It's been one hundred and twenty days since you left
But today
I smelled you
Opened up one of your dresser drawers
And smiled at its contents
Realizing
It must have been months since I'd opened this drawer
I pulled out a single blue t-shirt
You left behind
The only one
Out of the dozen others that you own
And stuffed into your seabag
You left this one behind
I held it up and remembered the countless nights I'd spent folding these shirts
Over and over again
I held it up and imagined you wearing it
And of course I had to,
I held it up to my face, closed my eyes, and then something incredible happened
I smelled you
You, not your shampoo or shower gel, not your deodorant or your cologne, not your laundry detergent, not even the boat smell that plagues half your wardrobe
I just smelled you
Something I haven't smelled in one hundred and twenty days
A scent I didn't forget,
But rather a memory I forgot that I remembered
Instantly it brings me back
Back to all the times I hugged you as you wore this very shirt (or the one hundred variations of it)
Back to all the nights I crawled into bed next to you and smelled this
Smelled you
Back to never thinking twice about this smell
Because it was normal, routine
It was you
Which means it was also me
It was nothing to drop to my knees and cry over
Nothing to thank god for
But that was one hundred and twenty days ago
And today
This shirt means everything to me

today
some part of me decided
that the lilac sky reminded
me of you
pale November blue
and a chill in the autumn air
the orange sun hides behind
the morning moon,
you wouldn't even know it was there
if you weren't looking for it
I think that's a little like how I fell for you
the first day I saw you,
you were like the moon I'd never bothered to pay attention to before
but one morning
you look up
its 7 am
and you know the moon isn't supposed to be there
but it is
and it's beautiful
it was a little like that
I looked up one day and I saw you standing there
I'd never noticed you before,
but once I saw you,
I found myself always looking;
always averting my gaze upwards
towards the morning sky
to see the beauty of the moon.

Is it love when you can find yourself
gazing deep into their eyes,
Is it love how when you're with them you
escape from your disguise?

How two bodies and two souls can merge
as a single heart,
Or how you can walk the wretched tails
of two paths that never part?

Is it love how you're still so young
yet you've come so far,
when he looks you in the eyes and whispers,
"You don't know how beautiful you are,"

And they don't know what it is to kiss the better half of you goodbye far more often than one should ever have to
That heartache
These empty hands
Throbbing temples and tears that surprise you at midnight when you allow yourself one moment to miss him
To really miss him
To smell his clothes, to lay your head on his pillow, to crawl into the memory of him.
To relive your last moments together
They don't know what this is
And some days, neither do you.
What are we doing? And what do you say to someone who you haven't spoken to in weeks? Months?
There are no words for this type of longing
No string of sentences that make up for months of silence
No amount of time could hope to make up for all the moments missed
All the memories stored for tabled conversations, forgotten
They don't know what it is to feel this pain
How you used to hate public places and now, for some unexplainable reason, you find yourself drawn to them
Constantly searching for him
Any face could be his if you miss him hard enough
The feeling in your gut when you're driving and your muscle memory directs your right hand over to the passenger seat
Grasping for something that is not there
And what was it, love? His hand?
Your fingers fell through the air and landed on cheap polyester instead
The feeling pulls at your heart, is now our moment to miss him?
the tears ready at the flood gates, but no, love, now is not your moment.
Because there are things to be done and places to go. There are sights to be seen and people to be spoken to. There is sunshine to be felt, and rain too. There will be rain. Love, some days, there will be so ******* much rain.
They do not know this pain.
But they could not possibly imagine the flowers that bloom in your chest; the summer air that fills your lungs; the culmination of every last one of their best days all made into one; the feeling of knowing, of being absolutely certain that every last bit of this pain is worth it all.
Because, love... there are brighter days ahead.

