,
one-sided and founded on ever unstable lust. I shouldn't even call this love,
I think it's love and I think you're just in it for a ****. Writing
poems about you is "hard" because I can't admit
what I can't bring myself to say out loud. You told me your secrets
and I swallowed the seeds, letting your admissions
bloom inside of me.
How could I have been so stupid? I should have known
you would plant a garden just to leave.
Girls made of gardens wither without affection
I must not be your favorite flower. I don't think I ever was
but you keep coming around just to see my petals unfold
every spring and I let you leave dew drops all over me

We've done this before. Lines and rows of blooming pinks and red,
scratches, finger prints, bruises, hickeys, marks that fade
after a few days. No matter how many days it's been, weeks, months
we find our way back to the patch of wildflowers
where we first decided to make love.
There will always be changes to the scenery and
I can't think of anyone else that I would plant myself anywhere with.
One of us is always leaving but somehow the wind blows us back home.

I'm not religious anymore but the Ten Commandments
seared inside of my psyche flash
before my eyes and I hear myself repeating
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
while I make myself ****** to the pictures you sent me. One night,
I wrote everything about you that I idolized in big letters on lined paper
and ripped it into squares. I twisted the paper bits
into your godly shape and whispered
your name as I dropped you into a floral candle and let the flame
eat your tiny body. Have you ever felt crazy?
Have you ever been so in love that it makes you crazy?
Until you've made a lover into an effigy
and tried to force your passion for them to rest
by cremating their paper remains
I don't know if you understand how close love and crazy really are.

I swear. I swear, I'm done.

But I'm not done. I pretend to forget
the way your name feels for a while, I pretend to idolize
other things but when you appear
uninvited to my dreams I can't forget the things I've seen. You kiss
my forehead as midday sun
settles on my skin and a garden of roses
start to bud where you've planted love. You pick the most precious one
and when you cut the stem I **** awake, facing the candle
where I tried to destroy what I thought of you. I don't know
why I see you everywhere and I don't know why
I keep asking questions that I'll never have the answers to.

Once you're actually here my laugh bubbles
from my throat and chrysanthemums and lilacs and daisies
fly out. When you kiss me I swear I feel ivy
entwining itself into my hair and my eyelashes grow tuberose.
I bloom with you and when you leave I become winter, waiting for you
to tend me. Every day with you is spring
and I know exactly how fast the seasons change. "Thou shalt not covet"
but god, I want you
I want you to trust me with everything and I want you to sow more seeds.
I can't tell you the last time I read my bible,
I thought it didn't have a hold over me anymore but I want you
to choose me and I don't want
to feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak anymore.

I've been thinking
about touching you
for so long
And now that I am
it feels euphoric

Your skin,
as soft as
I remember it

I melt into your words. I catch the flame
flickering on my bookshelf
where I burned your likeness and look into your eyes
flashing my most devilish smile.
You're back in my room and you've covered my body with sticky honeysuckles
and forget-me-nots. You, imperfect as anyone else but I see you
like you're some walking god. You, human as me. Your hands
left prints of hibiscus on my skin and when you leave
I open my diary to the page where I pressed cherry blossoms and maple
leaves and they fall as I write about how happy I am to see you.

"I just don't think that men like you like women like me who have moonstone eyes and crazy day dreams, women who dot their poems with inky pearl tears, pressed poplar leaves and, well, I wanted to write you a poem but I can’t think of any creative words. I want you to read how beautiful you make me, how your eyes drink me in, how I overflow for you. I want you to feel the conflict in my heart... so rarely that I see you but every time we reunite we are even better than the last. I don't know if you want to read it but I want to write you a poem. I want to write you a poem that makes you cringe because I write with honesty. I want you to feel the rhythm of my words the way we feel the rhythm of our bodies. You should be happy to inspire someone’s poetry. You, you don’t love me. And that’s fine, because I’ll always look back at you and see sunshine streams on your skin."

My room is all white and pink, floral print and my African violet.
You look perfect in the rosy glow
of my feminine sanctuary and I feel so appealing,
I trust you enough to show you everything, I say, luxuriating the words in the sunlight.
I want to absorb this moment to keep me warm. When I lay alone
thinking of drifting to sleep in your arms, it is this moment
with you around me,
the way you kiss my face like I mean something to you
and this is the place I go, when I swear
all of this means nothing to you. Doesn't everyone want to feel home?
Maybe I think being with you feels like the kind of home
with a nice garden I want to live in. Maybe you feel it too.

