like a prayer for which no words exist

““I hope we last. I hope we do. But if we don’t, this is how I want you to remember me: I want you to remember me curled up, listening to the sound of your heartbeat and tracing maps across your skin. Remember me laughing at your jokes, even the stupid ones. Remember me in hysterics for absolutely no reason and in tears because one time you made me so sad neither of us thought I’d recover. Remember me brave, that time you held my hand and I thought I was going to die; remember me scared and gentle and delicate and breakable - only for you though, only for you. Remember me happy, and all the ridiculous ways I tried to get your attention. Remember the way I was too stubborn to talk to you and how absolutely insane it drove the both of us. Remember all the firsts and how they were so delightful we went back for seconds and thirds and fourths. Remember the songs you couldn’t stop listening to and the childish dreams you allowed yourself about the future. If it’s any consolation I allowed myself to have them too. If it comes to it I don’t want you to remember the ending. Remember the beginning. Remember the first time you knew.”

“Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.”

“what i wanted to say was come lay down, put your arms around me, and we can forget all of this ever happened. we can do everything we planned, we have all the time in the world. but his feelings aren’t mine, and although we once shared the same heart, i can’t control what he wants, and i can’t forgive it all either. i will learn from this and hold myself through the night, and i will never again ask anyone to love me. i’ll fall asleep to the rain and let go of you day by day, even if, at one time, you were all i wanted.”

“I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.”

“There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.”

“And no one can ever figure out what you want, and you won’t tell them, and you realize the one person in the world who loves you isn’t the one you thought it would be, and you don’t trust him to love you in a way you would enjoy.”