I want you.
I don't want perfection.
You are the bliss
in my worst nightmares.
I don't care if you poison
my gut and think you aren't
good enough.
I still love you like crazy
but when it comes to soulmates
I think you're mine and you
think she is yours
so I am left here alone,
loving someone who loves another,
wondering if my life will become
a series of almost having
the best things in life.
I know you say I deserve
the world but no one
wants to give it to me.
I do love you,
and I can't believe
you are gone
but still here;
you will always be present in my soul.

Hearing your voice for the first time
in 10 months killed me.
It did not help
that the subject matter
was you leaving me
and loving her,
but still loving me.
So I guess that's how
I learned that I love
you more than I ever realized
because I want you to be happy
even if it doesn't come from me.
And I guess we all live our lives
loving people
who may or may not
love us in return
the same way we love them.

Tonight, I cannot sleep.
I lay awake in a hotel bed
overlooking an airport,
Wishing I could board one
of the planes that is lucky
enough to get closer to you.
All the racing thoughts in
my mind are about ticket prices,
savings, the future, our future,
and when I can get to you.
But baby, I wouldn't stay up
in to the morning
trying to comprehend how to
fill in the miles between us.
If I did not believe that you
are in fact the best thing,
the single greatest person,
to ever enter my life.
No airline ticket or
number of miles can change that.
However, I still need to get to you
so that one night I may not
think about numbers and miles and tickets and how much I love you
and instead think about how much I love you and how comforting it is to be able to sleep in the arms
of the only man I can ever imagine loving.

And today is the day
I began to truly believe
There was no God.
I prayed to Him
Last night and begged that
I may hold your love
For eternity.
But here I am
Broken and without
Once again considering
dragging a blade across my
skin and realizing
You will never know the
Birthmark on my side
As you know the way
Her hair looks at 2 am.
And today,
I believe there is no God
Because I have never been
This broken and hopeless,
Wishing so strongly for a brokenness to be fixed.

I do not know
how I am supposed to accept
that she is there and
I am not.
I will never be able
to accept that she has history with you.
I want you to be mine
and only mine.
However,
I have not always been yours.
So I guess that's how we all live our lives.
Constantly wishing we were someone's first
and praying to the sky
so that we may be someone's last.
Neither of us come untouched.
I love you,
and I will take you as you are
with more joy and love
than heaven itself can fathom.
Because, I would give up anything in this world
to be able to hold your love in my hands
for the rest of our existence.

Sometimes I laugh loudly
and then begin to sob.
My body shakes and trembles
and all of a sudden,
an instance of joy
turns in to all the pain I
have tried to hide
for so long.
I break down so
easily lately
because I am so scared
that I will die while
being alive
once again.

How am I supposed to tell you
about my days
and be honest with you
when I constantly fear losing you?
People leave each other in hell
and I need to know you won't
let go of my hand
even if the demons are holding me as well.
I need to know you will love me
even if I can't believe in myself,
and I need you to feel close
even though you are far away.

I often think about the day when my
beautiful 5 year old daughter begins to trace
the strange lines that are on her
mama's wrists and the day
she notices the white lines
on her mama's legs.
So the day she finally asks
what happened
the way children do,
I will tell her this;
Baby girl, sometimes life gets too hard
and you feel like you cant breathe anymore.
Sometimes you think that your tummy shouldn't rise up
and down anymore and that you don't
deserve to eat as much ice cream as you want on hot days
or that a boy doesn't love you so you
need something else to fill the emptiness.
Sometimes you give in to the mean voices in
your head and don't know where to go.
But baby girl,
when that day comes I will hold you
and protect you the way mothers should
and I will fight off all those demons
and make sure you know just how beautiful
you are.
I promise you, I will not leave
you alone in the dark and that I will take you
driving if you need that or bring you
places that make you feel whole.
And baby girl, if the day ever comes where
you think you can never win again,
I will drive us to the ocean that very day
so you can stand by me
and dip your toes
in to the biggest infinity
the globe has to offer.
We will collect shells and see broken
beautiful things
and the sand that is better with
other things
and on that day,
I promise you I will not leave.
And sweet daughter of mine,
I promise I will love you
no matter how bad things are
or how terrible you feel.
Because I never want you
to feel how I have.
I want to protect you,
I never want you to have to tell your
little girl stories like this.
But if you do,
I will love you.
There is nothing
in this universe you could do
that could make me stop
loving you
my beautiful daughter.

The only thing I can do is love you
and destroy myself.
But baby, when it gets bad outside
or the demons are shouting the names they gave you,
I will hold you until they are nothing
but a bad dream.
And the next time I think of destroying myself,
I will stop.
I will stop because of you my love,
your voice is louder than theres.

There is no limit to the things I would tell you
if you were here with me.
There's nothing I can do but wait for answers and replies
and there's nothing I can do but crave to hear your voice.
If I count to ten,
you will not appear beside me on blue bed sheets.
There is no force in this universe that could place me next to you
in enough time.
There has never been enough hours on our clock,
not enough laughs or memories.
These are things I desire to have infinitely with you.
There's never been walks on the beach or car rides or kisses for us.
I fear one day our clock will stop,
and I will be left wishing for infinite time.

