What is it that makes you so captivating? I can’t keep my hands off of you. Submit to me: rise again. How many times will you tolerate being pushed down and stretched thin? No matter; my warmth will bring you back. Show me your golden form and I’ll show you mine. This is my body: you are His. Thou shalt bruise his heel. I’ll cut yours off. Watch me break you—consume you—while my family sings praises. I brought you into this world, and God commands I take you out of it.

Missing you is so embarrassing. We’ve never even touched. But I looked you in your face once, and I now wish I’d never turned away. Maybe it was the nerves. I tend to be quite shy around strangers, believe it or not.
Are we still strangers if I think about you all the time? Why don’t you call me anymore? I wonder if polka dot rain boots will keep me from you again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? See you soon.

On May 5, 2015, you laid your head in my lap at three in the morning and cried for an hour. It has been weeks since my last load of laundry, and longer since I've brushed my hair. Playing the piano, but only to feel my fingertips hit the keys. All you have to do is exist.  No one looks up to stargaze anymore, but I almost crashed my car, craning my neck to catch a glimpse. What does God do when He gets sad? Nothing says "I love you" like forgetting about me. My last breath is nearing. All you have to do is exist. My writing has no structure because that's how it is in my head, only louder. Remember when I showed up at your house and we cried on the floor with your dog (you helped me more than I did you)? Seize the day so hard it snaps. All you have to do is exist. I went to therapy, but all I got was a story about Native American pottery copied onto a piece of wrinkled printer paper. All you have to do is exist.  Please don't become a dentist. All you have to do is exist.  It's just so hard to love when you're not alive inside. All you have to do is exist. All you have to do is exist. All you have to do is exist.

I don't mean to write about you. Kind of in the same way I don't mean to stay in bed until evening or avoid calls from my mother or miss meals or cry through a night or two. I just do. I'm sure the sun doesn't mean to burn and the leaves don't mean to fall and the flowers don't mean to wilt and winter doesn't mean to freeze. They just do.

Run your fingers up my leg until my lungs are sore from holding my breath. Tug my hair just enough to raise my head, get my attention. Hold my thigh so you can feel the chills I get from your breath on my neck. Trace my lips with your thumb until my mouth waters. Wrap your hand around my throat; don't grasp, just hold me tight. Feed me your thoughts using only your eyes. Explore me until you find your favorite part. Stay awhile.

You miss the softness of my skin;
The texture of my hair;
The taste of my lips;
I know what "I miss you" means.

You love the curve of my hips
The kiss on your neck;
The hands on your chest;
I know what "I love you" means.

I’m always waiting for something, always looking for something. It’s the reason I look into rooms with their lights off and drive down streets that aren’t taking me where I’m trying to go. You confuse me. I never know who I’m going to get. Guards up. Tell me I'm the prettiest girl you've ever seen. Ignore me. *** me up and throw me away. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?

I’ve run my car into a lot of things and I’m thinking it’s becoming a kind of Russian Roulette, just waiting the crash that kills me. Speaking of death, you think you’ll die young--how do I die young, too? I don’t understand why everyone says the person they love makes them believe in God. Because you make me question everything and want to find the answer with my hand in yours. The more I believe, the less there is to find with you. Why do we need God when we can decide our own fate? Who “needs” anymore?

We go through this together. If you don’t like something about me, you can say so. I’ll only agree. I probably won’t change because I’m the purest form of a loafer you’ll ever know, but I’ll sure daydream about making an effort. I think fighting with people is silly because I don’t care about them and they don’t know it. When you look at me, do you see anything more than a body? It’s ok if you don’t; I don’t either. That uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re somewhere you don’t want to be, don’t quite fit in, is the feeling I live with every second and it’s clingy, comes on a little too strong for my taste; a best friend I’ve grown tired of.

Love is not real;
Neither were you.

It's the feeling you get when your eyes happen to make their way up to the stars and their beauty holds you there for the seconds that seem to be hours. It's when you put the fire out and realize that the smoke that comes with the death of the fire is more captivating than the flames themselves. It when you feel so much pain you forget to breathe, and the breath you take after it's over feels like your first in years. I don't get to see you too often. But when I do, you are the stars. You are the smoke. You are the breath.

