Guard your hearts.

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word “home” means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mothers name just by the way you describe your bed room when you were 8. See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms? Or would you leave the snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad, even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name. And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mothers joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.

There are two people you’ll meet in your life.  One will run a finger down the index of who you are and jump straight to the parts of you that peak their interest.  The other will take his or her time reading through every one of your chapters and maybe fold corners of you that inspired them most.  You will meet these two people; it is a given.  It is the third that you’ll never see coming.  That one person who not only finishes your sentences, but keeps the book. 

because this is what you do. get up. blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late to work. go to the couch because the bed is too empty. watch people scream about love on Jerry Springer. count the ways it could be worse. it could be last week when the missing got so big you wrote him a letter and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work to go to, whole day looming. it could be last month or the month before, when you still thought maybe. still carried plans around with you like talismans. you could have kissed him last night. could have gone home with him, given in, cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing. shower. remember your body. water hotter than you can stand. sit on the shower floor. the word devastated ringing the tub. buildings collapsed into themselves. ribs caving toward the spine. recite the strongest poem you know. a spell against the lonely that gets you in crowds and on three hours’ sleep. wonder where the gods are now. get up. because death is not an alternative. because this is what you do. air like soup, move. door, hallway, room. pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold. wish you were a bird. remember you are not you, now. you are you a year from now. how does that woman walk? she is not sick or sad. doesn’t even remember today. has been to Europe. what song is she humming? now. right now. that’s it.

I love unmade beds. I love when people are drunk and crying and cannot be anything but honest in that moment. I love the look in people’s eyes when they realize they’re in love. I love the way people look when they first wake up and they’ve forgotten their surroundings. I love the gasp people take when their favorite character dies. I love when people close their eyes and drift to somewhere in the clouds. I fall in love with people and their honest moments all the time. I fall in love with their breakdowns and their smeared makeup and their daydreams. Honesty is just too beautiful to ever put into words.

I went on a date last night and then you texted and asked, again, whether I would come there. Start our days with coffee, end with you making dinner. Forever. I feel myself tug towards yes and then I remember why it will always be no with you and I.

There is a shipwreck between your ribs. You are a box with fragile written on it, and so many people have not handled you with care.

Moving on isn’t about not loving someone anymore and forgetting them. It’s about having the strength to say “I still love you, but you’re not worth this pain.

Don’t you dare, for one minute, believe that my kindness makes me anything but insurmountable. I did not unzip my chest to every kind of hurt, and stagger back, wounded and alive, just to hear you call me weak for trying.

I think once you’ve thought about how a person sleeps, how they’d feel pressed up against your back, or your head on their chest, how compatible your bodies would be in the same space of a bed — once you’ve thought about that, you’re fucked.