I live in a city where
Once the spring sun finally
Sets back into the April sky
We wear smiles we forgot
That we had

How wonderful it is
To be kissed by the sweet
Sunshine after a cold long-
Distance relationship

Spring brought memories
Of summer
And summer consisted of
Ice cream cones and naps with
The ceiling fan on

It told tales of midnight kisses
And swingset sunrises
Being the first two eyes
To witness the night blue sky
Changing into firey shades
Of red

But it is not summer
       it is not spring

Without you now I live
In a never ending winter
Stuck on replay in december
With bone chilling winds
And blue lips

And oh my god
I miss your finger tips
On my skin and icecream
Cone dips
I cannot bear the silence
of night without your
Heartbeat in my ear

So I still sleep with the
Ceiling fan on to remind me
Of you, dear

Very quickly, almost all at once
i found myself falling in love
with everything about you

With the way your eyes lit up
when you laughed and how
your dimples showed when you smiled
I fell in love with the way
your lips moved as my name
eased it's way out of your mouth
and stuck onto the skin of my neck

How your kisses felt like
butterflies landing on my cheeks
and every tear drop was a waterfall
that planted reason in my stomach
as to why I would always need you

I noticed, despite your subtly,
the way your eyes fell to the floor
every time I told you your laugh
was my favorite sound, and
your eyes were my favorite color

But everyday I continued to fall
more in love with you and
all these little things
Even if you could never see
yourself the way I did,
I knew that you would always
be enough for me

Even if I was never enough for you

7:22
and I'm thinking of you
and all the things I would do
to
forget

I miss you
And I'm sorry that I don't have some
beautiful and mysteriously depressing way of stringing those words together to make them sound like more than what they are
But I'm so drained without you that
I can barely manage to make
myself function properly
There was a particularly spectacular
sunset tonight and I wonder if you saw it
at the same time I did

I wonder if you thought of me
As I thought of you

I fell in love with the way he flicked
a cigarette and tasted death between his lips at midnight
And took an immense amount of comfort in the fact that his tongue tasted like black coffee and vanilla
and when he smiled I felt like maybe
I wasn't as lost as I believed to be
And every ounce of me despised smoking and pumping the only lungs you would ever get full of nothing but negative years and future tears that would streak the cheeks of everyone you never knew loved you
but ****, there was something so beautifully intoxicating about the way
you cursed gods name
and gently gripped another cigarette between your finger tips
And your eyes were tired but they screamed of stories left untold
like how you died before you were ever even born
and I think that's when I first knew that your heart would never beat quite right,
it would always be half way torn.

We were all that we would ever be
A hopelessly long list that consisted of maybe's
And someday's
I loved you in ways that resembled sunshine on winter days and rays of light passing through foggy window panes
I had grown accustomed to faces painted with tears and lungs tainted with cigarettes
And the only known cure for things like insomnia and disconnect was found folded in between your arms
A place so warm and filled with thorns
that made my heart resemble something like a thunderstorm
With your voice shaking me with a swarm of unborn feelings and words I couldn't bring myself to speak
I loved you despite the fact that I was dying on the street
Screaming your name at the raining sky to make my voice seem complete

“I want John Cusack holding a boombox outside my window.  I wanna ride off on a lawnmower with Patrick Dempsey.  I want Jake from Sixteen Candles waiting outside the church for me.  I want Judd Nelson thrusting his fist into the air because he knows he got me.  Just once I want my life to be like an 80′s movie, preferably one with a… really awesome musical number for no apparent reason.  But no, John Hughes did not direct my life.”

We spent the summer between
old libraries and book stores,
coffee shops and rock concerts
We were rebellious
in a sense that no one else
ever bothered to understand
How freely we would plan
for Eventually
and Some Day
with our feet in the sand
of a shore on some secret beach
somewhere that didn't even exist
And I did my best the resist
the constant urge to kiss you
as you sat shot gun in my car
with all our windows rolled down
And the nights we spent in town
were where I first found that
when you laughed your eyes
told stories of nights spent crying
and I never wanted to buy more time
on a maxed out credit card
than I did right then
It was hard knowing that dying
was becoming less of a verb
and more of an adjective
And I'm so sorry that I couldn't
Bring myself to tell you
Because part of me wanted to
but a bigger part didn't want to let go
of the girl that time
would force me to outgrow

At first I didn't believe you were gone
Up until that point death was
about as fictional as once upon
a time
And no one ever actually said the word
Dead
Like it was too hot
not spicy hot

but burning

singeing your lips as you spoke
and if you let it sit there too long
you'd start to think about the smoke
that clouded the impossible
You can't be dead
I was just with you last night
armed with a bottle in my right
hand while my left clutched a bottle of pills
and I watched your lips spill the words
You have so much to live for

