Sober and Unkissed

“What if, in another universe, I deserve you? Hear me out. There’s this philosopher from the 1890s named William James, and he coined this theory about “the multiverse” which suggests that a hypothetical set of multiple universes comprises everything that can possibly exist simultaneously. Are you following? The entirety of space, time, matter and energy is all happening at once in different timelines: It’s the idea of parallel universes. Right? So okay, let’s presume the multiverse is real. Well then, maybe somewhere in those infinite universes is one, or several, where I deserve you. Maybe there’s a universe out there — happening now — where we end up together and when I close my eyes at night, I’m not dreaming the way a normal person would. Instead I’m seeing flashes of our lives in the multiverse. They’re not simple dreams because I miss you, right? They’re scientific, anachronistic visions. For instance: In this universe, I don’t want a family, but maybe in another, I’m more of the type to settle down. Maybe there’s a universe where you hold my hand while I give birth to our daughter in a white hospital room with pink flowers and fuzzy teddy bears on the window sill. Where we take family vacations and pose for dorky pictures in our neon bathing suits on the sands of a Florida beach. Where we curl up to watch a cheesy movie at the end of a long day in our big, green, suburban house once the kids have fallen asleep. Maybe there’s a universe where we are middle-aged and taking our child to college and bickering over where to put her dresser or what posters she should hang up. Where you kiss her on the forehead ‘goodbye’ and we drive home in contented, proud silence, your fingers grazing my knuckles, our wedding rings glistening. Where we both have gray hair and we laugh and smile and hug and drink lemonade on the porch. Maybe there’s a universe where that’s the life I want. Where I don’t second guess everything and I’m not afraid of commitment and of the future and of love. Maybe there’s a universe without all the noise in my head and the pride that makes me so fiercely independent and the coldness in my heart that I can turn on and off like a security fence. Maybe there’s a universe where I’m the right person for you. Where I adore every nice thing you did for me without starting to resent you. A universe where you actually end up with someone who appreciates you. Where no one becomes a doormat. Where both of us can shed our baggage and curiosity and issues. A universe where we’re happy — without wondering if that happiness is some messed-up Jenga game ready to topple at the slightest quiver. A universe where we’re comfortable and sure, and we have cats. Maybe there’s a universe where we fall asleep next to each other every night like spoons, like two innocent bunnies — my face buried in your neck, hugging your warmth — and we both don’t want anything or anybody else. Where we don’t want more, we just want each other. Maybe there’s a universe where I don’t covet so much all the time and where I’m content and where I don’t wonder about picking up and moving to Japan without saying anything to anyone and where at this very juncture, I can just know I’ll always want to come home and cook dinner with you. If you think of it all this way, then it’s like neither of us did anything wrong. You just found me in the wrong universe. That’s all. This is, as they say, the darkest timeline. Everywhere else, nay, “everywhen” else — us in the Civil War, us in Ancient Egypt, us in the swinging ’60s — we are happy. If this theory holds, well, by the law of averages, there had to be one universe — just this one — where we don’t end up together. Here and now just happens to be it. If you think of it this way, nothing is our fault. So see, that explains everything. We’re not together anymore because of the multiverse. Well, isn’t that comforting? If you’re sad, do like I do and just think of the other ‘verses. The ones where I believe in love and where I don’t hate myself and where I never feel the need to kamikaze relationships. A universe where we can have nice things. It’s helpful, right? Because you could have loved me forever. And maybe in another universe, I let you.”

“Lemonade” poetry bits

“I dare you to burn holes into me; I will bleed love and kindness from all of them, and you will drown in the things you tried to end in me.”

“Not all love is gentle. Sometimes it’s gritty and dirty and possessive, sometimes it’s not supposed to be careful or soft at all. Sometimes it feels like teeth.”

every direction I move has always been, will one day be, once was, and always is toward the precarious cliff of your collarbone.

… if no one is there to touch you are you even really there?

Let everything weak Die in its cage. Let God’s love Ruin me.

"I want to be open for you. Like the moonflower at dusk, pale and luminescent in the heat. Like the doors of a church carved into something forgiving - I want to be a place for you to rest. Honey, please listen when I tell you this. Love is safe. Do you hear me? I’ve put all the pain away. Everything sharp is wrapped up. Everything loud is hushed. Love is the wind that makes the leaves dance. You are the softest part of the morning." -Emery Allen

Loving someone who cannot love you the same way in return is not weakness. It’s one of the most courageous things you’ll ever do. You are putting your armour at their feet and you are saying ‘I will not fight you in this. I have loved you and that means that I have already won.

She’ll put her throat in your open hands and close her eyes. This is what trust looks like. Dip your fingers into her swollen mouth. Lean closer, breathe the words, you’ll fill her like this: ‘you are so beautiful and I’m going to put my hands everywhere.’

I sit in front of maps and measure with my fingertips the distance between us. In this space, I tell the ocean to make itself smaller, we argue. I tell it please, I am in love, and it allows me to palm it in my hand and hold it tightly there. I wish the roads away. I grab the forests by the handful and plant them elsewhere, plant them in our backyard ten years from now. Like this, I slowly make the spaces between us smaller until I can walk across them. I take the ground by its edges and pull it until it’s gathered like a rug beneath my feet. I bundle the sky under my arms and don’t mind that the clouds are raining on my feet. I can walk the inches to your door and knock the wood and see you standing there in all your shocked silence. The question of the sky and the ground and the oceans all piled up around me. I can say ‘hello, look, it’s me, I love you, I’ve brought the entire earth for you.’

A good person gives love because they want love in return. A spiritual person gives love because they want more love in the world.

it’s amazing how you have always dreamt to be somewhere else by this age, how you turned out to be everything you have promised yourself that you won’t be. You thought by this age you will be living in a Studio, somewhere by the sea, writing novels about all the could have beens and the dismantled almosts in your life, celebrating your wins in life with your cute girlfriend, who studies English literature and plays the Cello in your bedroom half naked in full moon nights. Everything seemed so doable in your head, so close you can almost smell her perfume on the sheets of your empty bed. Years go by, and life knocks you down once or twice, then you realize how much of a fool you are, how everything that was almost yours will never happen, you wake up one day and you realize that you are working a crappy job. That you can’t get yourself to write a decent paragraph let alone a novel, next to you, lying your current girlfriend, who doesn’t play the Cello, doesn’t know the first thing about Hemingway or Matisse, and you two fight more than you make love, but boy, when she smiles at you, the whole universe stops and sighs in admiration, when you are walking home together, holding hands from that party where you didn’t have so much fun because you felt so out of place, and because you were so damn jealous of every person she smiled or shook hands with other than you, and because she looked so pretty dancing over there on her own like an afternoon cloud, and because you hated how you couldn’t dance with her on account of how shy you are and because of so many things that ended up with you making up this stupid fight, but she still held your hands on the way home. She still made you dinner, she still kisses your forehead goodnight and sleeps peacefully in your arms. You look at her sleeping face, think of all the things you have been through together, and realize how it doesn’t need an extraordinary life to be happy. All it takes is one ordinary person who loves you the appropriate amount and still want to kiss you after you made a big fuss out of sheer immaturity to make you sleep with the goofiest biggest smile on your face, All it takes is the way her hair smells, and the way her arms cling to your neck when she hugs you to make you feel like the luckiest person alive. All it takes is the safety of knowing that even when you feel like a stranger in your own home, in your own life, in your own skin, her heart will always be there to shelter you.