(212): Last night I had a dream about you. 

It was—dark, and we were in your room, watching dreamt up rainbow blobs float across what could have been a TV but maybe also a computer? And we were there, sharing that sort of comfortable stillness where we're not doing anything because we don't need to. 

We speak in a hidden language of grunts and twitches, snickers and smiles, and before either of us know it we're in bed, fingers entwined, and you're telling me about how you used to collect stars, used to pluck them out of the sky like blueberries to throw onto your canvas, and I'm rambling about driving a jeep into my neighbor's pool, I dunno, it's a dream, but you laugh that same, beautiful snort laugh and I know that you are real. 

I know that this is real, this is as real as it has ever been and ever will be—and then I wake up and I remember the first line of this text.



(504): I spent my day with you in my mind. Your fingers pressed against my brain and left fingerprints, as if my gray matter was clay for you to mold. And mold you did—five minutes into my first class and already I could hear the croon of your trumpet, a wolf in heat calling out into the night and sending a quiver through my legs.

I never told you how much I loved your playing. Christ above knows how many things I regret.

But still I take a deep breath and force the smile back onto my face. My students don't know you. They barely know [i]me![/i] How could any eleventh grade English class, no matter how wondrous they might be, understand the cravings I have for your dark skin? How could they understand the way I long for your fingers in my mouth, calloused tips against my tongue?

We read poems about love, won and lost, but my thoughts are elsewhere. My mind is off in the distance, laying in a field, mourning under the soulful cry of your trumpet.



(737): Sometimes I still smell you. Is that weird? I hope not. Once when I was staying over my aunt's house, she told me that she smelled burnt toast. Then she fell over and had a stroke.

But you don't smell like burnt toast—you never did. Not even when you, y'know, burnt toast. No, you always smelled of grease, like the frying oil you spent your days cooking with had seeped into your cells.

My favorite days were the ones we spent laying on the couch watching American Idol. I would bury my face into your shirt and bathe myself in your smell. And then you would laugh and jiggle my belly.

Mom told me that I have to get rid of all the stuff you left here, but I don't wanna. I'm keeping them, just in case you ever come back. And besides, it's only a couple of shirts and sports jerseys. They remind me of the football game you took me to when we first met. I like them.

(P.S.: Did you hear? La'Porsha made finals! I hope she wins!)



(406): We can make this work. I swear, I'll even give Simba back to the shelter. I don't care about him, I care about you. Please.



(253): I'm sitting in my living room and please come find me because I can't stop thinking about you. Every sound is you coming through the door to push me to the floor to tell me why I'm worthless and should stop breathing. Nausea has become my state of being.

And I deserve this. Trust me I know that I deserve this and so much worse. I deserve to be strung up by my hands and feet, to be crucified for what I've done. I feel like filth incarnate, a walking pillar of mud, a sin against all of creation and you, my love, you. You who holds the beauty of Aphrodite, the wisdom of the Buddha. You know everything there is to know. You remember every birthday, every anniversary, every second of every day because you are perfection.

The walls swirl into the shape of your eyes and I am pinned to my chair. Every twitch of my fingers is you dodging my last kiss. Every tick of my watch is you walking out while I'm sleeping.

You are my everything. I can't breathe without you here.



(480): Thank you.