ode

I am a poor lover, a desperate, delusional, dream-filled child.

I love by ripping myself into pieces, which I offer in devotion to you, wonderful you.

I can only paint you with shaking hands by the romantic gaze I look up from, I can only long to make you smile. Yes, I would cut my tongue from my throat if you asked me and I fall into narratives, maybe not love.

I will leave you because I am a coward.

To protect the beauty I take candidly, temporally, but infinitely. I cannot stay, risk you leaving a memory that will sting where I burn. When you see me, you can cut me deeper. I let you live in the beauty I found you in, and travel to sweet thoughts, safe and alone. Lovers are the candles in an alley, I am yours so much as the love I remember is mine.

From first love I devoted the optimism of a dreamer born of happily ever afters, unacquainted with uncertainty. I built us a little life in a second of speaking, in a smile and in tensing in the seconds we were left alone. I love eye contact. I love your freckles.

I was all giggles and daydreams, sleeping to dream of a future that was your face.

I lost some respect here, for seeing someone’s reflection as more important than mine. I learned I wanted to be picked, I found out I was not enough, and the shame for being me, not her.

I forever shall cherish my second, for if he learned I loved him, he would still laugh. You forced my eyes, which once scanned past you and trained them to seek you first. This is to the one that made them laugh, to the one who stands confident in front of a highschool class. I lost a piece of me lingering in the air they breathed, as if they pulled me there themselves. You looked, I loved, hard, back. It's all naivety, the novelty of a shy compliment and the first brush of a leg. You taught me that my lips existed, that a smile could linger longer than a conversation. My nerves could envelop me until you entered, that my mind would quiet until you were gone. A soul opening must give something and maybe it was my pride, or the girlish love and teenage capacity to make a romance from a distance and claim it to be the end. You taught me friendship, you did, and the ache of wit and a game. I woke up eventually and I lost my sideline stature, burned by the broken hopes so uselessly tossed into an unwilling face. I founded a home not built, held on to the blueprints for so long I thought I owned it. Young and the pain of another, who will not let you in, who will not let you fix it. I remember when I thought I would never get over you.

Next I found the magic of springtime in a soul. Blooming and growing, I anticipate silk ribbons and giggling between wineglass sips, almost choking while hoping it would loosen my words or maybe yours. Maybe your eye contact, it meant something more than I imagined. I could barely see that I was falling back in love. I was already thinking of how your hair would feel between my fingers before we even spoke. Your eyes would never fall from grace in their open, forever reluctant nature. Silk memories you weaved into my mind as if I was meant to think so delicately. I love you differently now, I love you forever still.

Then you, where, what was to gain but excitement? I admit it, and I should have never turned back to you; that first night, I realized I knew what I was doing. Oh, but I am just a girl in the end and so weak to a man who offers interest. Especially when I felt spotlighted in the wake of your favour, and eyes so kind, so endearing I could only trust. I wanted so desperately to feel the completion of your kiss, and fear was replaced in desire. To be afraid of a touch I dreamt of was the exhilaration which would echo past the year to accompany your fading face. Music and driving and grown-up fantasies for moments, a touch, I knew they were not infinite. But I felt so real that I believed while lying to accommodate the judgement. I had learned already; I knew to only ask for what I could be sure of. I thought I was trained to notice when I was dreaming again. I had only been doing what I thought we both wanted; I was doing what you wanted and wanted you to stay. I was lonely, and you were there, at night, when the loneliness got worse but never in the morning. I had to be dropped off down the street, I was too young to be acquainted with your friends. I knew better, or maybe I was 19, and that’s why it hurt when you forgot me before I woke up. I still feel left in the wake of annoyance in your bed. I still remember how your fingers felt trying to teach me guitar. I will never hold on to words so faithfully with that unbroken belief I gave to you.

I face my own treachery in the process of being kicked away

I long for nothing more than to break off bits of myself and offer them to the people who I love, and maybe that’s a little bit of everyone. I may not be as strong as I want to seem, but I love and live in memories you will always be a house in my heart