Drafts

I know we've just met, but before we dive in, I have a confession.

I am ignorant to love. I can't quantify it or pretend to understand the thousands of ways that it works. But for you, I’ll try.

What I do believe though, is that we're attracted to those who make us see new things in ourselves. People who can provide us with the things we're lacking, whether that be understanding, strength or support. Love is not duality, it is consistent, but adapting all the time. We refuse to see it as anything other than frustrating when we attempt to place the rules of our physical world on it. We allow fear borne in overthinking take the place of genuine outbursts of love.

I used to think that not voicing negative thoughts was enough to take away their power. I was wrong. There is so much strength in confronting uncertainty, discomfort, vulnerability, pain and trauma.

There is beauty in saying exactly what you're feeling when you feel it. Uncensored emotion is severely lacking in our day to day. Maybe that's why we see flash mob proposals and PDA as so infringing. Because they represent a union between carnal instinct and structured regiments.

I always start to prepare how I'll feel about an event later, as that same event is happening. There's something so finite about cataloging experience, good or bad, immediately and I wish I were better at simply experiencing instead of noticing every little detail in real-time. But then, what you're about to read would be very different.

So here goes:

Like writing, love demands subject matter. This happens to be about you.

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Every day changes my definition of "comfortable"

Is it safety or assurance? Or a combination of the two?

Should I continue to be subtle to be worthy of your love,

selective of the words I speak and the inflections I apply to them?

is it possible to avoid nauseating behaviour when in love?

And when did I become such a stickler for the rules?

I'm very aware of my high threshold for love

Always considered to be for passions, the places I've known for a long time,

a super power when it comes to coping with trauma

Now I can't help but wonder if some of this space was left vacant for you

Care:

I act as if your every action doesn't make me question my own identity

Must the edges of vulnerability be walls I force other people to climb?

Is care a fight we rage against common sense?

And is that fight what keeps us alive?

I will never try to change someone

Because that is not love

It's also none of my business

And so I'll care for you for as long as I'm allowed to

It's endearing to watch someone seek perfect clarity,

while still believing that nothing they say could communicate their true state

I remember that language often makes it very easy to misunderstand each other

I'm grateful that you're happy to listen, even when my thoughts reach no conclusions

When you look at me

do you see someone who's bending over backwards for you?

Or someone you wish would make room for you?

Maybe you know I don't need you

But I hope you that know I want you

Neurosis/overthinking:

I want to be an memory, not a photograph

An icon in place of a statue

A monument instead of a fucking donated bench

Could I say something sincere for once in my life?

Stop being neurotic for one, single, solitary second?

Why do I always assume that the people I love know the extent to which that is true?

Why do I strive to be the one that got away?

Why am I so scared of being the one who gets the privilege of being with you?

It's exhausting trying to be right all of the time

I hope you'll prove me wrong

I remind myself to stop using the past as precedent and proof

I'll turn my face into a frown just to see if it'll affect my mood;

to try on sadness

You ask me how it feels to always prepare for the worst-case scenario.

I'm aware of my self-sabotage in my throat as I look at you

Things will never be the same as they are now, or now.

So I sink as deeply as I can into this moment

and vow to feel everything that I can about you while it's still possible

If I can only see you like this once, I'll have no regrets about it.

Fear:

When I was a kid, I was afraid of everything.

So I'd deny that the scary thing even existed

and that seemed to be enough to make the scary thing disappear.

Some mornings I wake up and feel as though I couldn't want you any more.

Others, I'm terrified that I could not want you anymore.

I think I could be in love with someone like you

and the next day I decide I would rather never think of you again.

Why are the people who can cut us the deepest

the same ones who make us feel as though our every nerve is exposed?

I listen to words spoken and acted out

Looking through the cracks in façade

You scare me because you see right through mine

I remember that being comfortable enough to show your scars

proves that you are unafraid of yourself

When you act passively, I'm aware that what I'm actually afraid of

is not having an opportunity to accuse you

I can never be angry with you for sacrificing a conflict

You accept that we rare different people

and always will be

How can I blame you for you acceptance?

You seemed to sure of yourself and that scared me

I felt that my own confidence levels paled in comparison

My inferiority complex developed then,

but no more.

Instead, my panic manifests itself in desperate urges to send you a message at 4am

that tells you I'm irrationally attached and that I'm backing out

But I don't.

