i.
you smile at me and the world melts away.
the floor falls beneath my feet;
i float in a void.
you look like you haven’t slept in a year but
your tired eyes light up for me;
your smile reaches your whole face, not just your lips.
you are beaming right at me like a spotlight.
some days the sun does shine but i don't feel it anymore;
i can only feel your warmth.

ii.
i dreamt that i was standing in the frame of an open, tall window,
staring down seven floors, looking at you.
you were shining back up at me, arms outstretched;
you were only illuminated by a streetlight and the stars.
i leaned out into the warm summer night’s air.
i expected to fall straight into your arms, but instead,
floated in the air, overlooking the city, and wishing you were next to me,
experiencing and savoring the sights the way i did.
i looked down and you were gone again,
and i woke up searching for you in my memory.

how vigorously you tear me apart, how sweetly you mold me back together. you don’t see me as i wish you would. i imagine you feel the same. i feel as if you always look at me from a distance. i am so small compared to the rest of the universe. i question whether i will ever be good enough. i once dreamt of a night spent alone in your room, enveloped in each other, absorbing all that we can of each other. i look up and hope you’re staring back but i just see the back of your head. the sky was grey that night.

when i first kissed you the whole universe around us ceased to exist. all i knew was you. all i felt was you, your hands running under my shirt, up my thighs, around my hips. all i tasted were your lips; all i smelled was your skin, that cheap cologne i couldn't get enough of. i didn't want it to happen this way. i didn't want to fall for someone who only loved the skin i was in. i want to shed my skin like a snake and emerge as a new person. i want to be unrecognized by you in a new beauty. i want you to be mesmerized by the new person i've become. i want another chance for you to fall for me, too. i want you to care. but i've stopped. i've stopped caring about the amount of times i go to your house, the amount of time we spend in your bed, the money on train tickets from my house to yours and back. i don't care if we're caught. i don't care if we're not. nothing matters because this doesn't matter.

i wish i could explain this in a way to make you understand my side of this story. i didn't plan to fall in love. it comes out of nowhere like an earthquake. it splits the land under you in two and sends you hurtling down the massive crevice. i didn't want to fall for someone i can't even bring home to my family. i hate the sneaking around and the lying, i hate deleting all of his messages and not taking pictures with him, i hate not holding his hand walking down the street but dear god, the way he feels, his hands around my waist and lips grazing mine, makes me forget my own name. his scent is ******* intoxicating and sends me tumbling even faster down the rift. i'm sorry i couldn't fall for someone else. maybe my heart is just too soft, and maybe this is a mistake, but he keeps me sane and he keeps me happy. i thought i was going to fall in love with a nice doctor or lawyer like my mother wanted, someone i could have a future with, but i've fallen for the one person who i have to keep a secret.

we woke up together, enveloped in each other and your bedsheets, to the sound of soft wind chimes in your bedroom window and cars driving past your home. your room smells like your cologne and the laundry detergent my mother used when i was young. you lazily half moaned, half murmured, "good morning, love," and you, with your dazed condition and morning breath, found my lips and met them with yours. you pulled me in closer and ran your fingers gently through my messy, tangled hair, and i inhaled your scent so deeply i could feel it softly settle in the bottoms of my lungs. the morning sun shined through your bedroom window and the shadows of the trees outside danced in the wind along your baby blue bedroom walls. you ran the tips of your fingers gently in sporadic loops along my shoulder blade and spine. we lay there and took it all in, took each other in, our legs intertwined and my head against your chest. for these few minutes i found myself wishing we could live infinitely in these small, precious moments, the ones we take for granted, the ones we only remember when the big picture is gone. i snuggled closer into your arms and we drifted back to sleep, heartbeats synced and bedsheets entangled in our legs.

