Reading over text notes of biology,
or psychology,
or whatever it is that I’m studying,
the definitions come out almost indefinitely when I hear the key word.
As if my brain automatically attaches
the word to its definition.
When I first saw the grin spread across your face,
when you laughed at how I stumbled upon my words,
I felt something so captivatingly strong,
that I swear I forgot how to breathe.

A body movement so simple that it’s done involuntarily.
Over the past year that we’ve known each other,
I expected my heart to become accustomed to the way
that the blue in your eyes looks when you smile.
Yet last night,
I found myself drawing the crinkles next to your eyes,
onto the flesh of my thigh,
while I was falling asleep.
I woke up the next day with the image
imprinted
into my skin.
Reading over our texts about friends,
or family,
or whatever it is that we were talking about,
the definition of love comes out hearing you speak.
As if my brain automatically attaches
the word content
to you.

The feeling of serenity,
and belonging.
No thoughts,
no concerns.
Merely just teeth
spread from cheek to cheek,
and the sun
cascading from my eyes,
consuming every inch of flesh,
upon my body.
Every scar,
every freckle,
every bump.
All captured in the essence.
The feeling of feeling
and being.
Completely,
and utterly,
serene.

star, i feel so safe when i am here. the sand in between my toes feels like home and the whisper of the ocean crashing against my flesh is pulling me into a state of serenity.

star, i am no longer scared of the dark when you are here. your light shines bright enough to see as far as i need to see. i know you will protect me from the abyss of evil that haunts me.

star, i love how you listen to me when i tell you about the world. i love the way you still shine even after the darkest of thoughts creep into your shelter. i love how you still stay.

                                 ------------------

star, i found a boy who talks like the sun and walks like the moon. he has skylines in his eyes and constellations scattered upon his collarbones.

star, i feel like his fingerprint is the missing piece to the puzzle i've been writing my whole life. his touch feels like home to me.

star, i've travelled through cities upon cities trying to find a place to fit in but i've never felt as though i've belonged anywhere until he opened up his arms.

star, he told me that i do not need to see you anymore. he told me i shouldn't be near you. i have him to depend on now, please don't wait around for me.

                                 ------------------

star, i am so sorry. i thought he was going to hold my hand but he broke my wrist instead.

star, he told me that i'm not 'good' for him. i told him i've never been good for anything, but neither has he. i told him i loved him, he told me to leave.

star, until i met him i never knew what it was like to hold the sun in my hands. i guess the sun didn't need holding.

star, i saw him with the girl who lights cigarettes and starts fires in her backyard. i suppose he prefers the smoke of the flame rather than the crushing of the sea.

star, i haven't seen you in so long. you don't listen anymore.

star, please come out from the clouds.

star, i am so sorry.

star.

it’s interesting to think about all the right people who might’ve come into your life at the wrong time.
but then again,
i often wonder if time could’ve saved or wrecked us at all.
maybe from the start, we were destined to be nothing more than strangers.
even if i had been weighed down, glued to one spot,
nomadic tensions silenced,
it seems likely that, still, our friendly smiles and cordial jokes would’ve been
limited, somehow,
by unseen barriers,
by the cruel overseer that is fate.

i think i meant something to you, once.
not a lot, but something.
and now,
now i’m just there.
a solid. something that takes up space.
you still sit close to me,
but not as close as you did when we first met.

and i wonder, sometimes, if i did something wrong,
if there was something i could’ve done, or not done, to change things,
to make things better,
to stop us from drifting silently onto the end of the growing list of tragedies my life’s friendships have been.

but maybe there was nothing i could do.
that thought, while terrifying, is perhaps the most comforting one.
after all, it is better to be left helpless from the start than to be burdened with the knowledge that the stones you threw became part of the landslide.

i hope, maybe, that we can salvage what’s left,
perhaps even grow it into something better.
but somewhere inside, i know that’s fool’s talk.
i doubt i ever meant much to you, anyway.
i always was, and always will be, just another shadow,
another stranger,
another change of season.
i suppose i was your winter —
a barrage of snow and ice that danced in clumsily,
not bothering to think about what would happen once spring came.

i hope you’ll remember me when i’m gone.
even now, it’s nice to think that i cross your mind as much as you cross mine.
but my hopes seldom match my reality.

so, still, i am just another.
watching.
waiting.
being.
i am nothing, and in being nothing i suppose that i, too, am everything.

but i will never be your everything.

and i could say that i regret that,
but perhaps i’m still holding onto that last bit of hope.

always the optimist,
and yet even more so the pessimist.

i thought you might be both, too.
i thought we might find a way to complete one another,
much like how the land completes the sea.

but i suppose i am left the earth without its ocean,
the ground without its rain.

it’s a horrible thing, detachment.
my roots never quite find what they’re looking for in the soil.

i had just hoped you would be different.

(a.m.)

He shivered but not from the breeze, from the questionable silence that was echoing into the sky. All he could hear was the sound of her breathing and as he stared at the way her eyes searched the air for something that appeared to be lost, he realised that even though there are missing parts, broken things can be the most beautiful of them all.