Because I know I would be doing a disservice to myself

To pass up the opportunity to be extremely happy with/because of/in spite of you

I'm convinced that someday I'll know you so well that I won't know how to love you anymore

I hope I never feel I've figured you out enough to get to that point

Because then the intrigue of you would vanish with your mystique

and I haven't decided if I'm more afraid of abandoning or being abandoned.

Maybe when the time comes, they'll feel like the same thing

For now, I'm melancholic for things that have yet to happen,

impasses we've yet to be confronted with

Could I get too comfortable with your body?

Or worse, could you get too used to mine?

There's nothing I fear more than the mundane, something fading quietly until it's imperceptible

It's irrational, but I never want to cease being amazed

Could we become ignorant to the fact that knowing the ways a body has been scarred, adapts and is changed over time is a privilege?

I've never been so curious to know a body that isn't my own.

Are either of our egos big enough to believe we could avoid normalcy?

Are we such great critics that we'll never stop finding new things to appreciate?

What makes me think that we'll know each other long enough to find out?

Only one way to find out.

I’m terrified that one day you’ll destroy me

and it won't be a result of something malicious you’ve planned

But you’ll say something small and it will break me beyond repair

and make me question everything I thought I’d learned about you

After all, I only pretend to know every single thing about you,

things that have become just as much a part of my own identity as they are my perception of yours

I’ll resent you for changing the person I was when you met me,

even though that’s exactly what I asked you to do the second I met you

//

I’m scared that I’ll fuck you up,

someone so good and worthy of love

I could so easily ruin you without a second thought.

Because I’ve loved you, I could turn you inside out

My anxieties about it lay in everyday movements,

in the tension between your fingers when you take my hand in yours,

when you move just a little too far out of reach,

the way you let go of me as if it won’t be the last time.

Longing:

Then, I wanted to tell you how much I wanted you,

but it didn't seem relevant.

So I continue to live my life in majorities and not absolutes.

I'm usually in the business of getting what I want.

I should've kissed you again before you went,

because it's all I wanted to do, but I was too afraid of what it could mean.

It feels impossible to stop wanting you.

I can't change what I want,

and I certainly don't want to run if I don't think you'll chase me.

I don't want to be able to say that I was never clear about my intentions with you.

I'm making up my mind to refuse to ask for one thing and accept its opposite.

So I'll allow love to take the place of fantasy and use fantasy as hope instead.

Sacrifice always has its desired effect.

Because right now I feel everything,

and everything feels like a slap in the face.

So I keep my feelings with me like allies.

Without them, I'd be accepting defeat.

Could this be a love that I carry with my silently forever?

Or until it leaks out of me like plasma when I'm hurt

Or reach a point where I want to stop using my body to overthink, and instead find a home in yours instead

Can this last much longer?

Because I'm not sure that I will.

I've never known how your voice changes through the day

or how to reach out for you when you start to slip away

How strange to have only known you twice

I wonder how I can regulate my daydreaming and convince myself that I shouldn't see you

I want to be in the bed that smells like you

with you, wanting me there

I want to feel like I'm taking up a space that I was always meant to occupy

and somehow still be alive

Vulnerability:

For a long time I'll feel like an object to you, a body with which you get to play

Let me be clear, that is not the way you make me feel

But it's the way I've felt many times before

because chaos is not the same as passion

We convince ourselves that the pursuit of love isn't isolation

when it's obsession festering in internal monologue,

expectation held too high over our heads to ever grasp.

Often, it's being lonely together,

what happens when we allow ourselves to be known.

Is love the ultimate selfish act?

Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in hopes that even one person could accept us for it?

//

Nothing will ever be certain.

But love does a great job of convincing us that it is constant, eternal, forever when we're in it.

When it feels our skepticism, it shows itself and makes us believers again;

followers sure of its power and grace, that it can erase our scars and make us worthy of it once again.

Love is not vitriolic.

And so is it enough to say that I want to be with you forever?

When you say "I love you" and mean it

I know you only ever mean until tomorrow.

Sometimes, even less.

Words are not absolutes,

they never have been.

You don't strike me as someone who's afraid of saying something they might actually mean.

So say how you feel and don't leave a single thing out, I'm all ears.

