Me.

My mind has had your name burnt into it like branded flesh. Like a fresh tattoo; every single time my thoughts run over it, it’s like: fingertips brushing against raised skin. It would be more accurate to say I can sense your name against every surface of my brain, at every nerve ending, rather than hearing it, or seeing it. Just there, at the back of my irises, on the underside of my tongue, against the tender veins of my wrists, just there everywhere, like both the unstoppable force and unmovable object, like the circulation of blood, I feel your name. When I wake up, I think about you; when I fall asleep, I think I’ll miss you. My mouth won’t shut up about you, and my hands won’t quit shaking to find yours in the groping darkness of everything and lace our fingers together, as if then I’ll be at ease again, as if then my heart will stop beating a litany of your name, name, name. I don’t know when this happened. We’ve known each other for so long, but I never even noticed. It wasn’t a shock to the senses, not like being hit by thunder or swallowed up by the ground, or any of that nonsensical love that inspired metaphors about natural disasters and quicksand. Just, one day I woke up and felt it everywhere, and I thought, “I love you.” I love you. It was that simple. So pitifully easy to realise that sometimes I think I should have told you the day I met you, the minute we locked eyes. “hello, I love you, would you tell me your name?” It’s terrifying to no end. It’s terrifying because you, the one I love, make me want to be everything I’m not. But I’m weak, and I always, always fail you, because you have always dreamed of someone who is better than I am. Because when you look at me with those eyes that I love, those eyes that make my breathing spike and my heart scream the letters of your name, you only see the person you’ve always wanted me to be, the person I’m not. Isn’t that fucked up? Every cell in my system won’t shut up about you and I don’t even know if you’ll ever look at me and see me properly, but there’s nothing I can do about it. So, I sit here and nurse this fucking third-degree burn of your name and your face and the memory of the time you kissed my mouth and the scars your lips left against my knuckles and that one time we were walking side by side and our hands met and embraced and the way you say my name in my ear and God, I read somewhere third-degree burns are the least painful because your nerve-endings are charred off and you go numb, but if it isn’t agony that I’m feeling I don’t know what is.

I’ve been wanting to contact you but I can’t figure out what to say because now it’s 1pm on September 1st and I’m spinning around in the pink lingerie you bought me for our anniversary and I’m spinning so fast, looking down, watching the pink ruffles twist and turn I’m so dizzy and I can’t stop laughing, waiting for my eyes to focus and when they do you’re not there so I keep spinning. I keep spinning. because now it’s night time in our small town and I’m up sitting crossed legged on my perfectly made bed and I’m tapping my thumbs on my thighs to the beat of all of the songs we used to sing. because now it’s me driving across that bridge to sit in my parent’s driveway the same way we did when we were 16, arms crossed in a bed of ants, laughing into the night at the same time as the singing crickets. because now it’s my birthday I make a wish and it’s you. I’ve been wanting to contact you but I can’t figure out what to say she said, “tell me. tell me what you think you’d say.” I laugh while pulling a lighter out of the pocket of my yellow sundress and whisper, I’d say: hey. it’s me and it’s always been you.