this is when i want you the most; when its 9 30 am and it is still gray outside because the rain came early today. press your fingertips into the dips of my waist with every roll of thunder because you are here and i am here and its dark but its still a new day. in arizona, we're lucky to get rain three months out of the year, those months are called monsoon season. heavy storms that knock over chairs and threaten windows, knock on car doors begging to be let in. we count down to the start of monsoon season and i cant help but think how beautiful it is that so many people who will never meet all look forward to this one thing. when it rains, we cry, creating our own storms and puddles on tile floors with rumbling laughter for thunder. you, dear, are a monsoon, in every sense of the word; strong and beautiful and devastating. anticipated. i count down the days, and when you finally arrive, everything is finally bright; your smile supplied its own lightning. you knock on the counties of my body and make yourself at home until its time to go. monsoons always start and end with drool and you are the same way, able to create something from nothing; incredible.

you do not exist to me. in a world of shallow breaths and wordless apologies, you are a distant memory, barely a name in the wind, my aching bones every time it rains. every note in every song i can no longer listen to. i can hardly remember what my name sounded like when it was coming from your lips, slipping out from behind your jagged teeth, your poison tongue, it is so comforting to know that i am a version of myself that you never got to touch; that you never even got to meet. youre a tick in a mental calendar of days not to let myself be alone on. ive forced myself to believe that time and pain can breed nothing but wisdom in the hopes of convincing myself that ill come out of this on top but i dont know how to do that when you insist on making yourself a glowing beacon in the darkness of a wants to be, could be if youd let it be, almost there but not quite memory. i dont want to remember you. i dont want your ghost to linger. i dont want to hear your steady breath in my ear like a twisted reminder of what once was. what once was was a nightmare and i am finally awake.

and maybe i like being hurt now because my parents always taught me that pain equals affection. i want it because ive been programmed to believe the harder the blow, the stronger the love. ive been brought up with the idea that when a boy has a crush on a girl, he picks on her, so when my boyfriend asks if hes hurting me, i ask for more, because how else am i supposed to know that what we share is true love?

we talk about depression like an old, long lost friend; hes the guy that no one can ever remember who invited him to the party, but he always showed up before the end of the night. hes in every photograph we’ve ever taken, a photobomb that we had no chance of preventing. i used to think that he sat behind us like a wave, looming over the shore, wondering when it would crash but i know now he was nestled in the waves of our hair, sat in the spaces between our teeth, lodged in our throats. he knew how to conceal himself when there were cameras around. his name sits uncomfortably in our mouths, like its too big; or maybe its just too ******. his arms always felt warm when they wrapped around my waist to remind me that i still had a waist, i didnt want to have a waist. he spoke every language, knew what to call my downfall in fifteen dialects. he was the kind of friend to hit you where no one would see and claim the battle wound for his own. he had a superpower. he was invisible, but only when he wanted to be, and only to those who he didnt want to see him. he was a magician, a jack of all trades. he dipped his toes in darkness and shook them in my direction; he knew that i dont know how to swim. he knew that i would not want to learn how to swim for him.

and im no longer afraid to admit that i am a fool for you. my old guidance counselor used to tell me that she hopes to die before her husband so she doesnt have to spend a single day without him and i used to think it was so silly but now, i get it. i get it. one day without you is twenty four hours of empty meals, twenty four hours of a dead phone with no will to be charged, a thermostat set to fifty because maybe ill freeze over. twenty four hours of love lost, twenty four hours of an endless what if what if what if what if you had pulled through just a little bit longer what if i was better at wording the jumble of thoughts in my head all the time what if i could kiss you one last time what if what if. what if i had gone first. it pains me to say that i think about this a lot, you see, a world without you is a world i hope i never have to live in.  the sun rises and sets in you, and i was taught this by none other than you the moment that you took me in and made me a part of you, you pushed me into your soul and i used to wonder what would happen if i couldnt get out but i dont want out anymore. i would rather stay hidden beside you than ever have to experience the harshness of reality alone. because the reality is, one day, i will be gone, you will be gone, everything i have ever touched will be gone, no one will know you or me or the last text i sent you or the fourteen hour video call, but it's nice to think we have infinity. forever with you isnt long enough and im sorry that im so wishy washy when it comes to speaking and i know im small and im not very loud but i would write it in the sky for you if i could, let the world know just how mine you are, how much of my soul loves yours, how much of my heart beats for you. my whole heart beats for you.

1.  There is nothing romantic about the way our hair falls out or the way we hover over the open toilet like there's no other empty space in the house.
2. Do not think that it will be easier to love us because the love we aren’t giving ourselves will go to you.
3. You can trail your fingers along my rib cage, count every vertebrae in my back like marbles stacked high on top of each other. This is not beautiful, this is what dying looks like.
4. I’m sorry for the smell of my breath, but there’s no amount of toothpaste that could cover up the smell of myself rotting from the inside out.
5. “I thought you had to be skinny to have an eating disorder.”
5.   “You don’t look like you starve yourself.”
5.   I know that you wish you could hold me without worrying i’ll turn to dust if you squeeze too hard.
6.   I grew up being told that my body is a temple and I should treat it as such, but I don’t think this is right, see; temples can be destroyed but it always takes another person. I am doing this to myself.
7.   I can’t remember the last time I ate without feeling guilty.
7.   I can’t remember the last time I ate.
8.   One day, I will be nothing and you will be nothing, and i’m sorry that i’m already so close to being gone.
9.   I want to get better. I am trying to get better.
10. Do not think that loving us will be easier, because the love we do not give ourselves is gone, and we cannot love you more than we don’t love ourselves.