what first love feels like

MAY 2023

MAY 2023

i wear your shirt

I wear your shirt, except it no longer smells like you, it smells like me, because after you left I had to wash it or your familiarity would linger as long as your scent, but my plan failed because even though it no longer smells like you, I know that if you were here the anxiety humming in my bones would finally settle again and your fingers would still light my nerves in an intimate fire and your arms wrapped around my body would still comfort my soul as if it has known yours since the time when we were both still dust.

Yours is an embrace I could never tire of, a safe space I didn’t know could exist until you showed it to me.

It’s not that time stops when you’re here, it’s that it continues to pass yet I don’t care, time becoming a construct of man so insignificant in comparison to the care we built that to pay it any attention would be an offense to the events which had to align to create this sense of us.

I cannot be anxious around you, my body will not allow it, your energy comforting mine in a way that would feel suffocating were you anyone else, but you’re not anyone else, you’re you, and that is beautiful and I love you and I should have told you that when I had the chance and I wish your shirt still smelled like you.

what a shame

I crave the safety you create so deeply in my bones that even in the brightest fields of my mind I fantasize about being injured beyond anyone else’s repair just so I have an excuse to call you, because I know you will come and kiss my scars and hold my fears and tell me sweet nothings as you cradle my body against your chest and bring your lips to my forehead because that is who you are, you are the one who makes all of this bearable, except this is the one burden that finds you at its root and I want an excuse to call you so damn badly that I do not care how much it has to hurt me.

in my dreams

In my dreams we stand in our kitchen. I’m stirring risotto, slowly, the heat low, you’re setting the table, your hands gentle with the plates and the glasses and the silverware yet your fingers firm when you press them into me, palms holding my hips, lips coming down to meet my hair. It smells like coconuts and you inhale, deeply, every time. At some point you lean forward and I turn my head to the side and I look up because you’re already looking down and suddenly your tongue is tasting the wine staining my mouth.

My mind wanders to how far we’ve come, from my kitchen in my apartment to our kitchen in our apartment, yet you have always referred to both as “coming home” and I have loved you for as long as you have called me home.

mine

My arms reach up, instinctively, to pull you in, to pull you closer, your body coming down to melt into mine as I hold you, one palm on your shoulder, five fingers in your hair, your nose nestled into my neck, your arms wrapped around my waist, until I don’t know who is holding who, though it is likely we are simply holding each other. I stand on my toes while your knees are soft and your shoulders are curled. Our heads can barely meet, yet they do. Every system in my body has settled. I’m unaware of my breath, of my heartbeat, because all I can hear are yours. For this moment, you are mine.

I miss you, I whisper.

I miss you too, you reply.

We use the present tense because you’re only mine again for as long as this moment lasts.

i wanted to fall in love with you

I worry that years are going to pass and I will still remember what the weight of your head felt like resting on my chest and the way your eyes have golden stars in their centers when you look up at the ceiling from your pillow and exactly how your voice sounds when it cracks, but while I continue to replay these memories in my head when asked questions about what first love feels like, you will remember me as merely a girl, another notch in your timeline, our memories faded in your mind just like the feelings evoked by the birthday card I know you’ll always keep. Because while I know you will always keep it, I also know it won’t always smell like me, and that makes my chest ache in a way I didn’t know was possible until I realized just how eager my heart was to fall in love with you.

headphones

Missing you makes me physically ill, clouding my head in a way that prevents me from thinking, the same familiar feeling of standing up too suddenly so the edges of my vision go dark as the blood rushes away from my brain, draining my skull in the same way my limbs are drained of energy and my heart is drained of emotions and all I want to do is throw all of it up in a disgusting, bloody mess, because at least then I would have something to show for my pain even if my wounds are sweat on my skin and hair slicked to my neck, scars that will disappear when the exhaustion is done ravaging my body, but instead I keep headphones pressed into my ears even when the volume is muted because taking them out and having to remember that I exist outside of myself is unbearable without you here to hold me.

I listen to music louder when I’m home, but it is loudest when I miss you.

laundry

Missing you is loading the dishwasher I never use because the plates are stacked to the top of the sink and there is not a single utensil left in the drawer, missing you is leaving clean clothes piled on the couch and clean sheets twisted in the machine, missing you is needing to be anywhere but here, because all of my energy is focused on missing you and I have none left for myself, and it is in these moments that I want nothing more than to be home, watching television with my mother while she scratches my back, her presence reminding me what it feels like to be cared for.

