your handwritten letter

xx maggie

[yourhandwrittenletter]

I don’t quite know how we’ve ended up here. How we’ve ended up as strangers when we used to spend nights staring at one another across the mattress, pointing and counting up quirks like constellations. I knew you loved me when you asked about the small bump beneath my lip that even I’d never noticed. You traced it with your thumb, something soft in those eyes. “Where did it come from?” you asked, like you’d give anything to see me in childhood just to know me more fully. That’s love, isn’t it? Not the sex or sacrifice or small talk you make after years of memorizing one another. It’s the digging, the prying, the eventual release. The discovery of your own uncharted territories. You saw me more clearly than I saw myself, and somehow you still walked away. Back then I thought you loved me so much that even if it crumbled, broke beyond repair, you’d stay. Touch my forgotten scar and sigh. When you left you said, “You’re all I’ve ever known” as if that was reason enough. It’s become blurry now, the certainty that you loved me once. More fresh are the fights, the never-framed photos. The times I prompted you to call me beautiful, begging for crumbs. I wish I could remember the lilt of your voice as you asked me that question. I stare across the mattress all too often. Alone in the dark, I can almost convince myself that you’re still here. I can almost feel you, fingers frozen on my face, so curious and consumed. Both of us barely breathing in wonder, unaware it would be the moment I’d miss most.

a girl who only writes when she’s heartbroken, pen on paper for the first time in three years

[yourhandwrittenletter]

And even after all this time, you’ve got to find it in yourself to love this life. Even after bad haircuts and flu season and nights spent staring at the blurry turn of the ceiling fan, half-drunk and wondering what the point is. Even after your third slice of cold pizza and bug bites and pink eye. Hangnails, selfish sex, that little smudge on the mirror that never goes away. Even alone. Even in love. Even worse. The world, your mother used to tell you, is not your oyster. What she meant was, the world, too, is hard to love. Just like you. And even still. Even now, with all your carefully built walls caving in. Icy sidewalks lined with hungry people. Hopeless eyes. Empty hands open wide. Here’s the truth: she doesn’t love you back. Or maybe it’s him. Shaggy-haired smart ass. He’s too far away to touch you the way you want. Even then. Even when the bananas rot away. Brown and lined with fruit flies. It’s been a year since your grandmother died, and the kitchen still smells like the butterscotch candy she used to make each Christmas. She never got around to teaching you how to make it for yourself. Even so. Look up at the stars every once in a while. Watch how they flicker like the headlights on the highway behind your childhood home. Promise you’ll try to see this life with brand new eyes. A lover whose name you’re only now learning. Even after all this time. Forgive her sharp edges.  She, too, is doing all she can. She, too, deserves a chance at reinvention.

note to self

[yourhandwrittenletter]

I used to make you promise you’d tell your kids about me one day, and you’d roll your eyes and tell me to fuck off, but what you really wanted to say was, “Why do you always do this?”      "This?“ I’d tilt my head like I didn’t already know.       And you’d say, “Yeah, this. You find little ways to remind me you don’t plan on sticking around.”      On days like that, I’d kiss you just to shut you up, and you’d let me. You always let me. Teeth and tongue frantic to translate nothing into something. Somewhere in the middle of it all, a whisper against the skin of my thigh: “I’ll take what I can get.” Translation: you’re on thin ice.       And on days like that, I’d drag you to the car and drive until the sun set on some town we’d never heard of. Pull off the road and fool around like teenagers tip-toeing at the edges of adulthood. We’d eat at whatever mom n’ pop shop we could find, and on the way back, we’d sing old Frankie Valli songs, hitting notes only dogs could hear, laughing so hard I could hardly control the wheel. You’d say, “God, I love this,” only “this” would sound a whole lot like “you.”      And on days like that, I’d pick a fight for no reason. A comment about that Halloween party two years ago was usually a good start. Your mother, if I was feeling particularly cruel. Sometimes you’d fall into the trap, and then you’d say something horrible enough to allow me to leave for the night. Hook, line, sinker. But then, oh God, then there were the times you knew me too well. Hands in my hair. On my back. Tracing the line of my spine. You’d say, “Just stop. Stop being afraid of this.”      And on days like that, I loved you. I’d make coffee and eggs the next morning and scoff when you asked what I’d done with your girlfriend. We’d eat in bed bare naked and watch the morning news, ragging on the rigid politicians for building such a broken world. Inevitably, we’d trade hypotheticals. What if we were in charge. What if we knew a damn thing about anything. What if we could make this last. Later, you’d drag me close, my ear to the thump of your heart. The sound like a song playing in the apartment upstairs.        If you make good on your promise, I hope you tell them about days like that. Every laugh and sigh and long night of too much wine. I hope they listen with wide eyes. Your eyes. Or hers, I guess. It doesn’t really matter. Here’s what matters: that you tell them about this. That even if we don’t end up together, I still have a place in your story.

