i didn't think they were when we first met. i mean, why would i? they were suave, confident, hot. filled to the brim with sticky hubris and emotion. but everyone has a vice, and the best of people keep theirs well hidden. so i find myself here, the place where all good characters begin-- in love. i definitely wasn't expecting it, but that's another story entirely. i think insecurity is a cautious devil. like the fairy stories i was raised on, it's cunning, a trickster. it masquerades as many things- pride, confidence, and anger being the most prevalent flavors. my lover is none of these things, save maybe a bravado that only comes from finally having the courage to live truly as oneself after years of running. this bravado is enticing, but not necesarily a symptom. perhaps the greater fault is that i am entirely consumed by their personhood. i, like a crocodile on a winters day, bask in the sunlight of their soul. if my limbs were iron i would carve wheels from pure stone and a wagon of aged wood and use it to drag myself to their feet. yet, love is farsighted, and time has revealed the true deliciousness of their personhood rests on the facet that they too, are human. so, we make our bed in the meadows and we fight our battles in the night. i speak more than i listen, they keep feelings like secrets. they shrivel and burrow to avoid, whereas i become louder to confront. our love is indeed an unlikely story. but i like it, and i want to make it. so, i find myself getting quieter, conceeding more. i let them win and ask them to decide. they do, and we fight sometimes. they would rather be disappointed than rejected. god, don't we all. i speak in riddles and they in fact. maybe we are too different but we don't let it deter us, for we are far more the same than we could ever realize. still, when i speak plainly they assume puzzles, when i gently correct they quiver, when i say too much they internalize, communication rought by years of passive agressive parents and partners before me. i, who have known none of this, continue my ramblings, wanting only to share more of myself with my lover. i say the wrong thing. there is no wrong. i say things. they hurt. i don't often mean it the way they take it. their interpretation is a faulty compass that rarely points to true north. sometimes the sheer polarity of their interpretation shocks me. i say i'm tired, they ask if i want them to leave. my direct mind cannot wrap around their curved one. if i wanted them to leave i would have asked. and i would never want such a thing. i say i am scared to become dull. they apologize for ruining me. i ask them what they want, they cannot give an anwer. insecurity is not a trait, it is a tyrant. i see them beneath the ruling scepter but i cannot budge them out from under it. so i try to be gentle. i speak softly. i conceed. i give them exactly what they ask for. i have been trained on what to avoid. i wonder if this training is making me trickier, or more like the partners and parents that made them this way in the first place. i am no saint, i wish i could learn to shut my desperate eager mouth, a chore i have resisted and fought since childhood with the will and stubborness that remains unchanged. still i ache. the constant intent on misunderstanding me ages my soul. i feel the ache begging them from within my loving eyes. "see me as i am, lover," it cries, "please hear me as i am."
Jan 13, 2025

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there's no standard treatment for a broken heart. i sigh quietly to myself, thinking i’ll actually find an answer on how to heal a broken heart on google it all began five years ago, when i finally started spending time with him—the boy who seemed to shine a little brighter than the rest. he was the kindest, the prettiest, the one who made my heart feel lighter just by existing. and he wanted to be my friend. how could i not fall? kept the friendship up for a couple of years and my crush for him grew even stronger. sometimes he would come up in my dreams and then i would try to summon fate itself—manifesting, wishing, aching for him to love me back. because, as every girl knows, there is always a phase where we believe the universe listens. and so, i rinsed and repeated, hoping one day, he would look at me the way I looked at him when we messaged or meet up, he felt like my twin flame. a connection so deep, so natural, that i convinced myself he must feel it too. he understood me, and i understood him but i never felt that he liked me as much as i liked him. and then, it ended—not with a dramatic farewell, not with a grand confession, but with silence. I ruined it in my own quiet way: fading out, withdrawing, blocking him, letting the messages go unanswered. I stopped reaching out, and so did he. it was as if we had been a story left unfinished, pages ripped from the book before the final chapter could be written it has been four months since we last spoke. and now, he has a girlfriend. may I add—throughout our years of friendship, he never had one. situationships, yes, but never something real. yet, here she is. not me. the day I found out, it struck me in a way I hadn’t expected. I had let him slip from my thoughts, let weeks pass without missing him—until I saw what I had once longed for, in the hands of someone else. I hadn’t realized I was still holding onto the dream until it shattered before me. now, my mind drifts to what could have been. I picture myself in her place, feel the ghost of a life that was never mine. would he have loved me, if I had held on? if I had tried? was I ever good enough for him? wasn’t I pretty enough for him…? why… her… not… me…? time is meant to heal. i know this. but this wound runs deep. losing someone you once felt connected to in the deepest corners of your soul is a quiet kind of grief, the kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly but lingers in the spaces between thoughts. my heart feels heavy, my soul even heavier but today, i miss him more than usually. i’ve fallen to deep, so now every time i think of him, i will miss him deeply.
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nervous like a dog i lower my head as i come to greet you. i can only actualize through your likeness, through your touch. love me, mother earth, with the gentle hand you give offer your children. love me, please, somebody love me.  nervous, kind of like a dog, i kiss your face. i’ve never been nervous around anyone before, i just was always kind of just nervous around myself. but you but you that’s what i always say: but you, my favorite exception but you make me nervous. i don’t think it’s in a bad way, but rather in a natural way, like a human has ought to be nervous like a dog, cautious and slow, hesitant, but still excited to love, in order to survive. wound up but relaxed. scared but safe. anxious to give. i think that this is the right way to be. to be nervous, to be strung tight, but also to feel electric, to feel in the nerves. kiss my shoulder and i jolt, my back and i squirm, my, well my anything really, and i will lose focus. my electrochemistry, my feel of my own body, my understanding of who i am on a chemical level, is conducted by the girl i am in love with. bring me to life. please, oh please, let me live. breathe into me the words of old lovers and the grins of new faces. let me become divine through your touch. let me become.  to become a lover is to become something outside of yourself. i love vinyl and the soil, and so i will take this love inside of me from the outside world. i love stand up comedy, and so often i will tell a joke like people are watching. to love, and to internalize that love, is to be otherly: to become a mosaic. my body is almagate of record players and alligators and shitty punky bands and ottessa moshfegh novels and that is who i am.  to love is to be.  and i am scared i will never become you. not that i want to be you, but that i want to be like it is nothing but natural to want to become like what you desire, to find her in yourself and suddenly become relieved to be the girl you are, and yet, nervous, like a dog, i greet your towering presence, scared i am not like enough, but beaming with the joy of being loved by the only individual. 
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