I fell in love with you in the purchase of a postage stamp
I put your face and body and mind on paper
The way your hair curls
The way you jump with excitement and flap your arms
like a kid would on Christmas morning
How you were always there to turn to
Although I couldn't turn to you because you were never there
And by there I mean here, with me, where you should've been
I fell in love with the train tickets to you
The little orange squares like golden tickets
Granting me access to see you
To touch you
To share the foam of my coffee and laugh with you
at the man dancing at the hot dog stand
And when you finally stepped through my doorway
I swear it was Christmas and my birthday all at once
Planting my head on your chest
We bloomed and grew to heights I never knew was possible
And while little flowers blossomed at the ends of my fingertips
they grew on the tip of your tongue as you uttered those words
Those words to whom I have told but one; you
If I could find a word to describe the feeling of reading
the last several pages of a book you know has become your favourite
I would tell it to you
The hours that we whiled away and the ones that took up
the most of our day to get to each others arms before they took another’s
all meant something
And while the last bitter-sweet pages of our story have been read
Know that there's a girl who still writes you
You dance on the pages of her notebook
And while the postage stamps stay un-licked
She sends these poems to you
For in her mind you will always stay

whatever does not love you back
never define yourself by that
for it is the love that you have
that makes you who you are

Distance has a particular way of hurting:
It begins slowly, and is self-contained.
Because our mothers would often speak about Love,
and how everything falls helpless in Love,
Distance becomes a housebroken dog.
It is powerless, and whilst I love, I am powerful.
On Sunday, our fathers would teach us to put our faith in things unseen,
and so we grow confident and complacent.
Just when you think you’ve understood it,
It sinks its teeth in hard and deep.

An idealist tries to make it out light and easy
They will often write poems about finding
ideal love in the real world.
But I will write about knowing
real love misplaced in an ideal world.
It’s a world where comfort could come in binary files
filled with digital empathy and memories.
Where typed words and numbers that form
black and white promises could replace
the real and organic voice of reassurance.
Where wires between my webcams and your headsets
could entangle themselves in ways our fingers
used to be intertwined.
Where waiting for an email meant as much as
waiting for you to return home to me.
Where the strategic positioning of your punctuation marks
could transform these passive symbols
into active symbols of love and concern:

A comma, like a shared pause for when our eyes meet
Exclamation marks for when we wave to each other from across the street,
or as a passionate gesture from underneath these sheets.
A question mark for when you’re sick and I am by your bed
Worried, because you wouldn’t eat.
A semicolon for when we argue,
and a full stop for when we finally give in.
A parenthesis for containing moments of vulnerability
that only seem to leak out late at night.

You won’t know it but,
I dream mostly of an online conversation,
filled with time stamps that affirm your presence.
If I’m lucky, I will find an ellipsis
Small creatures of continuity with
heads heavy with hesitation.
…
And - if I’m really lucky,
I’d undo those black buttons of suspense
and see you once more.

Last night I had a dream
And in that dream
I fell asleep in your arms
A simple wish,
Which I desire greatly
It felt so real.

I was blissfully happy
And I felt so safe,
I finally felt at peace
A feeling which has been difficult to hold onto
As of late.

Now I'm awake,
Left to face the bitter reality
- I am all alone.

I miss you more than ever.