When I was eleven I joined the cast of the school play
Aladdin
And the genie was played by a girl
Three years older
With straight dark hair, and a nervously witty way with words
And the most captivatingly violent contempt for the world
That masked and mingled with a host of little insecurities,
And the largest jewel tone eyes I'd ever seen.
One was blue and one was green,
And she looked at me.
I think it was when I was peeking out from behind the curtain.
She just looked at me for a second and
I fell in love with her right there.
Six years later was the first day I forgot to think of her,
And I do believe I'll never go a solid month without the ghost of loving her pressing up against my back once or twice,
Quite unexpectedly.
I didn't speak to her for the first four years,
And when I did I became her best friend, sure that that was what I felt for her.
And two years after we met,
She disappeared and I was glad by then,
But loved her no less.
That was the first.

Then during my eighth grade summer,
Just before I started high school,
I walked into my summer camp
To the theatre to audition for the play
And there on the stage there was a girl
With freckles on her shoulders like cinnamon sprinkled.
She always wore a close fitting hat over her short hair
And her eyes were the deep, slate grey of the sky just before a rainstorm cracks through the clouds.
Her fingers looked like porcelain,
And I couldn't stop looking at them
Because I remembered the sculptures in the Museum of Fine Art
That I always wanted to touch as a child- smooth and white and delicate but with the suggestion of strength.
And when she spoke her voice was the lowest, richest one I'd ever heard
And everyone in the room bent toward her as if caught by gravity.
The way she uses words when she talks is the way a concert pianist uses the keys-
You have to stop and stand in awe, sometimes.
She can make you feel things.
I saw her on that stage, and I fell in love with her, right there,
And this time I think I knew it was love and not friendship.
Four, maybe five years later,
I know I'm not over it.
She was the first girl I ever thought about kissing.
That was the second.

Then my sophomore year, I suddenly looked at a good friend of mine
And saw her for what she was instead of passing by.
Chocolate brown eyes full of sweetness and vitality,
Long brown hair that fell in little curls about her face when it escaped its pinnings as she danced,
She was radiant, inside and out,
Full of this innocent joy, an ability to be... happy
That I had never imagined.
Her little beauties snuck up on you,
And then all of a sudden hit you hard and knocked you over.
It was her loveliness as a person that made her truly extraordinary-
She was nicer to me than anyone I'd ever loved.
By then I knew it was love, and I felt ashamed.
I gave her what gifts I could-
Perhaps too many-
To satisfy some need in me to thank her for existing.
And although I finally learned to keep myself from pining for her
I know that to this day I would fall for her again if I saw her.
She was like a balm for the hard cold brutality of everyday life;
Knowing her was like healing from being alive.
She's overseas now,
Lighting up some room somewhere,
And I hope that the people in it feel the warmth of her like the sun, like I did.
That was the third.

Then my junior year, quite unexpectedly,
I found that I loved no one and hurt over no one,
And I began to find a peace in that
Until on Halloween I walked into my friend's party
(My friend who has, since, sadly spoiled from the inside out over the years,
Or maybe he always was rather that way.)
And I saw what sunlight would look like if it were a person.
Dark hair, black eyes like whole galaxies, high cheekbones, full lips
And the softest, most radiant skin I'd ever seen or felt.
I thought I dreamed her that night,
And many, many times since then I've thought the same.
She kissed me and I felt it through every cell of me,
And although I slowly fell in love with her mind in the coming weeks,
I knew I loved her soul when I saw her eyes the moment she first looked at me.
The joy of being hers left such a glow upon my soul
That when she left I was blind, and fell to my knees.
For a long, long time, she was all there was-
First in love and perfection, and I shivered when she touched me,
Then in loss and devastation, and I shook without her near.
I worked harder and longer than I've ever worked for anything in my life this past year
To learn to love her and live through it even though she is gone
Instead of letting go of the memory of her and hence losing her for good.
Worth every second, I maintain.
She was the person who first loved me back-
The only one so far, honestly-
And I know I will be in love with her until the day I die.
That was the fourth.

