You are my platonic love,
My long-lost other half.
But not in the way that
First comes to mind.
You are my soulmate
My twin, my confidant,
I could spend
The rest
Of my life
With you.

But not in that way.

You can breathe tonight.
Let no effort bring itself to your tired bones.
I will hold you, until the end,
and no demons will break through to
your porcelain soul.

Let sleep wrap you in its wings.
Dance with me in the stars.
Tonight you are alive,
and you will be tomorrow, too,
and that is glorious,
because this cramped universe
is pure emptiness without you.

Let it be noted, that,
I am one who seldom seeks the presence of another being.
Fortunately,
you are no other being
(I believe you are a part of me).

Tomorrow, you will live on,
and I might not,
and that's alright,
but,
let it be noted, that,
you can still breathe.

I think I could get used to waking up beside you,
and following the catlike curve of that smile
on your celestial canvas
with a trembling brush.
I could paint you in the evenings,
and watch as you colored the world with
such a vibrant palette of a voice
and explained to me the things you love
with the most vivid of words.

I see you;
In the horses slowly trotting, riding along at the commands of their masters;
In the leaves clinging desperately to the vulnerable trees, left to the fate of the unrelenting breeze;
In the clouds drifting by, their shapes reforming at the will of the wind;
In the flowers wilting in the sun, screaming at their roots to find some source of water in this drought.

You go at the leisure of the ones who saddle your back,
and hold onto those hurt people, who angrily batter at your cowering form.
You mold yourself to others' preferences,
and are crushed by your god, looking for some hope he may have left you in this seemingly eternal despair.

I see you in my reflection, seeking some sort of break from an already fractured world.
You are broken and the world around you bent,
but there are ways to fix everything,
and I am studying to be a Mender.

Is this all you can describe us as?
Is that all we were to you?
I thought, perhaps,
I had stayed up until four in the morning
on school nights and on breaks
talking to you as though,
Mutually,
nothing else mattered.

I thought, perhaps,
when you told me to wait,
that you didn't have the time,
that it would be worth my patience
(Or perhaps my lack thereof).

I thought, perhaps,
that when I saw your face,
heard your voice,
listened to you chuckle,
woke up from a half slumber and saw you watching me,
some weird mix of admiration and love and lust and passion in your quirky gaze,
we meant something to one another.

But you've revealed the truth, and that's alright.
I can find another Lily in my pond.

It kept me
numb
and numb was the
only feeling I
was searching
for.

I used enough
in those days
to avoid
feeling any
type of emotion
for too long.

And when I
cried,
it was mostly
over a memory
of a time when
I should
have cried
but
was too numb
to care.