i feel like a part of my life is missing without you by my side. when my heart felt like it was made of iron and when my mind was a tangled ball of yarn i went to you, you were my ******* muse and my inspiration to keep myself going and when we ended nothing ever felt right again, nothing sits right in my heart, i feel like the pieces are trying to fit together but there's always one part missing and that part is you. i always thought we had the purest form of friendship, it was past the point of being best friends, we were just the same person. we never had secrets, there wasn't really anything we couldn't tell each other. i ******* miss you. maybe this is what being in love is. i used to think people were supposed to make you grow as a person, not complete you, especially the people you fall in love with, but ****, losing you made me rethink that entire theory. i don't feel complete anymore. the most important person in my life left and i feel like my batteries have run dry. you left and it feels like parts of me are gone, dissolved away in the fluidity of your departure. this is love. the people you fall in love with complete you. you can find different people to complete you, but no two will ever fill in the same missing pieces. you knew exactly where i was sad and you healed me. you filled in the blanks where i couldn't myself. it's been a year and i haven't stopped feeling incomplete.

we think from opposite sides of the bed and dance around the idea of us, but it'll only make things harder because we use each other on nights where ****** **** and cheap liquor aren't enough to keep us from tearing apart. so instead we tear off our clothes and pretend nothing is wrong, pretend we don't want this to be more complicated, pretend we don't want us, pretend we're both not falling apart

but we are and you feel it too, but what happens when one of us doesn't? we both lose a friend and a lover at the same time and i don't know what i'll do without you in my life so i keep a distance and we try not to complicate things but we already fell in love before any of this happened, we never had meaningless no-strings-attached ***, the strings were attached and you knew it too. but we pressed on as if nothing was about to go awry. this was inevitable.

you and i used to tell each other the world, we used to say everything that was in our minds but what's on our minds now is too heavy a weight to bear on two broken-souled teenagers who just wanted something simple. we never asked to fall in love. we started from the wrong end of a relationship, there's no turning back and we can't start over. it's time we stopped pretending.

i roll over to your side of the bed. you wrap your arms around me and pull me in so tightly i wonder if we're fused together. we both refuse to acknowledge our feelings. we pretend it's platonic, the way you kiss me on the forehead, the way i hold your hand, the way we look at each other. for a moment we look into each other's eyes and consider our feelings, but we look away and you pull me in closer. we stay like that, listening to the raindrops on your bedroom window and longing for each other even with my head against your chest.

you tell me i am young and foolish but you are just as young and foolish for falling for me the way you have. we walk across a barbed wire tightrope and i know it's so ******* dangerous but the way you taste makes me forget my name. your lips beckon me without saying a word and your eyes are so mesmerizing i lose my train of thought when i look into them and all i can think about is kissing you. i never meant for any of this to happen and the lying and sneaking around won't last forever but you make me feel like i'll live a thousand more years. we love while cradling a time bomb and no one knows how many hours, days, years there are left on it. one day it will go off and we will perish together, or one of us will cut the wire and your timeline will no longer be the asymptote to mine.

I am not content with how honest I am with you. I want to tell you how much you mean to me. I want to be with you like star-crossed lovers, our heart strings laced within each other. You make my knees weak and my heart unsteady and my head spin but that's all I ever want. I want to tell you when I'm sad and when I say "leave me alone" I want you to say "not a chance" and hold me close to make sure I'm okay. Our lives don't cross continuously, eventually we will diverge and you will leave. But for the time we do have, I want to tell you the words I have deemed too honest to say aloud. Our seconds together are limited. Our souls are too old to love but we can try.

I try to pay attention to the conversation going on in front of me but the only thoughts clouding my conscience are "him, him, him" and despite my best efforts I still think of what it could be like to kiss those lips and feel those hands running up and down my back. The first time I heard him laugh the sound filled my head like a water balloon and I haven't been able to forget it since. His eyes are so tragically blue, so full of sharks and tsunamis, poseidon takes cover when he walks by. You are a tempest but I have always been in love with the rain. The notes on the board mean nothing to me if they don't spell out your name a thousand times. The shows on TV are boring if they don't have a character that reminds me of you. Every song on the radio reminds me of you. I'm not obsessed with you. I don't want you at all. You're just in all of my surroundings and I don't know how to get you out.

