3x
I have loved 3 times in my life, 3 times more
than I ever expected to.
And it has been a mess every time.
You would think I should be grateful for
having loved so much
but it only means I have been
broken 3 times more
than you expect in a life expectancy.
It only means I have moved
out of a heart I’ve called home more times than
I’ve liked. Let mannerisms and intimacies
fall out of my head, as if I never learned them,
as if they never did exist.
But it also means I’ve got more branches growing
out my skin, more stories on leaves tucked underneath
my tongue. I’ve got more thickness in
my bones that felt so brittle before. And based upon
the rings circled around my chest, it means
I’ve endured it all.
I know what it’s like to inhabit breath that
isn’t mine, and what it feels to stay up until 2am worried
my body is interrupting someone else’s sleep
when it doesn’t matter to them, as long
as they can feel the comfort of their feet
blanketing yours. I know how fast you can get
that dizzying lightness stirring inside
your stomach from a glance—just a glance
when taking your first dip into a newly
budding romance. The sound of I love you
hidden inside the language of laughing at the same joke.
How it feels not have a word to define
what it’s like to have someone unlock your
doors and start a fire in your lungs.
The photographic flash that goes
off in your mind when it is trying to save memories
while they are still happening, before they
could escape you.
3 times I’ve felt this peculiar thing,
3 times the intensity, 3 times the ache—
3 times so different
but all too much the same.
“All loves fade, I promise.”
“But what do you do with the ones that don’t?”
“Anything you can.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“Shove it in corners, put it in books, leave it in coffee shops.”
“But why?”
“Because then it isn’t yours anymore. It’s everyone else’s.”
“And that’s better than keeping it?”
“Always.”
I’m not a writer,
but if I were:
I would personify words just
so I could take them out for coffee,
buy them a croissant or two, and
say, “Hey - how’d you like to be my world?”
I would get to know them all one-on-one and
learn more than just their definitions - I’d
pay interest to the curves of their letters,
the wave in their promise, and the emptiness
of the spaces between them
I would teach myself how to knit them into
stories, how to fold them into couplets,
and how to make liquid literature
flow gently into pedestrians’ eyes
I would find a way to make words mean
what I want them to mean
I would find a way to
make words matter again
I know you started to look at me
differently after you kissed me,
it would have been impossible
not to, but I wanted you to see—
I am still the same girl you went to
the Radiohead concert with, who
held you together with her words
like glue, who called the cops when
you swore you were seconds away
from erasing yourself from history,
who sat by you on long, lonely nights,
who wrote and read you poetry,
she is me, we are one.
This is the last time I will beg for
you not to discard me but if you do,
remember that I am not just some
person you had some moment with,
80 years from now I want you to
think of me as the one who stayed
stayed by your side, not the girl you
kissed while wanting to cry,
I’m the same girl I’ve always been,
even if you see me differently:
I, her, she resides in your memory,
my pathetic plea is that you
don’t erase her just yet.
the boys that i have fallen in love with
have always expected it - they have
always been the kind of boys who
wear the love of girls like rusting medals,
the kind of boys who claim to know love
but would not recognize her if she
were plastered across every billboard
and bus bench all the way down fifth avenue
the boys that i have fallen in love with
have always been clever - clever enough
to know the difference between my sorrows
and my sunshines but never clever enough
to know i depended on them the way most
people depend on oxygen
the boys that i have fallen in love with
have always been troubled - torn with
temptation, drowning amid tribulations,
crying out for help that they aren’t willing
to accept, but always managing to find
a way to survive, even if against all odds
the boys that i have fallen in love with
have always been sweet - tender with
their words but hardly ever with their actions,
slick in their spirits but never in the way
they spilled “I’m sorry’s” through their teeth
as they apologized for things they neither
regretted nor understood
the boys that i have fallen in love with
have not always loved me in return
and others have left
without even the slightest concern
the boys that i have fallen in love with
have always been the kind of boys
who did not deserve the love of girls
like me
When I grab your hand and drag you into a space for us on the semi crowded floor—you say, ‘Oh you want to dance?‘ ’Yes, because we’re never going to do this again’. It seems I could never resist you in celebrations of love.
