Every time I look you in the eye, I see thunderclouds. Yes, your laugh is silver bells on a spring day and your smile could have caused Mona Lisa to grin all the way in, but they’re right. Your eyes are the behind the scenes and your body is a movie. I don’t enjoy watching movies.

2. I can’t keep up with the storyline. Chapters fifteen and sixteen were about homecomings, and now the main character’s digging his own grave again. You never explained to me how he went from dancing in the moonlight to rubbing ash on his head, just when I thought we were getting already to the ******.

3. The wounds are reopening. I thought you knew better than to pick at the stitches.

4. Your heart must be handcuffed to mine. I feel it every time you hurt, every time you pull, every time you cry out and ask God, “Why?” The only difference is that every inch you move away is a sucker punch in my gut. I’ve never had a high tolerance for pain.

5. Do you know how many poems I’ve written about you? Try walking outside at night and count every street lamp from here to the opposite side of the sea. My words burn too, but they never seem to be bright enough for you to see. You’re still tripping in broad daylight.

6. I’m tired of standing behind you.

7. Hope is an anchor, but I’m starting to drown.

8. Sometimes I scream in frustration because the seeds are taking too long to grow. It’s so easy to forget that they will. It’s even easier to forget that I’m not the savior. But I try to be, so I’m putting down this yoke, little by little.

9. Seeds do grow and their trees make enough rings to tell stories to last generations.

10. I heard in a song that love alone is worth the fight. Maybe I’ll continue this battle long enough for you to see that we’ve already won this war, so that the next time I look at you in the eye, I’ll see the northern lights.