“(To Be Loved Means To Be Consumed. To Love Means To Radiate With Inexhaustible Light. To Be Loved

I loved you and then I didn’t and then I realised how wrong we were. I realised that your hands had not been welcome here and that even when I locked the door, you found a way to kick it open. I loved you and then I didn’t and then I realised I never knew what love was. all those terrifying memories that still feel too close and raw. memories that don’t feel like they belong to me. my therapist calls it abuse and I still don’t know if it actually was or if I’m just crazy and emotional like you said I was. I loved you and then I didn’t and then I was too sad to remember that my body isn’t a graveyard and things will be okay and I’ll never forget you or the things you did but I will move on. all those mornings spent in tears, the heart palpitations that were too urgent to feel like butterflies. your knuckles and the dark and then blinding light and then I have to explain away the bruises again to my mother. I loved you and you said you did too but you don’t hurt the ones you love. you don’t hurt the ones you love. I still loved you even when you did and I still don’t know if it was my fault or not.

I so want to be in bed with you right now, watching the office, wishing pam and jim together. main characters in our own love story, finding magic in even the most normal of places. my head on your shoulder and your hand on my thigh. sighing because god, isn’t this just the stuff of fairytales. aren’t afternoons spent in bed with your lover just inherently magical.

we kiss and we laugh and we get toast crumbs all over the pillowcase. everything I’ve ever wanted is here. everything I’ve ever wanted is you.

texts between angels trying to live as mortals by keaton st. james

I've nodded and being complicit in my own destruction, maybe more than I should have. because that was way easier than arguing about it, so much easier than just saying no because I am so used to the word falling on deaf ears. Our relationship wasn’t that bad, I say to my girlfriends. But I would close my eyes and leave my body and whisper to my bleeding heart: turn over, you don’t need to like it. god knows that’s not what he wants anyway. you just need to do it. close your eyes and lose yourself to him. do what he wants. do it. felt myself cower into nothingness. again.

my love, there’s never enough time is there? I always say to myself after I’ve left you that I wish I had kissed you harder, wish I had hugged you tighter, wish I could’ve stayed a little while longer. the clocks are just never on our side, are they?

please, leave your phone in my bag and come visit me tomorrow to get it. please, call me when I get home to check I’m okay. please, spend your evenings at mine, curled up on the couch like you belong here, next to my notebooks and coffee mugs and paintings. It seems that I don’t quite know how to midnight without you.

when I turn to leave you after I’ve kissed your cheek goodbye, every single time I wish I could run back to you and say “oh, 5 more minutes won’t hurt”. every single time, I turn to look at you and find you still waiting where I left you, smiling, saying that you love me. you love me. you love me.

self destruction is an interesting thing!

To be loved is to be eaten, ripped to the bone, skin tender and pink. A blush so bloody, my sweet killer, collaborators in each other’s demise.

To love is to attend hundreds of funerals of the person they used to be. How many did I create? How many did I kill? Have you done the same to me, my love?

To be loved is to die and to be reborn in their kiss over and over and over again, the resurrection painful as my bones rearrange to fit the mould of your body.

To love is to kill, heart in your hands and safety in your mouth. I am the funeral pyre and you are the onlooker, crying tears of grief but warmed by the flames. I burn to keep you safe, lover.

To be loved is to consume, gag, swallow everything whole, the sugar too sickly sweet, body unused to softness like this.

To love is to scream, is to lose in this battle for two, is to be vulnerable and hopeful and innocent and lost and found. A paradigm of desperate emotions.

To be loved is to kiss and suffocate but not pull away, no, never pull away.

for someone that feels empty a lot of the time, I’m sure able to give and give and give. it’s my nastiest and most damaging habit. maybe that’s why I have such a fascination with sandcastles and other temporary things, the way I commit all my time to a couple of fleeting moments. strange that I can always feel the storm before it hits, the way the air sticks to my body like ghosts. don’t I lose love like eyelashes. don’t I hold love like a hoarder. this little light lady is all smoke and no flame.