i need to take a few steps back and understand your intentions for us. you are not a written part of my future, you are one beautiful flaw in my life plan. you inspire the best in me but maybe the best in me isn't the best for you. i don't know enough of the calamity in your mind to determine what the next step is. you are a sine function and i am a horizontal line, we cross paths over and over but we will never merge into one line. but our interval is not infinite. i don't intend to waste time with the game we so dangerously play. i am tired of the empty words you speak and i long to hear your truths. until then i am not yours to toy with.

your smell is intoxicating and your smile gives me butterflies and this is such a ******* dangerous thing to do but no matter how wrong it is it just feels so right to be with you. God looks down on us with anger and disappointment but we look back at him with triumph and bravery because we didn't need to die to find heaven we just found exuberant love in each other. the angels are looking down on us with jealousy through the crepuscular light of dusk and dawn when He isn't watching them. our love is unholy but it's so ******* raw and genuine and even after we're gone from this earth, even after we've been sent straight to hell, it'll resonate through time and space and children in the future will sing songs about how we defeated God and made our own heaven on earth. we will live forever even after we are gone.

All of my thoughts seem to wander back to you, no matter how hard I try to forget you exist. You are toxic to me but I can't seem to stop myself from taking you in. I long to hear the words you've seen fit to keep to yourself, although I know my name is nowhere in their midst. This is unhealthy, a permanent lassitude from trying to understand you. This is not what I thought love was like.

"you're nuts" you told me one night, sitting together on your roof at 3am. i replied that you would crave someone crazy one day. i told you you would get tired of the girls with watered down hearts and pale blonde curls, that you'd be sick of daddy issues and smeared eyeliner and five-inch spiked heels.

you leaned in close and brushed your fingers along my jawline. you inhaled deeply, then your words dripped so sweetly from your tongue they could be mistaken for honey.

"i'm already tired."

i kissed you. hard.
a thousand stars exploded inside my chest.

my thoughts are headphones left in someone's back pocket for too long // I've always wanted a pillow that said "home sweet home" but recently I realized I don't know where home is // I thought you were going to be my angel, but Lucifer was once an angel, too // there's a hose running into my lungs and I thought you were turning the water off but instead you were slowly trying to drown me // I never understood how you could love someone if all you loved was their body // you promised me gardens but you forgot to water them // you once told me you loved me but immediately took it back and I still wonder if you were joking or you really felt as strongly about me as I did for you // you asked me if I ever felt like ripping myself to pieces and I almost told you "every night since you left" but instead I quietly shook my head and said "no" // I won't ask you if you ever loved me because you'll never tell me the truth


-m. j. g.

i once heard human beings naturally long for affection of any type; familial, romantic, or friendly. all humans strive for someone to connect with because we are the bones in the human body and we look for the socket or hinge to attach us with someone,

but the first time i ever saw you, you were playing a beethoven piece and ******* i don't think i've ever seen as much talent in any other musician as i've seen in you, and i watched your soul move through your instrument and the way you swayed while playing and i just thought to myself

"if i could sit here forever and just watch as you play, without you ever noticing me or even looking in my direction, my god i would because you are absolutely perfect to me."

sometimes we don't need affection. seeing him was enough for me to fall in love with him.

- m. j. g.

our lips' tessellation will repeat infinitely,
filling every void in our universe and our hearts.
there are about 1,025,110 words in the English language
and no combination of those words could ever accurately
reflect the way I feel for you.
when we kiss, I can feel the universe inside of me expanding
and I can feel stars being born inside my chest.
my ribcage becomes intertwined with flowers and vines
as they grow from the saddest parts of me.
our lifetimes will mean nothing compared to how long
our love will resonate after we have turned to dust.
distant planets with distant residents will sing of our story.
our imprint on the universe will be permanently etched in
every planet, every moon, every star, and every comet.

we are two microscopic pieces of the universe colliding,
but our impact will ring through time and space.

