Darling, Stop Running.

you can’t make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.

by Warsan Shire

{Photo:  Eleanor Rask}

The Key.

I have found how to be happy with a man: Give him no credit. None. Make deliberate, cold, unceasing assumptions that he has no feelings, that he cares for you in no way, and that he will never do you one good thing. Be content in the fact that he has no heart. No desires that stretch beyond his own body.

You will find happiness, just so long as you never let go of these basic understandings. You can enjoy that stupid way he smiles when you kiss. The freckles that pepper his shoulders. You can fall in love with his inconsistencies - while always being sure of his one consistent nature, to never truly love you back.
Do this. Because when you find, with devastating clarity, that you have been wrong, and that his heart is just as prone to feeling as your own damaged soul, your world will shatter. You will have lost everything saving you from the hell that awaits you when you wake up and realize that he can.
Do this. Because without it, you will see his failures, each shortcoming. You will want more than he will give. You will be continually brought to the very edge of what you can bear - and then brought back too abruptly by some sweeping act of redemption. He will cease to be able to keep you constantly satisfied, it will be a life of ups and downs, weeks of dinner for two followed by months of smashed plates and weepy kisses. His faults will seep through in the morning coffee that he left too long, they will creep their way through the unfixed cracks in the wall paint, they will call your name when the game is going and he wants another beer. 

Do this. Before his humanity stretches your heart in new ways that you wouldn't have thought capable, before he drives you so crazy with the amount he can be everything you've ever wanted and still not enough, before you let him so far up on that pedestal that he only has room to let you down. Do this, so you know he's lying when he whispers those three cliché, stupid, stupid, stupid words in your ear, so softly that it tickles. Do this, do this, do this. Find that easy, safe, and endlessly stale happiness. Or don't. And open up a world that is full and meaningful and frustrating and so so worth it. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Kari Devereaux}

Travel Companion.

We called you in the middle of the night. Lost and wide awake.
We figured you'd know just how to untangle us
from the twisted roads and dead ends.

I was always losing my way -
A specialty of sorts.
But then, you were always there
To guide me or to get lost alongside.
(Though - come to think of it - you probably knew just where we were.)

But anyways. That's over now.
You can't still be rescuing me
From my mistakes and missed turns.
It's time I took responsibility for all the backwards one way streets,
and learned to read a compass.

And maybe once I understand the positions of the sun, 
And how the stars align to form a roadmap in the heavens
Maybe then, I will find my way back to you. 

S.

{Photo: Flickr Tamara Lichtenstein}

This Is My Apology.

I am not the same one who walked away all those months ago.

I know you told me not to change, but who are you to demand that, and who am I to listen?

I've tossed away - and given - the best parts of who I was. Now only this remains. 

Sometimes I whisper my own secrets out into the air. I am nothing, I say, as the emptiness opens up and swallows my words. Yes - and you are alone. 

1am, and he kissed me on the nose and stared at me with those intense blue eyes, illuminated even in the dim lighting.

"What is it?" 

"Nothing. I just like the way you smile." 

It's the soft moments that scare me most. My heart wasn't built for caring, and besides, I can't shake the way your body felt. Yours felt better, and yet, his is real. 

2am arrived and I turned away from him - the darkness clashing with my bare white skin. I couldn't face the way he looked at me. "Stay the night, please". I don't like who I am anymore. 

5am blinked by and the ceiling tiles made faces in the dark. I thought they promised the world would be beautiful, but I don't see it; there is no strength left in these bones to fight for it anymore. 

I'm sorry for the disappointment I've become. I should have listened. 

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Don't Hold Back All Your Love For Someday

You are young. So you know everything. 

You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. 

Without fanfare, without embarrassment, 

without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. 

Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, 

and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me. 

There is life without love. 

It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe.  

It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. 

When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, 

the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the 

sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable 

pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth 

and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls 

plunging and steaming – then row, 

row for your life toward it.

Mary Oliver

Six Months Later.

My mind is in turmoil. I am feeling too many things to make coherent words string together. 
(Finally, I am remembering what it feels to be close - the familiar comfort of being enclosed in two strong arms and held steady with one.)

The truth is, I'm not sure if it was out of loneliness, spite, or blind emotion. I've been refusing to believe that I acted out of real feelings - for nothing could be more dangerous to me. 

I won't let myself feel right about this.

It seems I haven't finished letting go of you - as far away as you are. (As far as you've made yourself.) But I know now that I can. The hands; the lips; the eyes; they are all ready to meet mine. And I am standing at the brink, deciding if I dare. I've long since admitted that there is nothing for me with you, yet something holds me back even still.

A whisper or a hope. Something I dare not touch with heart or mind. 

Come find me and make this right.

S.

{Photo: Flickr Posternaks}