Honey,
no matter how many indie songs I listen to
or how many times I think about
telling you I'm angry,
I still love you.
No matter how many times I get mad
and sit being my passive aggressive self
I love you.
Despite the fact that I connect with pictures about loss
and still use depressed in my description of who I am or
how I feel in counseling sessions or
that I make statuses about **** stigmas
I love you
and you have changed me.
So don't leave just because I tell you I feel lonely
or scared or sad.
Because baby, you cannot move away the mountains between us
or change the way Pangaea separated.
I'm here and you're there
and I have not yet found
a song about how passive aggressively angry
that makes me.

We are not defined by skype or video calls
or text messages or distance
and I won't let those things change us
or the lack of those things.
I miss you like hell
and I love you like heaven
but that doesn't change the fact that
this gets ******* difficult
or the fact that I get mad over nothing.
I know we are different and I know
this is worth it.
I know we seem crazy, insane, even unrealistic.
But I don't care.
I love you I love you I love you.
It's worth it because I know that someday
you will find the birthmarks that cover my torso and the scars
that cover my hips
and I will find out the way your spine curves and how your
voice sounds when you get out of the shower
and the way your lips part.
These frantic wishes fill me up
and swallow me whole.
My love for you saves me and sinks me
but when I'm down at the bottom, I find you
have not left me.
Despite the number of texts we send in a day or the
number of times I hear your voice
I will love you.
I will love you more than I hate the miles.

I do not know
how I am supposed to feel close to you
when you are thousands of miles away
and you don't even cast out your words
to draw me near.

Do I just sit around and wait for you
to be here again,
or do I find the you that's hidden in the darkest valleys
through which I would never travel for another soul other
than the man I love more than anyone else?
I must.
For you are that man.
I promised myself long ago
I would never let something beautiful leave.

In winter, more than just the cold swoops in.
The hard times,
the long nights,
the burning wood is something you must accept.
Although you sit in a tight ball,
wondering why you feel like this every year,
it doesn't change that this season reappears.
Christmas and New Years aren't times of celebration anymore.
They're simply mile markers of how far away the sunshine is.
but, the sunshine isn't spring anymore.
It's the joy that's seeped out of my very existence.
I hope one cold wintery day I awake and can find beauty in these simple things.
Yet, it's not that simple.
I've grown too fond of summer rain.

I woke up this morning with a reminder
that the broken is hard to fix.
Tiny pearls spread across my sheets,
broken away from their unifying whole.
I held them and I cried.
They were not significant before,
they mattered less than most things.
But in that moment,
they were you and me
and nothing is more important than that.

There's nothing in the world I would not say
or do
or anywhere I would not go
if I believed it could save us,
Even if it wouldn't,
I'd string my words up like Christmas lights an give them to you,
to help brighten your world.
But I cannot give you anything
or be near you
or grab you and shake you or scream
or cry in to your chest.
I am at the mercy of you.
You have the power to leave
in seconds and minutes.
But I would do anything in this world to stop it.
Why? What's the point?
Because you are the first person I've ever really loved
and the first one who made me believe I was special
and the only one who's ever believed in me
and the last one I ever want to love.

If I could,
I'd board a greyhound right now and get to you in
two days and two hours.
I'd tell you I was on my way and you'd probably cry,
cry the happiest tears of your life.
Then you would take me home with you
and keep me warm.
We'd just falls asleep in each other's arms.
But none of these things are possible.
I'd do this and more
if I could.

I could write novels on the way you make me feel,
filling infinite pages with your essence would be a simple task.
I'd struggle only with the way to word perfection and the way your eyes gleam
as well as describing the ways your smile makes me weak.
You are so **** far away and I miss the sound of your voice
with the frequency of the tides hitting the shore.
But despite the tilt of the earth, time zones, interstates, and state borders
that keep me away from my home, I still feel close to you.
I could reach my arm across the bed and almost feel like you are here.
I wake up in the middle of the night,
expecting the body I have never even slept with to be here protecting me.
I know you are, just not physically.
You cannot be in my region of time and space
and I cannot be in yours.
None of these boundaries can keep me from you,
we both refuse to let them.
But every single moment I do something new or see something beautiful
or blink
or breathe
I miss you.
My fingers curl against my palm and my hands ache,
I reach out for you.
I wake up once more and experience the biggest disappointment I could imagine.
You still cannot be here and I still cannot be there.
So for now, I'll hold you in my heart that keeps my blood circulating
and where you have purchased your retirement home.
I will let you reside in my heart and soul because you cared enough to tear
down the wall, brick by brick.
When we come together,
I will not waste another moment.
I will hold you tight and tell you I love you.
Even after I have found out the definition to your perfection,
I will sty and I will love you for a lifetime.
I know you will keep redefining it as you have redefined my life, soul, and heart.
I'll hold you soon enough.
But for now, know I love you
and that I will not return the keys to the space I occupy in your heart.

