my friends don't understand why i'm so preoccupied with this boy that is always so quiet, so negative, so lonely. i've never told them before but i think i relate to that feeling of loneliness. i know how it feels to cement heavy walls of silence around your exterior so no one bothers to come inside, and say nothing when words jump into your throat, and feel everything but then feel nothing at all. it doesn't make much sense but i fell for you because you have eyes that always ask me questions, eyes that take my anxieties and pull them into the calm ocean in between your lungs and hide them there for me. “don’t worry,” you say. you always say that. i worry. “don’t worry.” i try to stop, for you.

but then i start worrying about you, and it's an endless cycle.

i claim you as my cure, the mellow remedy to melt in my bones as i walk down the hallways. i don’t want to throw myself down flights of stairs anymore. i don’t want to melt into the sidewalks with the rain. i don’t want some distant boy to fly to me and carry me away and i don’t want some boy who doesn’t know my name to turn his eyes in my direction. i just want you, and you’re here. i just want you, and you can see me.

the truth is i always write about your eyes because they are the only thing that makes me feel cared for anymore. they are the only thing that deserves my writing at all and you are the only thing i ever seem to want to write about anymore. i don't want some glazed-over faux-shine of love. i don't want to want you one day and be forced to forget you the next. i just want to tuck any of your nightmares in my pockets, knowing that you are my own dreamcatcher that hangs along my heart. i just want lazy conversations like the humid summer air that suffocates my soul every july. i just want effortless, and that's exactly what we are.

i like to sing and you don’t understand it, but i wonder what you would say if i told you that i can hear you singing. the melodies of your fingers and the falsetto chill of your skin and the harmonizing of your laughter with my own and the waltzing scent i sometimes notice. it sings to me, you sing to me, you are my silent musical that shakes me down to my very bones.

and someone asked me the other day how i love a boy that doesn’t know how to love, and i just shook my head simply because you taught me everything i know.