Just because you love someone doesn't mean you can have them and sometimes it means you shouldn't and sometimes it's no one's fault. Just because Joseph loved Mary doesn't mean he could have children with her, because he loved God's plan and Mary's welfare more than the idea of being with her. And for me this kind of heartbreaking selflessness is something I relate to a lot, because sometimes even though the feeling of love is there, it's not meant to happen in the way we expect, and sometimes the way we are called to love people is different from the way we feel we want to, and sometimes the way to love people through your actions is exactly the opposite of what you think your heart is telling you.

But at its core, that love is what drives you. That love of God (and of whoever it is that you love) can be and IS heartbreaking and sometimes we have to make a choice that seems impossible, for the sake of the other person and the sake of God. And the very feeling that makes it impossible- love- is the very feeling that makes it possible. If Joseph loved Mary any less he would have acted on his feelings and just had *** with her- or if he loved her even less than that he would have left her to die, just to save his own image. But he didn't. He proved that he loved her more than those things. He loved her more than himself and he loved her more than anything else in the world. He created a seemingly inexplicable paradox- he loved her so much that he was willing to give up expressing it, for her sake. And by not expressing it, he did.

Isn't that incredible? That he reached a level of love that absolutely divided his own interests from hers and made him willing to sacrifice the usual expression of that love and maybe, just maybe, the sacrifice of the usual expression of love was the ultimate and perfect expression of love. Because it wasn't a usual love. Joseph didn't love Mary with a usual love.

He loved her in a way that didn't for a second stop to think about himself, his own wishes. He loved her enough to not love her, even though everyone else told him he should and even though the plan for everyone else seemed to follow an ordinary path- marriage, then ***, then children. Joseph proved that the ultimate expression of love isn't just following this path- it's being brave enough to do whatever is best for the other person and God regardless of what the world tells you and what your own passions tell you.

Joseph loved Mary enough to give up all hope of loving her the way his heart told him he ought to. He gave up the entireity of his own heart to her, keeping nothing for himself. He loved her the way God did. And that is love.

war
the animal instincts of humanity
men
huge storms
demons
my own weaknesses
the idea no one actually likes me
approaching a group of people
ordering food at a restaurant
Sacred Heart
disappointing God
being misunderstood
dependence
mental and personal instability
yelling
nonreciprocation

Maybe my distance has made me realize
now, I don't even want to run off into the sunset with you
I wouldn't care if I died tomorrow
as long as I could be with you today.
I miss you,
I miss you, as you are you,
and not as someone I wish you were-
I miss being with you wholly and completely,
I miss your 'cold heart' and I miss how you'd call yourself an *******
I miss our group text and I miss the light in your eyes
I miss how you'd call me ridiculous
I miss being way too happy to see each other in the hall
I miss dancing
I miss how you'd huddle up your arms when I went to hug you
I miss your beautiful mind and I miss interacting with it.
I miss you as you and I don't want you any other way.

“We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”

he has a nice nose and dark hair, pale skin
like yours
and he's skinny and disjointed, unlike you
because you're like a million pieces designed for each other
that don't quite fit me right
and another is a bit large, while you are the small
fit version of an angel
this same one has more emotional depth than you do
and I find all these boys to talk to,
they're fine for momentary amusement,
but I can't help but measure them all to you
and I can't help but find them wanting.

why not just be for each other

those around me want to be in a storybook,
full of fairies and magic and dragons
I do not want that type of storybook- I do not want to live in one either
I want my world to follow the plot of a novel, and it does
I do not want to leave- I want a heightened version of this
I would like to be someone's Alaska,
someone's Augustus Waters
someone's Jace, Will, or Sam,
I would like to be so enormously interesting that volumes could
be written on my eccentricities
I want you to record the first words I said to you
and I want you to notice the way I capitalize words
I would like you to value that I eat my Cheetos with a fork
and have a passion for driftwood
I want to say enlightening things but only once,
at two in the morning,
smoking a cigarette in a parking lot
I would like to be so comfortable with *** that you would never dare touch me
I would like to burn down the world and raise it up again
and know that it was never my fault and I could not have done it alone
I would like to have secret passions that I do not share,
use hobbies rather than partake in them
kiss lots of people, have a mysterious past
I would not like to be in a storybook and watch it happen around me
I would not like to be taken on an adventure
I would like to be the adventure, and make spiced the life
of those around me, be the character in the series of their lives
that, because there is no one even close to similar,
they cannot help but fall in love with.

and sometimes, you have to find a reason to wake up in the morning
that isn't another person- and maybe it will be again, one day,
but not that morning (and not that person)- for that morning,
you have to wake yourself up. you don't have to
give up on the hope of having a different set of eyes
to dream about, but you have to give up on seeing them again
sometimes you can't. Sometimes you won't.