-m. j. g.

i believed you when you said you loved me after 3 weeks because i am an old book and no one has ever taken the time to dust me off before. my pages are aged and delicate and my cover is disconnecting from the spine. but there you were, trying to read a dusty book.

but after a few weeks, you must not have liked where i was going. was my story too boring? was it too cliché? was i not long enough, was there a plot twist you didn't like, was my print too small? did i break too much for you to even read because every time you touched me, a page would turn to dust?

she is an old book just like me. i hope you didn't tell her you loved her after a few weeks. i hope you didn't dust her off to use the pages to roll cigarettes and leave her on your nightstand. i hope you take the time to read her and understand her. i hope you discuss her pages in book clubs and i hope you read her in coffee shops and before you go to sleep and on long trips and in quiet corners of the library.

i hope, for her sake, she's not the story i was.

-m. j. g.

i swear to you i really do try but on most days I really just don't know how to handle myself.

i mean just the other night i was trying to fall asleep but i kept worrying about the hundred billion ways i could die and then when i finally fell asleep, i woke up the next morning contemplating enacting on one of those hundred billion ways.

my brain is filled with a tempest that i try so very hard to get rid of but even when the storm is gone the destruction it caused is still there. my bones have gotten used to the shaking and my head has gotten used to feeling like a lead bowling ball. i can't tell from reality or daydream and when i learn it's not a dream it sickens me to a point where i decide to live in a different reality for a while.

i once heard that reality is based on perception. once a reality is created, it cannot be changed, only your perception of it can change. well i hope to god that the realities i've created can be destroyed as well because i don't want to live in this one.  

-m. j. g.

i will never understand the calamity of your mind.
you walk a thin line separating the artistic from the insane.
i sometimes wonder if you're drowning or
if you've just got your head above water.
did you mean to dive in without a clue where the currents would lead?
the winds are changing, baby, and you're stuck overboard.
poseidon is too weak for the tsunamis you're about to cause.

-m. j. g.

when you love, you love with mercury. your love is acerbic, abrasive, acidic. you are poisonous. you expand in my heart and spread like branches through my veins.

your love suffocates me with every minute, and as i start to lose oxygen, i hallucinate and i start to believe in you, believe that you are good for me. your love tightens my throat and freezes my blood. i lose circulation, start going numb.

y o u   m a k e   m e   n u m b .

you love me with mercury, corrosively, scraping my skin off with every "it won't happen again". but baby, there is no cure for this kind of poison.

-m. j. g.

when i die, i don't want a funeral.

i want a celebration of my life.
i want someone to plant a tree in my honor,
or name a new star after me.
my death should be conveyed through a form of life,
not through my body sitting and rotting in a wooden box
as people shuffle past me and pray monotonously.  
i don't want everyone i knew
to come and mourn my departure together,
comforting each other, wishing i'd had more time on earth.
i don't want people to tell their children at the funeral,
"you don't need to see her if you don't want to."

i want to be cremated, but not just sit in a jar over a fireplace.
i want my ashes spread all across the world.
i want my ashes to reach places that i could not when i was alive.
i want to be sprinkled over a volcano and dashed over the aegean sea.
i want my heart to be in egypt and turkey,
my arms to be in paris and new york,
my lungs to be in haiti,
my spine to be in greece,
my legs to be in antarctica.

i want to travel even when i no longer can.
i want my death to be the extension of my life.

-m. j. g.

do not fall in love with a musician because they will play you like a symphony.

they will get to know every enchanting note of you. they will find parts of you in which they must get improve but in the process they will resent you for this.

they will caress your heart with their suites and sonatas. they will gently hold your hips as you would the curves of a violin. they will *******, sweetly, slowly, then presto, with fire. they will make love with you, but not to you. they will play beautiful concertos with your body but they will not dedicate a single note nor rhythm to you.

they will finish playing you when they become tired of hearing your melody. they will leave you in a folder or a case somewhere where you will never be played again.