And people just look at me
expecting to spout some ******* metaphor
about how death is less like the sunshine
and more like the storm that engulfs you long before you no longer have a pulse

Your mother asked me if you seemed suicidal
And as she screamed when she last saw you
I couldn't bring myself to go about our recital
Where I would shake my head and say
None of this was your fault
But as I looked in the eyes of a mother
who was no longer a mother
I couldn't bring myself to lie

And so I let the silence fill the air like
a thousand butterflies
pressing every square inch of atmosphere
making us all acutely aware about how unfair
it was that we were breathing
And you weren't

I tried not to think about
how much it must have hurt
when your car collapsed in on you
as you made no attempts to skirt
around the blue semi truck
that had no time to try and stop
I bet he couldn't even manage the word
**** before he died
You killed him, too

And I wondered if that was
something that ever occurred to you
                     that you were leaving more
corpses in your wake in your last successful
attempt to take your own life
That your mother hasn't stopped sobbing
and your father hasn't quit asking if there
could have been any stopping you
But I know the truth is
you didn't want us to

I said your name today, out loud
Which is something I haven't been able to
bring myself to do since I found
myself screaming it among the crowd
of people along the highway
They said you died instantly
That nothing prolonged
your suffering and I wondered how
they could have known that

Because they didn't know

that you had been dying all along

i hope sometimes
you remember me
and that i plague
your mind like
a sailboat being
rocked by the sea
i wonder if you
remember that
i love sunsets
and november
and how we
would line the
river with stones
in december
i wonder if you
know that flowers
continue to grow
from underneath
my bones
my love,
i'm still alive for you

"You're wasting gas,"
you whispered into my neck after
idling in your driveway amongst
the midnight air as our breath
began to fog the glass
"I don't care," I wanted to say,
no, scream because all I knew then
was that it was far past my curfew
and my father would most likely
rip my *** when I got home
but I didn't care
one because I was with you and two
because I found more of a home in your heart sheltered beneath your ribcage and neighbors
with your arteries than I did in his house
Yet I couldn't manage to make my mouth move
Words fell like fireflies dying
on the tip of my tongue as you drew
your fingertips along the surface of
my skin and part of me felt like if this
went on any longer I might explode
Like I was a stick of TNT and every time
you touched me a spark was lit and eventually
my heart would pump itself into amnesia
Leaving you and me and all of our beings
intertwined in it's wake like some twisted
train wreck that led railroad tracks to your lips
And you moved your hands to my hips and all
I could think was that I didn't know it was possible
to fall in love with someone's fingertips and
memorize the way their breathing shifts
when they sleep
And you made me feel like a ship that had been meaning to sink but could never quite
get caught in the right storm
But right now I was sailing through an ocean of torn clothes and warm skin and I couldn't stop myself from thinking that you were an ocean I wouldn't mind drowning in.

One time
I asked you if we could have a mirror installed on the ceiling above your bed
You laughed and then said,
why would we do that?
I felt only slightly embarrassed as I answered
that I wanted to see you from a third person perspective lying next to me
Because at times it felt almost too good to be true
Like when you say all these things you thought that you knew
And it turns out you never really knew anything at all
Like that it actually is possible to spend the better part of your entire existence trying to identify with the freckles on his back
or attempting to keep all of your sanity intact when you find yourself avalanching in love as you run your fingers along the track of his spine
At which point I pointed out how nice the mirror would be
So at any time I could glance up and see our bodies intertwined like the waves in the sea
And the absolute guarantee that there will always be stars in the sky
Even if you can't see them
The same way that in every goodbye there are words left unsaid and tears that aren't shed for the simple reason that we are all just trying to somehow keep our **** together
And so whether or not there will ever be a mirror above your bed I'm not quite sure
So I suppose, for the time being, my other senses will have to assure me that this will suffice
But that's quite alright
Because the feel of your skin on my hands is more than enough to ignite my own imaginative powers of the beautiful way you must look next to me at night