Fear is dark but my love is a lantern,
shining up like coins in a fountain.
Hope is a tree sitting on a mountain where the grass don’t grow.
There’s a sad old sea but my love is an island,
wild and free like the hills in the highlands.
Hope is a breeze that brings me back to dry land
where the flowers grow.

Maybe my life is like someone's album cover
There's millions of songs and I haven't heard even half yet
all I know is that my backpack groans like a saddle
when I put it on my back
It's a little happiness every morning
when my room smells like incense
Or like the air outside
Maybe my life is like a raspberry with an infinite or nonexistent
number of pustules
Maybe my life is like the word pustule
all I know is how scratchy my blanket feels
how the waves sprayed in my face from a thousand feet below
literally- how albus dumbledore stood there
but not really- how the lightning didn't always mean thunder
and how spring feels after a long winter
Maybe my life is like my sister's car
Maybe my life is like the people in my sister's car
drunk and a little confused,
all I know is that they're fun to hang out with
have great ideas when they're high- and sober, too-
that the cold mist is ideal in summer and terrifying in winter
that my sleeping bag is comfortable on any surface
and Blues Traveler's "Run Around" is my life song
but there's tons of others, too
Maybe my life is only like my life
and there's no appropriate analogy
that can capture what's actually going on.

and I'm the childish one?

I did not lie when I said I will feel the same in the end.

Two steps forward
one step back.
Always a' pacing,
a ratta-tat-tat
on the beat of my heart
or the beat of the drums.
Why won't you acknowledge
the people we've become?

who is the kind of person that
sees the kind of person and knows
the kind of person that lives within
the kind of person who breathes the kind
of person that loves the kind of person
that is worth loving?

I know why I externalize and bluster
this is not the last self-discovery but it is close
it is one of the layers closest to my heart
I let my words work their will upon the world
so that they cannot work their will upon me
the private is the dangerous
it must not be let in and it has to go somewhere
so I must let it out
I talk about my feelings and shout them, yes
because if I didn't, then I would have to feel them.

you can only be in one room at once.
a forest glade might look like the whole world from afar, but inside it is not
all those journeys you speak of must take place in a car. with other people.
and you'll be cold and wet and tired
and smelly, probably. and your experience
won't be the sweeping hills with background music
or dances or tambourines or crazy nights.
and flashing movie scenes aren't the reality of things.
it'll just be you and me.
and we can only be in one room at once.

my hell is restlessness
restless indifference, acedia,
because the heart of the wanderer rests in travel and movement
and to not move is to be constantly at motion
never ceasing, heart still beating
but not in peace.

why? is it my failing grades? My sneaking out at night? My ******* addiction? My late-term teenage pregnancy? What could possibly make this worth it?

some part of me has always known.

we were both too real for you, I think
if you couldn't touch me then I would never think you love me
even enough to try, at least.

I am glad you sat down and thought about it
because I did too, and I know that
things happen and slip out accidentally and people grow up
and mistakes are made and forgiven and forgotten
and the sun hasn't shone in three days, and I know you are more than that
but I think I wanted you to realize how much you are
and how much you are worth- so that neither of us lose our muchness.
I think we're both growing up very quickly and with every day
and we both see the depths and breaking waves in each other
so I am very glad, very glad indeed, that things happen how they do
and things are said how they are, even if they are wrong,
mistaken- I am glad we can look at our mistakes and move on, and
because of the flaws, see that we are far greater than here and now
and our fallen understanding of the world- glad that you know
you are not just sentences and I could remind you of that, that
some things people say can prompt a self-analysis that reminds us
that we're good and healthy and strong and worthy- that we are,
quite literally, more than enough; that someone's words that begin
making you feel not enough can teach you to stand up, and say "No!"
That we know ourselves well enough to deny and refute the things
assumed about us, that we take it to heart and at last don't get hurt
because we know who we are too well for that. That we can
rise and overcome and grow with every moment. Together.
Thank you. And I'm glad I have you.

