I honestly thought that without you,
I would die.
Not die,
in the literal sense,
that’s far too dramatic.
I don’t want to admit that without you,
I couldn’t survive.
But I thought…

well I kind of did think that.


I thought that my heart wouldn’t beat without you,
that my breathing would become shallow and weak.
I thought that the sun would burn out,
and the sky would come crashing to the ground.
I expected time to stop,
noise to cease existence.
I thought…

well I thought that without you,
everything would just grow quiet.
Lonely.
Sad.
Quiet.
But it didn’t.
Nothing changed.
Nothing stopped.
The world survived you.
So,
quietly and bravely,

I decided that I would too.

I loved you.
There.
I said it.
Wrote it down.
It's real now.
I loved you.
And I still love you.
Love the silly look on your face
when you realize you've said something that made me laugh.
Me.
The dutchess of the straight face.
The queen of the dead pan.
And I love that stupid smirk when I've bested you.
When I've gotten to the punch line before you even knew
What the punch line was.
And I miss you.
Miss us.
The way we were.
Back when you let yourself admit that I had stolen your heart
The heart you had sworn to never give away.
I miss that.
Miss the times I'd lay on your chest
And we'd laugh at the little things.
Miss the way you'd glance at me, and I'd catch you.
Better yet
When you'd catch me.
But I was never any good at playing coy.
Not when it counted.
And you knew that.
And you loved it.
Maybe just liked it.
But somewhere
Deep in your head
I like to think you considered
Falling in love with me.
Even if
Now
It's too late for it to matter.
I like to think you considered loving me.
And when it comes to you.
That's enough.
That will always be enough for me.

It's such a strange thing,
falling in love,
and the way the things you fall in love with,
change with the seasons,
or as various lovers even strangers,
enter and exit our existence,
as time passes.
And it's extraordinary how love
seems to warp time.
How it moves too slowly
when love is sad,
but far too quickly
when the love is good,
how you fall in and out of love
faster than you can say the words,
or the tears can form
on the inside corners of the eyes.
The tears that don't ever fall,
but linger just long enough
to melt the mascara on the fine lashes,
that only seem to be evident
during moments like these.
The moments when people look most like themselves.
Moments of weakness.
The same moments when you realize
that the movies are liars,
and songs are rarely written from truth.
Because people don't find their soulmates
in the spontaneous moments of passing,
but in the everyday moments.
Real people don't fall in love
during the dramatic, desperate, lonely moments
but the quiet
simple moments.
For I once fell in love with a beautifully ordinary boy
as he slept soundly
on the other side of my mattress at 4am.
Because he'd never shown me
any of the private memories he had survived
and that night he'd told me everything,
and whispered that without me
he always slept, but couldn't dream.
And once during a quiet evening
on a couch,
in a small town in Connecticut,
in front of Lord of the Rings,
while we'd laughed about all the things,
we'd somehow forgotten to laugh about
over the course of growing older.
And then a third time in your car,
on a rainy afternoon
while we had danced horrendously and sang off key
to an old mix you had burned back in
God knows when.
Where you knew every line,
and I'd rolled down the windows
despite the rain,
to hold my arm out like I was flying,
like we had when we were kids,
and you had smiled at me like I was magic..
These have been the moments in which
I have fallen in love.
Never during the movie-esque moments,
but in the ordinary moments.
The moments in which,
I never expected to fall in love at all.

I never called it ****,
the events of the night the gin had made us hazy
and the drugs had us reckless.
The half hour you spent strumming me
like some pawn shop guitar
Suffocating me in the sheets
which were covered in the filth of your former lovers.

I never called it ****.

The way your hands had rudely ripped
my previously untouched skin
and your mouth devoured my innocent lips.
Never thought much of the way you had told me to be quiet
while I whispered for you to stop
because I'd never done this before
and it was painful
and I wept.
Because you had warned that I would wake the others
and I was embarrassed
and you had made me *****.

I never called it ****.

Never let the repetition of your phrases sink in too much
as you told me it was fine
and it was okay
that I'd like it.
I never thought too hard.
Because you moved too fast
and the room was spinning
and I gave in to waiting for it to be over.
And when you had gotten too tired of hearing me whimper
and my pleading had become obnoxious
you sighed an angry "**** this"
and stomped off to the bathroom to finish yourself,
after commanding I put my clothes back on,
And find somewhere else to sleep,
I stumbled across your ***** basement to where the others slept
and collapsed hiding silently in the sinkholes of your couch,
Listening to your grunts before the light came on and you passed out
avoiding the stains of my youth on your sheets.

And I never called it ****.

In the morning you drove me home
making little effort to hide your disgust in my failure to get you off
While I looked out the car window at all the houses I had grown up next to,
None of which looked familiar any more
attempted to ignore the stinging of the poisonous scars you had left behind
pretending that my body wasn't covered
in the scratches and bruises of your insincere actions.
And when we arrived outside my parents' house
after an eternity of painful silence
you didn't speak merely
grunted at my departure
and I snuck quietly through the front door to the shower
where I scrubbed until the marks from your fingernails
became indistinguishable from the skin I had rubbed raw
until it bled
trying to convince myself
that I had eliminated all the remnants of your scent
and the dirt from your actions.

