I can never be the first one to say "I love you" -
She's told me so a million times,
Even when the only kissing we did
Was in my dreams:
"Do this for me, I'll love you forever"
"That was so funny; I love you, Jo"
It means such a different thing now
That I can feel her bare skin on mine
And not wake up in the morning
To find out that it was all a dream;
Now that I can kiss her lips on the streets
And whisper her gracious name.

I cannot tell her I love her because
I am afraid that she'll say it back -
I know she does not love me yet,
Not the way that I love her, with all I have,
So if she said those words again
I would know she could never see
The kind of love I have for her -
We'd mean "I love you" differently.

I cannot let that happen to us
Because it would mean the end -
That what we have will never mean to her
What I have wished for it to mean since we met.
So I keep my mouth shut when it wants
To scream her name from rooftops in Berlin
I keep my mouth shut when it wants
To tell her she's my favourite sin.

I can never be the first one to say "I love you" -
I need to hear her say it differently first.

- js

i am afraid of darkness but
the night has always been my friend
half asleep during the day
i feel the most alive when everyone else is sleeping
like my mind cannot function among so many others
and my soul uncrumples now it's given space
it folds out into a vast array of colours
and among them i can see memories that have become pieces of me
and shaped my being. there is
your lavender touch when we were
riding high among the clouds and i felt space was getting smaller
and pastel blue tears from when the waves drug me to the ground
it's funny how this works
how what i fear irrationally makes up my only refuge
how while i feel the darkness creeping in
and i fear every corner and the whole world outside my bed
the night still gives me comfort and a reassurance of myself
in the darkness things become clearer
like the absence of light sheds light upon them
maybe that is how feelings work
maybe that is why at night i feel the most in love with you


cs

we met only a few months ago,
so really, even though you're my best friend,
my other half, miraculously found across an ocean,
it feels too early to tell you of my soul.
i cannot tell you yet how broken it is,
how i sometimes drown in its black oceans of nothing,
and how i can still feel now-invisible scars on my wrist.
i am afraid of losing you, and everyone else -
you are so new to me and to my life
that you still see me as a carefree child
when really, i stopped being her years ago,
way before i was allowed to drive or drink or vote.
you do not know the miles i have walked
to be where i am now, you do not know
how much blood and tears i have shed for myself.
it is too early yet to let you know all of me,
and i hope that when i do, it will not be too late,
but right now, my hope that you will see me
as someone who never broke is bigger,
and my fear of you not wanting to deal
with damaged goods is too strong.
it's too early yet to let you know how ****** up i am.

sometimes, it's okay not to be okay
this, in itself, is something we all know,
or maybe we think we do,
because in the end, we're never allowed to.
i tell you it's okay not to be okay -
it's the normal thing.
let yourself be not okay,
cry it out or crawl back into yourself.
it's okay to feel miserable sometimes,
it's okay to not want to care,
and it's okay to do.
it's okay not to be okay,
because we all are sometimes,
and we deserve to.

you made a poet fall in love with you:
did you expect her not to fill pages
with how she felt for you,
did you expect her not to spend ages
trying to find the right words for you
(and none seemed beautiful enough);
you made a poet fall in love with you,
did you expect her not to make you her muse,
did you expect her not to write about you
the way she writes about everything she adores?
you kissed a poet goodnight after every date:
did you expect her not to scribble verse after verse
choppy stanzas about the way your lips felt on hers;
did you expect her not to gush about it
to her best friend - even if it was a piece of paper;
did you expect her not to make that feeling,
and the promise it made, the promise of you,
into the only art she was capable of
- because that's what you were, to her?
you made a poet fall in love with you,
and when you broke her heart in two,
did you expect her not to write about it
when that was the only catharsis she knew?
did you expect her not to splatter ink over pages,
hastily, the way she wished her blood could spill;
did you expect her not to write about your skin
on hers, into a notebook, at 2 a.m.
while you were drinking beer and laughing with a friend?

you made a poet fall in love with you,
and expected her not to make her art about you;
you broke a poet's heart, you shattered it,
and you expected her to walk away from it,
without any lines written about
how it tears her apart and
how you still have her heart --
you made a poet fall in love with you,
and when you broke her apart,
expected that to be all, but that's not who we are.
you did not get what you expected her to be,
but then again, you left her -
so in the end, i guess neither did she.

i guess that lately all i can write about is love
and how could i not when the feeling is simply overwhelming;
it swallows me up into its deep clear seas of adoration
and i have never learned how to swim.
i do not write about the love they write books about,
i write about the love that makes up poems
because love that is so encompassing and destructive
is something that is best expressed in choppy words and stanzas.
it is not something you can write a novel on
and if you could, nobody would read it anyway.
it is not something you can dress in pretty words
and send out for others to read in front of a fireplace.
the love i write about lately is the one that makes you heart hurt,
the one that makes you wish you were better, and makes you realise you're not,
the love that makes you hate other people because you know they are better than you
- better for him, they can make him smile -
it is the kind of love that makes you scream your feelings out into your pillow at 2 am
and that makes you sink instead of fly.
the kind that people read when they feel just the same,
the kind they hide under their blankets because they don't want
their friends to know that despite them saying that they're beautiful,
they know they're not, not to that one person that is, to them,
the single most beautiful thing.
lately, all i seem to do is write about this love
because lately, it seems to be all that i can feel,
with all that comes with it to bite at my soul with its brilliant sharp teeth -
lately, all i seem to do is think about him,
and i drown in the kind of love they write poems about.
it is not a happy love, not now and i doubt it ever will be
and maybe one day i will be able to look at him without blushing and feeling longing tug at my heart,
maybe one day i will learn ow to swim and not fall in love this easily,
maybe one day i will be able to write a novel about kids playing on the streets
instead of a poem about me wanting to die;
but right now, all i can seem to do is hate myself a little bit
and love him a little bit more every day.
but yes - maybe, one day, i can write about being in love with someone,
and how it feels to be loved back
not him, i know we aren't meant to be,
but maybe someone who, like me, dives before they've tested waters.

they said we were a kind of skinny love
but i guess it was too thin for you to see
or maybe you just wanted something more
wanted someone that i could never be
skinny love is something that tends to run thin
and tends to disappear too soon
and love is something you can never win
it must be given - you didn't, not to me.