everything i wanted to say but never did.

a collection of almosts, maybes, and apologies.

[edgesofmydreams]

my privacy, don't fucking invade it

it’s a violent assault and i smile through the whole thing. i knew it was over from the moment it began, i could see it written so clearly on your face. i try to catch your eye but you never look back. that was the last time i almost meant something to you. that was the last time we were us. 

[edgesofmydreams]

helpless

my head spins. it feels like I’m drowning, pushed to the brink of unconsciousness. his tongue teases my lips and dips inside, tasting like burnt sugar and cigarettes. my breath catches as he picks me up off the counter and presses me into him, his hand slipping further under the hem of my dress. a soft whimper escapes from my lips and i feel him smile against me. it’s an interplay of tongue and teeth and I take him in with all of me, memorizing this moment forever - the hardness, the hunger, the intensity of it all - indulging in the pleasure of having my innocence stolen by him. 

[edgesofmydreams]

coastlines

“[redacted]? i-”

my voice falters. i can’t. i hold everything back, suddenly afraid of my own self, of how fast my heart is beating, of what i might say. the soft echoes of his name still linger on my lips. i don’t manage say anything after that, but i don’t need to. he already knows. he just presses me against him and kisses me. hard. firm. absolute. quieting my fears with his steadfast faith. i close my eyes and take it all in, this moment right here, with him. the crashing of waves against the cliff's edge fills the silent space around us, echoing with a serene brutality that calms me. to our left, the pacific stretches endlessly into the distance, bleeding into the april sky like azure paint spilled across canvas. its sheer immensity washes over me and makes me still. please god, let this be forever.

[edgesofmydreams]

it's like this

it’s like this.

you have to wear perfectly fitted jeans, or the cutest top, or say the funniest thing so that people don’t forget you. you have to be skinny, but not too skinny, you have to buy this, wear this, say that, think this, want that. and you can’t have frizzy hair, your eyeshadows have to blend, you can’t have chipped polishes, and for god’s sake, you can’t be caught dead wearing that because it was so yesterday. you have to go to parties, you have to drink this, make fun of that, leave with him. you can’t show up early, but certainly not too late, because that’s how it just is. you can’t bite your nails, you have to tweeze your hairs, you have to keep up with the latest and the greatest and always ditch the lamest. 

and then you meet him

 and he says fuck that, i love you and you realize wow, it’s just like that.

[edgesofmydreams]

transience

the entropy of this life terrifies me. against all reason, all hope, all promise, i gave everything i had to build something beautiful and watched it fall apart as quickly as it came to be. in a matter of weeks. nights. hours. minutes. what is real and what is imagined? i feel as if i conjured you out of the silent pleadings of my own mind, out of the naive sort of fairytales that only materialize at midnight behind heavy eyelids and a childish heart. how stupid could i be. i thought i could take authorship for once and rewrite my own story. and in my summer of experimentation, it was the thrill of the becoming that intoxicated me. never the being. there was a world wholly new and unimagined and unexplored that lay at my feet, teasing a line i had yet to cross. and so i did. every moment was hallucinogenic, as if out of a psychoactive dream. i could do anything i wanted, be anyone i wanted, fuck anyone i wanted. it was a rapid free fall and everything was transcendent until i awoke one morning and i didn’t want you to leave. and that’s when i was destroyed. it crept up on me quiet and unassuming, in the dimples of your smile, the greens of your eyes, the gentle press of your hand against my waist, your light kisses on my forehead at sunrise. and i dared to think that maybe this could be it. the endgame. the epilogue i’ve spent the last 20 years writing. that after watching dreams come true for everyone else, it was finally my turn. you were the promise of a happy ending that felt so real and natural and mine. and then you left. 

how stupid could i be. i will forever be bound by the incompetence of my pathetic humanity. i cannot write my own story. i cannot change who i am, who i will become - no matter how skinny i get, how much prestige i attain, how many boys i kiss, how much eyeliner i wear, how many friends i have. an invisible god governs this universe, chaos obliterates destiny, and i control nothing. i am nothing. 

this is my surrender. 

[edgesofmydreams]

roma

and i hope i’ll walk these streets again someday, retracing the footsteps that we left all those years ago when we were just kids with broken hearts and broken dreams. and i hope that it will hurt a little less than it does now. that i’ll wake up one day when we’re both grown up, when i’m left with only memories of you - blonde and blue - and be able to look back on this in remembrance and smile.

that’s the hope i choose.

[edgesofmydreams]

that first night.

there will be many beautiful moments in life. but this one is ours.

[edgesofmydreams]

altered states.

you gave me this feeling that there were no tomorrows, no others, no buts, no maybes. that there was only you and me, this room, this bed, your leg, my leg, your heart, my heart, and all that was left unspoken in between. you pull me into you, so close until i can feel your heartbeat against my body, your breath on the nape of my neck. and for one night, i let myself believe that this moment was ours. that is, until the sun rose in the morning and all that was left were the pieces of me i gave to you, and the lingering scent of my perfume between the sheets.

i text you but you don’t respond.

[edgesofmydreams]

deja vu.

it’s late - a time of night that is only shared by the mad, the heartbroken, and the in-love. you’re awake and so am i. we laugh and argue and reminisce about past unfortunate late night rendezvous, about secret midnight phone calls and who fell asleep first, about how i still love to read and by some miracle, you now do too. it’s first an hour, then two, now three. no one bothers to acknowledge the quiet echoes of a heartbreak not yet healed because its been too long and we’ve forgotten what this feels like -  the soft amber streetlights, gentle staccatos of rainfall, your boyish teases that awaken butterflies in me. and so we fall back into each other like we did all those years ago, telling stories of the past and of the future until the sun comes up and we get to do it all over again, pretending that this will be forever.

