It’s the kind of bruise that bleeds in the center. The kind you don’t notice until you’re feeling your legs and your finger catches on the scab. It’s like the blood behind your skin that’s frozen. It’s the way you have to get used to a cigarette and how it burns your throat. But once you get used to the sting, the drag numbs you in all the right places. There once was a space of time during which I never thought I would stop inhaling you. “This is why I can see the stars,” I said. “This is what makes plants grow and this, this is what is beating in my chest.” But it turns out you were just a cigarette burning in all the right places and now thanks to you there’s a 95 percent chance that I’ll never smoke again.

I’ve become increasingly fascinated more with the way something is written than the actual content.

Hey mister, mister young man, your soul is growing so fast it’s gonna crash. Hey mister, mister wise man. Don’t lose yourself while traveling too fast. I’ve never been one for hostility, it’s always been a language I just can’t read. But iron my pen and coat my brow; the coarseness of this love has spun me ‘round. Hey mister, mister please stay. There’s no one else who needs my sorry state. Hey mister, mister truth and gall. I’m afraid by now that we both cannot fall. These lonesome times help gravity along but truth is I feel like I’m standing tall.

Hey mister, mister I love you. My biggest hope is you don’t love me, too.

Our favorite game was to count the eyelashes
That fell on my cheeks whenever you got a little anxious
You said it seems so strange that you can feel all my pain
I just smiled and walked away
I dreamed of leaving you today

Later that same day
I was still thinking of running away
You said my eyelashes reminded you of tiny ribcages
You said if we’d saved everyone since this had all begun
We’d have 100 sons

I said my dear I think you’re wrong
Go and look what we have done
We’ve made a whole lot of skeletons
But there’s nothing to hold onto

I’ve seen my bones fit together
With all sorts of people in all sorts of weather
But they have to get up and go, they have to be on their own.

‘Cause you’ve got the brains and I’ve got the heart
Ian Curtis said it would tear us apart
But it’s tearing me in two
I want to think of you.

But I’m thinking of my bones
They want to get up and go
They want to be on their own.

I’m recording our history now on the bedroom wall
And when we leave the landlord will come
And paint over it all.

As if.

I like guys that can pull off scruff and flannel shirts and still clean up “real good,” that actually enjoy thrift stores, indie music, real country music, hiking and camping. That understand the fact that I’m just a little bit of a feminist and things people say will offend me at any given time. That can handle that fact that I’m really emotional but hide it almost to the point of exploding. I can’t cook, I don’t clean, and I almost never finish a meal. I like guys that can be emotional, and can be totally pretty much callous and know the right times to be so. Open mindedness, creativity/appreciation or understanding of creativity and art. Be softspoken. Be vibrant. Be brash. Be bold. But be quiet. Understand that a portrait is not made in the camera, it is made on either side of it. You have to like to go on walks and late night drives with the radio off. I like holding hands and bumping into each other when we can’t hold hands, so he has to like that too. I like when guys either like coffee or like talking about things to do with it. You have to like Starbucks and Chipotle. Smile. (Crooked clean teeth make smiles even better.) Traditionalist views are great; your own views are even better. Don’t be a republican just because your parents are, and don’t be a democrat just because your parents aren’t. Loving Jesus/being curious about religions is a must. And please, please be taller than me.

Be perfect. Be humble. Be confident. Be brilliant. Be seductive. Be chaste. Be experienced. Be wordy. Be profound. Be kind. Be better. Be gorgeous. Be brash. Be spontaneous. Be cheesy. Be fit. Be cool. Be funny. Know music. Know books. Love contemporary art. Read the news every day. Meditate. Make me coffee. Check the weather. Call just to say hi. Drive up just to say goodnight or goodbye. Frustrate me. Know how to cook. Eat out. Compliment, often. Help me pick what to wear. Help me take it off. Stare in my eyes. Tell me I’m wrong when I’m wrong and tell me I’m right when I’m right. Never tell me I think too much, just let me know you can listen. Be silent when silence is needed. Be loud when you just don’t care. Be strong, be courageous. Love God. Love people. Love arguing. Love being outdoors. Love friends. Love family. Love churches. Enjoy being lost. Be afraid. Be confident.