If I had to define the word love
I guess I would start with the way
after so long has passed two people
are able to converse by means of
squeezing hands or sharing glances
But maybe a better place to begin
would be how for as long as I had
known you, I could count the number
of times I had ever witnessed tears
fall from your eyes on one hand
None of those times including when
your older brother left to go over seas,
or as you held a pole on your
grandfather's casket
But today I watched your eyes fill
with tears as I spoke your name
and told you that I loved you by means
of nonsense metaphors
and ammature poetry
So I guess in the end
it doesn't really matter where i begin
to define the word love
As long as I have you by my side

Hearing his name pass through her lips was like lighting a quarter stick from both ends and taping it to my chest
And for a moment I remembered that once upon a time you were hers and she was yours
And you shared things like secrets and kisses and even bigger than that - love
And I remembered how one time your heart had beat only for her and my heart didn't beat for anybody because it could barely beat for itself, and suddenly I didn't want to remember anything else ever again

Maybe it's even worse
when people compliment my poetry
Saying things like
that was so beautiful, and
you are so talented
Because there is nothing
******* beautiful about ripping
apart your heart and looking
for something, for anything to find
worth not hating
And it takes no talent to sit in solitude
and think and think and think
until the only place for you to
put the words you can't speak is onto
some crumpled up piece of paper
And they wonder why all poets live lives
full of love but more of loss
Living breathing and eventually dying
for someone who burned like the sun
and stung like frost.

Constantly,
over and over and over again
I find myself tripping and
breaking my back for people
who would never even think
of doing the same for me

And I realize that life really is
a never resting sea that takes
no mercy at all in beating the
best of people down
Down
Down

But then I look at you,
mid sentence and in full rant
about how none of this is fair
and and I realized you were actually
listening to me
A real live pair of working
human ears listening to me

And I didn't know how
and I didn't know why
but it didn't even matter because
when you kissed me I felt alive
in a way that made me forget
all of the times I had sworn I
wished I was dead

All I knew was that life
wasn't fair but I didn't even care
because it wasn't fair that
you loved me, because I didn't
deserve it, but God ****** I swear
one day I would earn it

I often times forget that this life
is not someone else's dream
And I constantly find myself
tripping over things and failing to realize that
I did this to myself
I am not who they all aspired me to be
I was never the flower girl tip toeing down the carpeted aisle with a bouquet of red roses in her hands
Rather I grew up the quiet girl sitting alone
in the back corner of the church
Scribbling on her wrists with ink
and wondering how this life ever even came to be

Falling in love with him was
as easy as collapsing into bed
at night and taking comfort in
all of your own familiar scents

And as routine as waking up
and expecting to see sunshine
peeking in through the cracks
of your blinds

Falling in love with him soon
evolved into finding solace in
his arms and serenity in his graces

And eventually you found yourself
subconsciously reaching for the
warmth of his skin and the
mess of his hair in your sleep

As you began expecting less
and less sunshine in the morning
because you took more comfort
in the knowledge that he would
always be at your side

Even if you awoke
before the sun

I want the world to know
that I would tear apart
my ribcage just to give
you my soul
and play you a song on
my bleeding heart strings

I want you to know
that I would pry open
my skull just to show you
that you are the only thing
that is ever on my mind

I want you to know
that I would pick through
my retinas to prove to you
that you are, and always
have been the apple of my eye

I want you to know
that I know
you wouldn't do any
of this for me,
despite the fact that I
wouldn't hesitate to walk
you through the dying garden
of my soul
But most importantly
I want you to know
that I love you every second
of the day,

regardlessly

I was seemingly unaware that I was
falling in love with you
With the way you cursed my name
and told me that you hated school dances
But I longed to dance with you
And find myself swooning in a cocoon
of black night dresses and tuxedos
With your arms wrapped tightly around
my waist and my hands laying along
the ***** of your shoulders
And I enjoyed the thought that you fancied
me in a way I naught knew possible
Because at the time I had yet to discover
the missing part of myself that was buried somewhere
within you

And I indulge in the thought
as to know how it would feel to be
meticulously and irrevocably in love with you,
my dear

So I yet again find myself
drifting far away
    from here

Evaporating into stardust all throughout the      
                      atmosphere

She hates the way she looks
first thing in the morning
and refuses to look in the mirror on her way down
to make coffee

He adores the way she talks
in her sleep, and runs his fingers
along the curves of her cheeks
and believes there is nothing
more beautiful,
more pure,
more innocent
than the way her hair is imperfect,
her skin left untouched and
her eyes when they have yet to see the world
as she turns to face him at six a.m.


