I only know you, my lover, as the empty space between my arms where you laid that day for eight hours straight. I know you as the bitter cold and sweet dawn of a winter morning, and the pale moon hiding behind the blue of the sky.

You do not fit me; we are two different people, and I love that we choose to be together, regardless. We are color swatches, paint blotches: part of a bigger, more beautiful picture that I can only dream to achieve with your help.

And I think that is love: the fundamentals of kindness, separation, and coexisting.

I learned so many tongues so I could try to find the right way to say "I love you." None of them struck a chord with you.

At the end of the night we were still strangers. You turned out to be my existential crisis. I never was the same after I felt the wounds I left you to endure.

Thank you for teaching me boundaries, and how to pray on a Sunday afternoon. I would have died without you.

You are my favourite chapter of a book I have never read.

I had you dog-eared at page 104, when you first told me you loved me, but I didn't know its importance until way later.

There were coffee stains on pages 223-247 from the three or four weeks we spent together in bed. After two weeks, you told me I was truly beautiful with your palm on the nape of my neck. I rejected this with a light laugh; I told you not to waste your breath.

On page 295, there were ink blots where your sweet words used to be. I'm not sure what happened. A reciept for a pack of cigarettes was used as a bookmark.

The chapter ended at page 311 with only seven words scribbled on the page in black ink: "You deserved better. I let you go."

I, however, could not possibly know this because I just took the thin, white reciept from the friendly cashier boy's hand for this book I just bought entitled, *Love and Other Intoxicating Things

You are a compass, and eventually every direction you lead me in takes me back to you. I think I am the north pole. I think I'm confused, or just confusing you; I think we're two of a kind.

I once watched your magnetic heart swell when I touched you: I realized I was hurting you as I loved you all too tenderly; I never thought of that as a possibility.

You quickly made yourself a home in my cerebellum; I can't even sleep anymore. You're always there, tapping, tapping, tapping, sneaking your way through me, pulling strings that don't belong to you. I can't talk about you: you always interfere. My tongue tumbles ineloquently over your name; I've lost control. You are, again, tapping, rapping on my motor controls. Get out of my head, or come back home to my heart.

I am bitter, and I am turning, and I am not sure whose fault it is. In the end I'm sure it's mine, but it's much easier to blame you, and I do. I blame you. Why did I have to love you; why did I have to leave you? What made this all happen, was it the stars, or the moon forcing a change in the tides? Was it some other cliché, or was it just my idiotic decision?

I have lost you again.

The cold night nipped at the tips of my ears,
and I was caught in a cave of blankets.
I couldn't help but think of how you had the same affect.
You warmed me and held me tight, but all around you there was darkness,
a deep coldness that persisted,
and though I was so in love;
I could not stand your black hole heart.