Dear poet,

I feel like every day I am away from you, the tiniest strand of our little red soul string snaps. I feel like the hours of pavement between us weigh down on my elation of revelation.

Dear poet,

This is not a love letter.

I only want to write about how my heart does this juxtaposing speed up, slow down, make me lose my ******* mind in the absolute best way thing any time you just… catch my eye.

Cliche, I’m aware; but since I met you, your eyes have been my favorite color.

Do you want to know why you’re the one who whispers sunsets? You speak, and I am instantly overcome with the glow of the sky. The soft oranges and reds, the delicate pinks and the comfort of the purples. I always want you to watch the sun set and remember that that is how I feel when you speak.

I never want you to be afraid to uncover your pages with me. I would submerge myself into each binding and memorize each curve of your letters if only it would bring me one step closer to being a part of your mind.

Your mind doesn’t scare me anymore. You tried so hard to keep me out, you put up road blocks and keep out signs but I refuse to listen to any more dusty U-Turn signs. Each time I take one step into a place you are afraid of yourself, you try to push me away but I decline your offer for a life raft. "Life rafts might keep you afloat but they rarely get you anywhere and I’ve got places I want to go."

I sit in silence so often because I hold back so much. I don’t want you to know how badly I want to take you back with me and spend hours on hours on days on days just sharing other people’s words and other people’s melodies with you. Months have passed, people have been in and out of my mind, but I still firmly believe that there is a reason I have not lost a single knot in my stomach when it comes to you.

If only it were possible
to slice open my skin
and carve open each vein,
I could drain you out of my bloodstream
So that when I lay my body to rest each night
I don’t feel you being injected into my heart
And I don’t hear your name ringing in my ears
And I don’t feel you rush to my lips when I sing.

Dear poet,

When your lips were stained with wine, your tongue was stained with “I love you.”

Months later, after you had left and we had both lived our lives like we had never happened, I asked you if you meant it.

"I love you, Katie."

You break my heart, just the same way you break my face into a perfect smile every time I hear your voice. We share a piece of the very same soul.
And every time you tell me the other half of you is twisted like the bark of an ancient tree carved by the ancestors we never knew I will bite my tongue and never tell you,

Dear knotted soul, dear twisted heart.
Dear soul mate, dear poet. Whatever type of person you may be, we still share that piece of sunrise together. Polluted sky, I see the knotted string in your eyes just like Andrea says.

I wait for that little tug.

Am I doing this? Am I starting over?
Do I have to heal this wound from you all over again?
Do I have to recount the days since I last wrote about you, dreamt about you, thought about you?
I am a recovering addict of self-aware fragmentation; and tonight, I am thinking of you.

I still feel the sensation of my heart swelling against the frame of my rib cage.
2. The sunrise will always remind me of the time I couldn’t look away from the morning blooming in the sky, and you couldn’t look away from the sleep blooming in my eyes.
3. You always felt like a dream to me. Even now.

Dear Poet,

I believe that nothing is as pure as an organic human connection, and I have found that in you. I look back on the hours, the days, the nights I spent with you and they feel so illusory. it is a time I am constantly craving to relive.

I’m not sure why you left. Maybe you were scared, but I was sure as hell terrified too. And this is exactly what I was terrified of. I opened up my entirety to you and you walked away without so much as an explanation. Its okay if you needed time to think. You just left me to wonder where things went wrong. I am left here with this hole in my being i can physically feel. I can feel the emptiness in the cavity of my chest, under my ribs. I feel empty, sore, and my heart is retaliating.

Our time together was short, but I have never experienced something so real in my entire life. I am constantly looking up from whatever I am doing hoping to see you pop up somewhere, but instead I am stuck searching for pieces of you in every little thing around me.

I cry because I am missing you so badly, I can’t distract myself long enough to keep from going insane. I have no idea why you can’t speak to me. I can’t close my eyes or attempt to clear my mind because the second I do I am consumed with memories of how your body felt next to mine. I hear you whisper "I feel safe with you." I am aching for that. I am holding my breath just to recall hearing you lose yours when we kissed.

I just keep losing myself.

But I have to keep snapping myself back to reality to avoid crying in the middle of a world full of people who have no idea what is happening in my head.

I still believe everything you said, except for "I’m not going anywhere." I can only hold on to the few things you left in my room in hope that its your excuse to come back.

These days have been such a run on sentence; no escape, no end, no breath, no relief.