tales of a teenage poet

“he is eyebrows and ambition

“i cried in my car yesterday

“you told me that you were proud of me. it’s kind of pathetic that that’s all it took to make me fall for you, really. but my world is small and fragile and things like love make my bones ache. life makes me tired and my ears don’t perk at compliments like they used to. you told me that you were proud of me, though, when everything in my life was hurdling downhill. you call me to check up on me. you make me feel important, when i lose hope in myself. you tell me that my eyes are beautiful in the sunlight and that you like my dorky sweaters. you know the words to all of my favorite songs. you’re my best friend. you’re proud of me and you make me feel big when im so used to feeling small and that’s all i could ever ask for.”

“i grew up under the stained glass dome of a century old church, and i learned to worship before i learned to speak. being taught religion in the dying Amercian suburbia that was my hometown only stood to teach me that god is being alive and being alone. god is every tiring day of struggling to figure out the purpose of your aching bones. god is resisting the temptation of bowing before the first person who learned the secret to making your knees weak.

“I attempt to reflect on my year without thinking of you, but the odds are not in my favor. It is as if the memories I have built all have the same foundation. The spiraling days of a treacherous year all are rooted within the same soul. It all comes back to you, which is both a blessing and a curse. It is perhaps easier to think about the most recent days then let myself ponder what once was. Mulling over the ache in my chest is much less grueling than recalling the sunshine days. The days spent riding out never ending highs with the person I thought I’d be with forever. The days where I could inhale without a dull pain in my side; the days where my mind wasn’t veiled in fog. How is it possible that 365 days have passed and yet I feel as if the person I was one year ago is someone I will never encounter again. It’s incredible, how a singular person can impact you so much that the person you were before you met them has become a stranger. Part of me longs to introduce them to you, the person I once was. Part of me knows that a version of myself untouched by you is not truly a version of myself I ever want to know again.”

“I don’t want to be the girl everyone finds beautiful, I want to be the girl that finds beauty in everyone. I don’t need to be adored by many, if I can have one person I adore. I don’t belong to others opinions of me, I belong to myself. I must learn to stop holding on to the expectations of society and start setting my own expectations for how I impact the world.”

“you have eyes as brooding as the ocean, and a soul serene as the sea. your lips are as soft as well ripened peach, you use them to explore my body like the beat up sneakers of tourist wandering a new city, though we both know just how familiar you are with the divots in my hips and the freckles on my thighs. your laughter rolls in like a hurricane, shakes me to the bone, and makes me understand why people find a thrill in chasing storms. you’re sculpted like adonis; i can see it in the muscles of your neck as you tilt your head back when i slide my lips around you or in how your jaw tightens before you moan my name. your thoughts never cease, whirring like a perpetually laboring machine, and amazing me at the most extraordinary times with how much you know about the theories of philosophers who were much less optimistic about our fate than you are. your heart beat is the only thing about you that is ordinary, a flashing red stop light that slows me down to show me the tangibility of your existence, yet it is still superior to any other pulse i’ve ever had the opportunity to listen to,because it thumps out ‘i love you’ in the language that only we know.”

“I understand why you cannot love me. You want a woman who is complacent and concurring. I am adamant and loud. You want a girl who will willingly believe in whatever you toss in her direction. I want to dispute everything, question the entire world. You want a girl who was opinions about the universe — as long as they are the same as your own. I want to have debates about why the sky is blue; I want to open your eyes to things you’ve never seen before. I want to challenege you to a game you do not want to play. You want me to change, to become the kind of woman you can kiss and not have to worry about the lingering taste of an insight on my lips. We both know that will never happen. My sharp tongue will never taste sweet enough for your mouth.”

"I wish there were a word to describe the feeling between like and love. To describe how it feels when you know that you are about to fall head over heels for someone, whether you want to or don't. A word to explain how it feels to know that someone is going to change you, whether you like it or not. It's like standing at the edge of a cliff, waiting to fall. It's not a matter of if I'm going to fall in love with you. It's a matter of when."

I’m afraid of falling in love. Not being in love, no, but falling into it. The not knowing whether what you’re feeling is love or something entirely else. Not knowing if the other person feels the same. Terrified that you’re taking it too fast, or that you can’t summon up the realization soon enough. It’s not being in love. It’s falling. Falling when there’s no definite stability in sight, no steady ground that will undoubtedly catch you. Falling even if you think you’ll get hurt. Falling when you know for certain that you will.

