Lover,

the first time we spoke I held my hand to
my heart and promised it I wouldn’t fall
for you, swore I would avoid too much
eye contact, vowed to never lose
myself in the spaces between
your fingers.

But

you

hold me like I am whole enough to
be loved and you love me like I am
a better person than I know, and see,
I am losing my sadness to the way your
chest rises and falls when you breathe and

I understand now why
when I first said
“hello”
what echoed in my mouth was

“welcome home”.

i. I am no more than a walking almost and I am almost beyond repair.

ii. The first time I saw you, I told you you were the most fascinating human being I’ve ever encountered.

“Poets,” you’d said, “you poets always know the best lies to say.”

iii. I am sorry I am broken in unforgivable ways,
and I am sorry I’m breaking everything around me too.

iv. I am a mess of destructive desires and infinite apathy. (But then you tell me you’re hurt and the only thing I want is to care for you.)

v. What happens when someone who
always gets what they want
wants to stop wanting?

(I don’t deserve to want you.)

vi. “We are dangerous together,” you said.

vii. I’d pick you over safety any day.

viii. I told you to stop loving silently
in hopes that you’d speak up.
(Please speak up,
I have a lot to say too.)

ix. I want to nestle myself in the folds
of your neocortex and bask in all the
art it has to offer me. I want to swim
through the rivers in your veins and
drench myself in all your intricacies.
There are worlds in your fingertips
that I’ve yet to see – but I digress.

x. You’ve only been gone a day
but still I cannot stop wording
your absence.

xi. I believed only in ghosts before you and I was haunted, but with you I believe in angels – wings worn out and tired but still ever so holy.

You don’t know it, but you are saving me.

xii. When you tell me that I am good,
I go against my every instinct and I
believe you.

xiii. You render whole universes obsolete.

xiv. I must have met you centuries ago.

(You fit so well into me,
I probably fell for you
just as quickly back then.)

xv. You keep me writing and every single word I spell out is drenched in your name.

You are a language I am yearning to perfect.

xvi. I am starting to understand why it never worked out with anyone before you.

xvii. You are helping me make peace with years’ worth of mistakes.

xviii. Every time you say you want me, I shatter into a thousand different pieces so I’d have more of me to offer you.

xix. You say you love me but I will not say I love you back.

xx. I do not love you back.
To love back is to love ingenuinely, and
I
love
you
independently, egolessly,
pridelessly, and vulnerably.

xxi. I am an absolute.

All yours, all yours,
all yours.

Remember me like this;
digging my nails into my
palms in search of all
the words that escape me,
gritting my teeth in hopes
that the right vocabulary
will eventually save me.

Remember me like this;
rummaging through tragedies
looking for hidden pieces
of me, dissecting catastrophes
in search of subtle beauty.

Remember me like this;
lips seeking refuge beneath
my teeth whenever they
resist the urge to speak,
tongue tapping melodies onto
skin until I forget how to
breathe.

Remember me like this;
palms always open and
welcoming, but never really
knowing how to receive things
gracefully.

Remember all of this, and
how I forget my
strengths sometimes.

Remember how I always hated
that my silence was a far more
articulate speaker than I,

remember how I always
wore my loneliness with my
head held high.

Remember how my passions
always turned my palms into
fists.

When I’m gone, please
only remember me like
this.

He calls me ten times a day just to make
sure that I am still alive and sometimes
when he has to leave for days at a time
he doesn’t call at all because he’s
filled with guilt at the fact that he’s
not near me. And when he cannot sleep
he’ll ask me to rub his back because
      ‘your hands always put me to sleep
  it’s like you’ve got magic in your fingers’
but all the magic I’ve ever known has
come from his hands, and this
man is as soft as silk but he’s always
been the strongest man I know and his
heart’s so full of goodness I wonder
how his human body can fathom it so
most days, I don’t even think he’s
human; just kindness. Just beauty.
He charges me kisses for money and
says he forgets his own name if I’m
not around him, says ‘how can I
remember anything if you’re not here’
so he’s always here making jokes
and laughing like he hasn’t got
the weight of the world on his back
and when the sickness pushes against
his chest; he is God’s exaggeration,
he is a super hero dressed in my
baba’s suit, all strength and
determination and no hint of submission
and I know his heart of gold gets heavy
sometimes and I know he’s tired but he
tells me that he loves me even though
he was raised to never say it out loud
so I’ll call him a rebel
and tell him it’s genetic and that’s
why I get into trouble sometimes but
even when I do, he says I make him
proud and no one’s got it as good as he.
And I am teaching him to linger when he
hugs me and he is teaching me to be
patient and kind and giving and he’s always
giving without asking for anything
back and so I love him with every
word that falls off my tongue
and I love him with all the kisses
I lay on his forehead before I go
to sleep.

They tell me that heaven lies
under my mother’s feet but I find it
resting quietly also in his
heart.