“I find myself occasionally loving you not because I need you, or want your love, and feel in love, but rather an objective welling in my heart that comes from the sometimes whole person…whatever it is, I give it to you with no strings attached.”

“I laughed and said, ‘Life is easy.’ What I meant was, ‘Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.’”

[Text ID: What / keeps me here? / Only my heart / that won't give up — / a puffed sparrow / gripping a twig, / a stubborn / leaf in a bare shrub.]

“Leave the lights on. Keep talking. I’ll keep walking toward the sound of your voice.”

[Text ID: you were there I was here you were here I was there where are you I miss you]

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

[Text ID: You spoke once of boundaries, of your fear about where you find yourself making them. Do you remember? I was trying to listen closely. I have been thinking about how I relate to people. It isn’t as easy as saying that I hold people at a distance, but more so that I am always sensing the insurmountable swimming between us, and sometimes this feels like an overwhelming failure. Rilke says love between two people is loving that very expanse, even considering it sacred, and I wonder if there is something transcendent here—a definition for community. Across the distance we hear the air shifting between us, and recognize it for what it is—miracles of texture and movement, tiny collaborations of our bodies navigating an unwieldy space.]

[Text ID: the only thing to do is simply continue / is that simple / yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do / can you do it / yes, you can because it is the only thing to do]

“I still imagine you in me as breath”

“To be touched - truly touched - that’s what I’m looking for. To unfold at a brush of skin like a rare flower blooming. To be surfaced at the curl of fingertips around my soul. I am so tired of shallow fun. I want my heart to shudder at a touch, to whisper, “here, here, it’s all yours.”