"you deserve someone beautiful.
let no one tell you otherwise."*
you think of her,
and you think
of dimly lit january midnights,
of poetry-filled evenings,
of renewed hope each morning,
of tireless afternoons waiting;
of crossed-finger whispers,
of untouchable constellations,
of iron-hearted wolf princesses,
of kindergarten hesitation;
of seconds between held breaths,
of clandestine glances,
of daylight cast upon her hair
of radiance.
you think of her,
and she is the sun.

or if you should think of me,
you would think
of inebriated exchanges,
of secrets drowned in caffeine,
of brushed away tears,
of faces within screens;
of image noise and film grain,
of ink-stained hands,
of nebulous confessions,
of an esoteric slow dance;
of adventitious white lies,
of flickering innocence,
of fire and brimstone,
of convenience.
you think of me,
and i am the ocean.

i am not saying
i am not deserving of you,
only that i am not the sun.
i am the ocean,
and you will only fall into me
after she has left your wings coming undone.

men do not attempt flight
in hopes of their descent.
men do not craft wings
seeking to fly into the convenient.
men like you have been wise enough
not to sink into girls like me.
girls like her have been kind enough
to keep themselves out of your reach.

she is the sun,
and you have flown too close.
your body is a kite lost to the wind,
just like what your father feared most.
i am the ocean,
and the possibility of you feels so close.
i count the seconds until you make contact
like a ticking alligator in the shadows.
i want to believe that it is bad
to want this so badly, believe me
i wish that when you broke my surface
it did not satiate me so quickly.
because for a moment
you may find me beautiful,
how my cool waves soothe your burns
and you feel featherlight in this lull.
but no one stays in the ocean for too long—
others' fingers prune away
others leave out of boredom
and though others return none actually remain.
perhaps you could be different,
perhaps you would never leave me for the shore.
and should you decide to stay,
there would be nothing i'd want more.

but should you start gasping for air,
should you tire of the taste of saltwater and the sight of blue,
should your arms start reaching out again towards her,
i will not take it against you.
you deserve someone beautiful.
to deprive you of this would be a great transgression.
after all she is the sun,
and i am only the ocean.

Its weird
that I still think
about you
   and
it makes me
feel weak.
Its worse
because
I find myself
missing the
   oddest things.
Like
   your mom
   your shirts
   how you held my hand
   the curve of your nose
and
    the way you like to run.
Its things like these,
the obscure
annoying things,
that keep me
     missing you.

"you're so, innocent"*, he said to me, eyes widening, soul opening, gritting his teeth letting this word take over my entire body, my body that would now belong to him, withholding his fingerprints like scratches on a penny
i absorbed his sentence and deflected it back out into the universe, for i never really considered myself as such, innocent.
what does it mean to be innocent, why did it excite him so much? was it my lack of experience? was it because he had never encountered someone with such purity in their heart? had he never touched the soul of someone who was comprised of mostly good intentions?
i realized his excitement really was just masking fear. he was afraid of me. if i wasn't using him, i was good. if i was good, i mattered. i don't think he had every considered the fact that a woman he was investing time with could matter. i don't think he was the type of person who wanted to care. so to fold up the fear like origami, and shape it into a facade, he began to express aggression. he was mean. i could not understand this. if i was so innocent, why was he trying to take this away from me? was the concept of my good character making him angry? i remember looking into his greenish eyes and feeling smoke in my lungs. my body polluted by his piercing stare, and i watched as his soul arose out of his shell, like fumes and dissipated into the air around me. the anger then turned to tiredness. i watched him sleep and i wondered if it could even be called that. i had never in my life seen someone in such deep, emotional pain that even when their body is resting their face is stiff and fragile as if he had been resting their his entire life, accumulating dust, hardening the cracks of his smile, cementing his ligaments until the possibilities of him standing again were not even questionable.
watching him, i thought about this innocence he described, and about how he was almost envious of it, how he wanted that for himself and somehow knew that he once owned that quality but somewhere along the lines of a wrong left turn or a path not chosen he had lost it. what he didn't know was that it was still there.
don't get me wrong, i had never met such a cold person in my entire life, but at the same time, he was like fire.
i rolled over next to him, holding his arms, comforting his sleeping body in hopes of him somehow regaining consciousness and becoming aware that he does not have to be so guarded, so cold, and so afraid of being vulnerable. i hoped he'd find the warmth he already has, but i too was tired, so i closed my eyes, and fell asleep.