I tend to shut down, intimacy and touch have never been my strong suit and I usually retreat into the safe crevices of my mind, and that’s how I know you’re my gift from the Universe. My one special thing. When you kissed me, it’s like I finally woke up. Everything has been dull and muted and only halfway there and I’ve been hiding for so long, but I’m not hiding anymore. You followed me into my mind and we got lost together and I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get you out and that is something I am completely okay with. I’ve kissed too many boys and too many girls but nothing can compare to you. None of my past loves matter, it’s like they’re not even real, just a ghost from another life. All that matters now is you and the fact that you must be some sort of miracle worker, because the walls of my mind are far too high for me to even climb out of but somehow you found a way in. Everything is beautiful with you safely tucked away in my heart and my head and I’m not scared of anything anymore.

Having feelings for you was like blindfolding myself and spinning around in a bunch of circles and getting really drunk and then deciding to go stumbling through a canyon with only one way out. I knew what I was getting myself into but I am a strong believer in the benefit of the doubt, of miracles. I wanted to know you from the inside out but sometimes I think I only know you from the outside in. On paper, we were perfect. Everyone thought we were made, ****, even I did; but there were flaws in our fabric that not even we could see. I’ve been told that if a writer falls in love with you, you never die but what happens when you fall in love with a writer? Sometimes I think if you laid me down side by side with a corpse you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. There’s a lot to be said about lost relationships, but what is there to be said about almost, could-have, should-have beens? I don’t know if I’m allowed to miss the way you’d say my name like you knew something I didn’t, like there was this big secret about me that only you knew. Sometimes anger and sorrow block out longing, but that’s not to say that I don’t miss you. I hold my breath whenever I see you but I’m not even sure why or what I am so afraid of. You were always the one to pick up the pieces but I’m not sure what to do now when you’re the one that put them there. I know I will be fine, and that one day I won’t exist and nothing will matter, but right now everything matters. I am a veteran in heartbreak, I know what to do this time. I’m a sucker for symbolism, and I think maybe that’s why I opened that fortune cookie last night. I wanted so badly to mean the world to you like you did to me, I wanted so badly to show you that love was good and though she hurt you I never would. I wanted so badly for us to grow, and to thrive. I wanted so badly for so many things but all I’ve got left is a dead rose and a text message waiting to be sent. I’m way past losing track of time. Tracking time. Things that seem so minuscule are colossal to me and every slight shift in your demeanor felt like a hurricane. I remember this one time, I got so ******* high and all I could do was talk about your hands. That’s when everyone knew I was ******, because I was singing songs about your hands before I ever got to hold them. I think I owe it to myself to find closure, but how can I expect to do that when I don’t even know how to end a poem? I was just a bad apple and you are the most beautiful orchard. I never deserved to be a part of you.

You’re never going to see this but I AM IN LOVE WITH YOU. I am in love with your lips and your teeth and the way they’re always chewing on something (and the way I always wish it was me). I am in love with your eyes and the way they scan the room. I am in love with the way you analyzed Where The Wild Things Are in seventh grade and the way you say “ketchup”. I am in love with your crude humor. I am in love with your hands and the lines on your palms. I am in love with your fears and your worries and your passions and all of things you love and all of the things you hate and all of the things that fall somewhere in between. I am in love with your fingers and the way they tap on your knee and on your steering wheel, the way they flit across the piano like that’s the only place they truly belong, the way they rake through my hair sending shivers down my spine, the way I wish they were inside me. I am in love with your body, the parts I’ve touched and seen and the parts I haven’t (the parts I wish to.) I am in love with your voice, how it washes over me like sunshine when you’re singing in the car, how it drips onto my body and my heart like candle wax when you’re falling asleep, how it whispers like my favorite song softly near my ear when you’re waking up. I want to love you, I want us to love each other, I want us to make each other better. I want to show you how astonishing you are, inside and out. I want you to be able to see your beauty. You are something cosmic. I want to hold your hand like it’s the only thing keeping me from floating out into space, I want to kiss you just because I can, whenever I feel like it (which is always). I want to breathe with you, I want to breathe you in. I want to taste you, I want to feel you. I want to ******* like it’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart in your hands and hold you afterwards like I am holding all of the stars in the universe, because I am. I want to tell you. Everything. I am in love with you. You have my words. You have all my words.