She doesn't know that she's beautiful,
He doesn't know he's her world.

all of the sudden its hard to breathe and I can't think straight and my throat wants to ******* scream but my vocal chords are knotted up with your name and I swear to god if I hear one more person ask me about you my ear drums are going to explode and the blood won't stop pumping to my brain and through my veins and I wish that I didn't wish that it would stop I can't feel my fingers and my hands are going numb at the thought of you holding hers and every time I close my eyes I see your face and you're smiling. you're ******* smiling but I'm sitting here at 3:27 a.m barely able to breathe because I love you and I ******* hate myself and somehow that's always been okay with me.

all choked up on words that lay hidden in the spaces between your fingers and the color behind your eyes
I found the beginnings to poems within your most worn down belt holes and favorite story books
and it was very close to impossible to pass you each morning and remind myself that gravity is merely a factor of the earth and not human beings
because when I saw you it was as if I knew again what a heart beat sounded like and how blood felt running through your veins
and I swore to myself I was done writing about love
but darling, without you nothing's the same

maybe it was when I saw my room for the first time in six months
bare walls
no bed
empty closet
almost as if
I had never slept there at all

or when I never got the invite
to Thanksgiving
because you already knew
that I wouldn't bother to show up
when I realized

that your life
her life
their lives

had all gone on without me
from the outside looking in
your glass castle had never known
I ever existed
I didn't anymore
my room was not my room
the tomb I spent my nights in
does not even begin
to remember me

luckily
I'm half way okay with this

because as much as I would love
to write about how
when push came to shove
I know
that I did this

to myself

It's got me wondering how many
more times I'll have to fall apart
before all the pieces of me are gone

why is it that every single day
I am stuck in this catastrophe
of missing you
and the thought of me is one
that never bothers to cross your mind

I want to ask how you're doing
and while I'm at it I think I'd also like
to ask how the hell you think
you've managed to move on

the cat we never owned has had my
tongue for the past two months
but now I am volatile

irrational
with the thought of showing her the ring
you had plans of putting on my finger
just weeks before everything was
shot to ****

it shouldn't matter
and maybe it doesn't
but do you think of me?

when the sun shines through your bedroom window and catches
against the glass
throwing rainbow prisms on your wall
when you see a stray dog
or breathe a stanza of poetry
when you've been working on something
and your hands are stained with paint the way
mine always seemed to be
back when I was in love and inspired and
always had something to make for you to
look at but never see

and when you look at her
do you see me?

are you haunted by the memory
of everything you promised me?

or is it all just a messy pile of nothing
years worth of everythings that you
shoved into a day
hours of kisses that you erased
from existence
and a body beneath you that all
you had to do was replace

when you're about to fall asleep
can you ******* name on your tongue
telling you goodnight?

when you wake up
do you ever wonder where I am?
whose bed I'm sleeping in
who's kissing my neck
and taking my socks off with his teeth

do you think of me
wondering
or is it nothing more
than just a memory?

this is not a love letter.
I watched you breathe your last breath and stood there in silence as every last ounce of life left your body and I waited in the room as if still in silent hopes that your soul would condensate around me and fill my lungs with your voice and my hands with your heart and I can't ******* breathe because my brain doesn't know how to operate properly without your constant presence in my every day life.
this is not a love letter.
I have no idea what love is when you can't be in it with someone else. and as you left me I had half a mind to invite you to take my old notebooks and crumpled up papers and broken pencils and my love of poetry with you because now what the **** am I supposed to do?
you're gone.
you're gone you're gone you're gone and
oh my god I am alone.
I am alone, and this is not a love letter.
*This is not a love letter.
(I love you)