I hate to admit that missing you feels like depression, but it does.

JUNE 2023

JUNE 2023

when you were mine

I wasn’t looking when I found you, yet there you were and that was it, simple and easy until suddenly we found ourselves invested in something neither of us dared to name. All of my expectations came crashing to the ground you stood on as you slowly came to be mine in a way that didn’t need to be vocalized to be understood, though now I wish one of us had said it. I wish it had been you’re mine rather than I’m yours, I wish it had been you’re mine rather than you’re the only one, I wish we had put our feelings into words in the moment so I would have a conversation to autopsy in the future that has since become the unbearable present. I wasn’t looking when I found you, yet I did, and I didn’t know how it would end, yet you did, because even when you were still mine, you knew, because you knew from the beginning, and while I am grateful that I found you, when it hurts the most I sometimes wish I hadn’t.

books you borrowed

I wonder if you read faster so you can see me sooner.
I wonder if you read slower so you can make this last even longer.

not enough

I used to think it was my impatience that filled my veins with molten fire when people told me to just give it time, the words rolling off of everyone’s tongues without thought, as if promises of you’ll be okay are supposed to ease my pain in the present despite their implications of someday, as if someday learning how to swim could prevent you from drowning before those lessons even come, but now I’m older and wiser and I know all of these things, yet even though I know there will come a day when I will be able to say the words “I’m okay” and have them be in reference to you, the fact of the matter is that I still loved you now, I will probably still love you then, and until the day I die I will have to live with the knowledge that love was never our issue and love is never enough, a necessary condition though not a sufficient one, and no matter how okay I one day am, I will have to drown in the heartache of knowing that love is not enough until the day I die, and that is a wound which time cannot heal.

volume

When missing you hurts the most,

the music becomes so loud it no longer sounds like music.

I am the one who makes the music that loud.

to be loved

It’s late and you’re tired and I’m drunk, so when you ask me what dress I’m wearing, I ask how you know I’m wearing one even though I already know the answer, and when you reply I know you, I realize those three words have eight letters, just like the phrase I love you, and suddenly I realize why people say to be known is to be loved and I wonder if this means you love me back.

three hard truths

I’m a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic despite the term’s inaccuracies,

because the truth is that I’m not hopeless, I’m desperate,

a desperate romantic who is

desperate to be wanted,

desperate to be fought for,

desperate to be loved in the same capacity with which I love,

and I want nothing more than to have someone meet my gaze

and see bags of groceries reflected in my eyes

and want to cradle our future with both of their hands.

And the second truth is that I’m not hopeless, I’m hopeful,

so full of hope that my mind will build a door in every version of my imagination,

ready to be knocked on,

ready for the maybes and the what ifs,

for all of the scenes I’ve spent hours writing in my head,

and while I deny my desperation and only advertise my hope,

hoping to control the last bit of dignity I have held onto,

the inevitable third truth is that there will come a day

when my hope and desperation have consumed so much of me

that there will be no more of me left to exist,

yet even as I succumb to my grief,

I will still wonder if it ever crossed your mind to come back and knock.

picture me

I hope you picture me lying in bed,

waiting for you to open your eyes and smile at me,

as if the world can only wake when you do.

i wish

I wish you missed me enough to make a mistake,

I wish you missed me enough to text first,

I wish you missed me enough to call,

and I wish I had the self-control

to not make mistakes, 

to not text first, 

to not call,

but I am afraid we would never talk again

if I had the same self-control you hold yourself to,

so I am left wishing you missed me enough

while knowing that

I miss you more than enough,

but I cannot miss you enough for the both of us.

progress

I don’t wipe the counters down,

but I do wash the dishes the same night I use them,

and for now that’s enough.

JULY 2023

JULY 2023

pain

It took two days for my nails to find the skin on my hands,

but less than two hours to scrape their backs raw,

and as my skin burns under the water I wash them with

I welcome the pain because at least this injury was not inflicted by you.

head empty

The words have stopped coming.

You made the words stop coming.

You made my brain stop working.

I wish I could make my heart stop beating.