You laugh in question, ‘What do you mean? We have another wedding to attend in two weeks.’
You never do get what I mean, do you? The subtext, the context—for you it was always about you & I, isn’t it? Separate entities. But for me, it’s always about us. Again, you state the differences so subtly that it still stings, even more than a year later, and I can feel that means I still love you deep down, in the darkest corners it’s hidden beneath it all.
Because It may not hurt as much anymore, and I may know I’m better off, but little things like this is how I know, you will still be with me, somehow, some way and how you’ll never even know it.
In little ways though, you still encourage it, by remembering things about me I thought you’d forget by now, by quickly mentioning me in a big speech not meant for me, but knowing it would mean something of a significance, no matter how small.
And I don’t want that, but I want that. And so I make mistakes like asking you to dance again, one more time. But I tell myself in my head—or rather in my heart, that this is it, I promise—like asking to keep one more memory before the eternal sunshine, just allow me one more time, to make one more memory, of one last time, to be held by you.
it is difficult for me
to understand
that some people
carry no marks
- they are
untouched by
others: spotless
of any kind of love-like
remnants
i, on the other hand,
am a museum filled with
imprints of all the people i’ve
loved, of all the people
i’ve held hands with, smiled at,
glanced at, heard from, or
spoken to
i absorb their presence,
tattoo it on my soul, and
breathe out reminders of
their existence years long after
they have left me, years long after
they have forgotten me
and so it’s no surprise that the first
question on my mind when i meet
someone new is: will you remember me
in a year or two? will i have ever meant
anything to you?
Let’s show our children what true love looks like so they believe in it and, when they find it for themselves, they never let it go.
Wrap your arms around me in the kitchen when I’m making coffee, hold my hand while we grocery shop, kiss me while the baby screams in my arms, cuddle me during family movie night, tell me I’m beautiful when I’m washing the sheets at 3:00am because our three-year-old had an accident in them.
I miss you.
Three loaded words that refer to missing something once found, and is now lost.
I’ve never missed anyone I didn’t love. Yet love is another loaded word that can be easily misunderstood. I fall in love easily, relationships wise. I’m currently falling in love everyday (almost two years…) but I miss him for different reasons than when I miss you.
Missing you is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Despite your gender, you were probably the closest thing to a best friend that I’ve ever had. Sure, my current love IS my best friend, but nothing can replace a platonic best friendship.
Over the years my heart has become more guarded to any form of love, friendships especially. I’ve overcome my own set of challenges of being bullied as a child, to having toxic friends as a teenager up to several years ago. I’m also guilty of letting good friendships fade because of my own mistakes and actions.
I’m living in my twenty-fourth year and being friends with you for eight months is a fraction of a lifetime, a sliver of the life that I’ve lived so far. But I miss you and I can’t help but think I lost a lifelong friend. And that thought alone is tearing me apart.
Please miss me too.
holla at your controversial post
I see these stories on my dashboard every once in a while about women getting abortions for what are deemed “legitimate” reasons - she was raped, the fetus has a rare, fatal condition, continuing the pregnancy would be detrimental to the health of the mother, etc. They always end with the same type of “don’t judge women who get abortions because they might have a really seriously good reason for doing it” statements. And I honestly think they’re trying to be pro-choice.
The only reason I or anyone else should need for a woman to get an abortion is that she has decided she no longer wants to carry a pregnancy. Your opinion regarding whether she has a “good enough” reason to get an abortion is irrelevant because her decision does not require your approval. End of story.
I've always hated the book The Giving Tree.
I’ve always hated the book The Giving Tree, because to me, that is never what love is about. Here! Take my fruit! Take my trunk! Take everything that is a part of me because I love you. Every time I would read the book, it seemed like such a fucked up notion. “That isn’t what love is” I would vow. Love shouldn’t ask you to reduce yourself to nothing. Love won’t demand you to change or fit who they are at the moment. Over time though, I did learn that love gives. While I find the boy selfish, I now understand the tree.
Today was downright awful at work. My students are acting out lately in ways that are emotionally taxing, state testing is making our schedule crazy, and the fact that I may not have a job next year is sitting heavily on my mind. Walking into track practice I got a text from my best friend, asking if she could call. I knew she knew I was at school, and would only call if it was important.
