an open letter to lovers

never forget to fall in love with the world

[inkbyaporia]

— ap (06.2022)

[inkbyaporia]

you cannot love someone into loving you.

[inkbyaporia]

they say that those who return from war never stop thinking about fighting. after all their years of wishing for peace, once they have it they seem restless, displaced. caught between two extremes, they don’t know what to hunger for. but pain is more memorable than peace, and even the most shell shocked soldiers run back to war, ready to die that familiar, fated death.

i do not forget this when you speak of her.

you never pass up an opportunity to tell me i am your sunshine, your happiness, the one you miss when you are alone and 100 miles away. i believe you, but you are far too sorrowful to crave only sun. in every one of your wounds, i recognize her teeth. i do not blame you for letting her destroy you. she is effortlessly beautiful, sleek and strong as a hand-crafted gun. her voice is like the sound just before the rain— belly deep and soft as beaten, battlefield grass. and you- with your strong arms, alert gaze, and obsession with war movies, have never turned down a chance to charge into battle. what can happiness do for a girl who has fallen in love with war?

i do not forget this when you speak of her.

you tell me she has dug a knife in you that she never pulled out. millions of my kisses (and there have been millions) can never draw more blood than a single wound from her long, elegant fingers. the body absorbs love, yes; but it remembers pain stubbornly, forming wounds that take too long to heal. i, too, want a place on your skin. i want to be the one you crave like warriors hunger for war. and as you tell me of every wound and scrape she left you as i ice your wounds, the question rises on my lips— is the love i give you more permanent than the pain she left you?

i do not forget this when you speak of her.

— on all of your wounds i recognize her teeth (ap, 6.21 )

[inkbyaporia]

she was a violent pen dug into the paper of your life, and the marks she left will never leave you. but you loved her until you bled through, until you had no space to write any other stories but the ones she left you. all i want is to make my mark on you, too, like you’ve left your mark all over me. im so scared that you let her engrave you with her story too many times to save room for ours. i want you to hold me like only you can and tell me it isn’t true. but with your fingertips stained with old ink, can i ever believe you?

— i want room for our stories, too (ap 7.21)

[inkbyaporia]

on some nights i want to turn to the world and say, “look at what you’ve done to me.” when i was a young girl, my mom told me i would speak to everyone i saw in the park— i was relentlessly friendly and always had a smile on my face. but the world does not expect this from women like me. it expects what happens to us, and i hate how often the world proves me wrong when i try to be hopeful.

there is nothing a dark alleyway can’t hold, no man that is guaranteed to not follow me home, no way to get home safe without clutching a knife and rubbing your abuelita’s quartz, praying that your ancestors will watch over you at least until you get back home. and i get back home but i avoid the mirrors. and i get back home but i choose my dinner based on people who will never perceive me, take a shower and keep my eye fixed on the tile in case i see something of myself the world does not expect of me, in case i see something i think is worth destroying.

who is watching me? what performance do i put on? when did i become so heartbreakingly aware that i was seen?

— when did i become so heartbreakingly aware that i was seen? (ap 2021)

[inkbyaporia]

i am so frightened of loving you for as long and as much as i do that it makes me nauseous. and i know that this was all inevitable, destined somehow— there’s not a life i could’ve lived in which i wasn’t brought to my knees from the shadow of your eyelids. and i am sick to my stomach because loving you has made me someone else and she is larger than my sadness. she laughs in the middle of crying and she spends too much money on gifts that will collect dust in the corner of your room. her sadness is a suitcase that she forgets under your chair instead of a tumor she carries with no treatment. loving you has made her, this version of me, a wild woman who dances in public and goes to the ocean even when her feet lift from the sand. she has grown as large as california oaks because she has found you.

somehow, that’s scarier than being small.