And forgive me for all the times I’ll mess things up.

He rambled about algebra
And I focused the 50mm lens
If I just blur out our personalities
This could work.

I’m learning that compatibility isn’t as selective as I thought. There isn’t just one person out there for one person; the fact of the matter is this: People are people, people have differences and similarities, people are wonderful and awful and excessively marvelously entertaining at the same time as being dry and closed off. You can really be happy with anyone that you have some sort of compatibility with. So please, please don’t tell me not to stick around if someone else better comes along. Why? Because odds are, someone else better will, or already has come along. But that doesn’t mean I WANT to try and make something or let something work with them. Just because they may be “better for me” based on someone else’s opinion does not mean that they are better for me based on my heart. I don’t want the perfect guy. Every girl has a dream. This girl would be incandescantly happy with an artistic, brilliant, attractive, tall, toned, adventurous and active scholar, a romantic old fashioned but new aged liberally conservative gentleman, and so much more, but not all of those are you. And that’s awesome. The thing I’m trying to say is: I don’t want the perfect guy. I want you. I want all of the mess ups, all of the perfect little moments that if they lasted forever like we wish sometimes, they wouldn’t be as special. I want all of the kisses with soft lips and chapped lips and the awkward moments where we’re holding hands and have to walk through a doorway and no one wants to let go. When we go out to get a gatorade for you and a tea for me from your garage but come back in with empty hands because we just got so lost in a debate or conversation. I want the laying under the trees by a creek and watching leaves spin as they fall down towards us and not even touching but feeling closer than ever. I want your crooked tooth grin when we’re skyping and the fact that even when we’re on the phone you can tell if my nose is scrunching in an actual genuine smile. And the tickle fights during card games on the floor where you are so overbearingly strong in comparison to me that all I can do is be smothered beneath you and I don’t mind. The fact that we’re so polar opposite but so alike at the same time, except where it counts. I want your track and cross country meets and my music shows that we barely ever make it to. I want your family. And how your desire to travel fits with my desire to be somewhere new all the time. I want the late night arguments that turn into talking about our future and how everything is going to work out if it’s meant to be, and how much we’ve been through and how even though we make each other miserable, we make each other equally as happy. We’re the perfect contrast of amazingly good and fantastically bad. Perfection has never been something I’ve been content with. I don’t want perfection, I want you.

I just can’t help wondering if I’m enough or too much or just not for you in your mind.

I got a(nother) job today.

Being employed by three different places at once is a weird feeling for a not yet nineteen year old.

There was a cute boy.

He had nice eyes.

I wouldn’t let myself think he was cute. Not really.

Not until you said what you did.

Six hundred – thirty one steps forward, and one step back is all it takes.

Sometimes it feels like the blood is rushing to my head.

Sometimes it feels like it’s all stagnant, frozen, hard.

Drained.

I’m stiff.

There’s really no way we can find the replay button.

The CD is scratched.

Your shirt is dirty; wiping it off will only make it worse.

I can smell the mint on your breath.

Stop trying to impress me.

All I have left to say is that all of your lines were sincere, one of a kind, genuine.

And you better find new ones for her.

I have this thing. It’s called an addiction. And it’s when you can give up anything, as long as it’s next Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, never Monday, never Wednesday, not yesterday, today, or tomorrow. I feel like a circle of fifths with no reasoning or method when I talk like this. The point is, I’m addicted to you. You’re everyday, you’re marvelous, and you are truly “sur le point.”

Sometimes I wonder if the reason I want you so badly is because I can’t have all of you; and I never want all of you to belong to me. Why? Because that would take away the excitement, the passion, and I fear, the appeal. There are thirty seven days left until you come home. There are four months and maybe a heartache or two or three or ninety before you leave for better things. There is no way I could ever replace you. You are not the only you. Yet there’s only one of me. (Right?) I have never understood why I allow my heart to travel through and over and under and about so many of it’s kind. It needs to settle down. Life needs to settle down. I, myself, me, needs to settle down.

And I can’t wait till we can peel the freckles from our shoulders.