At some point, we all reach happiness.
We all get there in different paces.
I've been working on my strides,
but baby wait for me at the finish line.

I want to form cities on my tongue, built up with all the beautiful things I've never said to you. The people would be clothed in white, and the skyscrapers would kiss my palette. I would take you to sit on the park benches, where fingernails have indented the wood and first kiss dates were carved into the backrest. I would walk you down the sidewalk, made up of all the unspoken "I miss you's" and let you pick flowers that have bloomed in the cracks between the pavement. I would show you the beauty in the darkness of empty alleyways, I would hold your hand on the edge of the tallest bridge. I would kiss you in front of the world, and shout my love for you into the void.
There are so many words you have never heard. So many times my lips have articulated "I love you" but never followed with a sound to resonate it. Maybe that's why we're not in the city. Maybe that's why you're at the other end of the room starring at walls, waiting for them to cave in and fill the silence. We always wanted more than this, but I have this fear of leaving and you have a fear of losing what was never yours. I hope I can show you the city someday, maybe you'll see my love for you clearly under bright lights. But until then, I'm trying to find it in me to get my tongue untied.

Growing up, every time I asked "How do you know if you're in love?" they always told me "When you're in love, you'll just know; but you don't have to worry about that now."

Well, I'm grown up now. I can answer my own question now. The truth is, you never really know. I have felt flowers bloom inside my heart while in the presence of some people, as though they were the soil, and the water, and the sun. I have felt every inch of my skin ache to be touched in the presence of some people, as though there fingers were the remedy. My stare has never been able to be pulled away from certain faces, I have drowned in the colors of eyes. I have laid watching the moon while the grasshoppers urged us to introduce lips. I have been held in the arms where I have felt safe from all harm, I have sang 'I love you' in the most beautiful keys. I have filled empty houses with the echos of each heartbeat.
But my answer is this;
I've been in the presence of so much. I have heard words that made my heart melt inside my chest and I have held hands that never wanted to let go. Love has visited me so many times, but I have never felt it more than when the grasshoppers stopped singing, the flowers quit blooming, and my heart started to break.
How do you know if you're in love?

You'll know when it leaves you.

Stay
I begged you
Till the words evaporated from my mouth
and the walls started to bleed
you told me that you wanted space,
and I would have given you the entire universe
but you were already gone
before I could say;
Stay.

You tipped me over. I spilled my words into your hands, they filled the creases in your palms and the spaces between your fingers. You held them as though they were malleable, crushed them with strength and shook them off as though they were something ***** that you couldn't get rid of. I still remember the night I found you trying to pick up the pieces, looking for the hidden message behind what I tried to tell you. Your knuckles ******, your face dripping with sweat, your eyes clothed in desperation. You replaced the heart on your sleeve with a broken one. You never gave me the parts of you that didn't need fixing. I wish you stopped blaming me for being the reason you're still filled with apathy, I wish you would of realized that I spent all this time looking for the right way to tell you I'm not what you're looking for. I wish everything I said was enough for you to leave, I wish my hands were strong enough to push you away. We both know that you're stronger than me; but I hope you wake up one day and realize I stopped loving you before you started. I hope one day you can wash your hands clean ; I hope you realize I never wanted to be the one weighing you down.

Suddenly, the world went numb. All the pain, the worry, the apathy, the carefulness; it all went away. There was no sound, no hum, no white noise. The light stopped flickering; the curtains stopped dancing with the breeze blowing through the window. All I felt were your hands.
Slowly and softly making their way down my shoulders, tracing my skin like fingers exploiting a map. Gently feeling the goose-bumps form along the surface of my arms, and gently intertwining your fingers with mine.
I could have closed my eyes. I could have convinced myself that your love for me ran deeper than this. The truth is, this was the foreplay before the passionate goodbye. This was you staining your pigment onto my skin.

“Stop. This can’t be your goodbye. You can’t leave me like this”

You stopped. You looked into my eyes; the same eyes I looked into so many times before. As though you had it all planned out, you brushed my shoulders with your lips and whispered in a way that still forms goose bumps along my thighs;

“I have been looking for ways to show you I love you.
Now all I can do is leave”