— my love for you is larger than the sadness i’ve always carried

[inkbyaporia]

they say that those who return from war never stop thinking about fighting. after all their years of wishing for peace, once they have it they seem restless, displaced. caught between two extremes, they don’t know what to hunger for. but pain is more memorable than peace, and even the most shell shocked soldiers run back to war, ready to die that familiar, fated death.

i do not forget this when you speak of her.

you never pass up an opportunity to tell me i am your sunshine, your happiness, the one you miss when you are alone and 100 miles away. i believe you, but you are far too sorrowful to crave only sun. in every one of your wounds, i recognize her teeth. i do not blame you for letting her destroy you. she is effortlessly beautiful, sleek and strong as a hand-crafted gun. her voice is like the sound just before the rain— belly deep and soft as beaten, battlefield grass. and you- with your strong arms, alert gaze, and obsession with war movies, have never turned down a chance to charge into battle. what can happiness do for a girl who has fallen in love with war?

i do not forget this when you speak of her.

you tell me she has dug a knife in you that she never pulled out. millions of my kisses (and there have been millions) can never draw more blood than a single wound from her long, elegant fingers. the body absorbs love, yes; but it remembers pain stubbornly, forming wounds that take too long to heal. i, too, want a place on your skin. i want to be the one you crave like warriors hunger for war. and as you tell me of every wound and scrape she left you as i ice your wounds, the question rises on my lips— is the love i give you more permanent than the pain she left you?

i do not forget this when you speak of her.

— on all of your wounds i recognize her teeth (ap, 6.21 )

[inkbyaporia]

my lungs are pitchers for your tears.

you cry all night and i watch the walls become waterlogged, heavy with oceans and oceans of every moment you’ll never live again.

i sit beside you and my breaths fill with water.

[inkbyaporia]

hi guys, i finally made an instagram! follow me at @inkbyaporia because i’ll be posting there now as well :)

[inkbyaporia]

the world drops like lazy honeycomb into the open mouth of cool, glass jars. i do not know what i am. the past year of rushing, my feet kicking up so much dirt i have buried what i love, mourning all i’ve lost, arriving finally at a finished line that was never worth it. my mother always said a human life is like a mist to God. when i was younger i’d visualize a windex bottle being sprayed onto glass, as if life is a quick, futile effort to become clean. i don’t think anyone has ever succeeded, and if they have, i doubt it mattered. saints, bards, instagram influencers who will always seem better than me, all have the same body and shallow breath. we our born with our mother’s sacred oil, we die in the same special earth. the middle is as sweet and stick as lazy honeycomb in the cool, glass jar hands of God.

— will we ever be clean? (ap 6.21)

[inkbyaporia]

last night i asked you why i am the wretched way i am and you said it’s because i carry everyone else’s pain along with my own. you said you used to be the same way but somehow you stopped— overflowing with pain of your own. pain. it’s like concrete— wet and sticky like overripe fruit before it suddenly coalesces into immovable, gray heaviness, blocking you off from the world, shielding you from the sun. but you should know by now that the concrete has made a lighthouse out of you. i want to enter the sanctuary of your body like the door has been open, waiting for me all your life. i will let the salt of the sea erode the concrete to dust, our petty pains to nothing. i will hold the windowsill of your fingertips and prefer you to the rest of the world. i will set the brimming pitchers of our pain down and let the years whittle it to air. and it will be enough to keep me warm for as long as you’ll let me stay.

—the pain has made you into a lighthouse and i want to live in you for all my years a.p. (6.21)

[inkbyaporia]

every time i try to write of you lately, my pen falters and my mind seems to fall into an endless, lovesick fog. for many months, this has frustrated me— how is it that i love you the most, but can express you the least? how is it that i have memorized every character from the language of your body, but i cannot make a poem out of it? how do i falter to be fluent in the language of your skin, when my tongue settles around yours like sun soaked cats, wrestling contently in idyllic afternoons? every time i try to write of you lately, my pen falters and my mind falls into an endless, lovesick fog.

maybe it is because i love you too much to make you my muse.

i would rather wrap myself around your limbs like a starving serpent than walk far enough from you to see you in your entirety. i am too distracted by the way the evening sunlight spills on the top of your head and the early blue dawn of your gaze to write of it. the lover admires what the poet misses in their rush to make art, but you are the first person i have never wished to make anything out of. i have no need to sign my name under paltry retellings of your smile, i have no hunger to become famous from your memory.

all i crave is to wrap myself in the soft shawl of your arms, to press my skin to you like early dawn dew to the morning fields. i would experience you before i’d see you, i’d press your lips onto mine, again and again, before i’d find the time to write a single word. i know by now that art is memory, a repeating chorus of muddled moments made into something for strangers to admire. for once, i need no part in it. i cannot bear to be apart from you long enough to remember you.

every time i reach for a pen to write of you, my fingers find your cheek instead.