I've always wanted you to expose yourself,
drop the shell,
show who you REALLY are inside-
show it,  just for me,
and I guess maybe I've realized
the shell is who you are.

When your heart stops beating, or loses its ability to pump blood to itself
the doctors put in a stent. And so, as pieces of your own self-sustaining
***** go to die, they are replaced by more and more
latticework. These tiny structures allow you to breathe, yes
they allow you to keep yourself alive. But what do you do
when pieces of your own sacred heart no longer belong to yourself
and they no longer pump blood the way they were born for
and no one told you that survival would come at the price
of everything that made you who you are- that this pointless
synthetic division would leave you a cold restless machinery
because you were scared, a little bit, too scared to be honest with yourself
too scared to even know you were scared so you stopped your heart
from pumping itself and gave the job to something or someone else
you made your heart a building, a high tower from which you cannot escape
rather than the core of who you are, it becomes a prison put in place
cement and steel blocks to keep you safe from the dragon but
the true danger is what became of you, you who gave up everything
to keep yourself alive, you whose heart no longer pumps blood
like a living, breathing human who shouts and screams and loves
whose heart no longer means what Aristotle and Jesus Christ said it means,
you whose heart now does its job, and that job only. You're me.

is it sickening to your stomach?
is it sickening to someone else's stomach?
if no, then your answer should be
"why the hell not"
if yes, then your answer should be
"why the hell do you think I would"

"This screams Republican."
"Um, excuse me, is that supposed to be a bad thing?"

Yes. Yes, it ******* is. You're the reason why this country is so ****** up, you, and your mother, who call themselves Christians and behave the same as the Pharisees whom Christ reviled, you who forget the poor and blame the women and latch on to the past as though even new and better solutions are wrong because they are different. Yes, it is a bad thing.

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.

cut me down to my bare bones
and I would burn my flesh for you

right now, my life is inscribed
on ten pieces of paper,
inside my backpack
vulnerable, visible, and destructible
all I would have to do is light a match
and my world would go up in flames.

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to **** me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father."

"Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would[c] do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to **** me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

a real life teenage dream is just wandering thoughts
that keep me awake

you have your choices. and this is what makes man great-
our ladder to the stars.

it is exactly like I promised
nothing is the same except the world I left
I am now a transplant, confused and bewildered
by the odd looks and the burned bridges
the person I am now would never have
but the person I was did, and I am mature enough
to realize that it doesn't make a difference who did what
but that it was done, it was done,
and it's over- the only place I can go from here is up.

how many standard deviations and circle transpositions do we need
to be back to ourselves again? or were we always?
Maybe it is not the point on the line that defines who we are but the line itself.

it hardly hurts now.

let's stop saying we don't care
because we do, and it affects us
and we can't say we won't let it bring us down
because that's admitting it's a bad thing
let's instead embrace it, embrace this life
take those ******* tests and do your ******* homework
like your life depends on it
and ******* enjoy it, why the hell not?
I don't want it to be written on my gravestone that
"She was tired of everything and gave up happiness"
or that "She wasted a good portion of life wishing it was better"
but rather "She was blessed and she was grateful".
Even doing nothing is something. Even any day at all
is still a beautiful day.

I do not wish to be scarred, thickened, hardened
I do not wish to become knarled
I want, and I only want
to stay tender and soft
energetic
and naïve
my whole life.

If you ever asked me,
"How do you feel about her?"
I wouldn't have a clear answer,
I'd probably tell you something simple like,
"Oh, I love her"
or "I want to **** her and she's
super duper hot"
but at the same time, "my church says that's a sin to want that
and I'm not sure what God wants from me
and to the best of my knowledge, He needs me for some great purpose
beyond loving one person
and I can't squander my future on her"
and "also I hurt everything I love"
so "I'm scared to love her because I'm scared
she'll think I'm creepy or crazy"
and "she's not even into relationships and doesn't think that's important
so I don't even know if a relationship would work"
and "my parents would be fine with it"
but "her family wouldn't be okay with it"
and "we live in such a hard time for acceptance that
if I went outside and held her hand, someone could **** us,
literally"
or maybe I'd tell you that "I'm fighting my feelings every day
and it's a cross I must bear"
and "I'm better off being a nun than falling for people I can't have"
and maybe I'd tell you that "all these complicated feelings,
dwarf in comparison to the huge, overarching,
powerful amount of love
I have for her,"
how "every day I would wake up next to her
and I would put on my shining armor
take my cross up from beside the dresser
burn my bridges on the way to work
if that's what she wanted."

