there’s a difference
between loving someone
and being in love with them.

i know that now.
because i love you,
in the way that feels steady,
in the way i’d hold your hand through anything,
in the way you live in my days
without needing to try.

but i am also in love with you.
and that’s different.

that’s why i think of you
when my legs ache
and my chest burns
and i want to quit,
because once,
you said pain means progress.
and somehow, that stayed.

it’s why your laugh feels like sunlight.
why the shape of your name
sits softly in the back of my throat
when i’m too shy to say it.
why i memorize your voice
like it’s the only music
i’ll ever need to hear again.

being in love means
i don’t just want you near me,
i want to be seen by you.
known by you.
still wanted anyway.

and that’s what scares me.
not the loving,
but how deeply i feel it.
how much i want to deserve it.
how quiet the ache gets
when you say my name
like i’ve never been too much.

there’s a difference.
and i know it
because i love you,
and i am in love with you.

and that truth
doesn’t hurt
quite like it used to.

It's all sunshine
and beaches
laughter
Suntans
and peeled skin
wrinkled faces
sunsets drenched in *****
open car windows
drizzling sweat drops
late nights stretched till dawn
flings and winks
but all this
misses
"u"

I’m so tired of loving you.
Of holding a space
you can never fill.

Your absence
is all-consuming,
constant.
It presses.
It stings in stillness.

I close my eyes,
and your face
is still waiting for me there.

I don’t want to forget you.
I just want the remembering
to stop tearing me apart.

If there’s a way
to stop loving you
without falling apart,
please-
show me how.
I’m too tired to keep trying,
and too full of you
to stop.

Love them nonetheless
Saving the world
Only to show
The validation they seek

Wrapped in the solitude of one blessed night
the moon-eyed moon wanders lightly and alone
inside a vast and deep, darkly expansive sky
Dark cores of light glide
through a dormant ether,
as butterfly shadows play softly against
a dense canopy of leaves.
A still figure appears as if by chance,
underneath the cadence of the light,
swaying like wavering puppets on a string
she meditates on
the fast appearing stars ...
Creating magic from the tatters of the night
she's an invisible wand to the world
but unto thyself, she is as full as the moon.