— you are not my muse, ap 6.21

[inkbyaporia]

You're awesome,never change! 💖

thank you xx

[inkbyaporia]

today i felt the first kiss of spring for the first time in a year. last year, i felt the same air and thought, “i don’t think i can be this content for this long.” days later, the world swallowed itself like a dying cobra, and it still hasn’t found a way to cough itself up.

in my head, i travel to places that are less cruel. the italian countryside, the beaches of puerto rico, or the rolling green hills of ireland. i think i need to feel like there’s something waiting for me, even if i know that’s not guaranteed. i spend so much time in my head that sometimes i forget to check if the world is as cruel as i’ve left it. i’ve stopped trying to find out. today, the breeze still blows, the birds are awake, and no matter how much time is running out, it will run all the same. i still cry when i imagine all the other places i could be. but on some days i don’t feel so cheated. some days it is all as beautiful as i’ve imagined it.

—finding the world again (a.p., 6.21)

[inkbyaporia]

i am so frightened of loving you for as long and as much as i do that it makes me nauseous. and i know that this was all inevitable, destined somehow— there’s not a life i could’ve lived in which i wasn’t brought to my knees from the shadow of your eyelids. and i am sick to my stomach because loving you has made me someone else and she is larger than my sadness. she laughs in the middle of crying and she spends too much money on gifts that will collect dust in the corner of your room. her sadness is a suitcase that she forgets under your chair instead of a tumor she carries with no treatment. loving you has made her, this version of me, a wild woman who dances in public and goes to the ocean even when her feet lift from the sand. she has grown as large as california oaks because she has found you.

somehow, that’s scarier than being small.

— my love for you is larger than the sadness i’ve always carried

[inkbyaporia]

they say we fall in love with those who resemble us. maybe this is why they keep knives away from me.

[inkbyaporia]

“maybe you don’t really love me, and you’re just infatuated” you joke as your eyes dart from my gaze. i’ve memorized and catalogued all of your facial expressions like a collection of vinyls— countless symphonies that must be protected if they are to play as they should. i know this look, too— the look of doubt glimmering behind your heavy eyelids, the questions you don’t ask, the answer you’re hoping for. i laugh, studying every part of you i was once infatuated with— the mole on the left side of your nose, the thick black eyelashes that frame the ocean of your gaze like the most beautiful shore. “you really believe that?” i ask lightly. “maybe,” you say, still avoiding my eyes.

so here’s my answer to you, the girl i love:

there is a theory that everyone’s heart is wrapped with red string, and connected across miles to the one we love. and when the time is right, the strings of our hearts pull us together. to the girl on the other side of my red string: i love you because when i kiss you we become one body. i love the person we create when we are vulnerable together, all string and fingers and breath. i love you because i never loved the ocean until you told me you’d swim in it for hours straight, letting the waves carry you into a place away from your own mind. i love you because you give money and food and kindness every time you see someone in need. and not to look like a good person, but because you genuinely wish the world for everyone. i love you because you always say good morning and offer to make my breakfast even if your nightmares kept you from sleeping the night before. i love you because you kiss me as if i am air and you are earth, molecules helplessly tied together by science or magic or both. i love you because you always listen to me, even if i am screaming or crying or rambling out of my mind. i love you because you feel everything with your whole body— all you know is the sea so you can only drown in your emotions. i love you because you are always strong enough to paddle to shore. i love you because you can’t eat mcdonald’s without getting sick and i love you because i can’t kiss you without smiling and i love you i love you i love you for every reason and for none at all. and i’ll love you when you’re so sad you can’t move, i’ll love you when you can’t stop screaming and i’ll love you when you do. i’ll love you when your mind is too loud to hear the sound of my voice and i’ll love you when we make mistakes no one thinks we’ll be able to come back from. i’ll love you when you rise and fall and tangle in my fingertips. to the girl on the other end of my string: i’ll wrap my heart around the earth again and again and again if that’s what it takes to love you.

— ap (4.20) why i love you