"...Versatility Was Something Elusive To Me And I Can't Find It In Me To Truly Focus On What's Happening

You and I were stranded. Trapped, in the school’s gymnasium. The rain was starting to coming down, it was pouring. There was this hummingbird rhythm in my chest, loud as drums, where you and I lie, side by side, in dark blue skirts and white school shirts, on worn gym mats. The sound compelling, if I let it. Supposedly my feelings lie on some sort of spectrum? All I know is you and I, no matter what, aren't clear cut. I fantasize, or do I fetishize? I'm hoping you don’t realize, I want to kiss between your eyes, and that mine linger on your thighs. Echoes in a empty colosseum, ourselves as our own audience and with no one to witness it. I’m too young to know what I want, young and confused, in a "phase I'll grow out of eventually." Does it mean anything? If your hands linger on my waist? You make a mistake in your haste, kiss the corner of my lips instead of my cheek, before you leave. You giggle, because what else could it possibly mean? 

—Camille Lee, her

We were made for connection, us, it's what makes us human. The crook of my shoulder is a resting place for your weary head, your hand fits snug in mine and it might seem silly to say but we fit together like puzzle pieces when we cuddle, arms around my waist, you're fast asleep while I admire the details of your face. Falling into you would be easy— so easy, it would be like breathing. Therefore I think I deserve some credit, for resisting your outstretched hand, even when you look so kind, I still have no clue if its genuine, but you look so inviting under these lights.

—Camille Lee, falling into you

She's sickenly sweet like honey with her crooked teeth, her breath smells like candy and her pretty stray eyelash, decorates her cheeks. She's a Venus fly trap. She's got stickers in her hair, glitter on her face and paint on her shoes. She gives her heart away like she has nothing to lose. She's the kind to make wishes on dandelions and to believe that when the stars align she can communicate with the divine in her dreams. We drove out to a field, laid under her "special tree" and watched the tall grass sway in the sunlight. It was something out of a movie. Do I want to be her or do I want to be with her? I couldn't pull it apart without leaving behind spider webs of her and I, traces of each other, like perfume clinging to a sweater I haven't worn in months. She's like a dream.

—Camille Lee, dream girl

I'm not religious but I prayed for this, I begged the sky, I pleaded with the earth, the dirt under my fingers, fistfuls in each hand, the grass beneath my feet and the rocks scraping my knees. I implored the planet, the cosmos and the isolating, quiet of the pitch-black backdrop of the abyss, of the universe, of the stars and all that exists far beyond my reach. please, please send me the one, the perfect one, the destined one, my other half, my soulmate, the one to complete me. I don't believe in love at first sight but I still wish to be loved unabashedly. I stumble in my prayer, does such a person even exist? am I incomplete?

—Camille Lee

When you're sensitive, your world is always crumbling—crumbling and rebuilding, rebuilding and crumbling, demolition and construction begin and end and begin again. I could get new carpets, new floor plan or buy furniture too—all brand new, only for another wave, another hurricane to come again and wash it all away.

— Camille Lee, the world is always ending

Love is the one who holds the ladder when I climb up to change the curtains. Love is the one that insists "let me do it, it's dangerous." but love is afraid of heights and holds the ladder with a white knuckle grip, despite the fall only being three feet deep. "It's still a long way to fall." Love is knowing I must be the one to change the curtains no matter what love says because love is still deathly afraid of heights, and love is mine to protect as much as I am theirs.

— Camille Lee, love is the one who holds the ladder

You're too soft, the world will easily devour you whole. You've got no sharp teeth. All dull and rounded, blunt at the edges. You've got no claws, you've got no teeth, no nails to tear into skin. You're just too soft for this world and the wolves will come to eat you alive. They will feast on your soft bits, gobble you and forget your bones where they lay. You're sobbing and no one will listen, but it is said you deserve what's coming. With torn flesh between their teeth and blood spraying from their mouths, they will ask, why didn't you harden when you know you're just too soft for this world?

—Camille Lee, too soft

An old sparkly journal is buried at the bottom of a weathered and worn, old cardboard box. Every other page has an "I ♡ Alex" written in pink ink on it. That girl used count every hand-holding, shoulder-touch, head-pat her first real crush ever gave her and wrote it all down. "He held my hand and rest his head on my shoulder." Fast forward three years and I started a new school, I'm fifteen years old and I reminisce fondly over my younger self's crush, at a party. Everyone around me mistakes my smile as lingering feelings for him, after all, I wasn't very subtle with my feelings back then. They just don't know. Now with older eyes to look back with, I realized something. I was always made of love. Love was never something I had to look for outside of me, it was always within me, I just didn't know it. I am love and love was always made of me.

—Camille Lee, love is what I was always made of

I’ve still got dance moves, like a friend I no longer talk to. Someone I’ve lost contact with, someone I’ve missed, someone I’ve contemplated reaching out to, to ask “How are you?” but I haven’t found the courage. When there’s a new season of  Bongou Stray Dogs, and she isn’t someone I can just call anymore, what do I do? When my brother is excited about the new Sonic the hedgehog movie, are you too? After all this time, I’ve written so many letters in my mind to tell you I’d still want you to be my friend but would you like to be mine? 

—Camille Lee, "I miss you" excerpt taken from the "Letters I never sent" poetry collection.

read full poem here.

I dreamt of you last night, you and I talked so much, more than we do in real life, it was nice. I don't remember what we said, I think all we did was fight as we usually did, but still it was nice, because I got to talk to you again last night.

—Camille Lee, it was nice to talk to you