And then when I had resigned myself to a life
Of loving someone who wouldn't touch me anymore,
I met somebody new.
She has dark hair that catches the light red,
Wild and curly and it dances in the breeze.
She has the bluest eyes I've ever seen, full of laughter and warmth-
Eyes like that are dangerous, they can make a whole room hot or cold
All on their own.
She saw me loving her, and drew my soul from me
With the touch of her fingers on my cheek
And took it with her when she pulled away and walked down the hall
At 3 am
And when she rounded the corner
She'll never know that I sat down and cried
Right there
Because I knew I'd never quite get it back.
I knew she wouldn't be so close ever again.
But I cried with a smile
Because everyone I meet who can make me feel so intensely that I lose control
Is the most important person I've ever met, all over again.
So now there is her
Her and all these ghosts that press cold against my back when I lay down to sleep
See-through arms around my waist,
Making sure that nothing warm quite touches me truly.
And if she fades with them-
For she is already blurring around the edges,
Starting to retreat into the part of my heart that can house the things that
Hurt
-If she fades with them
There will have been another lesson to go with this loss.
I never know what I'm being taught
So brutally
But hopefully someday I will figure it out.
Maybe then somebody will chase the ghosts away and put her arms around me
And I will know security for the first time in my entire life.
She is the fifth.
But heaven knows who will be
The last.

Her sweetness-laden face,
beckoned with a grace,
A wishful ray of hopes,
inconspicuously morose.

He read it with an ease,
The Pinings cached in crease,
Swaying like a tremor,
Agog for a breather.

Whilst unfurling the crease,
He feared his irrational leash,
Careened before her eyes,
And pulled his hands back inside.

He thought he had better,
Leave intact the wrapper,
For a sudden quietude hurts more,
Than a phlegmatic uproar.

I always wonder why it is
That seeing someone else's tears
Creates such awe in me.
I want to ease your pain
But I am also
Transfixed by it.

The mask slips
When people cry.
The seams rip
And all of a sudden parts of them
That are never meant to be seen
Writhe in the light,
Raw and agonized and
Beautiful
As hell.
I do mean that- hell.
It is both
Divine and perverse
To witness someone else's pain.
I always hold my breath
As if I could shatter their soul
Just with the knife's edge of my gaze.

When you cry
Most people politely look away
For their own comfort
And tug their disguises closer,
Check their pinnings
Reminded of their fragility
By the gauche display
Of yours.

When you cry
I
Freeze like a photograph
And I see you as a child
I see you as a god
I see you
As a rainstorm reaching its fingers across
All the ugly concrete and glass we build
And getting inside
Underneath
To make the trees bloom.
When you cry
I see you like I see a painting
Hung in a museum so quiet you want to hush your heartbeat
Just to keep the stillness electric.
When you cry
You are so bright that when I glance at you
And look away
I am blind for a moment.

There is something about seeing that loss of control in another person
That one second of utter truth
The brutal, consuming honesty that comes with tears
That reaches inside, for those who dare let it,
And wounds exquisitely.
There is a bare second
When the part of them that recoils from the light
Clasps shriveled hands with the answering piece of you
And both hurt-
To see and to be seen
But that moment
Reminds you that you are alive
And
Why.

Have you ever heard a song
So sweet that lyrics would corrupt it?
So pure that you hold your breath
Afraid you'll shatter it just by sighing?
It's a torn feeling, an unnameable feeling, the description of which can only lead you in circles
Hopelessly tangled in the desire to express it.
It is something so excruciatingly, frustratingly ineffable that you can't even move, frozen in awe, locked in a complex, pressurised longing.
Something
So achingly lovely that just the thought of it 
Pulls tears from you in diamond threads
And makes you, briefly, a shimmering echo of it,
Lit
From inside.

I say this
Even though I know that trying to describe that feeling
Is like trying to grasp at mist
I say this
I say it because
I felt like that in your arms.

I looked at you
In the half-light
And just for a second I saw you fully, in a new way.
The light loved you.
It slid along your skin like it came from the stars
And not from a bedside lamp propped against the wall.
You were so smooth, so soft, tendrils of hair escaping their pinnings and following the long lines of your neck.
Your eyes gleamed through your smile,
And all the sweetness and wit and beauty behind them,
All of that that I could touch, all that art looking at me in that moment, like having a symphony play for just you,
That soul under that skin, a whole galaxy of loves and hates and dreams and insecurities coursing through you...
And me
An inch away
Less
Pressed up against you like a parallel universe, so near and so sacred and so shockingly tangible-
The heat of you, so solid but so pliable next to me, so much a part of me that nothing about me could feel empty.

