If my life were a recipe
I feel like every ingredient would be followed
by the word "optional".

8 hours of sleep (optional)
Two to three meals a day (optional)
1 social life (optional)
1 job (optional)
A handful of friends (optional)
A pinch of creativity (optional)
One cup of laughter (optional)
Three heaped tablespoons of positivity (optional)

You get the idea.

But you're different.
You're the one ingredient I can't do without.
You're the one thing that matters
when I can't be bothered with the rest of it.
When all the chopping and sautéing and boiling
and grilling of everyday life
seems like too much hassle,
there's always enough time for you.
You're my quick-fix meal on a weekday evening.
You're a mid-morning snack
snatched between errands.
A quiet evening in on a Saturday
with a bottle of wine and Joni Mitchell playing
"I could drink a case of you".
I could cook you every night.
You're comfort food at its finest
unpretentious, convenient.
Never bland and never tiresome.
You're the one ingredient I'll always have in stock,
that one I'll never let myself run out of.
Because you cannot be substituted.
You, and only you, are not optional.

(i picked up
all your old habits,
and i'm not
letting them
go)

I wrote a lot of poems
about a lot of people
and many of those poems
mentioned love.

but I like to think that you're
the one who'll read them when
you're eighty, sitting beside
me in your chair.

I like to imagine your hair
as it turns grey,
your frown lines and wrinkles
of your smiles and your worries
and the sound of your laugh
that has not changed with the years,
and the way you'd wipe away my tears
of both pain and joy.

I like to think of rings and kisses
and your hands on mine,
of you asleep next to me on
winter nights, of newspapers
and car rides and Christmasses
and all those things that make
a life together.


I wrote a lot of poems
about a lot of people
and many of those poems
mentioned love,


but I like to think my best ones
are about you.

it has been some time
since i've been awake at
                         2:00am
       i forgot how
quite and peaceful it is
where i'm only just
                         tired enough
                that the thoughts
don't really matter now
                     and memories are just
            a faint fuzz

I wanted to give you my everything but I realized that I don't owe you that
I think that if you really loved me you'd be happy with me giving you nothing
Nothing tangible

But even so, I'd give you my heart if I could
I'd literally rip it out with my bare hands and give it to you
but my hands wouldn't work without my heart and I know you wouldn't take it on your own

I'd give you the sun, take it out of the sky and put a big ribbon on it
if it's absence wouldn't leave the world and everyone in it cold and lifeless
And maybe even then I still would

I'd give you the very breath out of my lungs as long as you used it to sigh

You told me you loved it when I sighed
I sighed when you told me you loved me
I guess this is a sort of paradox

I think the whole love thing is a sort of paradox
The only way out I know is out of your front door
because you pushed me towards it so many times

But I got lost in your lips
when I was trying to tell you everything
until I realized that I don't owe you that

For all the months we spent together, you only kissed me once. You tasted like spearmint gum, and like the burst of laughter you held back between our lips, and it was a "to be continued" kind of kiss. Every time after that we were picking up where we left off—extensions of that first kiss in March, extra pages to extra chapters to extra volumes in the story of you and me. You were a library book, one I hadn't read before. And in the back of my mind I knew you wouldn't be mine forever. But you were new and you were exciting and I couldn't wait for the next time I could open you up and be reminded how much I loved the taste of spearmint.

But sooner or later it was going to have to end. I knew this, I knew it, I really did; I just told myself if I didn't think about it it wouldn't happen. It did happen though. Sure enough, the due date to my library book came around—way too fast. I was almost sure that I had you for much longer, and for that reason I didn't even get to read the ending of the story. But I had to return all of the kisses and the laughter and the gum…as well as giving up all of the ones I hadn't gotten to yet, because I had had no idea when the words "the end" were going to be coming up.

And so the next time you kissed me, our second official kiss, I hadn't expected so much of a plot twist. I had finally renewed my library book, but my favorite character died, and the villain turned himself in, and the hero and the girl he loved were falling apart. You had stopped chewing spearmint gum, and the laughter was gone—replaced with the bitter taste of self-doubt and uncertainty. I pulled away faster than I expected, suddenly nervous and not sure why. I closed the book and handed it back to you, with the ending I had wished so desperately to be able to read, but not the one I had expected at all.