If We Were a Movie
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
Sunshine
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.
Other Half.
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
Leaving me
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.
3 am cup of coffee
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.
Cold
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
Halfway
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.
Stranger
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.