Maybe I'm reading too far into everything
and not saying enough of anything
maybe both of us say nothing hoping the other will
be the one to admit the feeling
but you, as soon as you leave and I tell myself I’m done. Swearing
I've burned up the last of you, I’ll never do it again.

I can't stop thinking about you

And I'm back thinking about you, too.

All I have is a photograph
and a blank page with your name,
our lives have clearly changed,
but my heart still feels the same.

So I write down a few scattered lines,
and add a chord or two,
just trying to make new memories of you.

I'll play this song beneath the stars,
watch it dance into the sky.
If on the wind my words do fly,
then you'll hear my lullaby.

Will you look above and think of me
as a shooting star breaks through,
maybe words will make wishes come true.

Now I have a brand new page
with a picture, poem, and song.
I know it's been so long,
but my love's still standing strong.

If a picture paints a thousand words
then this poem will never do,
but I want to make new memories with you.

Please forgive me, for my hands won’t stop shaking.
You and I:
Parallel lines holding on to the notion that maybe one day
We’ll intersect, in more ways than one.
My breath catches at the thought of your fingertips
Slipping and sloping down my spine.
I can’t fall asleep anymore without you on my mind,
Conjuring images of your
Phantom arms wrapped around my waist
And the autumn breeze of an open window washing over me.
They say that this cannot be love,
But god, I’m not so sure.

Your mother doesn’t know that I exist.
I thank her every morning for you,
Over my lukewarm cup of cheap coffee.
She is the only person who will ever love you more than I.
You look at me like I am made of flowers
Whose petals have colours you’ve never been able to comprehend.
I hope they make a little more sense now.

The first wrinkles on my face will be crow’s feet,
Like my mother’s,
Like my grandmother’s.
We’ve all fallen a little too hard
And smiled a little too much.
I’ll cherish them just the same.

They never taught us how to write poems without the fuel of heartache.
I’ll never learn, anyhow.

He asked me why.
It wasn’t the kind of thing that had
An explanation, or needed one.
Still, he asked why.
It was intrinsic.
I had never thought it through before.

It has something that home doesn’t.
He asked what.
It has you. That’s important.
He asked why it mattered, why he mattered.
Everyone else is gone and you’re here with me.

He asked why it meant so much.
Home has no culture of its own.
We are a melting ***.
Our history has us playing a part.
Our countries share a common villain.
The difference is, we became ours.
You didn’t.

He asked why here, why now.
You view this place like I view my own.
You’ll never see it the way I do.
There is no conversation in bars,
Just fingers and tongues and fake names.

You look at me when I speak.

He asked if that was all.
No, of course not.

Those uilleann pipes make me cry.
I have no nation,
No reason for pride.
My songs and stories
Do not hold the same depth.
You tell me who you are
And it means something.

He touched my arm and the universe swallowed me whole.

Do you want to go home? he asked.
Absolutely not.
Do you want to leave? he asked.
*With you, absolutely.

A loose arm draped across my abdomen,
Clutching me like I am a childhood teddy bear,
With one eye missing
Because you loved me too much.
In the morning,
Sleepy shuffling of slippers
To hot coffee between palms.
Shared kisses to sweeten the deal,
Tasting of hazelnut and cinnamon,
We are untouchable.
Out in the cold,
Your hand in my ever-freezing hand,
The wind turning our cheeks the most lovely shade of pink
And we’re so quiet
That not even the trees can hear us.
Soft, slow kiss on the lips before I go
And I will think of you all day,
Until I am in your arms again.
The cycle repeats,
And the coffee never runs out.

Somewhere,
Written in the margins
Of the history of time
In this universe:
Us.

Your unsteady hand pouring milk.
My unsteady hand on your thigh.
Breath quivers
But it is full and deep.

Someday
Someone
Will write about this night.

A heart doesn't realise how much is missing
Until something makes it whole again.

Somewhere,
Written in the margins of the history of time
In this universe
And all others:
Love,
Whatever that may mean.