And sometimes I feel so sick when you kiss me because my heart gets slower and faster at the same time so that my soul becomes confused and does not know how to react. The nerves in my belly go wild. And I hope I love you the way I do right now for a very long time.

not mine but might as well be

"We are just friends. Several times now, I have fallen asleep intertwined with you. Cheek to cheek, even lip to lip--just feeling your breath on my skin. We go no further. Today we went for a walk after a summer pour, and I could feel the warm steam rising from the streets. Now tonight, I sleep alone. It's probably healthy because when I'm tangled up with you I can hardly sleep at all. I spend the whole night on fire, quietly smoldering most of the time. Except when you pull me closer and rub your soft scruffle up and down my neck and chest. Or when you grab me by the hip bone and sink your thumbs into my flesh, sending electric chills up and down my body.Or when you pull me into you, sliding your fingers down my spine until they press the small of my back (chills, again). Or when your lips find the back of my neck and you mumble about how good I smell. Those are the times that the smoldering gives way to a blazing flare and all I can do is hope for a nap the next day.

But not tonight. You're there and I'm here. I could never tell you this, but every night your body isn't pressed against mine, I have to pack pillows around myself just to fall asleep. But we are just friends, and I'm sure you sleep fine without me."

credit: le love

We used to write names on small pieces of torn manila paper. We would write the names with our souls. Dotting our little i's with small globs of passion, curving each O with angst and fear and hope, spelling each letter of the first and the middle and the last with sadness, grief and tattered glory. When there were no names left to write, we would think really very hard about the names we had just written. Then, we would light the matches. The matches would strike, the flame would glow, and one name at a time we would say all the right reasons these names deserved to burn. And one at a time, all the pain and suffering would disappear. The embers of the paper would glow as the names disappeared, and our hearts would fire up and once we could feel the heat reaching our fingertips we would let go, and the names that once consumed us would disappear into ashes, blowing into the wind far far away. And once the lingering smell of the smoke was gone, we would forget about these names and their burdens forever.

But when I got to your name, I held the torn paper in my palm. I tried to think of all the right reasons to burn it away. But I couldn't. So I folded it up, and put it in my pocket.

the only reason i keep on coming home

That's the thing about us. We were all so full of passion. From the moment we arrived, each of us had sold a little part of our hearts to something, to anything that made us feel like we could rule the world. When we weren't doing whatever it was that made us most whole, we were thinking about it or dreaming about it or looking for more of it, breathing it in and out like obsessed fools. We were thinkers, dreamers, and searchers who had nearly found the golden ticket, clinging to it before it was lost to someone else.

We were passionate, and we were passionate together. We put ourselves out on the table, and subjected ourselves to the most critical of critiques. But we held each other up, giving each other both the confidence to succeed and the fear of failure; we held each other by the wrists as each of us dangled off the ledge of risk.

And when we left, we still held on to those passions that we embraced so fondly. From the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of passions to the dramatized and exploited wonders of passions, we kept them in our hearts and in our minds. We never let go. We made our passions even more passionate, and are developing kingdoms on our passionate foundations of curiosity.

And this is how we still hold on to each other. Through the possession of these passions, we will always remember how passionate we were together, as a large-scale family striving to leap as far as we could without holding each other back.

If anything, tell him that I loved him. Tell him that he meant the world to me, no matter how horribly any tainted light was cast upon him because in my eyes, he would always be the shiniest and most beautiful of all. Tell him that I never forgot those eyes that burned my soul the way the end of a careless cigarette pricks an unsuspecting hand. Alarming. Anger-infusing. Whimsical enough to be let off the hook. Tell him that I shone my best when I was his, trying to be his, hoping to be his. Hoping that I could become enough for him. Hoping he'd burn enough cigarette-holes into my soul that I'd fit the mold he'd fashioned with his own hands. Tell him that I remember the day when I didn't want to leave him but I had to, and we both went our separate ways but I walked all the way down Palm Drive alone while he did what was best for him and found his future. He held me for a long time and told me I was so cool and fun before I left, but his eyes gave away much much more than that. Tell him that I remember the last day I saw him, when my heart was so content and full of his loving emotions that I forgot I wouldn't see him for a long long long while and he got on the morning train and I rode alone in the backseat of Haley's car. We held hands before we parted ways, and it was the first time my small hand fit nicely in a larger one and I liked that. Tell him that somehow, that morning and only that morning because I forgot what it felt like after that day, I knew knew knew KNEW that no matter how many holes he burned into my soul, he would never sculpt me in the fashion of his mold. He couldn't. I was the mold. Tell him that.

new year, new stories. love ya, bitches.