every inch of her skin was hand carved by angels,
she was like coming up for air,
a handful of tiny miracles.
I was a cosmic mess unraveling at the seams,
a fatal storm destroying everything I touched,
turning everything that was beautiful into nothingness and dust.
and then I saw her,
the dip of her curves and her hands on her hips like she was invincible, unafraid of the walking disaster heading her way
and it had only been a couple of seconds
but already I was intent on kissing her
of discovering the secret land of her lips
lacing my fingers through the ocean of her hair and anchoring her body against my chest
pressed together like an unbreakable bond, a force to be reckoned with
we would be powerful
I could tell
but I walked towards her
my eyes like tornados and hers like the sun
I looked at her
and she looked at me
and instantly I felt myself dissolving into stardust
into nothing, into nothing like everything I'd ever touched or ever tried to love,
she looked at me
and I disappeared
she breathed me in
and we were one

strangely
there's something somewhat comforting
about nobody appreciating
your poetry
and in knowing that not everyone will read
and no one will fully
understand
there's something promising about the void of silence
and its perpetually unending eternity of emptiness
and quiet
my mind is a maze that no one bothers to play with
and this bothers me greatly
yet not at all

I'd sing for you until my vocal chords bled and I dread the day I can no longer play piano because its always been the only way I've ever known how to say that I love you without moving my lips or spreading my hips so I'll go until I can't feel my finger tips because what's something beautiful without a little pain? life's not worth living if you never go insane. so I'll play this ******* piano until I give myself arthritis but the night is young and our souls are old and my hands break more than they hold.

What you don't know

is that I was from a place far, far away from here
That I had no intentions of staying
Or ever coming back
That I was perfectly content with
Hiding away in my own shadow of the world
Alone

What you don't know
is that I've fallen in love with everything about you
That I've memorized the curves of your shoulders and the ***** of your nape
That I've counted every freckle in your sleep and took tune to the beat of your heart

What you do know
is that you saved me from a
Dark, unforgiving place
That I'm willing to spend the rest of
My life trying to repay you for that
and that my heart now beats for
you

"What's it like?"*
Someone asks you on the bus, in line at the supermarket, or over a Sunday cup of tea.
It's a funny feeling; your stomach shifting uneasily and the smile forming on your face simultaneously.
You've done it again. Your lips couldn't help but to frame his name in a conversation that had nothing to do with him. And yet, you still found a way to think of him and mumble his name through a grin and a heavy heart.
So, what's it like?
They mean being away from the one you love, but all you can comprehend is what it is like to love him. And to love him, some days, is your only saving grace. Your safe spot. And yet, at the same time, your Achilles heel. Those parts of your heart are tender with the lonely nights, the constant worry, and the million and one what if's. The fact that you watch a How to Make the Perfect Omelette video at midnight while laying in bed alone, because he is gone, and all you can do to pass the time is plan things for when he comes home. It's a culmination of every night you thought would be the last night without him. It's waking up the next morning to an empty, quiet home, and filling up the air with awful noises that escape from the deepest parts of sadness. It's waking up in a panic saying his name in the middle of the night because you were dreaming of him once again. It's how, anymore, dreams are the only way you see or hear from him.
But love? It's also waking up six hours early the day he comes home, because you're too excited to possibly sleep. It's spending entirely too much time doing your hair and makeup that morning, when you know all he cares about is having you in his arms again. It's seeing his car pull up. It's the butterflies you get and the smile you couldn't stop if you tried. It's running up to him after months of imagining this moment and it being so much more perfect than you ever could have thought. It's feeling him wrap you up in his embrace and finally, finally feeling whole again. It's the second, or the third, or the hundredth "first" kiss.
It's everything.