-m. j. g.

our lives do not collide.

you think we have always walked along a thin line,
separating the two relationships we could have,
but we crossed that line a long time ago.
we are not lovers. we do not love. and never will.
the most we've ever exchanged are words and smiles,
****** expressions and eye contact.
but i love you more than you'll ever be able to comprehend.

we are not meant for more. years take up the spaces between us.
you are responsible, you are kind,
you are a warm sunny day in the summer time,
that perfect day that's not too hot and not too cool.
i am childish, abrasive, loud and boisterous,
i am a tornado, ruining homes and cutting power lines,
i am foolish and young but so are you.
despite the differences between our lives we are still so compatible,
but our timelines will never cross any further.
the universe has been doing everything in its power to keep us apart.

i pray the universe is wrong with this one.
i feel important with you and you are important to me.
when i think of you, flower bushels start to grow in my heart,
their branches intertwining with my ribcage.
i start to feel love, the thorns fall off and i feel clarity and serenity.
you make me a better person, i never want to lose that,
but we can only tiptoe around this for so long
before we have to walk out of each other's lives.
maybe we really do walk on that thin line.

and one day that line will blur and you will leave me.
the hours we have are limited.
i love you,
but we are not lovers. we do not love. we never will.
our lives do not collide.

-m. j. g.

we walk on thin ice covering a lake of sharks and serpents.
i feel like i'm loving you through time.
we are not from the same era.
your soul is old and wise and mine is young and foolish.
we are so far apart yet so compatible.

i love you through time
but every day that time decreases a few hours.
i am counting down the days
where our time difference will reach close to 0
and you will have to decide
whether or not to let the difference go to 0
or break the clock.

i love you, but we are not from the same time.
we are spread apart by millions of minutes,
minutes full of emotions and love and happiness,
full of sadness, pain and heartbreak,
full of you and me.
are there enough to stay afloat?

i don't want to wait until 0 seconds. i need to know before then.
i don't want a broken clock.
it will break as the thin ice over the lake.
i can't use a broken clock.
i can't out-swim the sharks and serpents.

i can't lose you,
because i will be broken
and i won't know how to fix myself.

the clock is approaching 0.
is this time that we've spent saving ourselves
greater than the time we'll spend
together on solid ground?
i don't even think our converged timeline is a possibility.
we are not from the same era,
and i don't think we will ever be.
i feel as if i'll always be loving you through time.
this thin ice is breaking and i am the one without a lifesaver.

-m. j. g.

i am now 258 miles away from home which in retrospect wasn't my best idea because that's 258 miles of land and water and trees and cities that separate me from you.

i don't remember what it was that first drew me to you because there are more reasons than numbers in existence and i wish there weren't any reasons because now all i think about is you.

some say that holding on to someone who left you is pathetic, some say its tragic, and some say it's romantic.

personally, i don't know what to think because sometimes i find myself crying into my pillow because i'm so disgusted with myself but sometimes i daydream about us and what we could've had.

but most of the time i either feel everything at once, my feelings crawling around under my skin and in my muscles and bones, trying to claw their way out and expose themselves

or i feel nothing, as if my body has suddenly stopped producing hormones and chemicals and i'm just a dead man walking. it's been 4 months and i still haven't figured out how to manage myself.

i'm coming home today which is great but in retrospect it wasn't my best idea to buy tickets because now that's 258 less miles of land and water and trees and cities to separate me from you.


-m. j. g.

i think the reason you hate hickeys is because they're little reminders that you were there, indicators of your presence, but you hate leaving pieces of yourself behind because you know if you leave too many

you're going to fall apart.

you don't like leaving reminders of yourself because you are the wind. once you have blown past the blades of grass in the park and the trees in the forest, you're travelling somewhere else, you don't want to stay grounded and you don't want to leave any memory behind. you want a painless departure from everywhere you go. you are a light breeze in the spring, and i am a hurricane. i leave dark purple marks down your neck and red scratch marks on your back. i leave your lip bleeding and your heart sore. i leave destruction behind me and move on to wreak havoc somewhere else. i leave reminders of myself because i am afraid of being swept away by my own winds. i am afraid that if i do not cause destruction, i will not be remembered, i will not have left anything behind, i would be

forgotten.