every morning is too early, every ray of sunlight in the room is too bright. you can’t open your eyes all the way, but you’ll just have to work around it if you want to get anything done.

watch something ***** just to feel something, just to force some kind of reaction in a body that has been stuffed and emptied and prodded and picked apart, hands that don’t know what to do with themselves, lips that have spent too much time whispering the wrong secrets into the wrong ears.

you didn’t want to say yes but you didn’t want to say no, either, and now you’re stuck.

every day brings a new coping mechanism, a numbing agent. hours pass and you awaken to see yourself staring at plastic wrappers scattered over the bed, an empty tub of ice cream, a sticky spoon in the sink. go to the bathroom, wash your hands. blink at the mirror. anticipate the shame waiting for you when you drag yourself into bed.

you’re supposed to be on a road going somewhere, you promised you would be. you’ve booked your hotel and all that’s left is for you to put down the mileage. instead, you’re holed up in a ditch on the side, lying flat, hoping none of the passing cars will notice it’s you there, under the tarp, wondering why you’re always so cold. summon the courage to get back on the road, take a few steps, but you know it’ll just send you flying backward again - and for what?

you plan and plan and plan and plan, but it only gets you scraps of some life you never wanted. do your best, patch it into a quilt, but it’s not enough to keep you warm. somehow you know it never will be.

1/ there was a time when you didn’t know my name, or my story, or my birthday, and we sat around thinking about high school and everything grand that was about to happen to us, and how excited we were. and then we went to high school, but nothing really grand ever quite happened, except for meeting each other, and that’s what started it all, i think – when i heard your voice on the very first day of freshman year and knew that i was going to love you someday. i think that’s how it all started. i don’t know how i knew it, but I did – in the pit of my stomach, i knew somewhere that one day, we would spend our whole lives loving each other. our entire lives. in one moment, i saw them, clear as anything, and i knew.

2/ we were fifteen and it was dark. we were inside an empty house, sam’s house, and it was dark, and you were sitting at the piano, and you were playing music that you had written. and something moved inside me, something deep and old and warm, like the very core of the earth was shaping itself to fit inside your pocket.

3/ you forgot my sixteenth birthday. i cried, and you apologized, but then you forgot about that, too.

4/ last september we went to a football game but we decided to explore the woods by the field instead. we were off the trail and hopelessly lost so we laid down then and there and looked up at the sky, and the stars were out. i could feel your breath on my cheek. you saw a shooting star, but i missed it.

5/ you asked me what book i was reading. you smiled and we talked about it, but then the next day, you asked me what book i was reading. and the next day, and the day after that. and you will tomorrow, too, and you'll smile.

6/ it was new years eve and i was sitting next to you on your couch, and my insides were trembling, shaking so violently i knew that you noticed. my heart was pounding, in time with the count-down, the people all around us shouting numbers. five, four, three, two, one – and i turned around and kissed you, for the first time, the minute the old year slid into the new. i kissed you, and that was my resolution – to love you, every day.

7/ last summer, we were outside at a party, and you told me that you couldn’t date anybody because there wasn't time. we went back to the party and we danced, my arms around your neck. i saw a shooting star, but you missed it.

8/ one time, you saw my left wrist, my left forearm, and asked me what had happened. i told you it was my cat, and you said, no, that cats’ claws aren’t so close together. you looked at me, i looked at you, and we never spoke of it again.

9/ there was a time when we were lying on your basement floor, and i was curled up into your side, and you turned me around and you kissed me. and then we were sitting up, a tangle of legs, and you kissed me, the place where my neck joins my shoulder, and you kept kissing me. we went upstairs, to your room, and the house was empty, and you kept kissing me. the house was empty, you were kissing me, and we sank onto your bed, onto the sheets you had slept in since before you had ever known me, or her, or anyone, and we kept kissing, and i kept opening my eyes to look at you because I thought I was asleep.

10/ a time before, i was sitting on the bathroom floor of my parents' house, and i was crying. you called me, words tumbling over words, and my left forearm, my left wrist, was lying on the toilet seat, and your words were climbing down ladders to get to me, and i had to sneak downstairs for the first aid kit, and your words just laid there, useless, as i ripped the wrapper off the gauze.

