I apologize for liking you on Hinge purely on intuition
It hurts to admit I mistook your kindness as a door open for my wonder

I’m sorry I yearned for you from the day I heard your most gentle voice
From the day we first met, when I tried to find you in the parking lot of a cinema, in the rain

Dearest,
I was up too many mornings, counting minutes from 6 a.m.
At the time you wake, even on Saturdays and Sundays
I secretly wish you slept more, to comfort the chest of my anticipation

I’m sorry to have learned your schedule, purely out of care, and also romance.
I honestly promise I do not stalk,
except through invisible feelings,
except through the way a body shows without touching or words without telling

But I’m sorry that I find your perfectly correct grammar in texts quite irritating.
Your composition too sensible and unbelievable
Your ignorance towards me, too hurting
I feel too jealous because you might never think of me in a soft pink light
Or because you might actually never think of me in any light

I’m very sorry however, as I think of you too frequently,
and I don’t know when that will end

It isn’t your fault.
This is surely, absolutely on me
for I know I lack colors
Both in flesh and feelings
As there are plenty of fish on Hinge; so open to the ocean of your eyes
I should be no obstacle to your perfect match and mutual passion

I regret swimming in the river of my endless, unrequited sea
I regret to have had this sort of courage with only you, which is oddly shocking
I’m sorry to bother you when I reach out to say  hi,
Because I carefully try to calibrate that weekly

I’m sorry for the hundreds of times I believed
there might be one-tenth of a chance
Of me and you,
in an alternative universe
where I might deserve you
Maybe?

And I apologize again for always bringing up movies with you, in sense and nonsense
Because I am unable to tell you what I want to
As my 29-year-old stupid inhibitions play around
I apologize if I behave disturbingly distant,
but I will always be curious about your birds, and your neck that hurts

As you can clearly see,
I am sorry for innumerable things

But
I am never sorry to have met you
I am never sorry to think of you, and write of you
I see you
in colors of pink, red, and yellow,
in colors of blue and sea
in embrace of distance and memory

I just wanted to put this all out
in any way
Let this be a digital ship-in-a-bottle,
in the middle of a vast ocean

I am never just me
I arrive with this body
that contains my soul
and along with it comes
A broken ugly shivering creature.

I take her everywhere with me
Feeding her unsettling aura
Cleaning the debris that falls off her
Combing through her matted hair
Dressing up her bruises and bandages
Apologizing for her smell of despair

I wonder if perhaps I left her home from time to time
Would she wail and wait at my door
For me to return, and then cling on once more
Or would she understand the unwanted  
Grief and pain she holds burdens me
and take her leave

I fear most days I let her walk through rooms first
Drifting after her, much like a ghost being forced to haunt

I am me
and she is her
for now.
Although
I wonder if it’s only her
people see

Advice on falling in love with an assault survivor
The first time you look at them
They will do one of two things.
They will either not look you in the eye
Out of fear that your passion will burn them
After all,
The last time another's eye stared through their paper skin
They caught on fire.
Or this person may stare straight back into your pupil
As though they are staring death straight in the face
There is no in between with a survivor
They will either move too fast or not at all
But their trust is the petal of a daisy in the desert
Withered and delicate as you touch them for the first time
You cannot expect warmth from something so broken
For survivors train themselves to ignore the ghost in their heads
But that demon will always show up
And when they finally let you undress them
You undress their monster as well
As you remove articles of clothing
Their body begins to freeze over
And the spirit they could once hide and stow away
Is now at the forefront of everything.
They train themselves to have *** with the lights off
Because should a fleck of brightness reveal an eye
A nose
A mouth
The face of their abuser will fill in the rest
They do not want you to see their body
For the scars leave train tracks of the places they've been
Crawling in fields of thorns
Wrapping themselves in knives
Swallowing perceived sanity in the form of a pill
They will not always be okay
Because in their mind they are constantly at war
With an enemy ship that retreated long ago.
To everyone around them, they are a martyr
They have won the battle
But in their mind
They are a fallen soldier
Who can't stop hearing their own gunshots fire
Into the chest of their opponent.
Falling in love with an assault survivor
Is agreeing to watch parts of them
Go up in flames
Over and over again
And picking up the ashes they leave behind.