I push a pin through the thin film of silence and listen to your thoughts hiss out with the air behind it. I wonder how many things people don't say. Because I know I don't say that I love you, and that I've never been more in love with anything than your laugh, or that I miss you always, or that I still know all your favorite candies, or that I don't exactly want to get over you. I know what you think and don't say doesn't match up to that exactly but that's okay. I can keep admiring the soft curve of your nose and lips when you're smiling. You won't know that I think of it whenever the sun comes out.

You, you're like the sun coming out. I know you'd argue against that, but up close the sun is as hostile as it gets, nothing can touch it. But from afar it's so beautiful and want and bright- and what I'm saying is you're not as bad as you think you are. And I need you. Just like every rose on this earth needs the light.

Maybe it's all cliché. But ****'s cliché for a reason, you know? Love is a very collective feeling. It's different for everyone, but so collective. I'm sure I've been on the receiving end of the way I look at you, but I wasn't looking in that direction.

And you're not necessarily looking in mine either. So what I'm saying is you wouldn't know love if it stared you in the face. Because it is, it has been. But it's okay, it's better to burn out than fade away, and I've been looking at the sun too long to know if it's looking back anyway.

It's 2 am and I want to know why my hands are still twisting knots in my hair, trying to busy themselves from writing out "I love you, sometimes." I don't know when I don't, but I'm hoping it's in me somewhere because if not, I have no hope to ever say that with any conviction. I mean, maybe if I was a little drunk I could pretend to laugh at you. But, really, you fill up my whole heart. I hate it in the way people hate beautiful things that they can't have, like a kid in a candy store. It is child-like, how I cry over you. And you don't notice, not really. I can see it in the way children pick leaves off trees and let them fall to the ground without second thought after the initial satisfying snap. Every time I see a sunflower, head bowed with the heaviness of its petals, I'll think of you. Snow reminds me of you too. In fact, most things remind me of you. I would say only sometimes, but that's a lie I can't even tell myself.

I watch myself fade and wilt in your eyes like valentines flower petals from their vase, falling onto the white desk dirtied with graphite and candy wrappers below. There's thirty one letters from colleges and three love notes left there to peel up at the corners and get stuck with bubblegum but nothing leaves the taste of metal in my mouth more than "Michigan". I'm terrified every day of you leaving. I'm more terrified of your hair being out of place and your smile not being the way I remember it. Do you ever think of the way it would be if you loved me back? Sometimes I wish you'd force yourself into things the way I always do when I'm fitting into prom dresses or looking into my own eyes in the mirror, trying to decide if they're green or hazel like my mom insists every time I fill out a passport application. Think of how my hands would look in yours, the way my chipped nail polish would match your veins, thinly creeping up your arms like you haven't tried to carve them out with office supplies and hours of crying in circles. Sometimes I think I ought to just kiss you, remind you that it's easy to fake things. You should know. Sometimes I dream of holding the side of your face in the bold and silently rotting static of my room and saying "let's run away" and we don't really go anywhere, it's just us, the very edge of the half moon of our shoulders touching, warm like sunshine on pebbles. Most of the time, I don't wish for much. I just wish I could stare into your eyes for even a second without feeling the blood run into my face. Or just that I could look at you. You feel like forever and a universe away and I don't know if that's because you're so perfect or because I only ever see you after your hockey games, which ended exactly five days ago, by the way. Not that I'm counting or anything. And not to say that I miss the way that when I hugged you, I could feel your shoulder blades and the gentleness of your hand on my back, but I'd give anything to feel that again. I never knew if it was as awkward for you as it was life saving for me. You still have no idea how much I looked forward to seeing you even for those painful few minutes where, despite us not making eye contact once, you'd smile at least three times, every time. Again, not that I've been counting. Maybe it was just because you were anxious, but that's okay. They say it helps. I don't know who "they" are, but at this point, I trust anything that holds hope to make you happy. To be honest, I'm not really even sure what your voice sounds like, but I know your laugh like I know the crooked tip of my nose or the smell of vanilla incense. It's all I can think about when I go to sketch anymore, but I can't get the lines right. Amen to that, because I never want to be so in love with a single moment again and because really, I never want it to be over. I just want to make you laugh forever. I just want to see the way your eyes crinkle like that until the sun swallows itself whole and then we all can't see anything ever again. I'd want it just like that, the last light flickering as you come as close to happy as you can be. I'll make you laugh until you're dumb and dizzy and maybe then you'll love me. And maybe you would have to be dumb to love me. But I'll still kiss your nose every night in my dreams and pretend I mean anything to you like you do me.

Dreaming of you keeps me awake.
And I find myself here in the same place everyday,
trying to write out the way my heart skips a beat every time you even look at me but
I know it's never gonna be anything other than what it is right now,
me drinking ***** until I can't see your face burned into the back of my eyelids and pass out every other weekend.
And maybe I'm fine with it.
Maybe the way your smile makes me forget everything I've ever known about myself, and love, and breathing is enough.
But it's in the way my hands shake when I even think of you looking at someone else the way I do you that I know I can't do this forever.
And maybe I'll drink that away too.

I chase after you as I drift off,
waking up with my hand reaching towards empty space.
The only heaven worth wanting is your smile and
I see your face in my dreams every night like it's all a beautiful broken record.
It's skipping on the part where you say
you love me back.
And if fate means being asleep forever,
I'll close my eyes and stay right where I am,
waiting for you.

I turn my heart back to a time
when my silver nail polish
hadn't flaked off like
dandruff into the
rolling sea of my carpet.
My hand hangs over
the edge of my bed
as tears fall
down my cheeks.
I picture your face,
the gentle blue of your
gentle eyes and the gentle
curve of your nose, perfect
in my own mind.
I wonder how I ever
deserved to meet you.  
I think of your nervousness
and how I want to hold it,
arms thrown around its neck,
face buried selfishly in
it's shoulder.
How I want to press the anxiety
that fills your chest
into origami
cranes.
I cry and cry and think
maybe,
just maybe,
if I have cried
enough for the both of us,
that you will finally
smile for no reason at all.

Have you ever met someone
that makes you want to grab their
hand, turn it over, and
gently press your lips
into the soft part
of their wrist,
tenderly scarred and
rich in its
flowing deltas of blue veins,
beautifully alive.
Someone who you want
to hold, hold
their shaking existence,  
through the rain,
clicking on the windows
of their ribcage,
through the silent
light of spring,
hard dark
of winter.
You would give
your head and your heart,
to see the sun shine on
the easy curve of their cheeks,
lips parted in a smile
like the dissolution
of ice.