revolution

i long to travel
to everywhere you've been
and learn the reasons for
the sparkle in your eye,
the scent on your skin,
the depth of your laugh.
i love these places all
despite knowing none,
for they held you
nurtured you
changed you
while i could not
and moved you back
toward me
once the earth
finished
spinning.

Coming Home

I want to apologize for how frantic and perhaps even desperate I have seemed the past few days. I realize to you my behavior might just appear clingy--maybe even pathetic to a degree. Here's what you don't see: the depth of my love for you, that came on suddenly after lying dormant in my belly for so long. A need for your body and soul, for your touch and your voice and your warmth and your everything. A desire to feel safe, which after seeing you was fulfilled for the first time in years. A longing to give all of myself to somebody deserving of me, and who knows me better in all of my states of being than you? Here's what you don't see, and can't: an eternity of ache threatening to define me if I have to spend a day without you.

In three short months, you have grown for me from a memory I tried desperately to suppress and forget into a reality better than anything I could have expected. You are as you once were, but also so new. I wish nothing more than to explore who you have become, to come to know with intimate familiarity the spaces between your fingers, the freckles on your back, the curve of your spine as you stretch in the early morning light. It has been so long since I felt for someone such intensity that tears well in my eyes and flow freely. They are happy tears, tears of disbelief that you have come around again, tears of gratitude for your presence, tears that exhilarate my blood and set my bones shaking.

Do you remember the first time we talked about forever? Five years ago now, lying in your bed, a tangle of sheets and skin and energy. You looked into my eyes and I think without even realizing the words forming in your mouth, you asked me to marry you. And I, with the same disregard for the weight of my response, said yes. Did we mean it at the time? In our naivety, perhaps. I could not see much beyond the months ahead, could not see how I would change, how you would grow and shift. Nor could you. But surely the passion that we felt in that moment lent some truth to our words.

You told me last weekend that you would not--could not--live your life without me by your side. I smiled and laughed, unsure if you were serious and unwilling to believe that someone could care so much for me as to think about a world absent my being, and reject it. What I should have said was this: I won't let you. Younger versions of ourselves willingly let each other go, convinced we would find something, someone better. Fate shook its head and sighed, knowing we would discover in time the faults in our logic. Have we ever learned a lesson so painful, so wonderful? You cannot live without me. I tell you now, with the same sincerity you showed me, that I cannot live without you.

Our history is marked as much by pain as it is by love. Years ago, we hurt each other callously, thinking our youthful skin would heal the wounds we inflicted. There is ache in our hearts we have not yet named, blisters still forming and scars not yet dissolved.

We are learning how to heal. It has not been easy, of course, but then again a love as wild as ours cannot help but be tumultuous. At times it feels as though the distance between us, the literal miles that separate us, have conspired against our reunion. But as I told you today, in words unable to communicate the weight of their truth, it will get easier. The space between us is an obstacle, yes, but one we can surmount. What are a few months apart when compared with a lifetime together?

You told me today that neither of us should have to work for a relationship. It should come naturally, you said. I cannot deny that the last week has been bumpy, the most unnatural our joint presence has felt since we ripped ourselves from each other four years ago. But I refuse to discount the overwhelming joy and freneticism that fills the air when we are together. These fissures in the road are disruptive, but they can be fixed. I will take the asphalt of my remorse and fill each pothole with love, tenderly pave over our sorrows with the promise of forever.

I told you today never to let me go. You told me to relax. Everything's fine. But "fine" is too commonplace to describe us, darling. It always has been. Our story is defined by the immensity of our passion, by the enormity of our need for one another. "Fine" is infinitesimal in comparison to who we are together, to us.

Here, love, is my hand. I offer you my world, I give you my everything.
Join your palm with mine.
We have always been one.

blanchard

You saw me and immediately turned your back to me and walked away.
I'm not sure I've ever felt more like trash.
Is that how you think of me?

all of me

I didn't think I'd spend my entire drive back to school wiping tears away from my eyes.

Then again, I didn't think I'd spend the rest of the year without you.