As I sit down to learn the rules of the road and when to turn and yield,
you send me on a crash course.
My face goes from normal to flushed in less than a second and you sit
as if nothing had ever happened between us,
as if you hadn't hit the breaks every time our moment began.
You treat me like a turn you cannot make and I wait to catch you staring
like you always have.
Truthfully, I won't let you come back in.
You have gotten too good at sneaking up on me from my blind spot
and I will not let you **** me again.

Baby, please don't do this.
Please don't disappear.
I need your words to keep me breathing and I need you to hold my heart
so that mine can keep beating.
I'm terrified of losing you and letting this depression **** me.
You revive me when I'm 30 feet under,
just say the words I need to hear so I can
breathe again.

They ******.
They went home and ****** because that's what society said was love.
Although she wanted him to love her,
he didn't think she felt that way.
And even though he loved her,
she thought he just wanted her body.
But in reality, they wanted to make love
and thought that ******* was creating it.

Depression ate me alive
while I starved myself
and the demons bled me out
and the words bruised my skin.

Anxiety pushed me to panic
while I clung to the bed posts
and screamed and cried
and wished it would stop.

Death tempted me
like the taste of sadness on my lips
but life coaxed me in to tasting the sun.

When we were in second grade,
I remember you looking at your broad thighs and calling them chubby.
I looked at my narrow thighs and said the same.
My mother told us to stop and that we were both
beautiful.
But we both s-k-i-p-p-e-d lunch that day.

In fifth grade you told me about your newest diet but still didn't run your laps.
I looked at my thighs that didn't t/o/u/c/h and the "excess" skin gathered between my arm and body.
I ran harder and longer and ate less.
But, you still didn't approve of my body.

In sixth grade, you continued your verbal blows to me and kept making me view myself
as worthless, and fat, and ugly.
I was worthless and fat and desperate and ugly.
You turned my eyes against me so that I became your words of hatred.
Only one person still thought I was good enough after you had destroyed me.
Soon the insults became threats and I would hide behind the one boy who still thought I was beautiful
to protect me from the words that had in fact broken my bones and the fists that planned on doing the same.

In a moment of courage, I told you I was done.
I could not take it anymore.
I was suffocated by self hate.
I wrote you a note with far kinder words than you deserved.
I was sorry I said, sorry I wasn't good enough to deal with it anymore.
You decided you too were done and slit your wrist.
Your mom took you to the hospital and you still didn't miss the chance to leave me with your burdens.
5 words, I can't take it anymore.
And you're still alive and I'm still apologizing
for not being strong enough to pick up your burden
and being too weak to take the blows you redirected towards me.

I wonder what your voice sounds like at 4 a.m.
and how you look when you're angry.
I want to know if you keep an umbrella around in the rain
or if you do without.
I wonder how you fold yourself up in the sheets when you're sad or cold.
I want to know what you listen to when you're driving
and when you change the station.

I wonder how often you think of me
and if you see things and wish I was there to see them too.
I want to know what made you fall for me and if you could ever stop.
I wonder what made you believe I was worth it,
when nobody else has ever thought I was.

I refuse to medicate myself in to oblivion
to fight the demons that are in my head.
No chemicals are going to save me,
I will save myself.

I will not become a member of the Prozac nation
or use pills to fix my broken soul.
With God as my witness, I kneel down and swear
on my life that was almost taken by those evil pills,
that I am stronger
I am better
and I will fight alone.

I get mad that you're there
and I'm here
and that you're not here
and I'm not there.
I tell you I miss you and I miss the ocean
and how much I love you;
that is all true.
However...I do not tell you
how scared I am that your presence will leave me
and I will be left with nothing but memories
and the fact that I have loved far too much once again.

I think to myself,
"If you were here tonight I'd be okay. Everything would be okay."
But there wouldn't be a problem in the first place if you weren't there and I wasn't here.
I would burn bridges, construct temples, rob a bank, or jump off a bridge if I knew it would get me to you.
There's very few things that could stop my desire to want you.
to need you.
I don't know what made me willing to go to such extremes for you,
but I remember when.
I realized rain would taste better with someone holding you and that movies aren't supposed to be watched alone
and that books should be read with you and hikes should be hiked with you and food should be eaten with you
and nights should be slept with you and poems should be heard with you and car rides should be driven by you
and that life, my life, should be lived
with you.

You could take it all away right now.
With one singular buzz of my phone you could stop my anger from boiling over
and my thoughts from imagining you with her.
I'm waiting restlessly and angrily at 2:59 a.m. wondering where the ******* are
and hating your lack of vacancy and loving every single part of you.
You are so beautiful to me and I need to know
I have to know that when I get like this, punching walls at 3:00 a.m. that you'll come out of the shadows and stop me.
I need you to grab me and hold me until I'm okay again.
You can stop me, but you are the only one at 3:02 a.m.

If I were to disappear or die
I wonder how many would morn
and how many would cheer.
My presence is often unwanted
and my soul is imperfect as well as my wrists.
I am the opposite of the norm and I wish so desperately
to go unrecognized so that I could disappear and no one at all
would miss me.

You are the most precious thing I have ever found.
Your choice of words and the thoughts you conjure up
make my fingers tingle
and my soul desire to inscribe your mind
on to my own.

You were oblivion.
He was the ocean.
In you, I was forgotten.
In him, I was infinite.