i need him like oxygen. it’s pathetic, i know how my lungs forget how to work when he’s not near, how my chest tightens like it’s punishing me for missing him again.

i keep ending up at his feet, hands shaking, voice cracking, and he doesn’t even have to tell me to stay. he just looks down, cold, distant and i still stay. i’d rather be kicked by him than touched by anyone else. i’d rather bleed for him than breathe without him.

i would sell my soul if that’s what he wanted. he could tell me to crawl into the dirt and i would, just to feel his eyes on me for one more second. i’d let him break me apart if it meant he had to touch me to do it.

if i’m too much, i’ll make myself less. i’ll bite my tongue until it bleeds. i’ll quiet every piece of me that screams for him. i’ll carve myself down to the bone until i fit perfectly into the space he never made for me.

in algebra, she sent him a message: what are you listening to?

he replied without hesitation: piano man, billy joel. you are listening to rock your body, or the struts.

and her heart caught because he was right. because he noticed. because from behind and to the right, he saw her anyway. she typed back, yeah, the struts, and smiled, knowing he liked them too.

later, in homeroom, the poet sat backwards on a desk, laughing with the clown. the actor turned mischief into a game, scissors flashing, blade pressing twelve times to her leg, a quick cut at her wrist, a jab at her shoulder. she squealed and kicked and the room filled with their laughter.

she did not see it, but the clown did. the way the actor’s scowl broke open, the way his grin spread wide, unrestrained, like he was twelve years old and the world was still soft.

that night, she wrote to the clown in disbelief: what do you mean you have never seen him smile that much? the clown swore it true: he never lets anyone close, never plays like that, except with his partners.

and the poet kicked her feet beneath the blankets, giddy and undone, her heart racing with the maybe of it all.

yet when asked, do you still like her? the actor said, no.

i liked him since sophomore year, not loudly, just in that quiet, aching way where you memorize the shape of someone without ever hearing their voice up close.

we only ever talked in late-night glow, screens dim, eyes half‑closed, when it felt like the world belonged to just us and whatever soft thing was blooming between the lines.

i imagined whole futures in those moments, sitting on his lap like it was easy, doing his eyeliner with my hands steady only because he trusted me, messing with his hair just to hear him laugh.

i imagined cemetery dates, both of us whispering for no reason, his hoodie brushing my arm, the whole world quiet enough for me to pretend he might choose me someday.

i made a universe out of him, stitched together from half‑smiles, sleepy texts, and the way my name felt in my own chest when i wondered how he’d say it.

and then, god, i told him.

i told him in the most me way possible, with a typo, with panic, with my heart showing.

“into you,” i said, tripping straight through the truth, and he was gentle in the way boys are when they don’t want to break you but still do.

“i’m not really interested in that kind of relationship.”

and suddenly i’m in my room, lights off, “use somebody” spilling into my bones, crying so hard i’m not even sure which part hurts the most the rejection or the pieces of the future i have to bury.

i miss things that never even happened. i’m grieving moments i invented. i’m hurting over a boy who was only ever mine in a universe i built behind my eyelids.

and still god, still i want to curl up in his lap, draw wings on his eyelids, laugh about stupid things, walk with him where the world is quiet, be wanted in the soft way i wanted him.

i know it was nothing. i know it never existed. but i cared like it did, yearned like it did, loved like it could have.

I would break every bone in my body to make you love me. And sometimes, you almost do. Some nights your hands are gentle, and your voice sounds like promise. You look at me like maybe I’m enough, and I almost believe it.

But then you disappear a week of silence, a lifetime of waiting for a message that never comes. You come back smelling like apology and want, and I let you in again. You tell me I drive you crazy. You tell me you hate me. You touch me like I’m the only one.

You say I don’t like you but your hands tell a different story. I never know which one to trust. Maybe both are true. Maybe neither.

I keep changing, rewriting myself into someone easier to love, someone quieter, smaller, less likely to make you leave. Every version of me is a translation of what I think you want.

And when you say you hate me, I still search for the word love hidden somewhere between your teeth, like maybe I just heard it wrong.

