#secretly writes

[have-shell-will-travel]

You are scientific proof that there are still new reasons to smile. Your laugh has so quickly become my favorite song. I can't sleep without knowing you're there. You are a tree, who's roots have slowly wound themselves around my heart and all of my happiness grows from them. I count the stars and tell them about how beautiful you are. How the moon could only be so lucky to shine upon your cheek. I no longer make wishes on them. I know they have long since burned out. But I think the universe deserves to know how much i admire it's most perfect creation.

[have-shell-will-travel]

How do you convince a star it's beautiful? To hold a mirror up, and reflect the light back thousands of years. The vastness of space separating my truth, from you. I used to believe in the stars without question. Every chemical in my body made up of tiny particles of light. I always burned too hot. Then I found out the stars we see don't really exist at all. Their light faded millenia ago, lost to time and galaxies. Some nights I still reach for them. Reach for anything to believe in. Anything at all. So I believed in you.

[have-shell-will-travel]

I had a horrible dream last night. I woke up sobbing, looked over and she was still on the other end of the phone. Peacefully asleep. Tiny puffs of air finding the mic, blissfully unaware of the meltdown happening on the other side of the world. I love people with everything i have, every single time. And while my heart is screaming "you've never loved anyone as much as you love her" my brain knows better. It's that tiny semblance of truth that keeps me going. I have loved like this before. I will love like this again. Right now though, every atom in my body knows nothing but her.

[have-shell-will-travel]

See. there's this fine line. it runs lengthwise down my spine. ties like ribbons around my toes. it is looped through the edges of my smile. and draped over my tongue like snow. it twists tendrils into my hair. and holdsfast my listening ear. this line drapes slack along my funny bone. pulls taught against my heart beat. and bounces across my laughter. it dances off the ends of my fingers. and spins wildly through my soul. there is no place it hasn't touched. no emotion is hasn't felt. parts of it are starting to fray. in places it's wrapped in knots. but somehow, through all of it. it has held me together.

[have-shell-will-travel]

Things I feel like I should have told you before you signed on:

I don't like to say I'm sensitive, I'm just highly susceptible to feeling a lot.

I keep a pack of razor blades in my bathroom drawer for nights when I can't silence my mind.

I slept with my ex boyfriends dad out of spite.

I've broken more hearts than I could count on one hand. Sometimes I still here them crunch under the heel of my shoe.

I spent three years in AA because I have unhealthy coping mechanisms and a constant desire to be surrounded by people.

I've had an affair with a married man.

More people in this world have seen me naked than those that have seen me cry.

Sometimes the weight of who I had the potential to be holds me hostage in my bed. It can pin me there for days.

I don't know how to love people in halves. I don't know how to build walls or armour. I know how love so immensely it scares away the weak.

I am the weak.

[have-shell-will-travel]

Wanna know a secret?

I'm terrified of commitment.

The ink that's embedded in my skin doesn't count because tattoos don't wake up one morning and decide they don't love you anymore.

Tattoos don't ignore your text messages and screen your phone calls. They don't leave burn marks cradled into your skin where fingertips used to be.

Tattoos don't leave. Tattoos can't.

But you deserve every " I'm staying " I've got left in my heart. Nothing about you strikes me as temporary and that makes my chest tight. I've never been a "forever and ever" kind of princess, but you've left laughter laced fairytales under my skin.

There's nothing beautiful about the singed edges of my soul. Nothing poetic about the dust and peeling wallpaper of my heart. I gave up writing a long time ago, because no one gave me a reason to keep going.

[have-shell-will-travel]

I am absolutely terrified.

I am consciously aware that I am not a good person. The last couple years have taken me and beaten me down into someone I never wanted to be.

However, he is the most genuinely good person I have known in a very long time. Innocent, kind, and just universally good.

If I was a better person I would stay so far away from him. I would save him from what I know I will eventually do to him.

But darkness always seeks out the light.

[have-shell-will-travel]

My father died on Christmas.

Moving to a new city that's something I've had to repeat too many times this year. Too many new friends that don't understand why the holidays are so hard for me. That being said, this year was world's better than any year before it.

I am happy. Genuinely happy. It still hurts, and my chest still feels heavy, but I have the ability to enjoy what's happening in the now.