but what is forever, if not days just numbered too slow? then, love, we have spent forevers with a couple of sighs and a cigarette away from breaking under the moon — such a devastatingly beautiful sight. then, love, we have spent forevers with cherry-red lips against the thinnest parts of the skin, like dahlias pressed to the pages of a coffee-stained book. then, love, we have spent forevers naming skyscrapers and dying lights — calling them magic, calling them ours. then, love, we have spent forevers crafting words out of our pulses, leaving unintelligible whispers in the wake.

this no storm; this is the calm's betrayal.

and yet, i will hold you the way december holds onto her nights made of hours slipping too slow. i will recite to you all my unwritten postcripts until we have a word for emptiness, so searing — for forevers that end too soon. i will kiss you for the last time, even when these kisses are but the final blunders. i will slowly strip all this remaining love — i have nowhere to leave it in but here — in the space between these words. and i will depart amid the night's silence, leaving behind a briefcase of poems and dahlias bent at the stem, knowing that we have spent forevers against each other's skin, on each other's lips, in each other's arms.

but then, love, what is forever, if not days just numbered too slow?

Hey ez. Just wanted to say, you would be 5 months now. Almost to 6 baby girl. Cousin Ellie just got to 7. Shaydens at 1. Liliana is at 8. You would’ve been right in between. Just perfectly spoiled rotten with love. We miss you. I do. Sometimes I feel so guilty that I don’t think of you often. But thinking of the could’ve and would’ve beens leaves an ache inside that hurts too much. I guess I’ve associated you with so much pain that I think of you when I’m feeling low. I’m happy for the most part. You know? Like.. things feel okay. I held shayden the other day remember? I dreamt of you that night and felt like I was holding you and I felt like that was a push from you to tell me that it was okay for my arms to hold a baby even if it’s not you. It’s just hard for me tho. To have to be awkward and laughed at and watched over as I hold a newborn when I should’ve been used to it by now. I should’ve been the one to be able to tell the best way to angle the head and even know how to burp them. I know others don’t mean to be insensitive it’s not their fault.. I’m the one who always shows them how strong I am and that im not still healing. Thanks to you. I don’t know some times wether to thank you or not because if you were here I wouldn’t have had to find out what I’m capable of. If you were here I wouldn’t have had to find out what being strong means. You showed me the purest love in the most simplistic way and I wish there was a way I could feel that again. Maybe the hurt inside me when I think of you is that love still just not so pure anymore since it’s marred with losing you. I know it’s bad that I don’t talk about you. But baby, it’s only been 5 months. How does anyone expect me to just be okay with it now? 5 months of you being alive would be you still being brand new. 5 months of you being dead means that I’m still holding on. 5 months of me trying to go back to normalcy. Staying with friends, going for drinks, laughing and making jokes. Some of it feels more fake than others. I don’t think you realize how much happier I would be with you here. I sometimes get a thought in my head that is terrible, but that I think is my way of coping because it isn’t how I really feel. You know? That maybe I wasn’t ready for you. Maybe I was too ill prepared. I mean come on look at us. I can barely make it by and there’s just two adults. No car. No home. No baby. And we’re still struggling. So sometimes I think, yes maybe it is better for you.. that way you won’t ever have to know how much this world really is just a climbing ladder and a lot of the times we’re at the bottom. Maybe sometimes it would be easier if you were here, maybe you would be motivation. Something to get us out of our hole we’re in. Or that I’m in.
I don’t know what’s right anymore. I wish you were here so I could just talk your little head off again. I miss those morning drives of just telling you what I had in store for us. Of complaining about nonsense and always losing track of what I was saying but actually feeling listened to for once. You made me feel so much peace just by talking to you. I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore. Everyone has their own problems and me adding to theirs when my problems are easily fixable seems pointless. Idk. I just miss you. I’m sorry that I’m a bad mom. I didn’t deserve you but I thank you so much that you gave me you.

you were
always there
but not

for me.