I have never witnessed true beauty until I first laid eyes upon you.

Dear Jessica,

I admit to you that you are the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life. You have single handed changed my perception on the way I see beauty.
Your hair is fantastic. I love the many styles that you can really pull off; the tight bun in particular. Your face is as beautiful as a million foxes. I love staring into your dark beautiful eyes. I can sometimes get lost in your timeless eyes. Your nose is almost as cute as you are. Your lips are the most kissable lips, they are my favourite lips. I can kiss your lips all day, everyday. They are the only lips that make me happy.
Your smile is the greatest smile in the world. Never have I ever melted from a smile but you changed that. From your awkward smile to your "I love you so much," smile, I always melt inside. Your face is the warmest face to hold, to which I love holding. I love hearing your voice, your voice is like home to me.
Your neck is very great for kissing and giving hickies. I love giving you hickies. As well, you have a nice thin neck that girls would **** to have. Your shoulders are my favourite place, after your thighs, to rest my head on. May you have your scars on your shoulder, I will always accept you and love you no matter what. You have the most perfect *****. Your ***** are exactly the perfect size that I would like ***** to be. You also have nice ******* which in really greatful for. Your belly button is my favourite belly button and I love tickling it and kissing it. Your hands. Your hands are perfect fit for mine. Holding your hand is like putting on a glove that fits so well and feels so nice and warm. I love holding your hand. I use these hands for my basic survival and so do you and the fact that we take a moment to stop all that and connect with each other, it's so lovely. I've never felt so happy holding someone so closely by my side and showing them off to the world, having the world know that you're all mine. Your ****** is the greatest source of pleasure in the world, 'nuf said.
Your thighs are my favourite place to rest my head on. Your knees are so perfect and pure, I'm jealous. Your feet are so warm and precious when you put them up to mine for warmth when we're cuddling.
Jessica, you are the most amazing person in the world. There is no one I'd rather have.
You are so caring; you care about me, you worry for me, you actually take interest in what I have to say. You are alwaaays there for me; may it be something that you have no interest in or if I'm feeling insecure, I know that you'll always be there for me and will always listen. I don't know how you do it, but you put up with all my ****; I know I haven't been the greatest person to you at times and the fact that you go beyond that and still love me with all your heart just makes me melt completely. As well, you actually want to be apart of my life, doing everything with me, just being closer to me.
You honestly do so much for me, I sometimes don't even realize it to be honest. You are the greatest girlfriend that I've ever had, you are the greatest girlfriend that anybody would be lucky to have.
Jessica, you are so amazing. You're such a great painter and you're such a nice person. You have like the nicest style. You're also the smartest girl I've ever been into/dated. You're reallly smart. You think you're sometimes not that smart, but you're actually really smart.
I just want you apart of my life completely.
I love cuddling with you. That connection that we have, just laying together in each others' arms, it's so magical. I feel like I'm in another world when I'm with you. You've honestly made me a better man. I love spending time with you. We've been through soo much together, I can happily say that I am ready to spend the rest of my life with you. We also are so perfect for each other. May we not have exactly the same interests,  we have soo many things in common. And it's the fact that we're so different that makes me so attracted to you. I don't want another me, I want a Jessica. I'm so happy to have you, I'm the lucccckiest guy in the world to have you as my own forever. All those resteraunts we go to, all our little dates at my house, all the times we go to that park near your house, it's just so perfect.
I'm truly in love with you.
I know we've had our mistakes and issues in the past, but I promise that I will do whatever to fix our relationship because I value and cherish it.
Jessica, I honestly love the **** out of you.
You are mine forever.
I am so happy.

Some days I long to be held,
and others the thought of someone even shaking my hand makes me cringe
I still can feel hands on my throat
and the touch of an unwanted, wandering hand.

Years have gone by,
Yet the ghostly haunting of your lips on mine will not fade.
But hell, I "wanted it anyway"
I wonder how in the hell you looked into my sobbing eyes,
and decided that turned you on.

But it was my fault for wearing shorts instead of pants,
despite the 93 degree mid-July heat.

After you were done
You held me and asked for me to call you back.
You left me crying by the road side,
With my hair in knots and dirt on my new white shirt
Hours passed as I tried to walk yet couldn't because my whole body felt numb,

My best friend laughed, "nice hickies on your neck"
I cringed inside and had to lie,
hoping no one would ever know those hickies where the bruises you left when I tried to scream.

i want to give you hickies
all over your neck, and stomach, and thighs
i want to kiss you so much
that we forget that we need to breathe
i want to deeply love, write you poems and songs
and cry with you when it is too late to
hold it in any longer
your lips are perfectly shaped,
your eyes hold some type of magic
please let me be the one to love you
endlessly and without limits
we can do things that you
have never experienced before
i want to give you hickies
you can give them to me too,
if you want.

o.o.

4/6/16 11:01 pm

I just hugged Zoe and I saw her hickies and wanted
to kiss her lips over and over just like the day
we got high and danced underneath moving lights
and she was in my tutu and her blonde hair
felt right tickling my face and the boy
who is supposed to love her didn't notice
and it made us laugh and laugh because
if we didn’t laugh; we would have cried.

Why do we love to leave behind bruises
on lips and necks and arms and eyes
and teeth? It hurts but no matter what, no
matter how much I crush my teeth together to
hide my yelps, it always turns into this
beautiful, beautiful mark that doesn't want
pressure and looks like a sunset borrowed
it it’s colors because no one, not even
a bruise, wants to be ugly.