Pain brings out the best of me, so that all that's left is an empty disappointment. Don't try to tell me you don't look at the stars and think of me. Every time I drag a smile across my face, I feel my thoughts tug down at the corners of my mouth. Funny how you beg to hear my voice, but you never pick up the phone. Why does everyone treat me right but you? My enemies kiss my hand before they slit my throat, but you prefer to waltz in unannounced and rip my sanity up shred by shred. You broke everything I ever was. I've cried for hours over you. You **** me inside. I hope we end up together.

You beg for your hands on my body; I prefer mine on your mind. You pray to kiss every inch of me; I wish to kiss the pain away. You want our bodies entangled; I'd rather untangle my thoughts. Jesus Christ, just open your eyes and shut your mouth and maybe you'll see the metaphors I do.

Jet engines could never compete with the voices that bellow my flaws and echo off the walls of my head. Dropping your mother's China will never compare to the feeling that is my body's way of telling you it's aching for understanding. Sometimes when you squint at the sun, you realize it's nothing compared to the burn of the look you get when you tell someone you're drowning in yourself. If you don't read my words with the voice of gods on fire, are you reading it at all?

Your mouth is too full of the words you're about to say to swallow what I'm telling you. Your ears are too blocked with the sounds of what you think you're hearing to listen to my desperate cry for help. Your eyes are too clouded by what you want to see to be able to perceive what you've done. You're oblivious; can't you see you're killing me? I love you.

I've always loved you, even before I knew you. I dreamed of you, faceless; your blurred eyes staring back at mine. Sometimes we go out at night just because it seems the world is ours when everyone else is asleep. What does God think when someone sins? Maybe he feels half the heartbreak I did when you said goodbye. It was just a crack in the wall, but you hit it again and the house caved in. As you choked on the rubble, you wondered why any of this was real. I constantly challenge myself to think of problems with impossible solutions. They keep my mind off of you. Your friends still ask about you; I can never answer them. You're more of a mystery to me than God is to any of us. Does the moon weep over how recessive she is to the sun? I can't stand words like "betrayal" or "alone". They pull the strings that make me vulnerable. When you said you'd wait, did you mean it? Or will I come running to you just to see your eyes on someone else, your lips on theirs?

I remember the way you laughed while you played the piano. Your dark brown eyes followed your hands, gliding across the keys. They were just broken chords, but you made it sound like a cadenced sonata. I look at old pictures and fall in love with the people my parents used to be: free-willed, adventurous, happy. I wonder who convinced them they'd fall miserable if they didn't change. I burn these musty incense in an effort to get a smell different than that of sadness. But all they do is turn it to smoke and send it drifting through my head. You don't get high because you get scared; I get scared either way. Everyone is enchanted by the sunset; but once it's gone, they leave the moon to be alone. I want to feel what I felt when I laughed and you stared and mustered a "wow' in awe. You've become everything I've wanted, and further proscribed.

The sky is the color you see when you close your eyes. Not quite black, just dark. It was nice, the way you looked at me when I was calm. How your smile caressed your eyes, your shoulders seemed to relax. The flowers I planted never grew; they must've been too weak, consumed by the earth. I watch happy people and realize how shallow they are. They space out and talk about their favorite tv shows and worry about stains on their shirts. My fingers are strangely shaped: they curve in and out, thinner than normal. But somehow they fit perfectly with yours, straight and perfect, always oil-stained and callused. I remember when I draped my arm across your chest and felt the scars on your shoulder. How they were arranged in such a familiar pattern. I traced them so carefully and read the word 'fear'. I wish I didn't write about you. I wish I didn't write at all. I know the smell of my mother's perfume. It reminds me of the times she came home and I ran to her after hours of waiting restlessly. Now it chokes me and creates a lump in my throat, tears in my eyes. No one's voice could ever fade in the background yet be heard so clearly except yours; a piano ballade in a distant room. We spend so much time trying not to take things for granted that we end up taking things for granted, for granted. "I ruined the flower you gave me. I didn't mean to," you said to me. It's been three years, and I feel like the flower.