Breathing is almost impossible when I think about you.

the learning gap

Sometimes I have these moments where I forget that you aren't in my life anymore. I'll see something that reminds me of you or brings back memories from something we experienced together, and I'll reach for the phone to call you, or open up a new e-mail to tell you about it. Sometimes I get as far as hearing the phone ring before remembering you, on the other end of the line, aren't really there anymore.

I'm not sure why I forget, but when I suddenly remember, it's like my heart breaks open all over again. You've left this unbelievably huge void and I just can't seem to understand how I didn't become a part of you, too.

No amount of education will ever help me comprehend why you left without even really saying goodbye. I thought "I promise I'm not going to leave this time, I want to spend my life with you" meant forever, but maybe I've had my definitions wrong this whole time.

(let's do it tonight)

Do you remember the first time we danced together? Our veins pulsing with adrenaline and liquor, our hands greedy for touch but afraid of rejection, as the words to "Give Me Everything Tonight" pulsed in the background and convinced us what we felt was not only organic but also meant to be.

I wish I could be dancing with you tonight, feeling your body pressed tight against mine as you kiss my neck. (I'm so afraid you will kiss someone else.)

holes

Today I thought about how much I loved when you laugh. Anytime you smiled, I fell in love with you all over again. There was so much comfort in the way you looked at me, with love and intensity in your eyes.

I miss whispering "goodnight" to you as I wrap my arm around your stomach and pull you closer.

My pillows still smelled like you. I finally washed them, but your scent lingers. I feel like you left so much of you behind, but I'm afraid I didn't even leave a trace of myself with you.

intentions

The last time you did this, you called me exactly two weeks after you broke all contact. We've hit that mark again. I'm trying really hard not to wait for the phone to ring. Lately, though, I've discovered that my willpower doesn't stand a chance against my heart.

i feel like puking

My friend just told me she saw you on Tinder.
Are you already looking for somebody else?

These days I don't even want to look for myself.

insomnia

Fuck.
I miss you so much.

You are still in my dreams
(which haven't quite caught up to reality,
since there we are in love) --
but lately
I fear closing my eyes
to find you've disappeared.

I don't want to
be alone
awake
and
asleep.

Being without you,
my eyes open,
is hard
enough.


Today the air smelled like
that first August night
when you leaned in
unexpectedly
and changed my life.

They say smell
is the strongest form of memory,
but I'm so afraid
you've forgotten.


I would give anything
to feel your warm skin
as it promises me
everything will be
okay.

morning glory

Sometimes I think the hardest part is waking up without you.

loss: a checklist

God I miss dancing with you.

I miss touching your skin and feeling your lips kiss mine.

I miss your laugh. I still hear it sometimes, but I miss the way it sounded when it happened because of me.

I miss the way we would look at each other, having entire conversations through our eyes. (You have such beautiful brown eyes.)

I miss your soft snore and your complaints about my hair getting in your face as you slept.

I miss the comfort of having someone who knows everything about me.

I miss talking about our future, imagining our lives becoming one life together, no matter the obstacle.

I miss running my hands through your hair and rubbing your back for hours on end, even when you'd fall asleep before returning the favor.

I miss your intellect. You are so inquisitive and I think maybe I fell in love with you because of that. But then I fell in love with every other bit of you; there was (and still is) so much to love.

I miss going out with you and holding hands as we passed by strangers, wondering if they looked at us and saw beauty in our love.

I miss driving on the highway singing Avril Lavigne at the top of our lungs.

I miss our intimacy. Nothing else could or ever will compare.

I even miss those times you'd run towards me full force to envelop me in a hug (even though I was usually terrified you'd knock me over).

Mostly, though, I just miss my best friend.

Elucidate this:

your ability to take the most important person in your life and pretend you never met her.

Sometimes, I wish you hadn't.


(Nothing feels worse than being invisible
to the one person who used to call me
his world.)

evolutionary theory

does it matter who looked first?

the point is
we were both
looking

(small things)

Yesterday was the first day I didn't cry.

(one humble request)

But like for real, please stop dangling yourself in front of me.

I get it, you're happy.
Do you really need to laugh that loudly?

dystopia

Today I accidentally rediscovered one of our favorite spots to escape everything and just exist. It was a kind of haven, and we were pretty sure nobody else knew about it.

Someone else was there today.

this is why it hurts

everything to nothing
in one week