☆ we're ever so flawed.

Tell me that you have been dreaming of me. That you wake up in cold sweats, gulping in air. You feel like you’ve drowned. You wake up and still feel like you’re drowning. Tell me that you’ve spent a great deal of time gazing at stars, thinking that sometimes things look better farther apart. That constellations are only beautiful because we have the space to connect the dots. Now take it back. Tell me that you’re sorry. That you know we’re not stars. We’re just people. Tell me that you know there’s nothing poetic about plane tickets. Tell me that you want to buy them anyway. Ask me to stay.

WHEN THEY ASK WHY IT DIDN’T WORK: Tell them it was my fault. Tell them I was skittish and distant. Say any word other than abuse when it comes up. Say something that sounds softer or less intentional. Tell them I was confused. Say you didn’t do anything. Say you didn’t mean to do anything. Say your depression made a monster out of you. Say you were trying so hard to take care of yourself that you forgot to treat me like a person in our home. Tell them it was self preservation. Tell them it was necessary. Say you never knew there was a problem. Say you knew there was a problem but I never tried to talk about it. Say I only tried to talk about it three times before I quit. Tell them I quit. Say it again, but sound more disappointed. Tell them I refused to badger you about your trauma. Tell them I was only understanding for eleven months. Tell them my patience ran out and you don’t know why. Tell them it was “complicated.”

This is the part where I Google signs of emotional abuse and wonder how many I have to tick off to prove there was a problem. The part where our friends wave away the details and say that they love us both anyway. The part where I take the details to bed with me. Hide them like baby teeth. Keep waking up hoping for change. This is the part where we fake it for everyone else’s comfort. The part that has nothing to do with us. We sit alone in two different apartments. We write our separate poems about nothing. You don’t mention how I couldn’t sleep in the bed when you were in it. I don’t bring up how you used me like an ATM. How you masturbated loudly every night in the other room. How we never touched. How I said we needed to talk about it and you said no. How I could have picked a better hill to die on than one with nothing at the bottom of it.

My mother tells me that when I meet someone I like, I have to ask them three questions: 1. what are you afraid of? 2. do you like dogs? 3. what do you do when it rains? of those three, she says the first one is the most important. “They gotta be scared of something, baby. Everybody is. If they aren’t afraid of anything, then they don’t believe in anything, either.” I met you on a Sunday, right after church. one look and my heart fell into my stomach like a trap door. on our second date, I asked you what you were afraid of. “spiders, mostly. being alone. little children, like, the ones who just learned how to push a kid over on the playground. oh and space. holy shit, space.” I asked you if you liked dogs. “I have three.” I asked you what you do when it rains. “sleep, mostly. sometimes I sit at the window and watch the rain droplets race. I make a shelter out of plastic in my backyard for all the stray animals; leave them food and a place to sleep.” he smiled like he knew. like his mom told him the same thing. “how about you?” me? I’m scared of everything. of the hole in the o-zone layer, of the lady next door who never smiles at her dog, and especially of all the secrets the government must be breaking it’s back trying to keep from us. I love dogs so much, you have no idea. I sleep when it rains. I want to tell everyone I love them. I want to find every stray animal and bring them home. I want to wake up in your hair and make you shitty coffee and kiss your neck and draw silly stick figures of us. I never want to ask anyone else these questions ever again.

I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was… Not love at first sight exactly, but - familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you.

It’s been years & my heart still has your fingerprints on it.

finishing a series but still being attached to the story and its characters

I. i’m the kind of asshole who will stand on the other side of the room the whole night, silently hoping you will touch me. why ask for the things i want when i can do nothing and complain? very sensible.  perhaps i’ll go outside and beg the dead trees for money, next. II. all this is to say that if i don’t ever find out what your hands feel like on the backs of my thighs i will set this goddamn house on fire.