You've become the crawling in my skin
The rollercoaster dropping of my heart
The bad dreams that wake me to my own screams
The lack of courage I battle with
The anger in the pit of my stomach
The cries lost in my pillow
The loneliness that consumes me
And I didn't even lose you
I never even had you

When he shows up at my door at 1:30 am, I do not hesitate
Instead invite him in with tired arms,
Make a conscious decision to sacrifice a night of sleep
to lie in the body of a boy on my too small twin sized bed
It was not made to hold another but
this heart was

His smile is summer in the marina and feels too much like the sunsets of
red and
purple and
pink

I want to bury myself in the sand next to him beneath
A sun too harsh for our pale skin to meet, one that
will leave us burnt and peeling and laughing at our human turned starfish bodies
I want to be surprised by the freezing that comes from
running into the ocean bare and unbound but
for now all we have are the sheets we are in
so we sink further into the memory foam

Too delicate and slow for my eagerness to grab onto,
He mentions the softness of my lips as they trace his
I laugh and say
“I try”
What I really mean is
“I hope I am enough for you”
His limbs stretch across the length of the mattress, mine fold to fit his
Our cohesion in this lack of space is a packed box and
I don’t mind the suffocation

I think to myself that
this intimacy right here
is exactly what I need,
to be touched like I am important even if it is just for a moment

I decide that this hour of holding before
his eyelids fall together for the remainder of the night
is worth the 10 hours I will spend not sleeping
His breath, heavy with exhaustion, overpowers the sound of my starving heart
beating for the music of his and
that’s completely fine

I am running out of ways to
tell him he is exactly
what I want

So I let him stay as an unspoken declaration of always welcome
I let him make my bed a home with the hopes that
in turn he will make one out of me

I'd like to say I don't think of you
That you don't cross my mind until your name crosses my screen
And only then do I take the time to care

I'd like to say that I don't
That I haven't devoted any energy to wasting
That it is all too precious to give away to anything but positivity

I'd like to say I would need to think twice if you asked to see me
But I know too well that I wouldn't
I'd say yes
okay
of course
when
All without asking why

I don't know why some people come back and trust me when I say I want to
But I would without question welcome you with open arms and no hesitation
I wouldn't even pause to wonder why you left in the first place

I'd like to say that I'm happy,
That this heart is a filled balloon and there is enough oxygen for me to breathe easy
But sometimes I find myself suffocating on what I don't understand

I am scared that I could so easily let you back in the way I always swear I'll never do again
But I have and I do and I probably will
All you need to do is ask
And I'd say yes,
okay,
of course,
when?

I colored you into an image so bright that I could see you even with eyes closed. I painted you loud enough for the noise to keep me up at night. I made you into something you were not; a masterpiece.

If I lay blade to skin
Will I bleed out all the toxins that make me so undesirable.

If I rip open flesh
Will I tear away the pieces of me that repel.

Will the anger and loneliness seep from the wounds
Leaving me whole again.

Can't I just pretend

I do everything with you in mind
But you could live without me.