Yeah. I'd probably tell you that last bit.

You know how that quote goes, everyone does.
"If I was a drizzle, she was a hurricane"
I've got news for you: we're all just our own kinds of rainstorms
Coincidentally running into each other at different times
while we're just trying to drench whatever we can.
People used to tell me they looked up to me
and the same people haven't spoken to me in months
because what they saw was a figurehead instead of
a friend who is on their level,
and they like people who have flaws (not that I don't),
but tell us to strive to be perfect.
There's all these impossible expectations
of moral perfection- if you were the one who did it, it's
completely understandable given the circumstances,
but as soon as I'm late for school,
I'm lazy, a dropout, a slacker, partied too hard the night before.
You can lie your ***** off to me but you know
when someone did something wrong it was completely, morally unacceptable, but you, you're justified.
You can't get inside their head and understand them
because who we are, as humans, is not enough to forgive perfectly-
And I've worked so hard to learn how to love
flawlessly, but the more I love, the more I
bleed, with every breath you don't appreciate
and every love poem you don't read
And they keep beating me and beating me down
expecting this priceless gold mountain of positivity
and crushing me. It's like they're looking for flaws
in the statue I'm hiding within, and they seek to
destroy it because even tarnished gold is too bright
in their losing eyes. Maybe I'm the flaw in the statue,
my pink flesh and pale blood can't stand
these attacks and violent words, creating
holes in my heart where before there were none. They seek,
with every moment, for some trait that's imperfect,
and I'm only human, I can't maintain perfect posture all my life,
I'm on my knees,
because that's what they told me to do,
in the midst of standing up for what I believe in I forgot
how to breathe,
I'm begging because I don't think I can do this anymore.
The blood I live is torn out of me because I've given it out of lonely passion, I've had my suffering and death,
where's my resurrection?
I'm driving my head into the ground trying to
whip up the storm that will make me unique, beautiful, and valuable,
tear through the home where the heart is and skid across the highway of souls,
gather little tornadoes around me,
while they're destroying me from the inside out;
What I need isn't perfection, it's someone to love me perfectly
and I'm caught in a tortured cycle because no one can love like that-
so I'm kneeling for these things that are greater than me, and
watching in vain for an equal partner, since
no one can come too close to this lighting
and 200mph wind is fine to observe from a distance,
but nearby it's too much to take-
It's lonely being a hurricane, too, because
none of the lovely drizzles think they're worth your time.

in calculus, we describe how infinitely close
we can approach a goal,
the fractions growing smaller and smaller.
The spirals decrease in size but we cannot leave
orbit,
we shall divide endlessly,
and perhaps because of that,
we will never find the end-
the limits of our physical world confine us to
imperfect numbers and imperfect love,
impossible to live in a seamless harmony, but:
if we are anything together, we ignite each other.
My heart sets on fire and my world shifts a little
when I look at you.
We've gotten as close as we possibly could,
always a step away, the centrifugal force
balancing the gravity that draws us into each other,
our magnetism impossible to avoid
but we cannot connect.
The divine irony enjoys this type of subtle humor,
the paradoxes arising from impossibilities and passion.
We're just lost in the night sky,
two stars coming inextricably close:
doing a heavenly dance, but the Lord of the light
knows the steps too well to allow us to collide.
I will forever admire you from the distance,
painfully caught betwixt many gravities
and I cannot escape-
til the day I die,
I shall salute you to whom I am tied;
we are spun around on the finger of God as He
sits bored waiting for something more important to do.
I watch your star spin wildly,
just too far for me to grasp- and I wait forever.
You're beautiful,
today just like every other day-
but our zero is out of reach,
and I'll never be with you.

what is it now
what is going on
maybe today is just a day
and this sickness is just momentary
but maybe tomorrow will be just as cloudy
and I will still feel nauseous
and my parents will still act hostile for no reason
and I still won't be able to motivate myself
and I will still be glued to this ******* cell phone.