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Can i tell you my love story?

yes please

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Watch how he treats waiters and speaks to his sister and acts when you win your third round of spit. Does he untangle Christmas lights with care? Fuck this. Hold that. Make sure you listen. When you’re late –overtired and dead in the eyes– watch him. Does he draw you close and talk you into slow dancing around your shoebox bedroom? Tell him a joke and wait for his lungs to bleed laughter. If they don’t, you should leave. Or stay and watch him cook dinner and fold laundry. Flip pancakes. Touch your underwear and sigh. Oh! Kids and dogs, too. Puppies, preferably. These are good indicators. Does he dip low to greet them? Small things might scare him, and if they do, you should leave. Or don’t. Or tiptoe around him until the tension erupts. Storm Warning. Code Red. Listen to him sing in the shower. Billy Joel. Elton John. Elvis, but only around Christmas time. Forgive, but don’t forget. And fuck. All the time. Don’t ever call it making love. That's idiotic, and you know it. Do it in your childhood bed after your parents fall asleep. Just once and only for the adrenalin. A quickie. A never have I ever completed. Afterwards, tell him about the time you lost your virginity to James Nelson in the backseat of his mom’s mini van. Tell him you think you were too young, but mean you wish you could take it back, and let him see you bare for a moment.  Let him kiss you hard like he’s trying to tell you something, but don’t make any assumptions. He could be too drunk, after all. He’s always too drunk. Have the kids talk, the marriage talk, the my side of the bed talk. If you survive all of this, you should stay. Unless you say, “We need to talk,” and he squirms. This is cruel, but ultimately effective. Or maybe try, “I love you.” This, I warn you, is even crueler. When he says it back, ask why, and listen as he hands you pebble after pebble of ego. Don’t be fooled. You can still leave. That’s still an option. Clothes thrown haphazardly into a suitcase- his or yours, you honestly can’t remember. You say you want more, and he asks of what. It’s ok not to know, but even if you do know, don’t you dare clue him in. For once in your life play hard to get. Watch him watch you half-way through the threshold of something brand new. Does he cry? Not now, necessarily, just ever. If he didn’t cry when you watched The Titanic, you should leave. Unless he’s crying now. Which he is. Holy shit. Unpack your bag slowly, sock by sock, and let yourself wonder if you’re making the right decision. Let your heart break a little for the other side of the coin. Does he care about people? Not just you, but people. Humanity. Peace on earth. But then, okay, does he care about you? Enough, I mean. Does he care about you enough? He’s here now, and he says your name like a prayer, like a curse, like a thing he thought he’d lost in the fire. And then he’s mad as hell. Wait for him to clench his fists and practice patience. Push his buttons if you like, but don’t expect him to play nice. Sleep on the couch, just for a night, and hold on tight when he carries you back to your bed, his bed,  in the middle of the night. Don’t bring it up in the morning. He’ll just blame it on your sleepwalking, and that’ll spark another fight about nothing. And by nothing I mean everything. Watch him pour your coffee a week later and add two sugars and a cream, just how you like it. Does he still pray under his breath right before bed? Listen to the way he says, “Amen,” and compare it to the way he traces your brow when he thinks you’re still asleep. He’s too proud to act that way in front of his parents. Or anyone else, for that matter. Look through his drawers, top to bottom, and swallow the thrill that arises when you find the crumpled love note you once left on his desk at the job that he quit last year. Remember the way he used to call you darling. Mourn for a moment, only a moment, the way he used to be. And watch him that night, stroking the cat you couldn’t leave at the shelter, and let yourself wonder what life might be like without him. If the answer scares you or excites you or makes you tuck your feet up under your legs, stop. Breathe. He’s staring at you, waiting for answers. Scoot a little closer. You know what to do.

on falling in love and falling apart 

[yourhandwrittenletter]

