I am kissing someone who wants to know why my mouth tastes like sorry and I can’t find the words to tell him that I’m drowning in the handfuls of love that have been handed back to me in a game of tug-of-war that I never signed up for. I am kissing someone and he is choking on the ashes of all the burnt cities living in my throat and I don’t know how to say that I built them with my bare hands which haven’t stopped shaking since they went up in flames. I am kissing someone and he can feel the past tucked between my teeth, an old ache that pulses every time I tongue it. If I were going to be honest, this is what I would tell him:

that love, for me, is something I know exists but that I can’t quite wrap my head around- like gravity. And just like gravity, I’ve been testing love my whole life, falling through the air and spitting blood out with my baby teeth. I would tell him that love, to me, seems impossible. Once you have it, how do you ever let it go? Once you have it, how do you ever keep it? Love to me, is quiet- a warm hand playing with my hair when I have a headache and love to me, is loud, my god is it loud because when I love you, I will shout it from the rooftops, it will spill from my mouth like a summer storm, like a declaration of dependence, like a promise because call me naïve but love, to me, is a promise. That you’ll hold my hand when the monsters crawl out from under my bed. That I’ll kiss your forehead and be your greatest friend. That you’ll listen to my secrets and my stories and only laugh when you’re supposed to because love, to me, is kind. Love is if I have to go, I’ll close the door softly on my way out. I’ll blow out the candles. I’ll send a letter.

I am kissing someone who wants to know why my mouth tastes like sorry and I’m telling him that I thought it was right last time but it wasn’t and it’s been years but I’m still picking out shards of truth from my bloodstream, fitting the pieces together to find where we went wrong. I’m telling him that love was not quiet or kind and love didn’t hold my hand. I’m telling him that love hurt in a way that love shouldn’t have because love should have known better. Love knew better.

Autumn has nudged summer out of the way and I am still kissing him because I told him all of these things and he didn’t laugh once. He is lighting candles inside my heart and staying awake by the glow. I am still kissing him and my mouth doesn’t taste like sorry. It tastes like something new. It tastes like love.

These are the stories kept hidden in the depths of this blog. I never got the chance *or the emotion, yes* to finish them. But I had to put them out there because they tell stories that I will probably remember without the need to look back. Failed romances bring out the best and the worst of us. I just wish these weren't just fragments of the beautiful memories and the haunting nightmares of the thing we all love and hate: the past. Hand on heart, I wish there's more to them.




"You played with my heart,"
"Well, I've got the reputation. Didn't I?"


He held a pack of cigarettes in one hand and alcohol on the other. His eyes were dry and reddish and he looked at me with pleading, wasted admiration. Drowned in the whispers of everyone else around us he said "I love you,"

All I could ever muster was "I'll try,"


"You have to know that I will lie to you, because I couldn't bear to tell you the truth. You have to know that I will not always be as sweet as you want to be, because that's not who I am. You have to know that I will sometimes forget about texting you or calling you, because you're not always on my mind. You have to know a great deal of Nos coming your way, because I'm not the kind who always say yes."

"Okay."


"I want to paint you naked."
"Isn't it enough that I bare you my soul?"


I will write so many stories about you, about how much I feel for you, and you will know nothing about them.

I am a writer. I am supposed to have a word for everything, but I have no word to describe what I feel for you. I am a writer. I am supposed to recount my feelings through words. But I have too many feelings for you that a paragraph won't be enough to describe them.

So I will write about you, because you give me a lot of them.
I will write about you, as you write about someone else.
I will write about you, as you try to forget about everything that used to matter.
I will write about you even if it means writing a whole damn book.


Is it bad that I know what I deserve? I want a clean state. I don't want to look at someone and remember that they belonged to someone else.

I know what I deserve, and I know how much a "No" hurts.


"I'm with her, but I love you,"
"I'm not the one with a decision to make,"


He told me I'm nice and that he likes me. By now my heart should have been flustered and my stomach should have been doing somersaults but instead I'm running the opposite direction. He's not supposed to like me because I'm nice,"


"But I did what everyone else failed to do, I stayed."

I know a girl. 

My love,
it's been a long time
since my lips damped yours.
Every day after that damned night,
I try to recall how it good it is.
Now that so much time has passed, I
wonder if you still
remember how it felt.
Every time I hear your voice,
I wonder how many pieces
of the person I love is left of you.
And now that you have become
someone you both love and hate, I
couldn't wait to see it for myself.
I have waited long enough
and I am still waiting
because nothing ever
makes me feel alive more than you do.
I wonder for every night
the next night I will
be in your arms again.
I walked this world without you
and it made me feel like I'm a
many different person with only
one dream, to have you.
Every morning when I wake up,
I decide whether it's the kind of
dream I want to pursue.
Our memories that haunt me
have made it difficult for me
to say no.
Because the girl that I am
is more than the promises I have broken
and the excuses I have made
to cover myself.
And while I am both running away from
hope and chasing after a chance,
I try to recall the feeling of having you.
But for now, let this sink in.
This is what it feels like to lose you
and I can only hope that you share
the same agony too.