You could vanish again tomorrow and I’d still check my phone every minute, still rehearse the way I’ll forgive you when you come back. Because you will come back. You always do.

i hate you. god, i hate you. at least that’s what i tell everyone, because it’s easier to say that than admit i still wait for your name to light up my phone.

if only you could hear the way i speak about you to my letters— the ones for you but you’ll never read. i talk about you like you’re divine, like the world should’ve paused the moment you were born. your lips taste like heaven, your hands— god, your hands— they knew my skin better than i do. i pray no one else ever feels them the way i have. i know that’s selfish, but love makes me greedy, and i have always been starving for you.

we still hang out, in parks after dark, pressed against trees, the moon too shy to look. our hands brush, our words hover. you say things that make the world stop— things so beautiful i’ll never repeat them, because they’d sound wrong in my mouth.

and still, i hate you for the quiet. for not calling me pretty anymore, for not asking what i’m thinking, for not seeing me when i’m standing right there. i hate that i still dress like you might notice. i hate that i still wait for it.

i say “i hate you” because “i love you” would tear something open i can’t close again. maybe if i say it enough the words will harden into armor instead of bruise.

but then— then there’s those nights. the silent ones. the quiet walks where i almost believe you love me again. even if it’s not real, i’d take it. just to mean something to you for a little while. i tell myself i won’t read into it, but i will. you know i will. it comes too natural to me and too hard for you.

i am drawn to you like icarus to the sun, and my dear, i am not afraid to burn. because if i do, at least i can say i held heaven in my hands without ever reaching his doorstep. and i would fall at your knees every time you let me, because you look as beautiful above as you do below.

all the things i say i hate about you are the things i love most about you— your laugh, your silence, your stubbornness, the way you ruin me without trying. and maybe i’ll keep saying i hate you, again and again, until it sounds true. but between us— when it’s just me and the night and the ghosts of your touch— i still talk about you like you hung the stars yourself.

You—heavenly, my love, my religion, my cathedral, my altar, my pulse. Every breath I take belongs to you, every word I speak a quiet offering, every heartbeat a vow to honor you, to worship you, to live only for you.

When the sun spills across your golden hair, when your baby-blue eyes hold the sky, I am undone. The world stops, the air trembles, and something holy rises in me— a fire I cannot contain, a trembling awe that makes me feel I have glimpsed heaven and it is you.

I would walk through fire, descend into any shadow, smile in the face of hell itself, and brag to demons that I kissed heaven without ever falling at its doorstep.

If I could fall at your feet and find peace, I would crumble willingly, every bone a hymn, every breath a devotion, every heartbeat a prayer that my life, my soul, is yours alone.

When the end comes, when my last breath shivers and leaves me, your name will be my final prayer, your voice the only light I follow as I cross the bridge from this life to whatever waits beyond.

Even beyond time, beyond stars, beyond death, I will find my way back to you. For you are my faith, my heaven, my reason, my god, and I am nothing if not yours, eternally, devout, trembling, undone, forever worshipping the miracle that is you.

We met by the lake again The water didn’t move like it remembered like it was watching

He smiled first He always does Said something about how it’s funny to end up back here like we didn’t bury everything in these woods months ago

We walked He talked I tried not to look at him like I still loved him

On the bridge he said let’s make a bet Rock paper scissors He wins he gets a fruit roll-up I win I pick

I won And I picked him

I took his hand kissed him like a dare like I was burning a letter I never sent He kissed back too easily like he’d been waiting

Later on a rock the air thick with everything we didn’t say he said that’s what makes me a prick and I whispered through the smoke that’s why I love you

He heard me I know he did He leaned in close close enough that I could hear his pulse and said what did you say

Nothing I said just hitting my vape

And then softly carefully like a secret that might rot if left out too long he said I love you too

The world blinked For a second I thought it meant something

Then he leaned back smirked and asked did that make you feel better

And I didn’t know if he said it to make me happy or to make me stop wondering

But the wondering didn’t stop It never does

Because he’ll always be the actor knowing his lines hitting his marks making it look real