Dearest,

This thing is claiming me again. I write only to express a great need to see you, or call you, or maybe even crank up the engine of this beat up junker I'm sitting in now. I'd very much like to see you again, or once more, even if it were just your eyes. It's been three years. Three years since I last heard your voice, or laugh, or saw you smile. ****, do I miss that smile. It's been three years since you left without a decent goodbye, you ***. You never had a ******* clue - but, anyway. That's not why I'm here.

I was thinking of you today, as I have every single one before and will continue to until my breathing ceases. Did you know it's the anniversary of when I realized I was hopelessly in love with you? Of course you don't. I never told you about that moment, or how I really felt. I swore I might, before you were gone, but it's been three years and I never did. So that's that, I guess. This is such a waste, writing to you. Yet here I am, painstakingly scrawling these thoughts whirling around in my brain on to a sheet of loose leaf paper. The best part is knowing I'll never send this to you. This is going to sit here in my pocket until I wash it, or burn it when I'm searching for the cigarettes I don't smoke, or even lose it on my walk through the city.

I walk every day, and not just to and from places. I walk to think. I walk to clear my head. Instead, I will pass somewhere you've been -- somewhere we've been -- and I will be right where I started again, plagued by the ghost of you on every new corner, in the middle of the crowds, and at the foot of the subway stairs. You are everywhere, darling.

You'd be laughing at this point, probably. You'd be thinking that I ramble like I used to and still don't manage to say enough to ever convince you that I'm true. Or maybe you'd be thinking how wasteful this is to this sheet of paper. How unfair that this piece of paper gets to carry this nonsensical message to you -- or not, actually -- and how unfair that it gets to sit in my pocket, close enough to be lost. Or maybe you wouldn't think that at all, and you'd be just blankly reading all of this and wondering whether I'm just bullshitting around the truth, like I've always done oh-so-well.

Or maybe you'd just be thinking that this is so typical of me, keeping things I'll never do anything with for the sake of keeping them. You always thought I liked the act of keeping things rather than the things themselves. Perhaps you're right, because I've always wished I could both keep you and be rid of you and the toxicity you bring.

But at the end of the day, I'm the one writing you. Maybe my feelings learn towards the former of those two extremes.

Anyway, you would have been right about the bullshitting thing. I'm really writing because the emptiness is back, eating me out and wringing my guts inside out, and it isn't even pleasurable. I wrote because I haven't done so in some time, and it's been a long time since I wrote one of these one-sided letters to you. I used to write more; I used to have dozens, even, though I never wrote those on loose leaf paper in an old junker, heat off in the middle of winter. Really, I'm freezing right now. This is ridiculous. And I've got to stop bullshitting to you, I do.

You know, I can almost hear you responding to this. I can hear your voice somewhere in the back of my mind, answering me. And maybe that makes me more insane than I ever was. Maybe this hollowed out body has finally been done in, and I'm just beginning my descent into the clutches of insanity... or maybe I just can't tell you the truth.  You know me well, you do.

The truth is that I ******* miss you so much, it hurts to breathe. It physically causes my chest to ache, for pain to shoot through my entire body with each pump of my heart. Unfortunately, my heart is beating ceaselessly and my breathing has yet to stop by choice, so it hurts every day, every single second. I am always missing you. There is no other truth but that.

I think that, by allowing myself to write this, I'm hoping this idea of you can save me. I know already that this is the dumbest thing I've let myself hope for, more stupid than letting myself hope for you and for change and for happiness. The point is, letting myself do this at all is stupid, But I can't stop myself. You are worse than any drug I've ever known, and I pity those whose lives you have touched only because I know what it's like to be cut off from you. God forbid you leave them, someday, and they end up like me. Or a few shades less crazy than me.

I haven't even eaten because of this emptiness. I can't eat, actually. If I feed the monster, it erupts and soaks me with self hatred. I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid to do anything to infuriate it, and it's always angry. It's always whispering to me, sexily and sweet, asking me to do things that are so wrong. I'm not listening, and I'm staying clean, but it's hard, dearest. It's so hard when you've got nothing to cling to, nothing to even dream about hoping for.

