"Just

"Just

Tell me

The truth.

I promise

I won't

get

upset."

It is a lie, of course.

But everyone wants

The truth,

Until they have it.

As it is always so much more gruesome,

Than one could have imagined.

I do not blame you

For becoming angry

For the truth is an infuriating thing.

~reflections on the gentle falsehoods that have never turned me away and the untruths that have always made room for me to believe when I had no where else to go

I think if I have to come undone for someone, I would rather it be you.

Which is to say, I would prefer it to be you. Which is to say, I would like to unravel, and I would like it to be at by your hand. Which is to say, I would like to earn the honour of being loved by you. That I would like to have the pleasure of loving you unconditionally.

Because I think that if I were to give you my heart, you would treat it kindly. That if I were to show you my scars, you would memorize their pattern. That if I were to bear my soul to you, you would bear yours to me. I would like to love you and be loved by you, if you think you wouldn’t mind it. 

Because I know you will always offer me the hot water for my shower first. And even if I never take you up on it, I know you will. I want that with you.

I would like cabinets over flowing with tupperware and glass jars and old ice cream containers in the fridge filled with your mint chutney. I want bookshelves crowded more with your hand bound make-shift notebooks than novels. I want to grumble about stolen covers as I wake chilled in the morning and laugh it off clinging to you for warmth instead.

I want sunlight filtering in through our curtains on Saturday morning to dust your lashes and cheeks and still being allowed to be the one to wake you. I want to watch you dance with a broom across the living room (as I wipe down the kitchen counters) singing to a song from a musical I haven’t listened to but have become familiar with through moments like these. I want you to try to teach me how to cook and not mind when I mess up the soup I attempt to make you when you fall sick. I want to be there when you are sick. 

I want to be allowed to care for you. I want to do so many loads of laundry together we forget who’s pjs belong to who. I want to stop caring about what belongs to who with you. I want to feel you slip into bed next to me at 3 am still scented with your favourite take out I left on the table for you because I knew you would be home late. I want that with you.

I want to memorize your favorite take out order and how you like your tea. I want to memorize at least 75% of your playlist. I want to be allowed to hold you when no one else is. I dont care if I’m always your plus one but I want to be the first person you call when the night is over. Your tipsy phone call filled with soft smiles and hiccups. I want to be the person you come home to. I want you to be the person I come home to.

I want to let you convince me that we should get a cat. Even though I have never owned a pet in my life. I want to realize it has grown on me as we both hold fast to your pillow in bed while you are away because it smells like you. 

I would like to be allowed to miss you, in a gentle aching kind of way. The kind tinged with the reassurance that you will be coming home to me, eventually. 

I don’t care what the books say. I want to hold your hand until the butterflies migrate out of us and we watch them flutter along the ceiling dancing with ribbons of sunlight. I want to know you until your presence evokes nothing but peace. I want to find peace with you. Which is to say, I would like to, if it is all the same to you. 

How many times can someone fall out of love?

Trick question.

No one ever really falls out of love.

Not all the way atleast.

For love is a shape shifter if I ever knew one.

.

I will die on this hill

And you will not know

Because you would have left

My heart at home.

So I become a peony.

The ground holds me kindly,

The same way she has cradled bones and buried teardrops,

Until I disintegrate into her embrace.

I will not be waiting for you when you come back for me.

.

The stars are all already ghosts.

And perhaps they are proof that there is a life after this one in which beautiful things are possible.

That we might bring someone hope in their darkest moment even if we are too far gone to be bound by the gravity of holding someone's faith in our palms.

.

I have nothing to offer you but potential.

Do with it what you will.

I hope you will find a better use for it that I have.

The most reckless thing I ever did was forgive you.

Mostly because I couldn't help it.

.

Please, stay with me until I forget.

I am frightened.

I am

Scared.

I am really

Scared.

For freedom is lonely.

And regret a vicious companion

.

~I don't know what I mean but I hope you do (02.20.21.)

And in the end, is it not the desire for beautiful things that destroys us all?

~gold sinks easy, my poor king midas

The idea of you spending the rest of your life with me makes me sick.

Which is to say I do not think it would be fair of me to sentence you to the rest of your time with me. What a shame it would be for your years to be wasted on us .

What a tragedy for your infinite love to be reduced to soft smiles and to drip slowly through cupped palms. Reduced to weathering skin and decomposing dreams.

I do not think I could bare, chaining you to us. When I know there is so much out there calling to be known by you.

What a sin it would be, for your infinity to be stifled by my desire for a fleeting eternity with your unfathomability. Your soul a broken record of lost potential.

I do not think either of us would be happy, for long. The endless loop of what could have been, lulling us to sleep and waking us at dawn. The winding melody threading itself between us as we hold eachother in the dark.

Your unfuillment clouding the windows. My guilt cracking the floorboards. The rements of our love sitting in a shoe box at the top of the closet. A fond memory of our youth that evokes more slammed doors than it should when we dust it off over a glass of Nostalgia. We don't know why it makes us so angry. So sad. To recall that we have become nothing of what we thought we would.

I think fate would forever resent me. For stealing you away from her. Life plotting our drifting slowly. Poking holes in our roof, flooding the kitchen sink, fiddling with the thermostat so its never quite right.

Until we find the silence (a once soft blanket we giggled under in the pillow fort we made in the living room)-- thread bare. Itchy. Fraying. Slowly unraveling. Until we find ourselves sleeping back to back. Holding hands awkwardly for photographs. Not talking until noon after 3 cups of water downed coffee. Dinners eaten at different times and tight lipped smiles with sad sighing eyes as we cross unexpectedly in the one bathroom in our appartement.

All of the kisses I brush across your cheek tasting of apology. Both of us trying to hard to let it be enough. Life, a spited lover picking us apart slowly. It would never forgive me. I would never forgive me.

I do not want that with you. I want forever with you. And I think the only way, for us to have that, is for me to let you go.

But love,

Please

Come back

And visit

I will patiently await your breif moments of return. Savor the sticky honey footprints you trek into the house. Every step dripping in hope. You-- drenched in life.

Wring out your sun soaked skin over the bath tub while you tell me tales of the way the universe has made love to you an infinite number of intricate revaltions.

Your eyes sparkling with a garden of blooming constellations that would have long ago wilted if I asked you to stay. Let the glittering of the stars in your gaze tell me I made the right choice. That it would have been selfish to keep you,  in all your miracle, to myself.

The taming of your galaxy. Until it be consumed by its own blackhole in self preservation. Making itself small enough to plaster itself across my bedroom ceiling. Call it the sacrifices you made for love.

No. I would rather miss you recklessly gentle. My longing tinged with the knowledge that you will return, to assure me that that love I refused to take from you is being spent well. That the time I refused to steal from you is being spent well.

My needing double dipped in the the belief

That

You

Will

Come

Back

To

Me

If only to rest your weary soul, a moment. My little shooting star. My little galaxy. And tell me tales of your travels, without me.

And I

Let the quiet of the night devour me

Let the darkness feast upon me

(As though they crave even the crumbs

Of what remains of my existence)

And I find myself laying awake,

(Patiently)

Waiting

For them to come for me

Because it is in these moments

That I feel most desired

And even if I dissipate this way,

(Slowly consumed night after night),

Atleast I will fade

Unafraid

And

Feeling

Wanted