For as long as I could remember
Your favorite month was December
You found solace in the solstice and
Snowfall and didn't particularly mind
Rosy cheeks or numb fingers

I had thought it odd that anyone
Could love something so cold and
Destructive and see it not as that -
But as gentle and serene

And I realized this was the very way
That you saw me
And I never questioned how such a warm
Heart could love so many unloved things
Again

I guess now that all is momentarily calm
the war has stopped
and the dust has settled
it's easy to see
that after all there was to say has been said
and all there was to do has been done
I am still the only one
holding on

I have known no greater pain
than this
         this moment where you no longer
love me back

this life where I am alone and
without you
this world where you are not mine
this morning I woke up alone
and tonight
I will fall asleep alone
only to repeat this daunting new cycle
the next day
and the next

and I can't even put this into a context
in which I am familiar with
because this world where I am alone
and without you
has never before existed

I am sick with the constant thought of you;
of your contagious laughter and
our poisonous love
that I am painfully aware
we no longer share

and in this moment
I feel it everywhere

everywhere
everywhere
everywhere

I will not sit here in lies I cannot swallow,
I cannot wallow in this world of sorrow
without you
I cannot hold my head up and pretend as if
you never meant anything to me -

how can I pretend you never meant anything to me when
I cannot stand to breathe this hollowed air
without you,
live on this broken, godforsaken earth
without you,

and is it me or has time completely stopped
without you?
is it me
or has the earth reverted to spinning backwards on its axis
without you,
have the tides of the ocean ceased to kiss its beloved beach
without you,

or has it only been me?

has it only been me
who has spun backwards on my axis
and stood frozen in the empty sea

dear god,
has it only been me
all along?

Sticking my nose in places in which it did not rightfully belong had never failed to be a flaw of mine
And along with that came an absurd amount of assumption making and curiosity
Like when I sat at the back of a cluttered classroom looking around at all of the people whose backs were turned to me
And I watched the girl who wore black shirts and ate assorted candies as she feverishly tapped her feet against the floor
Wondering what she was trying to distract herself from remembering
And I looked at the boy who never raised his hand for anything and while role call was being taken was barely audible as he spoke his name
Wondering who it was in his life that made him so unostentatious, and why
I glanced at the girl who sat in the corner of the room, the girl who always came to class with an armada of water bottles, now guzzling a soda pop
Wondering what other old habits she had given into
And then I looked at myself
With this pencil in my hand and all these thoughts in my head that only the insides of my eyelids would have the pleasure of meeting
Wondering if anyone was wondering about me

You are the light among my
existential darkness
The song that people sing
when they are in love
What better way to analogize you
than with the words that pass between
the lips of two humans
whose hearts have sewn
themselves together
for eternity

I look at you and see nothing but
possibility
I see hope hiding behind your eyes
and happiness holding tight to your teeth
when you smile

And what could possibly be better
than this?
This moment where we are alone with
each other and the world

My pillows know all of our secrets
and my sheets smell like your skin
You kiss my face and leave half moons
on your favorite parts of my neck
One hand lost in the ocean of my hair
the other exploring the dips of my spine
Our bodied tied together like a knot
that no amount of time could hope
to untie

And while we're talking about time
no stretch of it could ever
be enough with you

You are a church that never closes,
a sun that doesn't set,
a wall clock beautifully frozen

Let me worship you

You are a forest fire
and I
am but a single match
envying the ferocity
of your flame

And time is the greatest tease of all
I am wrist deep inside your chest
working away at the gears
that move the hands of time
Begging them to stop

Wishing on every single shooting star,
every birthday candle,
every penny,
That when we're alone with each other
and the world,
and the walls of my bedroom
are eavesdropping on our
moonlit pillow talk

The night decides to stretch on into infinity
and the sun never bothers to rise

and today is one of
those days
where you wake up
to reality snuffing out
the flame of hope
and optimism
you've spent weeks
trying to light

today I am bombarded
with the thought of you
leaving
with the weight of
92 days
hanging over my head
like a rain cloud
today
I am
tired

and I've found that even when
I'm with you
I'm not really with you
because I am always too busy
thinking about you leaving
to enjoy what little time
we get to share together
and I'm sorry for that

I don't know how to apologize
for my feelings
in a way that doesn't ask for
you to say
"you don't need to do that,"
because believe me
I do

I am sorry
that despite my best efforts
I will not be able to be strong
all of the time
or perhaps even
a majority of the time

I am sorry
that I will never get used to
saying goodbye to you
that I can promise you
leaving will never get
any easier

I told you
this would be hard
and I meant that
but I also told you
that there is no one else
in this world
that I would rather do this with
than you
and I meant that
and that is what makes this
so
easy

and I mean that.