today i found out that
i have
scars i didn’t
know
exist,
a hea-
vy mind, and
a little voice in my
veins that keeps saying,

i can’t.

1.

There is a quietness in these streets, she thinks. Graffiti-covered laneways and flickering street lights at 3am on a Saturday (well, Sunday) and alcohol-drenched laughter accompanying clinking of beer bottles — she is standing outside a piss-smelling dark bar with a boy she barely knows. He stands next to her with his arms by his side and a cigarette wedged between his fingers, and she makes sure that her skin doesn’t touch his.

There is a quietness here and I want to keep it safe until the next time I have you next to me, she thinks.

i hold your hand in mine and
i listen to your heartbeat as you
fall asleep:
now now now
mine
mine
mine.

this is all i know about love —

you make me feel like we are never
going to run out of time. 

you remind me of uncharted places, of boats that get lost at sea, of the quietness that invade the darkest moment before the dawn.

(sometimes i find myself trying to make sense of you with my words. sometimes i wonder why it has yet to bother me, that everything i write always leads me back to you.)

you once said that i was everything you ever needed.
and that you didn’t deserve me, because for some unfathomable reasons
you thought that i was heaven-sent, and that i was the most beautiful thing
you had ever seen, and that everything would’ve turned out to be okay
so long as i stayed there by your side.

those were the first few mistakes you made, 
and the biggest one occurred not too long after,
that moment when you first told me that i was perfect.

(i am not. i am nowhere near okay, let alone perfect.
and if you had just taken a moment to listen to my silence,
instead of forcing me to open up my heart, one stitch at a time
you would’ve realized that despite all the dreams and fantasies
and plans and hopes and everything we had conjured in between

i never asked for anything in return.

because i just assumed that i would always have your hand in mine
for the rest of my life, and i made the mistake of thinking,
“yeah, that would be nice. that would be enough.”)

and this is why i think we may just work.

with you, i can just feel things. no ‘what-if’s. no ‘why’s.

(and this is how you make me feel: )

i watch the storm pour over this city.
 
god, i’ve forgotten how it is to notice
just how beautiful 
everything is.

I guess,
I just want to believe
that there is a version of us
in one of those parallel universes
who still get to love each other
the way autumn adores its gray sky.

you were the sun rays that ignite the storm,
and I am just a little boat that happened to pass through your sea.

tell me where I went wrong.

i spend my days
ignoring the absence
of your hand in mine
and I spend my nights
reading other people’s words,
hoping that I can still find you
in spaces and brackets,
after commas and ellipses.