I’m watching a rom-com at 5 AM instead of doing homework. The leading man reminds me of you. The “mean girl” reminds me of me. In another universe we might’ve never met, never gotten together, because you’re the good guy and I am far from good. But you loved me anyway. It almost doesn’t seem fair, that a nice girl didn’t get you. The pretty, popular girl didn’t get you. I got you, and it doesn’t make any sense.

I watch these two characters fall in love. I remember the feeling well. A thanksgiving weekend spent making pizza and pasta together. You couldn’t cook, still can’t. But God you knew how to kiss me to make me want more. You still do.

As I watch them fall for each other I fall for you all over again. You are the love of my life. I will spend a lifetime falling for you, over and over. It’ll be exciting and breathless and exhausting and I will love every second. Love every time we hold hands. Love every first fight. Love every new discovery, like how I didn’t know you hated watermelon until the summer and liked pumpkin spice until the fall. You are my favorite thing to discover, to study. I could write a whole book on you.

The rom-com ends with a happily ever after. The leading man chooses the nice, smart girl, not the pretty but mean one. That is not how our story goes. In our story, there are chapters where I almost lose you, and you almost lose me. There are chapters where I’m not nice or smart.

But the difference between the rom-com and my book on you is that I am not even close to finished. I’m still writing myself in. I’m writing myself in as the girl who might not always be nice or smart but who is still deserving of you. I make mistakes in my writing. But I know that my story in yours isn’t a mistake.

#movie #romance #love #romcom #kiss #fallinginlove

With your eyes

With your teeth

With the hunger that shows

In your gait

In your eyes

I am yours for the taking

Just as you are mine

For the keeping

Don’t touch me yet

I beg

Wait a little longer

Anticipation is sweet

Satisfaction is better

He undresses me.

I remember when you bought expensive paint just because you liked its name. Yellow sunshine, you said. It reminds me of you.

How can I be yellow sunshine? Me, with my raised pink scars across my wrists and on my thighs, me, with my hair a dark mane of despair, me, with my eyes that burn with fury and hurtfulness and jealousy and possessiveness and every fault that a lover can have - me, yellow sunshine?

What do you mean? I asked.

Yellow sunshine, for your laugh, he said.

Kissing you is like a revelation

of desire blooming, of sweat forming

of heart pounding, of cool tingling

Looking into your eyes is like

seeing all the contradictions in this world,

all the endless suffering,

and finding it beautiful anyway.

Holding your hand is like hope,

shaky but steady,

dangerous but bold,

and always constant.

Saying yes to you

was the beginning of me.

It’s you, the incessant voice in my head

How dare you cause me to twist and turn

Weighing my heart with pain and my mind with lead

Make my blood simmer and stomach churn

With emotion I cannot control, cannot hide

My thoughts are filled by you and my words hold your name

Rules suddenly that I cannot abide

Nobody feels your heat more than I, nor more shame

You are forbidden to me, a challenge

Posed by a world I dare to defy

Your actions have captured me, your eyes salvaged

The tender pieces of my heart, fallen from the sky

I want you to be my savior

I want you to be my hero

Please ignore my misbehavior

I would do anything to drown this sorrow

Love me or love me not

But don’t leave my heart alone to rot

Boys leave me with

Their smell on my skin

Their wineglass on my nightstand

Their teeth marks on my neck

Girls leave me with

Their perfume in my hair

Their letters in my shoebox

Their breath against my chest

Boys leave me

Once they're satisfied

Girls leave me

With their unsatisfactions

Boys leave

Quickly and quietly

Girls leave

Bit by bit, driftingly

But they always leave me,

In the end,

No matter who they are.

A 3 am cup of coffee

Brewed with shaking, relentless fingers

Milk swirling together like thoughts

In a restless, sleepless mind

A 3 am cup of coffee,

Poured over melting ice

Spilled over endless sheets of lined paper

Soaked up hastily

A second cup of 3 am coffee

Brewed with tired, lethargic hands

Milk carton discarded,

Poured in the last clean cup

A return to the papers

Dawn is breaking.

I could wax poetic about how

His eyes are a warm shade of ice blue

I could dedicate an entire ode

To the stubble on his cheeks

I could write a symphony,

create a whole new melody

And never capture the sound

Of a single laugh.

If only the world had appetite

For the longing inside my heart

If only the world could view

His blue through my eyes

If only my poems and songs

Could be new to this world...

Only if the world could see

That my soul yearns to be with his

to save him from the cold

forever melt the icecaps that are his eyes...

Then, maybe,

love could be ours

My meals are half-eaten, my body

half emaciated

The other half in shining light

My sheets are half twisted

with old dreams of death

Though life now warms my pillows

and peace warms my breath

My thoughts pass like ghosts

of the demons they once were

I am halfway 

up a smooth slope

Feet gaining traction

as I slowly go

away from being nothing;

I am halfway 

to whole. 

Perhaps it was because we had never been strangers to begin with; that we had always somehow known each other deep in our souls; that the second time I laid eyes on her after years of distance I fell in love with her; that we had held hands through joys and pains and wept together about the failures of the world around us; that we never, ever felt in our hearts the natural coolness one feels towards a stranger. 

It seemed impossible just months ago that we would ever be anything but together. 

Yet today we passed each other in the hallway of our past memories and both stared blankly ahead, avoiding eye contact. Halfway through we met, shoulder-to-shoulder in the narrow corridor. We did not touch. I did not stop. 

And here we are, strangers for the first time after a lifetime of knowing her.