(The one I put my heart into that you read and promptly handed back to me)

*T,

You know as well as I do that when I want something, I don't know how to give it up. I don't think I have ever loved anything as much as you or wanted anything as badly as I want you and so I have absolutely no choice but to keep trying.
I don't know how to stop loving.
Trust me, I am trying so hard.
I’ve gone on my fair share of dates
And gotten a kitten to distract me
And cut my hair to start over
But dates make me sad because
They don't hold my hand the way you do
And I love my kitten but
She reminds me of you more than she helps me forget
And my hair is short now but
I still have no interest in a fresh start
If it doesn't include you.

Maybe I wasn't supposed to stop loving you.
It feels like the whole world is trying to prevent me from getting over you.
And so I will keep choosing you.
Without pause, without doubt, without hesitation.
I will always choose you.

I cannot give up.
I know I can fix it.
I know I can be better.
I just need the chance.
Please give me one more chance.
Until then, I will keep trying to get over you-
No, until then, I will keep waiting for you to come back.

“Have courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
-Maya Angelou

Love (Always),
S

P.S. I will send you three hundred letters if I have to.
Three thousand even.
Three zillion trillion.

We were just close friends.
I loved the way you could make the grass stand up straight
With the way your lips moved when you spoke
And how the sounds your mouth uttered
Buttered the blades with a sparkling dew
But we were just close friends.

I loved your smell of vanilla and tobacco and
I daydreamed all day about sharing four cigarettes
With filters laced with your spine tingling mint Chap Stick.
I loved to watch your soft hands glide effortlessly up and down
The neck of your guitar and sometimes I thought of your fingers
Plucking blouse buttons instead of strings and I tried
To keep my voice from quivering as I sang along
But we were just close friends.

Sometimes we gave each other back massages without shirts but only because they would get in the way of hands carving sculptures into each others shoulder blades and once when we were high and drunk we even kissed and you leaned over my shoulder and whispered stop fighting it, let it happen and it was easy and gentle and felt like music and when you snuck my shirt up over my head the butterflies that had been fluttering ceaselessly in my stomach flew up with it and into your mouth and neither of us wanted to stop and we both knew we weren’t that high or drunk anyway but we had to be because
We were just close friends.

Then you fell in love with her.
And I said was so happy for you but my insides felt knotted and mangled and I wasn't sure why because we were only close friends after all and I wanted to be happy for you but I didn't want to share you and somewhere along the way I think we passed being just close friends but neither of us mentioned it because I couldn't let myself feel that way or I couldn't admit to feeling that way and then you found her and I didn't get to see you as much because you were busy sharing your minty cigarettes and kisses with her and singing songs about her and plucking her blouse buttons and then eventually we stopped being friends entirely.

Now its four years later and you are fine I think and I am fine I think but sometimes I still think about sharing cigarettes and secrets and kisses and sleeping with your arms wrapped around me like we did that summer when we were close friends and every time I hear the symphony that is the name Hannah I can still your smell vanilla skin and I get chills where you used to mold sculptures and sometimes I wish I had found the courage to tell you four years ago that maybe just maybe I wanted to be more than close friends.

You held out your hand, inviting me
To dance barefoot across the cedar
Splintered wood of your living room floor

Despite my guise of grace I am not
Capable of keeping your quick pace
The glass slippers I misplaced around
Midnight helped to hide my two left feet
Knobby knees and numb toes stumbled through
One  two  three  one  two  three  one­  two  three

We danced till the sun interrupted
Not with my tongue-tied toes but with our
Chapped Lips, teeth, pink cheeks, racing heartbeats
Fingers waltzed across your warm soft flesh
Memorizing skin maps and tracing
Constellations of belly buttons
Palms, spines, collarbones, and speckled chests

In the abrupt light of afternoon,
I rushed to leave before you saw the
Disheveled remnant of a Princess
Still in her dancing dress, but shoeless

You searched for long-gone slippers as I
Faintly heard you ask my name beneath
The echoed slam of the palace doors

My mom always told me
I was a possessor of happy tears,
so there must be something beautiful
in the pathetic irony of the girl
who pushes you away all month
and misses you on day 32.

They keep telling me
No, yelling at me,
“For your wounds to heal,
You must stop touching them."

But Rumi told me,
“The wound is the place
Where the light enters you”

And I’m not sure if I ever
Wanted to heal in the
First place

I kept trying
To put it off
I rolled over when he tried to kiss me
I pushed wandering hands away
I pretended to be closely watching
The movie I didn't give a **** about

But the credits came
And took my alibi as they rolled
He got on top of me because
He assumed that’s what I wanted
Funny
How consent works

I am thinking,
         Feeling,
         Lost in my head
I wish I could talk
But I am entirely too busy
         Watching,
         Thinking,
         Feeling
I simply haven’t had the time
To think of my own words yet