they say we accept the love we think we deserve
and you need to know that i have spent three years
thinking of your smile, and your laugh, and the touch of your hand, and being held as i sleep
and living for little signs, vague promises,
wasting afternoons, mornings, evenings on you
and i couldn't ever help but feel it was building up to something
but now i know that it was nothing i can really count on
because you could never tell me how you really felt
and i have to admit that now, finally
i am ever so much closer to accepting the love i think i truly deserve
and it isn't yours.

what do you say to someone
to tell them everything you feel
when they were the reason behind
your words for years?

how do you say i love you
and happy birthday
and please don't leave me
and you mean everything to me
and you are still the reason behind my words
without it sounding trite or desperate?

it's been four years and i still don't know.
but i love you, please don't leave me.
you mean everything to me.
happy birthday.

but i wonder, did i ever return?
i love you both, and can never
not even if all of our dreams
came true five, ten, fifteenfold
repay you for all you have done.
but i need a bigger knife, now.
to cut the tension and to saw
out a hole just for me to see
that i can breathe, if i step out.
out from the inner circle, this
circle of ******* truth,
that you granted me access to
and similarly ****** me to.
the pressure is too great, your
expectations are too high for me.
i cannot hold this family up;
certainly hold it together.
i won't be running away again but
please stop making me wish i would.

someone told me once that i was an all or nothing type of girl.
and they meant it as a compliment, or rather an insult
draped and disguised to look like one.
but it's true, i know this.

and i have locked onto that phrase for years and years.
because i am so afraid to love someone wrong
that i love everyone too much, maybe.
or maybe not ever at all.

i can tell you what a crush feels like, list symptoms and
cross things off on a list one by exciting, miserable
one. but i cannot write on the excitement
of the brush of someone's fingers

or the bone-rattling nerves of an across-the-room glance.
i can't remember what rejection feels like and if
you asked me, i could not properly say
that i care about that anyway.

but i am familiar with this, the anxiety and this yearning.
to talk and laugh and say out loud what was said
to me and oh, however shall i respond?
that's what i'd say.

if i had a crush, anyway. but i am a girl who just...
does things all at once or not at all, and so
i find myself terribly frightened
to feel anything at all.

this was going to be a poem of epic proportions.
but not even poetry stands up to you and i anymore.
and every year it gets harder to explain this to you.
because i love you for everything you are, have been,
will be, cannot be, refuse to be, and try to be.

and that's really all there is to it.

we're still tragic and all wrong and we feel it, sometimes.
but i hope that no matter where you go next year,
i am with you somehow, even if you just remember me.
because whatever we are is not meant to die, fizzle, or explode.
it is meant to reassure and to be patient and to hold hands.

and that's really all there is to it.

there will always be somewhere that you can call collect.
i solemnly swear to accept any and all charges billed to me.
i would follow you until the ends of the earth, but only for us.
not for me or for you or poetry's sake, only if we needed it.
this is my "i'll see you soon," when you go away from me.

i will never be farther than you would like me to be.

play them like a game
and very quickly you will find
that there's really nothing
to worry about.

so take a hand and lead
them into the dark.
where monsters hide and
the light does nothing
but make shadows dance.

then you'll be forced to remember
that you are nothing but bones
nothing but bones and dust.

so *******, honestly. because until tonight i thought i felt okay, but i think i’m lonely.

my heart sticks to the walls of my chest and i’m thankful for the cold because it means i can wear mittens and have an excuse for the spaces between my fingers to be empty.

it’s a quarter after three in the morning, and i miss you.
and i don’t even know who i’m talking to, really.

but that’s kind of the problem, too. i’m not talking to anyone.
everyone’s sleeping, and i’d be sad but i don’t want to be sad anymore.
so i sing to my dog for an hour and do some laundry, and wonder where my words went.

and soon i’ll take a shower, and soon i’ll go to bed,
and soon you’ll wake up and not think of me.
and that’s okay, because as strangers, i have no place in your life.

and as strangers, you have no place in my heart or in my head.
but you, you are everywhere else. and that’s kind of the problem, too.

but i guess i understand why they say lonely people are always up in the middle of the night, because i am. because until tonight i thought i felt okay, but i think i’m lonely.