your favorite punching bag

there are worse things than not receiving love. there are sadder stories than this. there are species going extinct and a planet warming. i told myself: who are you to complain, you with these frivolous extracurricular needs?

you never need anyone else to understand the wonder of your beating heart. As long as it's pushing, so can you

back to my coffee. back to my errands. back to pretending my heart’s not on constant high alert. it’s not that i’m afraid of love - well, at least not entirely. it’s that i’ve known the weight of wanting it. and God, wanting, really wanting makes you vulnerable in ways no amount of sarcasm or emotional detachment can protect you from. if i let myself actually want it. love, connection, anything real, suddenly there would be something at stake. that’s when it could hurt. so i don’t want it. except i do. except i don’t. it’s funny, in a sad kind of way. or sad, in a funny kind of way. either way, i guess it’s working. i get to keep my peace and my romanticism. i just don’t get to keep anyone.

but also i’m lying. just a little. the kind of lying that doesn’t hurt anyone except maybe me, when i’m alone and overthinking in the checkout line. because while i say i’m not open to love, i’m still looking for it. passively. casually. it’s like background noise to help me sleep at night.

i soak up the concept of love like sunlight. i read about it, i watch about it, i listen to it on loop. i enjoy listening to my friends who happen to find themselves lucky enough to find it. i’m the friend who cries at your engagement even though i’m single and vaguely bitter. i’m not looking. i say it like a fact, like a boundary, like a joke i’ve rehearsed countless times. “i’m just focusing on myself right now.” “dating is exhausting.” “i enjoy my peace” it’s all true, technically. i do like being alone. i like not having to explain my moods to anyone. i like being able to leave the second something feels wrong without a full-blown breakup. i’m good at being single. great at it, even.

birthdays are weird. i don’t hate my birthday. i just don’t feel connected to it anymore. it feels like a reminder of how much has changed, of how much hasn’t. of the people who used to call, of the ones who said “i’ll always be around” and meant “until it’s inconvenient.” i don’t mean to be a party pooper. i’m just tired of pretending this day feels good when mostly, it feels like a report card for things i didn’t finish. a tally of who didn’t show up. a mirror i didn’t ask for. birthdays get quieter. no one warns you about that. they get lonelier. more loaded. you think the older you get, the more solid things will feel. but a lot of the time, you’re just better at carrying the uncertainty. and still part of you waits. for that one name to pop up. for someone to say, “i know this year was rough. i’m glad you’re still here.” but most of the time, it’s quiet. not peaceful quiet. just quiet.

there is no great cosmic stillness reserved for your private sorrows. there is only this: life, humming and pulsing and surging forward, as thoughtlessly as blood through a body that does not know how to stop beating. and you, battered and broken and bewildered, are somehow expected to keep moving too.

how greedy. these days when you look around, how many little ways are you assaulted by the notion that it's wrong to need others. but the yawning in you doesn't understand logic or sound or reason. it only sees sundays, only sees what you do-not-have, only sees the look others share and that you so desire. sick with dread at it, sick at how it makes you want, how you yearn in no direction.

these days when you close your eyes, what else do you want but to be loved in a warm and permanent way. the open soft hand, the lowered voice, the blanket around your shoulders. you want to be loved like hot chocolate, like spring flowers, like dawn. you want to go to sleep protected and wake up fully rested. you want the wounds in you to matter, you want someone who is patient around your scars.

i want him to be so bored he goes to play with my hair. twisting two strands together because he thinks that’s a braid, clipping the end with the first bow he sees. wordlessly appreciating me, learning me, like the first time you ever pet a cat. you almost want to pull away from how soft it is, it shocks you. but then you go to touch again, and again, your mind quieting to allow room for the pure, unconditional peace that comes from loving another being as you. your silent heart fills in the rest. you are content with just petting this quiet, simple little animal because it mirrors your own natural state. i want you to be quiet with me, i want you to touch me simply because. i want you to be curious for the glint in my eyes and the curled ends of my hair even though you’ve seen them a thousand times. touch me because i am yours to touch.

heartsick. the exhaustion runs deeper than bones, it's in the marrow, the longing floods your veins. you feel unsteady, like your heart shifted, or you just woke up from a nap in the wrong body and you spend the next half-hour looking up at the popcorn ceiling, inventing new constellations, because really that's all you could manage to do - you're terrified. you want a new mouth, new teeth, a new tongue so you could forget the language of yearning and the bite of its hunger. you're consumed by it; you know you can't go back to it and escape unscathed. it demands patience, and you've been unknowingly training for it. your whole life was one big waiting game, so you wait. and wait some more. and wait.

what i’ve noticed is that my need to write peaks when i’m going through something painful, but mostly when i’m pining for something, someone. why do i find my most potent inspiration in grief and in the void that comes from what’s missing?

i want to write. i want things to make sense again. i’ve been thinking about the role writing used to play in my life, back when i used to write voraciously, back when it was all i ever did and the only thing i knew how to do. the only thing i had. the role it played was this: the act of writing, of contextualizing my thoughts and feelings and experiences, made things fall into place. made them neater, delineated them. without tangible proof of my thoughts, they float and disappear; i cannot name my feelings, cannot form a coherent string of thoughts that is meaningful in any way. i am less me when i don’t write. my inner life a dull gray.

i must be somewhere inside of you. even if your brain has forgotten, perhaps your teeth remember. or your fingers. i hardly remember your voice but the pain of you floats in some remote current of my blood. i carry you in my depths, trapped in the sludge like one of those corpses the sea refuses to give up.

i cant remember what you sound like but i could map out your beauty marks with my eyes closed.