What’s on my mind is that scar on the left side of your face, right below the sharp edge of your jaw, how it looks like an arrow. How I wish I were brave enough to trace my finger like a road on a map until I hit somewhere  to call home. When you drank your first beer, did you pretend to feel the buzz just to make the cool kids stop calling you a fucking loser? Or maybe you were the cool kid. Maybe you pressed cheap alcohol into the palms of kids like me. Careful kids. Color in the lines kids. Also, key lime pie. Specifically, my mom’s. Would you eat it? I know you hate pie, but how many girls’ moms’ pies have you eaten just to please some girl’s mom? A lot, I’m sure. Too many. But I like you. Even though you are a raging republican. Even though you practice dinner party talk in my bed. (Especially because I think that’s you trying to impress me.) And sometimes, when we dare to let the silence sit, I wonder if the first people to get married regretted it. Did they lie side-by-side five years past their vows and rearrange letters of the alphabet just to find the right word: Done. Damaged. Different. Devoid. Divide. Divorce. Yes, they thought, as they unlinked their hands. Divorce. Because it burns something ugly on the tongue. I wonder if we’ll ever get divorced before I remember that we aren’t married. We aren’t anything. Then, of course, I wonder, what the hell we’re doing. And on that note: Hell. Do you believe in it? Because I do. I think I do. At least I might. Or do you make up stories about the girl over there nose deep in the Bible or the man with no hair who keeps nodding off. The people on subways and street corners, half-awake. When you guess at their lives, are they happily ever afters with green grass lawns and dogs who don’t bark? Do they believe in hell? And even if they do and you do and suddenly you see some small fragment of yourself in the glass of her eyes, does that mean you won’t bury her jagged pieces so deep she loses her sharpness? And when she exhumes that grave and slips idiosyncrasies back under her skin like splinters, will you stay for something beyond the guilt? When she finally cracks open her mind just to let you peek at the bone and raw edges, will you even remember asking for all of this in the first place? No. Of course you won’t. So I smile. I stretch. You hold me like a question mark, quiet and careful and waiting. There are things you’d like me to say, but the silence is so much sweeter. Stranger hands wander down my waist, and you ask, once more, “What’s on your mind?” “Nothing,” I say. “I was just falling asleep."

[yourhandwrittenletter]

The first boy who loves you wears floods because he can’t afford a new pair of jeans. He can’t look you in the eye. Not until he asks you out your sophomore year. Sweaty palms. A crack in his voice. Don’t say no. I know you want to. I know your friends are snickering about it in some corner. But I also know that you like the way he is kind and gentle and quite. Even if you won’t admit it. Even if you introduce him to your parents as a friend for the first five months of your relationship. He is real, and he is here, and he is asking you to dinner from behind a greasy mop of hair. Yes, you say. You’ll go.       The first boy who loves you picks you up late in a car with chipped paint, but apologies fall off his tongue like rain from the sky. Genuine apologies. He takes you to a place way off the grid. Some total dive. You order the pasta carbonara, and he smiles with all of his teeth when you tell him it’s the best damn food you’ve ever had. He says sweet things. Funny things. You forget that he’s weirdo boy. Lonely boy. Sad boy. When he says he likes you, has liked you for years now, you tell him you might be starting to feel the same way. Might. But when he kisses you, just barely fucking kisses you, your insides scream at the sudden rightness.       The first boy who loves you asks you why you never talk about your family, and you tell him all of the gory details. The fighting. The drinking. The divorce. And he holds you until you forget where your limbs end and his begin. Eventually, into the skin of your neck, he tells you that he loves you. You don’t say it back, but you pull him close. You lose your shirt somehow. And then the rest of your clothes. And then your mind. It’s painful and awkward and wonderful before it becomes something more. Much more. And when you let yourself relax, arching into his touch, it’s very nearly everything.       But the first boy who loves you will not be the last boy who loves you. And he is not an idiot. The first boy who loves you will not let you push him aside when you need space. He will not let you break without trying to fit you back into place like a puzzle. And when everything falls apart, he is the only thing you know how to destroy. The boy with bright eyes and bad hair and the strongest arms will stay by your side through anything. But when you ask him to leave, rip his hands from your waist and edge him towards the door, he will go. Even though you wish he wouldn’t. Even though you don’t know why you’re doing this. He will go. Because the first boy who loves you is kind and gentle and quite, but he is not an idiot.      When you look back at him, sweaty palms, a nervous crack in his voice, you will still remember everything. He called you sweetheart. And babe when he was angry. And your full name when he was feeling especially affectionate. And even though it’s over, even though other boys have loved you, the first boy who loved you will be the only boy who holds your heart in his hands, feels it beat and breath without possession or power but a reverence you still struggle to understand, and then places it back into your chest and whispers, “Live.”

a messy letter to the boy who will never know how much I loved him. (via yourhandwrittenletter)

Reading through old writing because even when it feels like everything has changed, I recognize myself here. Shuffled somewhere between the words I wrote years ago. God, I love it.

