a letter to my love who loves someone else
I know that with life cutting corners on your shoulders it is easier to walk away from a game that involves using your hands, the ones that knit blankets to keep me warm, the ones that made sound when I swore I was deaf to every motive except my own
I am sorry to have caused you so much trouble
I know that the word will knock down trees to build skyscrapers, I just only hope you will remember what it felt like to lay under them
I only hope you still think of me when you look up at the sky
I know that perspective is everything and sometimes turning the other cheek molds into shaking your head
I know that I often looked away too much and I am sorry I couldn't bare more drawn out moments of silence with you
My mouth has no safety on it, my mind wanders as if a lost child in a super market, it was hard to fall in love with every piece of you because I was scared of you leaving without taking me with you
I am afraid of the dark, I always have been and will most likely always will be because darkness means uncertainty and I still have a nightlight
I still pretend to be a child
I find myself sunbathing in these memories as a form of prayer
I hung up a picture of you and I on my wall and told everyone it was only for good times sake, something beautiful to look back on, flipping page in the scrapbook, old videos on the home computer
I did not tell them it was because I am pretending that we are still possible
That you will come back here and we can reminisce and play pretend
There are days when I am not sure if I can ever love someone the way I loved you, there are days when I do not want to play pretend with someone else
There is nothing poetic about the way I hopelessly love you
I have learned that poetry loses it's grandeur when you realize there is not a single combinations of words that can make someone love you back
And still, standing on the precipice of an echo, I can almost hear you singing along to the radio, I can almost feel your fingertips on my back like a record playing needle
And I can't help but wonder
Do you still sleep with a light on?

Your smile will be a sunset shouting, declaring that mountain tops are not the most beautiful place on earth because you have always believed that was a setting saved for loving someone
Your fingertips will be magic wands casting spells on bodies who ache for illusion her hips are the trap door that I never saw coming
Your heart will be a speeding ticket, gaining on cupid as he races away with the one thing you swore you would never let go of
Your knees will be an earthquake, shaking under the sound of her breathing, bearing witness to each tendon imitating downfall
Your eyes will become testaments of the strength we never learned how to use the right way, an open drawer of instructions to someone who didn't know how to read
Your love for her will grow like wildfire, falling trees, building stairwells up past all of the smoke, you will find it hard to inhale something not seeking to **** you
Your mouth will be filled with words that have become stale from the overuse of them, you will tell her what she wants to hear
And she will always listen

Whatever you do, don’t let your love go unspoken
It will be scary and your knees will quiver
Your hands will shake but this is what it feels like to be alive
To really feel something for someone
Do not miss an opportunity because you cannot bear the idea of your palms being anything but still
Tell them
Tell them that their smile runs through your veins and their touch consumes your body and soul
Tell them you have found a home within the gold of their eyes and a place between their laughter
Tell them that you still love them
Despite all the past holds, tell them you still haven't let go
Before telling them too late, past the point of repair
Tell them before they find someone else
Because they will

We are sitting in the same coffee shop I fell in love with him in, but it is different now. I look up and he is still looking at his hands. Eyes are on his callused palms, twiddling his thumbs and I still love him more than I ever have. He looks up with an innocence that only a child could have. I think of how he is thinking about her. I wonder if he even sees me or just the ghost of a girl he almost loved.
"You know this isn't easy for me. You know that," he mumbles, looking down again.
"Do you think this is easy for me? I have to sit here and watch you fall in love with someone else when all the while I am having to convince myself that eventually things will get better, people tell me that eventually things will get better. I can't tell you the amount of times you would have received a phone call but didn't because I knew you wouldn't answer. I don't know what you expect. This isn't easy for me either, this isn’t easy at all."
We sit in silence for a moment. I almost cry but I refuse to show any more weakness than I already have, he doesn't deserve to see me hurting. He wouldn’t understand. The silence falls heavy on the wooden floors. And after a few long seconds of it all he can manage is,
"I'm sorry."

We were lukewarm hearts and cups of coffee
Breakfast in bed on Sunday morning
Videos of laughter and short-lived occurrences
Late night drives with the radio too loud
Saturday afternoon movies and naps
And a box of letters that ended in
P.S. I love you

Your hips will fall into metal blankness
His hands will brush over them like paint to a canvas
And you will expect a beautiful painting
And even though your mother told you to never hold high expectations
You did anyways
And now you feel the wisdom in her words as this grotesque picture looks you in the face grinning with deceit because you only did this to forget about someone else
He insists that you frame it
Your collarbones will sink like boulders
Lay on the bottom of desolate ocean floors
You will feel like an abandoned ship wreck
Like an empty treasure chest
You have disappointed because you are still in love with someone else
You will ask for a blue print of your body so you can leave it on a train just so you can have something to remind you what it used to look like before he took it from you
And they will call this a mistake
Giving away the one piece of you that should have been saved for someone who didn't just say they loved you
Someone who meant it, the words would hold so much passion it would hit you with a force that not even the strongest anaesthesia could keep you from feeling
But yet you keep trying to find that missing piece of you in other people's bed sheets
You will trust anyone who shows interest because you have not tasted this is so long
Because bad man look like respectable men
Bad men with a smile so wide that they will swallow you and you will convince yourself that you asked him to
Your whole being will begin to ash away
Because you were lit by someone who did not finish what they began
And the truth is, you cannot hand a paintbrush to someone else once a piece of art is started because the finished picture will never be as beautiful as it could have been
So why do you keep passing it around

We are sitting in the same coffee shop I fell in love with him in, but it is different now. I look up and he is still looking at his hands. Eyes are on his callused palms, twiddling his thumbs and I still love him more than I ever have. He looks up with an innocence that only a child could have. I think of how he is thinking about her. I wonder if he even sees me or just the ghost of a girl he almost loved.
"You know this isn't easy for me. You know that," he mumbles, looking down again.
"Do you think this is easy for me? I have to sit here and watch you fall in love with someone else when all the while I am having to convince myself that eventually things will get better, people tell me that eventually things will get better. I can't tell you the amount of times you would have received a phone call but didn't because I knew you wouldn't answer. I don't know what you expect. This isn't easy for me either, this isn’t easy at all."
We sit in silence for a moment. I almost cry but I refuse to show any more weakness than I already have, he doesn't deserve to see me hurting. He wouldn’t understand. The silence falls heavy on the wooden floors. And after a few long seconds of it all he can manage is,
"I'm sorry."