11/ there are moments. there are moments when you are sitting alone in your room, and the perfect song is playing, and he whispers in your ear: you’ve made me fall for you, that’s what you’ve done. i’ve fallen for you…you and your beautiful mind, body, and soul. there are moments when you know in the pit of your stomach that you'll want nothing but to spend your whole life loving him, your entire life. in one moment, i saw it, clear as anything, and i knew.

to the one who played django reinhardt for me on vinyl,
who cooked me pancakes and bacon for breakfast,
who gave human names to the animals at the zoo,
who senses thunder in the air before it happens,
who made me try sponge candy and coffee and good indian food,
who bought me a candy bar with a poem on the wrapper --

on the bus ride back (all 8 hours) I couldn't stop thinking about you
and when I fell asleep, I dreamed of you immediately,
missing you already before I'd even made it home

you're the opposite of everything I'm supposed to want and you're not easy to explain
we run out of things to talk about (or perhaps there's too much to say)
i'm afraid to reach for your hand under the table, to sleep next to you in the bed instead of curling up at the end, or to lean my head on your shoulder, nervous because I don't quite know where I stand

and it's still enough, in an easy, sunday-morning, pajamas kind of way. it's enough to be with you without having anything to say, to drink orange juice from a coffee mug, the electric precipice of wanting to know the answer yet being afraid to ask the question

i wonder if i'll ever stop being afraid of myself --
that i'm too shy, too quiet, too boring,
with nothing that could hold you,
no magnetic field, no gravitational orbit to keep you
you, who is infinitely magnetic.
but how can I want to keep you when I don't even know
what it is that we are?

to the one who grabbed my hand in the parking lot even though your parents were with us,
who let me sleep in your bed while you took the couch,
who looked at me with sleepy eyes and said "come here,"

to that one, the only one --
as long as you keep asking,
i'll always come.

a hand held across the table
a paper bag of alaskan candy
a pair of tickets in a red envelope
a daffodil rescued from the street

"can't I just look at you?" you asked me when I tried to get you to focus on your food, the most mischievous little smile on your face

(if you asked me again what you asked me in february -
I don't know I don't know I don't know)

it goes without saying that I'm afraid of the depth of my own capacity to hurt people
I am a sailboat made of paper, I am a terrible idea
I am everything everyone I have ever loved has left behind,
the pieces that don't fit, the muddy debris

I'm afraid of my own fear, I'm afraid that I will deny you
and that it will leave wounds in you deeper than any you've ever had
I'm afraid about feeling guilty about being with you
and I am afraid because I can't see how my parents could ever know

(despite it all, there's still my body, like an animal, looking at your lips and hips and eyes and hands, whispering
I want, I want, I want)

tumult, grasping
for a foothold, just
someplace steady that
I can use to
make sense of things

i’m dying, i’m dying, i’m dying

desperate, i’m desperate. trying to keep
my head about the waves – god
why did I never learn how to swim?
how does everyone else seem to just know?

what is true what is real what is good?
do i love them? do i just want to **** them?
why can’t i seem to
stop scaring people away?

i never quite know whether my night will end with me
singing on mountaintops
or crumpled on a ***** floor

i hate it i love it
i wish it would stop

motion sickness all over again
spinning -- why should the earth need an axis?
just give me a ******* pill

we had one night
and it came and went like a wave on the shore
with nothing to show,
except what you and i know to be true

we had one night, just one
five entire years in the making
when we existed entirely at a precipice –
hot breath on my neck (yours) fingers inching up my sleeve (yours)
the suspense was killing me

we had one night
one night when everything could have changed
and i suppose it did,
because we haven’t spoken in a year
i don’t think i’ve gone a day without wondering how you are

i hope you’re happier,
i hope you’re found what you were looking for,
that unnameable thing you tried and failed to find in me that night

i hope we meet again

i also hope we don’t,
i know you understand

today i laid on my back in the middle of the new york public library and stared at the painting on the ceiling

i’m not the kind of person to do that
to be honest, it was just because you did -
without a thought, without a pause, you just flopped down and stared up at prometheus bringing fire to the mortals,
your eyes huge and full of life

when we were crossing the street to get to bryant park,
you grabbed my hand so i wouldn’t get lost in the crowd and
we both held on for a little bit too long

are you thinking about that moment as much as i am?

sometimes i wish i could forget about the kind of person i’m supposed to love, supposed to marry -
the perfect christian guy that my parents would love, who would pray the rosary with me every night before bed
sometimes i wish i could just love who i want to love, and stare up at the paintings on the ceiling even though i’m not supposed to,
because who even puts a painting on the ceiling anyway?
it's beautiful, it's there,
so why shouldn't i look at it?

you are utterly unprecedented, you make me feel normal and human and alive

your hand was so small and cold but it was okay, it really was