[yourhandwrittenletter]

“But you told me you loved me,” he said.     She nodded. “So much I can’t breathe.”     And he sunk to the ground and pulled her too close, his nose in the skin of her neck. He whispered words along her nape. Something like, “Thank God.” Something like, “I’ll be better.”     Didn’t you hear me? she wondered. His arm like iron across her waist. Deep inside, something began to unravel.      I said I can’t breathe.

excerpt from a book I’ll never write

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Someday you’ll love her the way I loved you. Like the rest of the world isn’t peeking through the window. Like it wouldn’t matter if they were. Someday you’ll know how it feels to sacrifice for someone because you want to. Because maybe it’ll make her smile, and God does that smile knock you off your feet. And you’ll hold her while she cries. Believe me, you will. Your arms like open palms catching rain.      Someday you’ll understand why I stayed even when it felt drowning. Even when you became a person I didn’t recognize. Because someday you’ll see that love like this doesn’t ask. It doesn’t knock at the door and wait for your welcome. It’s just there. On a cold Wednesday morning, coaxing you back into bed bare naked or brewing coffee. Singing some song you know by heart, fluid as note into note. Like it’s been there all along. Like it already belongs.

I hope it’s someday soon

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Reply to this post with your favorite books so that we can make a long list of good books verified by good people. Ready, set, go.

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Listen to me: it’s ok to be a mess. It’s ok to have thighs and questions and cracker crumbs in your bra. You’re 17 or 23 or 48, and you’re still too in love with him to move on. Too scared to quit the job you hate or get the help you need or wear cherry lipstick to the bar and kiss the stranger. Too wild to sit and wait and do what they want. Sharp and shy and a lazy pile in your bed every Sunday. That cackle from your father and kindness from your mother and a pocketful of dirty jokes from your older brother. A pinch of this and that and pale pastels and finger paint. This whole damn gallery of insanity. Abstract and absurd, but alive more than anything. That’s what you are. So alive that it makes your eyes burn. It makes your heart beat.

[yourhandwrittenletter]

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” she whispered. “That even love isn't always enough.

[yourhandwrittenletter]

I fall in love too much. Too easily. Just like that. The boy on the subway, flipping fingers through a copy of some Shakespeare drama or the one in tight kaki pants who covers my coffee the day I leave my wallet at home. The tallest guy in the office who talks about sports in the break room as I nod along. I fall in love with what they might be. Could be. The kind that slips his hand into my back pocket or calls me by my last name. Who's stricken every time I walk into the room. Astonished. I fall in love like this. With strangers and possibilities. With abandon, stupidity. With hope. I fall in love too much. Too easily. But maybe you do, too. Maybe we all do.

yourhandwrittenletter

[yourhandwrittenletter]

You know, people love to say that opposites attract. And maybe that’s why I tried so hard to make us work. The girl who measures two teaspoons of sugar to put in her tea and the boy with calloused palms, climbing every mountain he can because he likes the way the stars look when nothing is in their way. Frothy milk and adrenaline. We looked like idiots together. You at my charity dinners in a poorly tailored sport coat. Five o'clock shadow. Bad jokes. And me scaling the rock climbing wall with slippery hands. Two feet above ground. A loose cotton dress. But laughing. Both of us always laughing. At me and you and this stupid world for working in a way that let the two of us need each other so desperately. Opposites. You’re damn right they attract.      But attraction and commitment were never the same thing. Maybe you always knew that. And that’s why you laughed. Because you knew that one day, your girl would stand on Everest. Scream to the stars. Drink her coffee black. But me, I’m still learning. Learning as you tell me we want different things. Learning as you drop off every piece of myself I’ve left at your place, nothing folded, the toothbrush tangled with hairs. Learning as I sit here writing about the boy who bounced from cliff tops to see the stars and the girl whose feet never left the ground, whose eyes only ever knew how to watch him walk into clouds and disappear altogether.

the truth about you and me

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Just grow and scream and fall hard into the things you love most about life. Kiss boys or girls or both and let yourself be someone else’s reason to smile. Just look at the world, the big wide whole of it, and remember that every bit is right there. Right under your feet and your fears and just dance for a moment. Alone or for a crowd, it doesn’t really matter. Just do it. Just this once. And then stop and listen to the Earth as she holds you up high and calls your name. Let her remind you where you came from and whisper where you are going. Just live and belly laugh and be good to your body but never turn down a hot donut. Skinny dip and read under the Oak trees and breathe it all in. Just be. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. For once in your life, just let yourself be.

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Don't wait around for people who only text you for favors or rides or late night company. You are beautiful and brilliant and so, so alive. You're triple text material.

a pep talk for you and me and anyone else who needs it

[yourhandwrittenletter]

Here’s the hard part: you don’t ever stop loving him. You move on and you grow and you change, but it doesn’t ever stop, this feeling. And when you see him five years from now, all uptight in his fancy new job and wearing a suit that makes him look like a big deal, when he smiles in that easy way and says,“Hey, you. It’s been a while,” your stomach will still trip over itself. Your hollow hands will still want to reach out and mess up his tie. His hair. Trace the skin of his back until he sighs. And you’ll still wonder why. Why it didn’t work. Why it couldn’t now. Oh, God. No, you’re never going to stop loving him. Your heart just doesn’t know how.