Making love was never about you and me being naked together in a bed.

We made love whenever we held hands.

we are what people sing about, what pop culture is made of;
darling, we are what everyone wants to be--
two idiots in love, happy and content
the building blocks of all young adult novels, everyone's goal
but nobody ever bothers to know how this love came to be
what's behind it, who's had to weep, why it happened

it was love at first sight for him, and she, a few months later
they were happy and awkward, like childhood lovers decades ago
god, were we ******* adorable
i hated how you confessed online, but made up for it
when i confessed back in person, two weeks later
(your blushing face and awkwardness were enough as payment)
you properly asked me out later on, beside my very yellow school bus
we had our first kiss in our school's unkempt football field

honey, we're what everyone wants to be
a couple made up of two distant planets that were apparently meant to create a whole new galaxy entirely
(and we both loved that, didn't we?)

then came our sudden fallout from your part,
and six months
have never seemed so long not until this whole **** happened

there was nothing for those whole six months
silence, dullness, emptiness
the sky looked like what i would see if i were drunk,
just a mess of dark colors with no real meaning and affection to it
everything looked like that, and in the midst of all that
i realized something

honey, from the start, we were what everyone wanted to be
we were in love
but we were never friends, were we?

those six months are done now, and again, we hold hands
the planets are back together, our new galaxy expands each day
i look outside my window,
and each night sky i see turns into another work of art once again

god, i love you so much right now
more than i did before we cracked
(more like before you cracked and i crumbled)
we're slowly piecing ourselves back up
and again, i think:

love, we are why poems need to be romanticized
why stories need to be written by people who love dictionaries
why pop songs are repetitive and love songs are everywhere

we went about this the wrong way, because honey,
we were just lovers,
we were never friends

(that's all changing now, though.
thank god.)

If you were to ask me what my name is, I would hesitate.
I would hesitate for I know not how to respond.
My name is not of my own, but a faded thing, like a memory or a dream.
A memory of who I used to be, or rather, who I never was, who everyone else dreamed me to be.
I am not my name.
I am not something to rely on when things go wrong.
I am not the things forced within a heart.
I am not the thing that keeps most breathing.
I am not Hope.

Let me stain your magic majesty;
sick a tempest on your tapestry-
tear those flags of modesty.
What is wine but rotten fruit,
and disguised euphoria that follows suit.
So let innocence fade,
cast in each other's shade.

And I want to tell her that I understand
what it feels like to be fake, insignificant,
and a shadow on the sidewalk of society.

And I want to tell her that I also borrow
the experiences of others --
that I, too, learn feelings
by stopping and staring at personal wreckage,
like a tourist of emotions,
like an inevitable wish of a human being.