inky-handed phen

“

My heart is permanently barricaded behind a steadfast cage of bones — the black and white reality of separation will be all we are left with.
But you are rows of streetlights in the darkest parts of the city. Brilliant and precise, you are always flooded with a warmth I try to attain but can only admire. You offer up handfuls of moments instead of hours and days, and surround me in radiance.

You are a body of geometrics. Protruding and angular, I am comforted in a mess of shapes. My soft voice has become the perfect accent to your sharp tongue. We share horror stories of heartache and you tell me “your graces outnumber your insecurities”.
You hum lullabies while you sleep and calm my sporadic pulse like second nature. I embed words into your wrists, your arms, your hands, and wonder if you dream in poetry.

“I’m somewhat lost,”
you confess through clouds of smoke. You stutter and stumble in a way that makes me wonder if you’ve stolen my fear. I cradle your desperation close to me and cover you in reassurance — I have been lost for years under the turmoil of your humor, your kindness, your allegiance. I fall into you like I could never stop, you wrap me in never-ending arms. You are not letting go.

”

—Driving to Boston, 2010

“I loved you, I still love you. Part of me will always love you so very much. You were/are/always will be my first love. You let me into your life when you were blocking others out. You told me your secrets and plans and stories and dreams and all I could think of to tell you was how much I loved you, because that’s what I was always feeling. I was always loving you, always wanting to tell you just how great that felt. I had never loved someone so much, no one had ever loved me back.
Even when we were moving on, growing up, getting away from the small and into the big, even when we were giving parts of ourselves to other people, there was always still part of me that belonged to part of you. And then I kissed you, and then you held my hand.”

—

Me, 18 years old. Love letter to a ghost.

Sometimes I cannot believe the things my heart is capable of feeling.