light out, wanderlust.

It’s sink or swim, he says, but I laugh and tell him that’s not always the case - for I have been thrown into the deepest of waters, plunged so far to the bottom that my feet have graced the shreds of shipwrecks guided by sailors with hearts and hands much stronger than my own; only then did I realize how badly I needed the surface, how desperately my lungs yearned for something more, and as the weight of the water crushed the breath within my chest – I pushed off from the bottom and god damn, I swam.

i. You taught me things I would later wish I didn’t have to learn, like how to talk someone out of their tightening grip on your wrist after four too many shots of whiskey. When I told you that I loved you, in the parking lot behind that dingy old bar we used to hide away in, you replied “no, you don’t.” very matter-of-factly. I had never cried that hard in my entire life. It took me four more years to realize you were right. ii. I didn’t see you coming; you crashed into me head on with hands that felt like fire and lips that left holes in my skin every single time they graced it. I had mistaken pain for love for so long that I thought what we had was stronger than anything I’d ever know. The fire in your touch burned out quickly and when there was no where left to leave your mark you disappeared; I never went looking for you. iii. When we met I was still donning full battle armour; I was impossible to love but you tried anyway. I’ll always admire you for that. iv. It was five months in by the time I realized that I really only loved you because I was lonely; my hands felt warmer wrapped around yours than wrapped around the neck of a bottle of Jack. I’m glad that you found a girl who loves you for all of the right reasons now. v. While I loved you, you loved someone else. It was both a first and a last. vi. A little while back you told me that you always wish you could erase all of the mistakes I had to make before I found my way to you. I smiled and told you that real love never really erases your mistakes, it just makes all of the them worthwhile.

When I met you your smile looked a lot like an awakening. One glance and I could feel the parts of me I had long since put to rest were stirring from their slumber. I shook the dust from my bones, told my heart it was safe, excised the wanderlust from my feet so I could stay where you were for a little while. I made a home in your hands; before I knew it I had laid my doubts to rest in the space between your shoulder and your chin where I seemed to fit so perfectly. But everything only lasts so long - these bones are gathering dust again, my heart feels far too safe, and the wanderlust is tingling in the tips of my toes the way it’s done so many times before; the way it does before I run. So hold me tightly to you now, tell me in the earliest hours of the morning and in the quietest moments of the night that you won’t ever let me go, remind me how your smile once felt like an awakening, and teach me how to make my smile feel a lot less like goodbye.