I want you to stare at me.

I want you to think about me even when I’m not around.

I want you to grab my hand and stand to close to me. I want you to love my laugh and love my smile and love the way I use words that don’t quite fit my personality. I want you to see me and think of our life together.

I want that very badly.

But what I want is hardly ever what I get.

What I want is you, and you seem to be incomparably out of reach.

I guess I should give up on the wanting...

Can you ever even want if you've never been wanted?

Forever is

a funny word.

Forever in the past,

impossible to discern.

Forever in the future

equally dizzying.

But

you keep promising

forever.

And maybe I

should have

learned by now

to stop

taking your words

as truth.




But forever

seems so nice

with you.

i’ve never had feelings for anyone who could be good for me. i’ve never been interested in someone where a good, healthy relationship could’ve resulted, and maybe that’s why i’m so jaded, because everyone i’ve ever liked has just been a distraction or a house on fire— someone i know i shouldn’t be involved with, but i’ll give myself just a few more days to run around frantically with my hands over my eyes, peaking through the cracks between my fingers, searching for things i know i don’t really need, and then i’ll dash out and run down the driveway and the smog will linger for a little while, and the neighbors will complain, and i’ll sit on the curb with my forehead on my knees, holding nothing but intangible regret. next, i’ll either get over it, or obsessively think about him and the ashes smudged on the inside of my eyelids for longer than my sanity. i’ve never really liked someone and been able to daydream about the real possibility of us turning into something greater; of tire swings and painted mailboxes and overgrown, green lawns. it’s always been pretending and fake hope and melodramatic doom. i think it’s messed up my perception of having feelings for someone, because i can never take it seriously— either i know he’s not right for me, or i know the circumstances prohibit the possibility of us. it makes me never want to give anyone a chance (i can’t even see anyone worth chance-giving) because i know how it ends. i don’t like having this closed off heart so early on; i’m too young to be this bitter.

Our heads are the most terrible place, you know.

And I’m glad that he cannot possibly exist there, not actually. If I try to fit him in my boxes, place him in my categories, I’ve removed every bit of his individuality.

Individuality is what makes us who we are. So if I remove the thing that makes him who he is, I’ve removed him entirely.

So it’s a paradox, you see.

The boy out there in the world cannot possibly exist in my head

yet I spend all my day thinking of him.

I’m thinking, rather, of the objectivity of who he is.

I like the idea of the object-boy — it’s simple, it makes sense.

The object-boy fits in all the right boxes, he slides right into my assumptions and conclusions.

He never has a care, he is perfect and is spotless and is happy and is robotic.

He is not real.

He cannot be real. And I’m so very happy, because perfect people tend to be a bore.

Please break out of your boxes.

I don’t want you to be an object in anyone’s mind.

I want you to be filled with light and ideas,

darkness and rage.

I want you to be filled with being

and with thinking

and with everything in between.

Because who you are does not belong in anyone’s box.

I may have been wrong before

our heads are not the most terrible place.

It is the boxes

created by our minds

for others

that seem to be Hell.

And I hope that you do not end up in someone else’s box.

I want you to transcend every box

you’ve ever been met with

because you are so much bigger

than anyone’s mind.

I stand to the side, watching. I scream and nothing comes out. My throat burns, my chest heaves. I gasp and cry, needing someone to hear. I try to run, try to somehow stop the invisible force from wrecking every last piece of me. Then I realize my arms are constricted, strapped forcibly to my body.

I am silent and I am in a straightjacket.

All I need to be is screaming and saving myself.

Because everything I’ve ever known tells me that you won’t come and save me.

But then again, didn’t I say everything I ever knew was being destroyed?