But I never called it ****.

Tonight,
in the words of Neruda,
I can write the saddest lines.
Tonight I write the saddest lines,
all for you.
And it will be painful
and tear-stained,
but honest.
I will pour my heart into this page,
for you,
and you will take my innermost thoughts tonight.
But you must know,
darling boy,
that this will be the last words I spill for you,
the last drunken night I allow you into my creative soul.
This will be the end of this,
of us,
of you and me.
Never again will I write for you love stories, or sad words.

I used to think that if given the chance,
or given the time,
I could write a thousand lines on the way
your breath felt against my bare back.
I could write infinite lines on the way
your fingertips electrified my lips,
and still have more to say.
I could write forever on the way I loved you,
Loved you entirely and hopelessly,
how I ached for you.
And I used to see you everywhere,
in the faces I passed
and the lopsided smiles of strangers.
I used to drive past you in every beat up pick up truck
on the streets of Columbus,
behind every backwards hat.
But my darling,
it's been awhile since I've seen you,
and I can't remember what your fingertips felt like anymore.
I used to close my eyes and be able to trace your features,
for they had been etched into the walls of my mind.
And I used to feel this emptiness in my chest,
because I had placed my heart in your hands,
whether you had wanted it or not.
But lately,
I haven't felt very empty,
and I couldn't tell you what your dimples
looked like.
I used to know every speckle and fleck
that lived in your irises.
But now,
I couldn't even tell you the color of your eyes.

At first,
I tried so hard to keep missing you,
thought I was supposed to miss you,
thought I wasn't supposed to let you go.
I used to think that I would love you forever,
that you would live in my heart,
occupy my soul.
I used to be okay with that.
I used to miss you every second that I was breathing.
But now,
well now sweet boy,
I go days without you here,
and some mornings I wake up unable to remember the last time
I actually missed you.
So I try,
try to miss you.
But it's far too hard to miss you by myself
and I'm so tired of missing us enough for the both of us.
So this is the end,
the end of all of this,
the end of everything.
Thank you for allowing me to love you,
for never asking me to be more than I was,
for never being more than you were,
for being ordinarily
Spectacular.

It's 2am in December and my windows are all open.
Every
one.
Heat off.
Clothes off.
Trying to remember what it's like to feel..

I'd smoke another Newport, but I've smoked so many
that it hurts to inhale normal air,
especially the crisp winter air
that's pouring into my apartment,
sleep seems futile..

There's an empty bottle of cheap pinot lying next to me,
a half-finished PBR, from the thirty I bought myself
and I haven't thought of you in a while.
Hello there...

My mind wanders to that alleyway in the heart of Columbus,
dark and deserted,
the sounds of lovers off in the distance,
my boyfriend calling my name, searching
but I can't hear him.
I can only hear you...

You see love, I haven't thought of you,
haven't let myself back to that place
because I met a nice boy,
who told me nice things,
asked nicely if he could touch me, in nice places
before he did so,
and it was nice...

So I waited and he waited,
took things slowly for once,
convinced him it was worth it,
that I, was worth it,
so when he told me, it was beautiful
and I told him right back.
it was beautiful,
"I love you"...

And don't you dare question me, love
for I love him,
because he thinks I'm wonderful,
hasn't seen the scary parts that I'd showed you,
doesn't believe I'm as broken as I say,
He tells me I'm perfect...

But yet,
that night in Columbus, Ohio still haunts me,
the night you rode a bus for sixteen hours to get to,
that moment we're screaming at each other,
I'm telling you that I hate you, and I know you've never cared
why are you even here? I HATE you...!

You kiss me.

Kiss me...
Like your sole purpose in life... was to kiss me.
Right then.
Right there.
Like you'd been waiting forever..

You kiss me
like you were created by God
for the final moment
where your lips would dance with mine,
and fireworks would fly
from your fingertips
as they brushed across my cheeks,
turning tears into vapor,
unspoken truths into song,
longing into love,

you kissed me.

Kissed me, and saved me from being stone..

That night, you told me everything I'd ever longed for you to tell me.
Told me about your terrifying family,
and the reasons you were better off being alone.
I wept into your arms as you told me you loved me,
that you had given me every single thing you could,
how you were sorry it wasn't enough.
And I told you all the sad things I'd lived through,
all the boys who never learned my name,
all the nights I'd never had a home,
the day I wished I was dead..

And you stroked my hair, told me not to cry,
wiped the tears from my cheeks,
while I told you that all you had to do was ask,
that I'd come back for you.
All you had to do was tell me to come back, for you.

And that night,
in that tiny apartment, 700 miles from home
you made love to me,
kissed me softly,
whispered sweet nothings until I fell asleep on your chest...
You became home, my love,
You were my home.



The next day,
you got on a Greyhound bus back to where you came from.
Didn't look back.
And I went back to that little apartment,
never looked back down that alleyway,
and once more,
became stone.