This emptiness takes and takes, and it does not give back anything but empty caverns and the memory of what it was to feel. It takes everything I've got and it dumps it on the ground, spreads it around and sullies it. And when it's tattered and worn and filthy and unrecognizable, it crumbles it between its fingers like it's nothing but ash. I hate this behemoth more than I hate living through it. It's never-ending, the terrors it brings, and it pounds against me when I trap it away. It is invincible though, and it will always win. It's invincible in the way I believed we once had been, a long time in the past. Like us, I am not as invincible as I dreamed.

I'm sorry if I've worried you. I didn't mean to tell you, not truly. But now that the words are out, I seem to be a bit less empty than I was. Maybe I'll find my way out of this... maybe. I hope you are well, and smiling, and the world treats you kindly. I hope the night sky is beautiful where you are, and the lights glimmer in the distance exactly as you've imagined them. You deserve it a thousand times over me.

-A.C.

Parting, bittersweet memories of lonesome days; different paths going opposite ways, we drop interlaced fingers to our sides, looking over our shoulders, you let go with time. I hope she makes your world beautiful as you've desired & submits to your every whim as she loves your fire. My wish: she is your comfort, your hope and your world, as she fills the empty void left by this girl.

I was somewhere where I was enticed enough that I forgot to call home, I forgot to check social media, I forgot to respond to texts, I forgot I had a different life somewhere else. I forgot that public transportation stresses me out, and I also forgot about how meeting new people can put me on edge. I was somewhere fresh and new, somewhere that made me independent, open, curious and even more so adventurous than I already am. I was somewhere where my eyes shone brighter than the street lamps and sky scrapers. I was somewhere where no one knew me and as cliché as it is, I could be whoever I wanted to be. I was somewhere new, and I could feel it in my bones.

I hope everyone finds a place like that, somewhere that's so encompassing and captivating that wherever you were before seems small and outgrown. I hope everyone wakes up in a place they love someday, in a place they realize they can be and do and say what they want. I hope everyone walks outside and realizes that where you are now doesn't have to be where you'll be forever.

I was somewhere so enticing and beautiful that it made me realize I can be those things too. I hope I end up somewhere where the stars shine as bright as I do, where my love for wherever I may be is as vast as the sky. I'll end up somewhere someday, and I've never been so ready to find my somewhere out there.

You are so special
I am so ordinary
How did you find yourself in love with me?
How could I shatter such a beautiful heart?
How many times will it replay in my mind?
I can't do this without you
I will never forgive myself
Please don't leave

and even though we speak in the same language
we are worlds apart
and how i wish that i
could be the one
to warm your tired heart
i wish my words could chill your bones
but maybe our paths
aren't meant to intertwine
but your words tear me limb from limb
they are the ocean that i'm sinking in
and i THOUGHT that i knew how to swim
but your ocean is violent: grim.

Broken~
You broke me more than once. You played me and my emotions.  You led me on. You left me broken left to pick up the pieces. At first I tried to pick them up. Then I realized that I was only hurting myself. You left me shattered. It took me awhile to get back up on my feet. But guess what I did. I picked up the pieces and put them back together without you. You never truly cared. I should've listened to my friends. But I didn't and now I have learned. Once you saw I was gone, you had a change of heart. You only wanted me back cause I was happier with someone else. You saw I could move on and go without you.  You tried to pull me back. Back into the pain I felt. You scared me. But I'm not going to let you pull me back or hold me back anymore. I'm done with all your games you play. I'm moving on and going on with my life. You've taught me how strong I really am not just physical but emotionally and mentally. You made me a stronger person. So for that I thank you for helping me learn and making me stronger than I was before. So Ive moved on you're just apart of my past. I have the future in my hands.
~ You may have broken me, but I've gotten back up. And moved on~