I couldn't breathe for joy, suddenly.

You could have been the moon, just then,
Or a goddess, like one of those smooth, white, subtly glowing statues in the museum halls,
Women I always imagined came alive at night and basked in the starlight,
Absorbing it to throw it back upon the world when day broke.
Your fingertips on me traced patterns
And I wanted them to touch me deeper
Wished my body was more my soul than flesh can be
So that I could feel yours in your hands.
It was too much!
It was
Not enough.
And I laughed, hid my face in your neck, felt your pulse there and how fragile your collarbones were.
I wanted to seep into your skin like rain.
I tried to shrug past it
But the feeling grabbed me by the shoulders and shook the words out of me,
And suddenly I was cheek to cheek with you,
Confessing...

After that the way I touched you changed.
I don't know if you felt it,
But I did.
It had been coming, sneaking up on me, all that day.
In my arms, beneath my palms, I held something so unutterably precious
Whenever I held you
And I knew it fully then, unable to unfeel it.
It made me tender in a way that pierced my heart
In a way that scared me
Because it felt like why I'm here.

If someday I get to tell you I love you
I will tell you that it was that moment when I knew for sure I would.
That moment when it all became so crushingly, beautifully real to me-
When gravity shifted, and you began to pull me instead.

I don't know why I love you so much.
That was never the plan.
It isn't safe, to love someone like this
And I always knew it.
But the way your hair curls down your cheeks when you've fallen asleep and it has escaped its pinnings
The way your eyelashes leave shadows down your cheeks
The way your eyes sparkle when you laugh
You hit something so beautiful and painful in my heart.
The way you are,
Everything about the way you are
Just tears me open with love.
When you cry, I long to wrap you in my arms and protect you from every pain you inflict on yourself.
It pulls me toward you, this need to show you with my skin that I belong to you.
Resisting it carves out a huge crater in my chest
As if more and more of me goes to you by the second
But I can't follow it and make myself whole again.
If I do this, if I succeed in these next few weeks,
If you continue to love me
And relearn how to touch me
It will have been the hardest thing I ever did for someone I loved.
If I smile at you and show you how happy you make me
And manage to hide how broken I am,
If I can survive it when you turn away from me in bed,
And pull away from my touches.
I've always said that not reaching for someone I adore
Is an act of unutterable love
And it has never been more true
Because you used to reach back,
You used to crave me like I crave you
Not ***, but closeness, oneness.
I live alone.
I have always lived alone.
And not for a second have I liked it.
I can count on my hands the number of times in my life I've felt at home and whole.
This
What I am doing for you
Trying to do
By giving you all the choice in this
This is the biggest, most difficult thing I have ever given anyone.
And if at the end I lose you
Make no mistake
I will have nothing. I know it. I fear it.
When I woke up this morning the terror of it took my breath away
Because my body knows.
And it won't be losing you that does it,
It will be these weeks,
These weeks and the strength I don't have, the hang on by your fingernails strength I will have to find
In order to keep my head above water and show you why you love me.
By the end of this
I will have used every failsafe I have,
Every life support, every backup plan
I will be stripped raw and naked inside, armorless and starved,
And if you go I will be more unprepared for the agony of losing you
Than I have ever been for any sort of pain.
It is my life I'm giving you, right now,
And it's impossible for you to understand unless you've felt this looming shadow that I live with
But I'm giving you
Every bit of energy I always save to keep myself alive when I am swallowed by the dark.
And I am... so afraid. So inexpressibly, mesmerizing afraid.
I am facing my absolute worst fear every second for all this time,
And it's important that I say that.
Because I've never done it for anyone.
I've never been able to.
And maybe sometimes I'll crack, and you'll see tears, and I'll reach for you.
But I swear to god I'd be less afraid to jump after you off a bridge than to do what I'm doing now.
In ways I would rather die, because it wouldn't take so long with so much fear.
And I have to say this, I have to, because whichever way this turns out
This tops every act of love I have ever done before
And every risk I have ever taken
And every fear I have ever faced.
You are more important to me than I could ever express,
And I love you enough to give you my life,
In every horrible, beautiful sense of the word.