i usually fling around
“i miss you’s” with no care,
with no intention
of ever following through,
but you came and changed
my entire philosophy:
you gave life to the words;
now they’re up
and dancing around,
yearning to do what
they were meant to do,
living, breathing creatures
that suffocate without you,
just like me.
(when you’re not here,
a part of me is missing.)

the saying goes
“falling in love,”
like love means diving
into the ocean
without knowing how deep
the water flows,
like it’s a leaf drifting
side to side
softly to the ground.
for me,
it was like climbing up
the side of a cliff
with nothing but
my two arms
to support me.
you were the biggest
challenge
i’ve ever had to overcome,
but baby,
i reached the top
and the view
sure was beautiful.

i learned the hard way that love
doesn’t mean staring down the barrel
of a loaded gun,
telling me it’s his way or no way at all.
no one can ever make me
compromise my values,
not even the sweetest face (you),
not even the smoothest talker (you),
not even the gentlest touch (you).
i see you in every landscape,
every arrangement of orange leaves
on the autumn trees,
the snowfall on the tall mountainsides,
and i feel you in the hot sun
that beats down on my skin,
but i can’t keep dancing around
the words on my tongue,
the ones that keep trying to
pry open my lips, gasping for air,
begging to be set free.
no one can recalibrate my mind
to suit his needs, his wants.
we promised love to each other,
but even that isn’t enough for me
when my concerns, my beliefs,
aren’t second to none.

we can disentangle
our fingers from each other,
our legs and our lips from
their newly-found partners;
we can separate
our simultaneous gasps for air,
tear our gazes away,
and keep our intense touches
from setting fire
to one another’s skin.
but what we can’t do is
untangle our minds;
we can’t isolate our hearts,
creating a wall between,
and force them to pulse
on different beats,
or make ourselves forget
why it is we fell together
in the first place.
because even when
we’re not together,
i’m tangled up in you
and i hope
you’re tangled up in me.

my words tend to trip over themselves
on the way out of my mouth,
almost like they’re racing to see
who can get to you first,
even though they never make sense.

i don’t have anything that i am good at
or know every bit and piece about,
something i can reconstruct
to make you understand why
it holds a special place in my heart.

nobody taught me how to fall in head first,
give myself completely to someone,
and not worry about the innate insecurities
that have always been present
in the back of my mind.

i am nowhere close to perfection,
but can you find it within yourself
to pick up all my broken parts
and try to make something of a girl again?
(because with you i feel beautiful.)