someone once said,

“if a writer falls in love with you,

you can never die.”

i am immortal -

or,

i was

 

i met her on a weary August day

and i did not know what to expect:

she was as bittersweet as the morning after Christmas

and as alive as the innumerable pens she stashed in her bag, 

i did not know 

that her presence would shine like the cosmos she held so close to her heart

or that when she looked up from a book that she would never smile;

so much of her i learned 

later

when it was too little,

too late

 

they say that boys only want one thing,

and all i wanted was her

i begged, and i groveled,

“beggars can’t be choosers,”

they say,

but all i wanted and needed and chose 

was her

 

i loved her feelings and her salty skin

and the way she held a blank space 

when all i saw in myself was scribble after scribble

of incorrect grammar

and broken promises

and i loved the way she made the world feel so small

when we hadn’t seen any of it all together;

but when i use loved, i’m wrong, again,

(she was always the right one)

 

and she measured my worth,

and deemed my “good enough,”

she soothed my atelophobia

[my fear of never being good enough],

my claustrophobia

[my fear of being far too close, too much],

she cured by philophobia

[my fear of being in love],

she tinkered and twisted and figured me out,

struggling to read the instruction manual 

i’d stashed away for so long,

and after she tinkered and twisted and figured me out,

she held me up:

i was her doll,

but everyone knows

power comes from the weakest link

 

and i saw it, all of it,

her white hands, 

strangling the mug of steaming green tea attempting to wash her away;

her tapping feet,

tapping, moving, shaking, never ever still;

her eyes, never seeming to meet mine,

as if she couldn’t bear to see me with an imperfection -

and she explained it wasn’t me but her

and that she wasn’t the right one, 

she was wrong all wrong,

and i told her,

i told her that what if all the parts of ourselves you and i hate

folded into each other

as lovers

before midnight

and morphed into the blackest of our eyes

and what if all these parts were nothing more 

than all these reflections:

of how we were and are and are yet to be

and what if

these were nothing more than reflections,

of how we should have been, supposed to be,

what if

all these parts were nothing as we are,

at all.

but i am not the poet for her.

 

in the end, 

she was an impossibly difficult test

and i spent most of my time trying to find

the right answers

but all i was to her was a rejection letter stating

“come back in 5 years,

(maybe then you’ll be good enough for me this school)”

and even though it scares me,

every time something knocks on my window,

or even makes a tiny noise,

i rush to the window, craving to see if it’s you.

 

because the truth is

you flashed into my room,

like the sun escaping the stars.

the curtains blocked you out 

too soon

(there was nothing i could do).

but sunlight always finds

a way 

to stay for a while,

a while,

before the stars come out

to play

and when fear creeps into my mind and says,

“aren’t you afraid of tomorrow?”

Yes, I am deathly afraid.

but self-consciousness and

leaving

and the left are back again and

i miss those who aren’t gone

and those who have been for so long and

i am so afraid

for what my tomorrows hold

 

----

 

the truth is,

i wish he could have felt

half of what i really said,

and twice as much as he really did;

because a writer isn’t

beautiful

or poetic

or even lovely,

she is cold and ravaged

and i tore out his

heart.

but before that weary August day,

i didn't know that

love is more than a four-letter word