It wasn't a big moment, like I expected it to be. It wasn't out of nowhere, not sudden realization. It was just... there. It started as a lie, really. Telling people that I had started a new path, even though I knew I hadn't. Convincing myself that my poems weren't about you, even though they told the truths I hadn't been able to face. But then I went to tell you I'd moved on, just so my adoration could be kept a secret once more. However, the second the words left my mouth, I knew it was true. It didn't feel like a bluff, it felt like a moment of pride. That's when I realized it. I'd done it. The big, malicious thing I thought I'd never be able to do. I'm throughly convinced that it happened quite a while ago. Something is different. Things are have changed for the better. I've gotten over you.

At the end of day, though, it's still you. I can tell myself I'm over you, that I've moved on. I can assure my friends that I won't go running back to you when you decide to leave her. I can sit and flirt with him all night long and pretend that everything's different now. But it's not. Because even as I lay my palm in his, my eyes dart past him to see your face. Even when I've stopped checking your social media everyday, I still get a pang in my chest when I see you've commented on a photo of hers. Even though I can ignore you every single time we're in the same room, the second you talk to me I will always light up. I still check my phone for your texts, still dress up with you in mind, still look for your name on every list, and dammit, I still cry when I think about how close I was to being yours. So to answer your question, yes. Of course I still fucking love you.

“Describe him. Tell me why you loved him so much, what he had that lured you in,” he whispered. “He was blue,” she replied. “Blue? He was a color?” He questioned, obviously misunderstanding. “Not a color. A feeling. He could tell you stories that never ended, like a perfectly clear sky. He reminded me of blueberries, sweet and messy. The way you felt when you were with him… It was a feeling you could drown in. He was like the ocean in that way, elusive and deep. You always craved more. But he was also like the night; carrying the feeling of loneliness and the ability to hide unwanted truths. Nighttime is a different kind of blue, the kind so dark it’s almost black. It may seem silly, but when I close my eyes and try to think about our time together, blue is the only thing I can see.

I cannot bring myself to regret you. Even though you've messed me up in a thousand different ways, I don't regret anything that has happened. I have decided that falling for you has opened my eyes up to the kind of person I am and helped me acknowledge the kind of people I crave. You were the first person I wanted to want me back, which tells me about the destruction I feel I deserve . Watching you destroy me and putting myself back together makes me believe that I can take on anything I set my mind to. The fact that I couldn't make you love me back lets me know that it's ok if I don't always succeed. You have taught me life lessons through breaking my heart, and because of that I can never regret choosing you.

I have always loved fairytale romances. The kind of stories where people have this great, extravagant, life-changing love. The kind of love portrayed in my favorite movies, the kind of feeling people write songs about. I spent almost my entire life thinking that that was how love was supposed to be, when in fact, love is almost never like that. Love is hard. Love is scary because you have no idea if you'll receive it back. Love is not a choice, and it's terrifying when you fall in love with someone you shouldn't. Love is a feeling that comes naturally, but also a feeling that you’re terrified will some day slip away.

I want you to text me everyday. I need to stop waiting for your texts. I want to talk to you about life and everything happening in yours. I need to stop asking you so many questions. I want to hold your hand. I need to stop wringing my own. I want to make you smile all of the time. I need to stop staring at your lips. I want to stay up all night talking on the phone with you. I need to stop losing sleep because of you. I want to be with you. I need to stop pretending that you’ll ever settle for someone like me.

I don’t see you very much anymore, but when I do it makes me wonder. You’ll stroll into the dim church basement and catch my eye, and I’ll wonder. I’ll hear them talk about you, those younger girls who see you more often, and damnit I just can’t help but wonder. I hate even considering the idea that it was there, that we were something more. I don’t know if it’s because we’re both so young (you even more so than me), or because I can’t accept that maybe, just maybe, I fell in love with you. Even as I write this I question it, question everything I know about love and myself. All because of that one damn moment in that bloody stupid field. I knew how you felt about me, you’d made it very clear. I could never decipher my feelings for you, still can’t, and I told you that. Laying there on the grass, feet in the air, I turned to you and told you that you confused me. It wasn’t random, not at all. You’d been flirting and smiling, and my chest ached in the best way. So I told you how I felt, and you just looked at me like I was the best thing you’d ever seen. It made my head spin, and the more times I think about it the more I question about that feeling. Maybe it wasn’t love. But sometimes I wonder if it was.