(via stphnvg)
first sight, after sight: We do not grow absolutely-
I’m curled up on our couch because you’re in another state and I can’t bear nights in our bed with out you in it. I’m thinking about the curls you have, the way your hands have always gotten so dark in summer. I’m wondering about those mornings you’d drive to my house so early when you came back from the west coast, showing up on my front porch at five am with hot chocolate and smokes. The way we’d step quietly back to my bed to lay through the soft dreamy hours right before sunlight. I asked you if you ever worried about the breakable quality of everything, how it’s like we’re all just walking on eggshells, how being so careful is exhausting. You said you had no idea what I was talking about. I wondered what you thought of things, if you thought of these things, what they meant to you. That night you kissed clumsy lines down my spine. You told me that you loved me. You told me not to worry about the brokenness of things so much “Pay less attention to what you might break - worry about what you can build.” Pulling splinters from me like they’re petals. You are my constant. I try to remember to thank God every night for you. For what you said to me all these significant years. I have heard people say things like how they don’t understand the idea of a soul mate, how you should be whole without needing another person to get you there. And the truth is the sentiment is nice - to be built so entirely, an existence without the sloppiness of love and ache and the crookedness of being what we are.
but the reality of it is not so neat and precise. The truth is those are the sort of thoughts we think to convince ourselves we need never give all of ourselves to someone - because that’s dangerous, right? The truth is that some people think it better to give only a fraction of yourself to someone and keep the rest for yourself. Not for better or for worse - for better or for the part where I take it all back when it starts to crumble beneath my feet. And I don’t doubt for a second that a person could live a good life like this - that they could be strong enough for themselves, that they could navigate carefully through the ugliness of effort and hope. but they would never know the kind of punch and power life has for the fevered and the brave. The truth is that sometimes there are people who wear into you so absolutely that they leave you grand canyoned. They leave you moon pitted and summer saulted. It’s not “I could never live without you” it’s “I didn’t know what kind of life I could have been living before you”. It’s dancing horribly in your living room to some pop song on the radio with them, it’s telling dirty jokes in the line of a fast food restaurant and when they laugh you can still hear the way they laughed when they were nineteen and seventeen and fifteen - the way they laughed right before that moment you knew they were going to kiss you and pow! cells, layers, constellations, right? They’ve got you and you know that for the rest of your life you’ll sleep on couches when they’re not there, scrawling messy poems about them like manifestos on the walls around your every fraction of a soul, dreaming of ocean waves, learning that courage isn’t just doing something right when it’s hard - it’s putting up a fight for the things you love and knowing in your heart of hearts your root of roots that all those things everyone tried to say you couldn’t do, you always could. It’s trying not to beat yourself up over the brokenness of things because this person smacked into you out of no where and ever since the sound your heart makes when it beats is “build, build, build.”
Don’t do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.
| you: | when was your first real kiss? |
| me: | i guess it just happened. |
| you: | what did your friends think? |
| me: | i'm sure it didn't matter. when you've found the right person, you don't care much about what other people think. |
| you: | you smitten me. |
when you listen to a song you used to listen to ages ago and you get that weird as fuck spine chilling feeling as you remember how your life was at that point in time»»»»
Don’t play with feelings. If you love a person let him/her know. If you don’t, then stop making him/her feel like you actually do. The truth hurts, but lies, worse.