When I felt you tremble,
I felt the earth quake beneath me
Like I stood on high grounds;
You pounded emotion into me
With playful punches
And hard stares;

But I'm not supposed to like you like this.

The way your hair falls
And the way my finger feels curling in it;
The freckles on your face
And the heart I formed connecting them,
Your voice that is a song playing on repeat, repeat, repeat
Release me from your spell -

Because I am not supposed to like you like this.

Tension builds like the walls I put up
To protect myself from a girl like you,
A girl that will come marching through
With the audacity
To make me break rules set in stone,
Because I don't care that

I'm not supposed to like you like this.

Your teeth align in your smile
Like the planets during a solar eclipse -
Girls like you come along once every other millennium,
You are the reason I pray to God
For every good thing that has happened to me
On days when nothing goes right
You are the hammer that shattered any standards I had.

You are the reason I am walking like a KING.
You are my QUEEN.

You look so beautiful right underneath me;
This isn't just another hook up
Why are my lips tingling
and my mind mingling
Somewhere between us and the heavens?
When will I remember to start breathing again?

You are not just a friend -
you are the girl
That I am not supposed to meet.
Why am I connecting to you
like steel chains that cannot break?

Emotions became synonymous with skyscrapers -
We're touching the clouds,
We're getting higher and higher
My lips
fall lower and lower;
You
Get closer and closer,
I am being pushed
Further further,
Im not supposed

To be writing a poem like this.

Your moans should not be in perfect harmony
With my panting,
You should not have a necklace of hickies and bite marks,
Your pants should not be on the floor,
I'm not supposed

*To be feeling good about this.

It’s a “travel week” here in Georgia. I’m writing this on June 1st at the Atlanta airport. This morning Sunny’s flying in from Nebraska, Sophy from California, Lisa from New York and Anna from Oregon - all around noon. Charles put a hard-shell luggage carrier on the roof of the Navigator because he didn’t trust it to hold the luggage 4 girls could bring.

My parents left last Saturday for Warsaw to join “Doctors Without Borders.” Charles, Leong and I drove them to the airport and then we took Leong to “The Mad Italian” for the best steak & cheese sandwiches on this side of andromeda.

Sunday was a typical lake day. We tied off in our favorite cove and were quickly joined by everyone who could get on a boat. Imagine that Dunkirk movie - except this was a get together - with motorboats, sailboats, skiffs, pontoon boats and canoes all crowding the little bay.

Leong’s an avril lavigne - who knew? On Monday, I surprised her with something green - a trip to “Fun Galaxy” roller-skating rink. I made reservations for a “birthday party” and a group of 15 of us had the rink to ourselves all morning (and cake). I thought I was a skater but Leong’s legit. She says that in Macau you either skate on the street (rough terrain and dangerously between cars) or at one of several huge multisport pavilions where the rinks are cement and resemble our skateboard courses.

She’d never seen an air-conditioned, basketball-court-smooth-hardwood, disco-lit, rock concert sounding, American roller rink. It was love at first sight. She spins, does double lutzes, skates faster backwards than I can forwards, and the manager threatened to pull her off the floor for doing backflips (“There are liability issues,” he insisted.) She was also amazed because there was a built-in diner. At home, she said, you have to bring your own water and sometimes your own toilet paper (toilets are completely different in Asia - don’t get me started on THAT).

Yesterday, Leong, Kim and I were waiting for a Facetime call, to coordinate today’s arrivals.
Before that though, at my behest, Kim helped me ferret-out - Holmes & Watson like - the dire skinny on something, and we, as long time besties and co-conspirators, had a plan.
“Did you know Rob Chen was class valedictorian this year?” Kim asked the room.
“No!, congratulations Rob,” I said.
“Yea, Rob,” Leong echoed nonchalantly.
“We’re so proud of Rob.” Kim continues.
“But, you know,” I said seriously, “there are Rob haters out there. I understand it - he’s hateable,” I expand.
“ek,” Kim blurted, like a little bird, at Leong’s reaction as Leong gasps, “What.. Why?”
“Because he dresses ugly!” I explained.
Kim, unable to curb her excitement, squeaks out loud.
Leong looked at Kim, shocked, Kim was looking down and rocking with the effort of silence.
“That’s not enough REASON,” Leong blurts, “to hate someone!
Again, Leong looked to Kim for agreement and got none.
“I don’t hate YOU,” Leong says, turning on me.

There’s a moment of shocked silence.

“WOW.. wow,” I say, as Kim nervously snickered with glee.
“First of all,” I begin, between my own chuckles, a defense:
“I’m wearing a very **** black ensemble but not exactly dressed to go OUT, (Kim laugh-coughed) and SECOND,” I pause for drama-queen effect.
“YOU,” I say, turning my head significantly and accusingly, towards Leong, slightly askew for a better view, “seem to have quite a few hickies on your neck this morning.”
Kim can't stand it any more and squeals, full out, with delight.
“You, need,” Leong said, pausing just before she lunges at me playfully, to put her hand over my mouth, “to cut off THAT line,”
“I knew it.. I KNEW it!” I say, bobbing and turning my head away as Leong pins me with her body while still trying to mug me and we’re all howling with laughter now.
“Those are Rob Chen hickies! - I. KNEW. IT.”

The facetime ring interrupts us and Leong reluctantly lets me go to answer it.
We all sober as she moves to press “Accept.”
“Let me just loop-back to say,” I looked at Kim with elementary-dear-Watson satisfaction, and said to Leong, “you didn’t deny it,”
Leong blushes crimson as the call begins.