my modern manifesto

I love you max.

No man has ever made me feel like you do.

I’ll never say it to your face but I’m so helplessly in love with you.

You spark my soul in ways nobody ever has.

Truly, I’ve tried my best to move on.

I’ve tried hookup culture & self loathing

it doesn’t work

They are nice,

But they’re not him.

Why am I so attached?

He doesn’t feel the flames he ignites in me

But he’s all I want

this can’t be coincidental

We met for a reason

Even from far away, you could see it.

They were drunk.

But not the kind any beverage could offer. They were drunk off eachother.

They way they laughed, they way they kept sneaking glances even those they both knew the other was looking too.

The way they curled into eachother with nervousness hidden behind a subtle excitement.

Even from far away you could see it,

I couldn’t let him turn into another stranger with memories

he had meant far too much to me.

I often found myself laying awake at night reliving the smallest moments we shared,

just trying to remember what it felt like,

when he would pull me in and hold me to his chest

or when I would catch him staring and watch as blush filled his cheeks.

it was so easy for me to run after a heartbreak , reverting back to unfamiliar outsiders.

but I couldn’t let that happen between us,

what if you lay awake in bed all night

because you can’t get our memories out

if your head?

a part of me is terrified that you’ll never feel that spark again

I fear that all the beauty and all the pain we’ve shortly lived through will mean nothing to you

I’m not angry anymore, maybe sometimes bitter

but often at night that bitterness fades into loneliness

leaving me with a ocean of tears created by the hurt of that spark dying short

your still my person, you’ll always mean the world to me

three years since I saw you

but what keeps me awake

is that you don’t know anything of my life

anything of who I am now

I honestly wish you did

I wish you knew I have grown

I’m almost as tall as you now

I’m no longer that scared little girl anymore

I learned what real love is

what real passion is

what real sex is

I learned that I have strength

and courage

and that nobody can ever hurt me again like you did

I learned that not all strangers have good intentions

I learned that people can hurt you

and I learned that not every painful story is a lesson

sometimes people just put you through things you don’t deserve

there’s no excuse for it, It’s the kind of pain you’ll never truly heal from

I am not a survivor or a victim

I will not allow you to paint me as that

maybe when I was 14 I was

but that was only because you made me a victim

I’m taking that power back

I wish you could know that now I’m just a woman with scars no tattoo can paint over

because it has to be

& I remember the ripples on the pond water when we flexed our arms back and threw our lives away,

the splash, that fleeting freedom, and the inevitable fall.

because it has to be.

I don’t know if it’s reason enough.

the wooden shelves hold all our wishes, caught in jelly jars. The mail piles up by the door because we are too fearful to face it.