I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

I feel the waves getting started
It's a rush inside I can't control
Your eyes keep pulling me in
I know, I know, I know
Your friends all talking 'bout me
They say I got no chance at all
Your fire is burning deep
In my soul, my soul, my soul

I ain't up for debating
You ain't up for the taking
We got the whole shaking

In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart like a bullet in the dark
One by one, I gotta take them down
Better run and hide, ain't goin' down without a fight
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling
In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
They come straight for your heart
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

I keep on holding tight now
Cause your body's telling me don't let go
We are gonna be starting up trouble
I know, I know, I know
Just bringing my demons out
More than ever now
Your beauty could start a war
As you walk in the door

I ain't up for debating
You ain't up for the taking
We got the whole shaking

In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
Like a bullet in the dark
One by one, I gotta take them down
Better run and hide, ain't goin' down without a fight
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling
In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
They come straight for your heart
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

I wish it wasn't true
But the whole world's tryna get a piece of you
And my heart keeps fighting in this battle of fools
Gotta make it through, gotta make it through

In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
Like a bullet in the dark
One by one, I gotta take them down
Better run and hide, ain't going down without a fight
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling
In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
They come straight for your heart
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

the goal of love is to make every person you come into contact with
feel as though they are the most important one in your life
there can be nothing else.

One day, an abbot pulled a brother who was having some difficulty aside. He said to him, "Look, Brother, I know you are having a hard time right now. I need you to do what I tell you." The brother agreed. So the abbot told him to take a cup of salt and pour it in a glass of water. "Now taste it," he told him. The brother did. "How does it taste?" "It's bitter." Now, the abbot took the brother to a great lake that was near the abbey and instructed the brother to pour a cup of salt into the lake. "Now taste it," he told him. The brother did. "How does it taste?" "It's pure and fresh and clean." The abbot looked him in the eyes and said, "The bitterness you taste is relative to the size of your perspective. When you are small, the same amount of salt can make you bitter. Expand your perspective. When you begin to see things in universal terms, the salt cannot make you bitter. Stop being a glass. Be a lake."

if I got even an inkling that you wanted to be in my life
my arms would be out like they are to anyone that puts in
one percent of effort, anyone that even smiles at me
is my friend. If you don't want that then you don't.
But it sure ain't my fault.

I'll keep my eyes wide open
I'll keep my arms wide open

children
are a flame that is already kindled
and you must be careful not to extinguish it
for they will hold the water you poured all over their souls
deep inside them
forever.
children
are carpenters
engineers
painters
and when you build for them
build them a platform for them to explore from
not a box for them to fill.
children
are galaxies,
spinning, beautiful, incredibly deep
they are flowers, with tender pistils
and incredibly fertile stamen
they are grass that will not strangle eah other
until you stomp on them
they are clouds that move frailly,
bound by the wind and bearing but one load of rain
they are wells: the deeper you dig, the more you find,
the farther the bottom goes,
they are dancers: turn off the music for just a second, and the mood is ruined
they are all these things
but above all,
they are children,
and they should be guarded
and held as tenderly
as our own hearts-
even more so, for I am careless with my heart-
I will guard the children like I guard my mind,
lay down my life and pick up my armor
anything, everything,
for these, the most beautiful and perfect of us all.

what an optical illusion, the human soul
percieving emotions and situations
like a retina- but why is it different for each?

I chose Joseph because while God called Mary to say "yes",
He asked Joseph to say "no". No to everyone around me,
no to the latest fashions and trends, no to my own fear
of what they all think, no to whatever it is within me that says no
no to those who tell me to ignore my heart,
no to those who tell me to listen to my heart at the cost of all else,
no to forgetting the meaning of truth,
no to "love", no to my own wants, no to selfishness,
no to everyone saying to "be myself",
no to giving up, no to saying yes.
God asked me to say no, and that will hurt a whole lot ******* more
than saying yes would ever have.

and the next time anyone tries to play chess with me
I'm throwing the ******* board away
because I'm not a piece and it's not a ******* game.

I have this passionate love for
non-tasteful, guitar-y songs that I can shout
and I live for really any kind of weather
all the subjects are my cup of tea
I like mountains and flatlands
city and country
when faced with all my wordly options
I have no idea what I wanna become
but there is one truth- a constant,
one magnetic north, even amidst the noise and haste:
there's nothing I can do;
I only wanna be with you.