Because I know there's a difference between what you feel you can't say

and what you decide you never will.

I’ve loved people for their cantor, their irony, loudness and their desire to be known

I’ve loved them for how their bodies moved with and in opposition to mine and for how their eyes told me that they saw me

I’ve loved the rotation of wrists and the swaying of hair in and out of the frames of faces

I’ve discounted the ways I’ve felt love

Because isn’t it easier to reject love than to that we are worthy of it?

Insecurity is talking and my voice is the mouthpiece

My masochistic urge to not ask you for what I want is getting absurd

The sooner I ask you for the truth,

the sooner I can begin to turn good memories into distant ones,

I stay here in limbo because it's dramatic and exciting

(and I secretly love it).

Each day my anxiety reaches new heights, and I know the remedy.

What lies beneath is an unspoken question, being

"do you want to be with me?"

or maybe it's "are you willing to try?"

Is it you or the pandemic, you against the backdrop of the pandemic, or the pandemic as a barrier between us that does it for me?

People have come and gone and I always leave their leaving up to them

They always come back and tell me tales of things that remind them of me,

beautiful and reassuring all at once, until they tell me that I am out of their league.

I'd rather let someone hurt me than be able to say that I hurt them.

So stay until I tell you to go and I'll never ask you to leave.

If we ever get to that point, you could even be the first one I ask to stay

//

I'll fill pages in vain, trying to sum up how it felt to almost be in love,

how to avoid a broken heart by avoiding falling into it altogether,

an action that can be heartbreaking in itself.

It seems that the harder I pull the idea of you away from my heart,

the deeper I feel you burrowing in.

Soon you'll be a splinter I only remember once a season or by mistake

Moments:

‘I’m very attracted to you’

the words felt and sounded right, correct

like lyrics to a song I’d thought I’d forgotten

but that didn’t stop the blood from rushing behind my ears

//

I laugh when I'm uncomfortable

and you say you appreciate that someone can find life and all its broken pieces humorous

I'm not sure that any of those things are true

Quarantine:

Loneliness has taken on new meaning

No longer based in the fear of exclusion

The fear comes now from confronting ourselves,

parts that we're usually too distracted to examine closely

finally rising to the surface

Unrequested and wanted

but necessary

The world feels like its ending,

but does it especially feel that way today?

It's ending all the time in every small way, isn't it?

Seasons and meals and cut flowers in vases, sunrises and sunsets are all ending right now.

Isn't that all the more reason to try our best?

Sex!:

I like the sounds you make when you're in my mouth

I feel your hubris disappear when your name's in mine.

You let out a sigh so intense it sounds like a word.

I exhale sharply without meaning to,

incapable of saying or doing anything

I turn to look at you again and your body's already against mine

You use your mouth before your words

while your hands restrict my wandering ones

You rest your forehead against mine and I feel like I could die.

Your palm presses into my hip like you want to become a part of me.

I feel at home, a nice change from forgetting I have a body at all.

But let's not confuse power with dominance, my trust does not lie in your arrogance.

Control if given, and belongs to no one

Time will always be more powerful than you

I hear something past the wavering of your breath when my lips brush past your neck

a vote of confidence that I can return the favour.

Not charity, just retribution.

Or revenge if those are your terms.

I didn't know that a person could be so tender, so worshipping,

that they could make me want to cry

You're like a good book I wish I'd written

I'm forced to be totally transparent

How do you make yourself so familiar to me?

Why do we make reference to God so often in bed?

Is it because of how subversive He is in this context?

Or maybe we want to be reminded of all the ways that we are good, and deserving of good sex.

It's inherently catholic to want to be the morally superior human.

So praised be to both of us.

Now worship me.

Do you not enjoy feeling powerful?

Or are you uncomfortable when you're reminded of how much power you have

and how much you love to bask in it?

BLM:

I will not waste my youth

by not advocating for equity and justice.

Because if we stop talking, it will be defeaning.

How strange it is to accept a quarantined state as the new normal

when nothing much has changed.

All this new perspective does is expose the hate that was there all along

"Normal" people do not exist.

People who willingly conform do exist

and so do those who are complicit and content to remain so.

We will not return to "normal" once quarantine lifts

We will return to whatever state of normalcy is most widely accepted.

What that is, is a decision that falls in the hands of all of us.