Do you remember when we used to plead with the kingdom of the sun? We’d run along the shoreline, the tide crashing swimming up around our ankles and stinging the cuts on the backs of our feet from shoes that never fit… the ocean was an ominous puddle reflecting the grey sky then and we thought we could keep the sun burning for us forever, even though we never could convince it to stay awake. We thought we were smart, but ended up being cursed by the complex naivety of our youth… “smart yet young.”

I wonder if there’s room to believe those two can exist in a sentence harmoniously.

I’m tired of reading notes about love, and how you triumphed over the way memories of me clung to you- “for all this time.”

But when I was dying and no one was looking for me I felt horribly unromantic. Why should I give anyone anything else different?

“So is this what it takes to separate the craving from the purpose, measured by success and not the motives of the heart?”

The greater the love, the greater the loss.

Here I am. 

Here I am at zero.

Here I am.

Here I am with less than nothing.

They say, “let’s be friends” as though we haven’t considered the option in one of ten thousand scenarios played out during the countless hours of sleep we’re not getting.

They say it so easily, with no more effort than it would take someone to blink. Of course they want to be friends, keep us at arm’s length and enjoy the benefits of our charms without taking on any of the baggage. Of course they want to be the heroes saving us from oblivion- and beyond. They’ve already removed themselves from the situation so they can avoid getting dragged into the undercurrent of all these bullshit feelings. But no one feels closer to the nuclear meltdown than the people giving birth to babies with two heads. So here’s my two-headed freak:

Fuck your friendship. Fuck the warm cozy images you played in your head that made you say it out loud. Fuck your hectic schedule and the way your mother doubted me because I wasn’t Muslim. Fuck your phone call. Fuck the pictures you drew of me as a lobster. Fuck your blasé attitude. Fuck the way your picture shows up under the headline, “[your name] will miss you,” when I deactivated my Facebook. Fuck your 2 a.m. text message that finally replied to the one I sent at 11. Fuck your feelings. Fuck your lack of them for me.

Fuck you.

The world has slowed down. Clouds, the rain, fresh new stems of dandelions- slowed down to watch us stay still.

I could’ve whispered, “come closer” into the distance between your shoulder blades to see you hesitate to hold my face. The night you grasped me by the heart and dangled me over something deeper than a sea, I dropped into the abstract spaces of your want, falling through cracks failing to stain your eyes, lips, the quaking core within your chest… every tumble made in attempt to dismantle a growing divide.