the stories are there

Whoever is happy will make others happy.

I stared into your chest last night as if it were a telescope. I saw our future in the distance, an island I will not swim to. I have eaten my own legs. I have cut my own stitches. My love: you cannot fix what wants to be bro- ken.

I told myself if I had nothing the world couldn’t touch me.

Our pointless conversations mean a lot to me

I’m afraid of a lot of things, but mostly, most sincerely, I am afraid of being completely unraveled by you, and you finding nothing you want in here.

You deserve the love you keep trying to give everyone else. You are a rare breed, sparking and gleaming in a world that does not yet understand what it means to love ferociously. You deserve to find someone who does not ask you to lessen your roar, who is in awe of the magnitude by which your passion burns. You deserve to find someone who will only ever want to add to your fire, someone who will use their own matchstick heart to encourage your passion, to magnify your flame. Until then, use the world as your kindling, use experience as your coal. Grow your love like a wildfire, and never back down from its heat; never let them dim its light.

I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can’t give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.

How do you go back to being strangers with someone who has seen your soul?

“But I have infinite tenderness for you. I always will. My whole life.”

I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back

1. Your skin may never be perfect, and that’s okay. 2. Life is too short not to have the underwear, the coffee, and the haircut you want. 3. Everyone (including your family, your coworkers, and your best friend) will talk about you behind your back, and you’ll talk about them too. It doesn’t mean you don’t love each other. 4. It’s okay to spend money on things that make you happy. 5. Sometimes without fault or reason, relationships deteriorate. It will happen when you’re six, it will happen when you’re sixty. That’s life.

Goneness is a feeling I have all the time.

like the stars, you, my dear, deserve to have your story told.

لا أبحث عن نصفي الأخر لأنني لستُ نصفًا.

they teach you to love hunger; to turn your stomach into an unfilled grave so you will always have enough space to bury things : homelands, war zones, nightmares, black eyes, broken ribs, love letters, fathers.

In memory of summer 2013. You taught her as a teacher would, the basics of love. You wrote your equations on her thighs while you whispered love notes into her ears. You taught her that romance was developed in the back of your dingy, beat up Toyota with Kid Cudi turned all the way up. You taught her the taste of alcohol through your bitter lips. You gave her the view from the city bridge, taught her to always associate it with the memory of you. The one good memory of you. Because a year later, I know that what we had wasn’t love. It was a lusty passion, something we both denied ourselves for too long. And I know that hiding me away in your dingy little car every few nights was just your getaway, I wasn’t real to you. And that’s okay. Because with you as my teacher, I learned. I learned quite a bit about strength, I learned that I wanted more, and I learned to say goodbye. So here’s me, giving you exactly what you taught me. Goodbye.