Dear Violet,

This isn’t what you want from me, and we both **** well know that, so
I’m sorry.

For making you the true victim of unrequited love, because altruism comes at a high price, something we both know too well, and this kind of behavior simply won’t do. For once in my life, I must try and put these feelings behind me. Because I cannot express, what I cannot understand, especially towards you, Violet, considering your own sense of confusion. This was a world I never expected to find myself in with you. I’ve sat through dozens of your accounts of exactly what I’m becoming, and I’m well aware of what becomes of them. You’re a rare Violet rose weathering a storm, and all I can do is offer you shelter. But in no way shall I pick you, for if that were to ever happen, I’m afraid you’d instinctively wither away and die between my fingers, and I couldn’t stand to let that happen. I wouldn’t put you through that. But the heart is an animal solely restrained by the rib cage, unbound by the mind, and my bones are rather weak. My ribs would be worth breaking. My heart would, could be yours for the taking. But I need to make do, for this is the exact thing I just swore I simply wouldn’t do.

This shall be a love triangle fought with pens, paper, pencils and keyboards. A war of wordsmiths and poets, of lead and ink, of writings comparing everything besides the kitchen sink. These words will be our own, and may reside unknown, but we will all fight with our hearts at length, and we will show each other our true strength.

This is passion.

This is love.

This is precisely what I am capable of.

Humans are eighty percent water, we are

fluid.

Our thoughts and behaviors can only be expected to be equally so, we can’t be expected to know who we are if it changes in every heartbeat. And we can fight the current with all our might, and act like we always know wrong from right but we are fluid, and our virtues are like liquid, slipping through our firmly grasped handholds like the tears of an immoral god.

Boy, I know it ain’t easy, but you gotta be careful when you wear your heart like a wristwatch but your head’s so far in the clouds you can’t see what people do it. I know it’s scary. And I wish I could hold your hand into every day, if for nothing more than to keep the lovesick predators at bay, but we are separated by the most daunting of boundaries. However, even distance can be traversed.

And Boy, I always swore I could never love someone smarter than me, but something about the way the gears move behind your eyes, powered by nothing but good will and hope, is beautiful to me, almost as beautiful as the layers of flesh hiding that sad situation.

Almost.

Because Boy, I know you hate the way you were shaped, and every now and then you may feel the need to take a whole arsenal of sharp objects to your beautiful locks, and I don’t really mind because change is good. And I’ve always noticed how it grows back, stronger than ever.

And Boy, I know you love me. With all that you are. And maybe I’ll never quite understand that, because more often than not I forget to even give you the time of day, and you’re eternally patient about that. You threw all your faith into this broken, shattered, childish man.

Boy, you deserve better than the half-hearted love I’ve been able to give. Because half my heart is powered by my mind, and it knows better, and I know you do too, but why hasn’t that stopped us yet?

Why do we still fight through all the misery and loneliness, all the longing and hopelessness?

Why do I write this poem? Why did you write yours? What’s even to come of this?

Please, let me be the wrench in your gears
The bug in your system
I want to drive you crazy
I want to be the voice in the back of your mind
Let me be the catch in your breath
The skipped beat in your chest
Allow me to become the tingles in your back
I want to make your hair stand on end in the best possible way
Let me be the flaw in your perfection

How can you be so sympathetic
Watching me, a simple moth
Pinned down to a corkboard
Desperately trying to escape

I’d like to believe it’s because you see yourself in me
You were once a butterfly in the same position
But I saw you torn from the painful security of that board
And, still bleeding, I saw your gorgeous wings ripped from you

I thought they’d never grow back the same

So how can you be so sympathetic
Watching me simply pinned
So securely
While you fly so free, so deservingly

You’ve worked so hard to mend your wounds
While I’ve almost stop struggling, accepting a broken fate
So hopelessly inspired by your success
So proud of something I’ll never be
Purely because I won’t break free

I think you should know how broken I feel
How incomplete my life is.
And it seems no matter how hard I try
I never feel like I’m trying at all. I will never be good enough.

*

No! Not good enough. I wonder if I’ll ever find happiness in love. I think that I’ll never be handsome enough for the man of my dreams, I wonder just what it is everybody sees in me, I try my hardest to be how everybody pictures me in their dreams, but I feel like it will never be enough.

*

No! Not good enough. I try to escape my reality into a world of fiction and imaginary deadlines, I feel like I’m leading a limitless life but constantly stopped by the walls of reality which for some reason I just can’t seem to see, the consequences of undermanaged ADD, a fictional disease according to leading scientists in my family but out of my control, honestly. However, that excuse will never be good enough.

**

No! Not good enough. I dance and spin and toss and weave, I exert myself desperately, but these things require bones and muscles, concentration and hustle, these things take time and patience, and I’m trying my best to cover my bases but I’m working off my basic skills, refusing to build atop the talents I was born with, and I know it’s impressive but I’m too stubborn to discover my potential. I know in my heart that I’ll always be stuck at a headstart, and I know in my mind that physical exertion is a waste of time, and I tell myself it simply isn’t enough.

**

No! Not good enough. I stride through practiced steps of one, two, three-and-four, dance instructors always wanting something more, feet on the floor, girl in the air, handle with care, stay in line, always keep time, careful with your dips, and Jake, please don’t dance with your hips. But…my hips don’t lie. So I try and pry at this art, a release torn apart through structure which wasn’t part of the plan, see, I must be a man, though sometimes I stray THAT’S… strictly for play, see, I have to be strong, have to be leaned on, have to be a base, have to stay in place, and that’s something I will never be able to do good enough.

***

No! Not good enough. I tentatively go where no man has gone before, if that’s even what I am, for it simply seems it wasn’t adventurous enough for me to be gay, but I had to stray from what was just seeming normal and find a new definition from what I considered to be formal, but there’s something alluring to the concept of twirling in floor length dress, or the beautiful strain of a high heels caress, and sometimes make-up can be more than skin deep, because the feeling of seeing what I’ve always wanted to see is… incredibly heart meltingly fascinating. But society sneers, and leers, and jeers, and I’ll never really hear the cheers for the men who wear skirts and the boys who get hurt because of they’re choices in life, it all ends in strife when a man gets curious, because to society, those choices are never good enough.

****

No! Not goo-