Lover, I was never a creature of euphonious language, but, in the sincerest way possible, I want to trace the lines in your palms with my fingertips I could blindly transfer them onto paper like my native language; there is something that tells me that there are otherworldly creatures that breathe life into every speck of dust floating by your window in the early morning so they can be assured that every particle feels the blessing of seeing the loveliest of nonsense spilling from your lips in a low mutter; I have dreamt of a world where I am stringing harps with every word you said that I grabbed with my grimy hands and condensed into velvet strings and in this world I play you a melody and I do not tremble and you are immortal. However, I do not quarrel with this reality that is given to me, for I know that it is an honor to have been placed on this earth in the realm of your existence, to have the privelege to see the way the sun glows this new shade of warmth when it is bathing your shoulders — like a lover with kisses made of milky light, it kisses you into a divine sort of oblivion that I cannot help but envy and admire, I know we do not realize the true beauty of things until they are broken but I have haggled my soul to never see you crack, and God knows I would extinguish the flames behind my eyes so that they are reduced to low-burning coals, in the hopes that you and everything delicate that follows close behind will at least hover just beyond my grip, still not too close because I have always had trouble keeping a gentle grip on heavenly things and you are a piece of every form of divinity that I can bear to break down into fathomable thoughts; so, here I love you from worlds away — yes, from worlds away, I love you.

9:03 pm:* I stand for nothing and fall for everything, but I've never fallen so hard for something as I have for you. I haven't wrote you anything in awhile and I think it's because I feel like I have you safely hidden in the middle of my palm in my fist, but lately I feel you slipping through my fingers. Are we okay?

9:46 pm: I've realized that I have trapped myself in a world of art being with you, everything I touch feels as if I'm experiencing it for the first time, but when I touch you, it's as if I'm touching fire, and baby, I haven't stopped lighting matches just to feel close to you.

10:21 pm: After our first love died out, others taught me love with bruises and punches but you haven't laid a hand on me and I can't decide if you don't love me or if this is true love. I'm leaning towards true love. I'm torn between showing you the darkest parts of me or shining a light on my cracked skin to avert your eyes from my scars. Does that make sense to you?

10:38 pm: This silence burns more than the ***** seeping down my throat could ever and I'm shaking at the thought of your mouth forming the words "goodbye". I've been built on the words "sorry I love someone else" and "this isn't going to work out" and if you listen closely, you can hear each person whisper those words that cut like knives when I cry. I sound like thunderstorms because I'm only a natural disaster, nothing less and nothing more.

11:02 pm: I wish I was bulletproof to the shots of sadness that are fired at me, but I am left convulsing with panic attacks and heart palpitations. Is it weird to want to die of a heart attack? Is it weird to want to be one of your cigarettes that you bite between your teeth? I want to be on top of your lips. I want you to breathe me in. Nothing makes me more afraid than you diving head first into a sea of lies about how I am cold and distant, because I've never felt more close to someone as I do to you. You'll find that I am only shattered glass, but do I ever want to be more for you. I want to be better for you, I want to be able to see happiness pouring out of your eyes so I can drown in them.

11:44 pm: You're a broken home but I still want to retire inside of you. I'll rebuild you if you'd hand me the tools. You don't even have to do so, I will fix you so you stand stronger than you ever have. You are a piece of art painted drunk and I want to kiss your canvas until my lips have left an imprint on you and we merge as one mess. This city rains too much and I have to get out and be with you, even if it does rain too much where you are, you shine brighter than the sun ever could.

1:20 am: I've taken 5 more shots and I can't stop sobbing your name. If I were ever to run into you I feel like it would be in the emergency room, but I'd still kiss you. I've attempted to write how much I love dating the girl of my dreams, I hope I'm still yours.

2:07 am: The slashes in my wrist match the lines in my walls and I can't stop staring at them because you always just say you're fine and I know you're not. I want to be so much more than this pile of dust, I want you to think I hung each star in the sky for you and that I created each galaxy to try and show you my love for you. You don't have to read all of this, my words are small and empty no matter how much of myself I pour into them, but I hope you believe them for once. I want to be so much and so little at the same time. I'm at war with my body and you're holding up a white flag for me and I don't know if I can recover. Somehow I managed to find myself with a handful of pills, just like 3 years ago when I attempted suicide to an Ed Sheeran song. You can say I love you to me but when I say it to you, my lips ache and my head fills with warning signs because it's never been this real before.