[edgesofmydreams]

fall from eden.

she looks into his eyes, gutted by the pain that laces through the steel blue. eyes which once saw a world in a grain of sand, an eternity in an hour, now bore the weight of the world in its vacant gaze, haunted by horrors which should never be known to a boy of nineteen. and as his fragile frame pressed against hers, and her fingers traced lightly across his scars, she prayed to a silent god somewhere that nothing else in this world would be the cause of another.

[edgesofmydreams]

beautiful psychopath.

i’m haunted by the way you used to look at me, stripped down and uncomplicated. you were skilled at making me love you without uttering a word. eternity was in your eyes and i abandoned myself to it, terrified and intensified and breathless at the naked disclosure. i let you see all of me and not once did you blink in your deception – pretty brown eyes hiding a broken mind and broken ways.

forever to you lasted four months, leaving me at the end of summer unraveled by your lies, your recklessness, your indifference. how effortlessly did those promises fall from your lips when you said that you cared, that it was us until the end. i deserve more than just to be your momentary whims. but somehow, i let you take my innocence, my belief in happy endings, because at the end of the day, it’s not you i don’t trust, it’s me.

one look and i know i’d let you break me twice.

[edgesofmydreams]

1.17.21 at 12:10pm

when i saw you today, despite distance and time striking between, my reaction was visceral. my heart started racing, i couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. you were so near yet so so far. it made me feel weird, like i still had you memorized despite all these years apart and yet somehow, i didn’t know the person i saw in front of me. it shattered my delusions of you, the parts of me that kept you alive and hidden within everything that remained of me after you. i don’t know you, i haven’t for 2 years. it doesn’t matter if we were best friends, if i spent my nights writing about you, about how alive i felt when i was with you. it doesn’t matter if i still love you. because you don’t exist anymore. and i have to let you go.

the truth is, i fucking miss you. and it’s gonna be the hardest thing i’ve ever had to do - to move on from you when you’ve suddenly come crashing back into my life on a random sunday morning. i’m lost and confused and hurt and tired. yet you’re all i can think about. i guess i shouldn’t be surprised. you’ve always had that effect on me.

[edgesofmydreams]

i desire the things which will destroy me in the end.

[edgesofmydreams]

seating charts.

i wander into the lecture hall, occupying a seat closest to the back wall. and as hundreds of faces i don’t recognize start spilling into the sterile room like currents of water, i recall the day i walked into our classroom all those summers ago, scanning the whiteboard for my name and finding it next to yours. you smiled at me and it set my life off course for the next eight years, weaving yourself delicately and unknowingly into my life. i grew to know you like no other. i knew that you liked math and physics, that you despised english and loved to torturously remind me about it, that you had a habit of leaning back dangerously in your chair during class, that somehow, you’d never get cold and would stroll into class in a t-shirt and shorts while i was bundled in the corner with a sweatshirt. i knew who you were at 11am on a monday. but i also knew who you were at midnight. i slowly memorized the way you laughed and whispered to me over the phone because it was late and your dad was asleep. the way you’d text me when you wanted to talk. the way your voice would deepen an octave when you grew tired, getting softer and softer. the way i could hear the smile in your voice whenever you would talk about something you loved. the way you sounded when you said you cared. 

now i shift uncomfortably in my seat, nauseatingly aware of the stranger next to me that’s not you. aware of everyone who is not you and will never be you. and i know that you’re gone and everything should have faded away with time but i still remember you. i still love you, against all logic, all reason, all promise, all hope and happiness that could be. it’ll always be you. so i take a shaking breath, look up into the crowd of empty faces, and hide you away in the most inarticulate parts of myself, keeping the dream of you alive in me.

[edgesofmydreams]

east 77th.

you came in, hair undone and shirt buttons awry, looking at me. there was no small talk, no pleasantries exchanged, no desire for the superfluous. your hands explore every concave and convex, my lips parting in surprise as they slip under my sweater. i am pulled into oblivion as you quiet me with your tongue, pressing my body into yours. raw with every mouthful, you undo me. i gasp and feel you smile against me, echoes of your name lingering on my lips as you pull away, breathing heavily. in the half-light, your eyes tease of silk sheets and cigarettes.

i don’t want comfort. i want poetry, i want art, i want danger, i want freedom, i want sin. i want you.

[edgesofmydreams]

somebody that i used to know.

it’s different now

i’m no longer the girl in your midnight phone calls

and you’re no longer the boy written in these pages

its december, two years and three months.

nothing has lasted but a yearbook signature and memories of you lingering in me 

as i walk through downtown, the cold biting my lips the way love used to.

it’s different now

but as i pass by the school that once was ours,

it all comes back without warning

the parking lots, the libraries, the classrooms

they always trace back to you.

same old paperbacks, same knit cardigan

same brown eyes, same boyish smile

the brief chapter of a girl and a boy

who grew to have bigger dreams than their hometowns.

[edgesofmydreams]

the week you visited yale.

the air is unusually crisp and dry

it’s 4:30AM there.

i can hear the staccato notes of rain upon ivy and cobblestones outside

and your words, slurring from fatigue, cutting through the electrical static.

i’m gonna stay up with you this time, okay? i promise.

it echoes with boyish persistence, futile 

as the whispers fall gently from your lips 

getting softer and softer

until all that’s left is the quiet hum of your breathing.

i smile and syncopate mine to yours,

whisper goodnight into the empty space between us,

and fall asleep 5,000 miles away

with the quiet stories of you and me tucked away behind my ears.