I said yes, and sat on the cafeteria table talking to her while she cried. At the time, her burdens were far more important than mine. While I listened, I gave her the little bits of me that had not been taken throughout the week. I gave her the last of my branches, the spare fruit that I was surprised I still had left.
While I gave her the best advice I could, I kept thinking of The Giving Tree. Giving her my time, my dwindling energy, I realized that I was giving up the last of myself, just like the tree had. It was then I understood. Love can give everything of itself, it can become nothing, but only if love trusts. Here! Take my branches! Take the last of my fruit! It is okay because I know you will take good care of them. You realize they are the best parts of me. I trust you and know that, unlike the selfish boy in the book, you will give back my best parts when I need to feel whole again. Because that is what love is: love is reciprocal, love gives and takes.
Anonymous asked: write about the difference between Colorado and New York.
There are fundamental differences between mountains and skyscrapers.
You can drive up a mountain road with your little sister in the carseat next to you, and The Little Mermaid on tape blaring out of the stereo, and your mother screaming at your father from the passengers’ seat, I swear to God David, just ask for the fucking directions. You can stand on top of a mountain with a pretty boy, and you can tell lies to one another while the moon paints his face a blinding white. You can climb a mountain in the dark after four shots of raspberry Smirnoff (don’t worry, you can use your cell phone as a flashlight). You can sit on the edge of a mountain, dangling your feet over a man-made reservoir, and you can whisper secrets to the sky—you can rest assured that only the stars will hear them. And even from an endless stretch of highway, or an open, empty field, or the window of a yellow-painted bedroom, you can see the tip of a mountain, majestic and familiar.
It’s difficult to locate the top of a skyscraper. You squint into the sun, but at around fifty feet it all begins to blur, and the top simply becomes “up.” You ask yourself: when I’m at the top, will I recognize it? All I know are these wonderfully dirty sidewalks and these icy elevator conversations and the bass pounding through my veins. All I know is this little black dress. It’s a whirlwind, where you have skyscrapers— a whirlwind of yellow taxis and high heels and congested air and electricity. Occasionally, a skyscraper will overwhelm you. You’ll find yourself surrounded by strangers and hopelessly alone, without a clue what floor you’re on, or how to get up or down, so you’ll wish, quite briefly, for a stretch of highway, or an open, empty field. But then you’ll look out a window and see all the rooftops, and the tiny people in their tiny cars, and you’ll realize that you’re farther up than you’ve ever been. You’ll let out a surprised, yet triumphant laugh. Where you have skyscrapers, you have a hiccup of clarity, because you don’t miss those mountains, anyway. You’re taller here.
You can’t compare mountains and skyscrapers, really. They’re two separate states, Colorado and New York—two separate and particular states of existence.
Estranged.
You’re so foreign to me.
A life so parallel to my own. No longer
a sight deemed as familiar but So estranged.
Its not that i don’t know you, its that the
time in which i knew you is up. There’s
no turning back the clock. A memory which
holds much meaning but oh so misleading.
Growing up is the strangest thing i’ve experienced so far.
Feelings so foreign they require exploring.
Now the depths of my heart are all pouring
Into these hands that you are no longer holding.
I always try to pin point the exact moments when it all came crashing down. I mean after the little reunion, the little motivation that made us come back together, when and where did my love and dedication suddenly disintegrate…to what it is now. When people ask me if I’ve moved on…I always hesitate a little, and tell them, “kind of”. Kind of in a sense that I feel like I’ll never be ready to let go of what was probably the best three years of my life thus far. But at the same time, there were the times when I realized that he deserved a lot better. So then the next question comes, “Would you get mad if he found someone else?” And the immediate answer is “no”. No, because I know that he is picky enough to wait and see if a girl is worth even talking to on a deeper sense, and rational enough to take his time before making any sudden moments. A guy like him does deserve better than a girl like me. A girl with more time, and a little more love. So I do wish him nothing but the best. But I wish he wouldn’t forget the fact that I’ve been his number one fan since the beginning.