4:31 am: I woke up with uneven heart beats because I think you've started to regret me and I'd be lying if I said it never happens. I hope to one day convince you that you put the air in my lungs every day and I don't think I'd wake up every morning without you. Those are two things I'm very sure of. I don’t really remember what I lived for before you, I guess I wrote ****** poetry and thought drowning was fun in some sick way. I’ve been thinking about the way you’re going to kiss me, I’ve been prescribed antidepressants for 3 years and they’ve never really worked but i think your lips could cure me. I remember when we first started dating, i thought skin was supposed to be destroyed and i think thats when you realized that this wasn’t a two person relationship, it was you and I and my depression. I didn’t think the small of my back would ever crave being touched by someone as it does when i think about you. You say you see stars in my eyes and I pray to god that they don’t turn into black holes. I’m letting you pick apart my glass heart piece by piece and i never knew you had such strong hands until i didn’t see a cut on them while you examined such a shattered mess. God, I’m trying to put into words how much i love you and i know you think i don’t mean them and I’m searching for the right words but every time i take a step forward i take two steps back but I’ll keep on pushing because baby, you’re worth more than I can put into words.

I guess I was a walking tally chart of the amount of times I hated myself and even God couldn't kiss that better.

i saw an elderly man today at war with gravity. i watched him tumble on the time-made incline of the pavement. he laid there with his cane in one hand and a crumpled ball of tissue in the other and wiped at his bleeding nose. we didn't know him but we stopped being bystanders and rushed over to help him up. nameless characters peeled off the backdrop like paper dolls in a children's activity book and everyone's faces were fraught with worry for the poor guy. he couldn't speak english so our barrage of questions likely confused his bedraggled and weary state even more. eventually a woman who spoke his tongue came to his aid and we later walked in the same direction and saw her tugging onto his arm, leading him where he needed to be. he still looked as detached from the scene as he did earlier.

i wonder if i'll be like that when i'm, let's say, 72. i don't want to be helpless but i'm scared that's all it comes down to. sometimes i feel burdened by the thought of time constantly passing, by the stolid fact that the progression of time will always be continuous. a never doesn't exist, and some things have to be inevitable.

i can say i wish that time would just stop even briefly but even then i'd just be wasting time.

what does it take to chisel time?
what does it take to structure a fully lived life?

a letter in the mail,
a three, four, five, or even six digit number meant for you to repay, sooner or later. but we both know the answer lies later than sooner
2.
in bed during broad daylight wearing his clothes,
missing, missing, missing
an empty space in your heart, vespers of fingerprints across your body
crying into your pillow til your eyes turn red and angry, bloodshot
defeat, the smell everywhere, damp.
where do loved ones go when they still exist, just not in relation to you?
3.
unfixable,
irreversible loss.

and finally, 4.
the screen.
tendrils of hair bunched into angry clumps in the palm of your hand,
blood dripping from eye to mouth,
a bored lumberjack with a garish mask flanked by black branches, auburn leaves
all of these things and a doll at the end of the dark corridor are nothing to worry about.

I'm going to love you like the floorboards do. I'm going to touch you like your bedroom walls never could; lay your forehead against me like the shower wall and try to recount every lie you ever told laying down. Your nails will hold me against the headboard in a dark act of crucifixion; I have been dying of your sins since before I understood that they were not the kinds that I should love, and perhaps this is not the kind of love that ends well on glossy pages but it is the only love I know. I was a nearly dead stray on your doorstep and you fed me pretty words from your hands like you knew how to take care of things that had no home (despite having never had one of your own). You know too well how your name sounds when your hand is on my knee, you know too well how your name sounds when you are coaxing the life out of me, as though my trachea were the back door of your apartment, and you know how deadly you are with a look on your face that burns like the candles in a chapel but never melts - I sit vigil over your dead body but your ghost is always touching me, you are always bringing out the worst in me and stretching it out like sheets over a ****** mattress and I cannot take care of myself and I am incapable of breathing until you are watching me.