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[windysharpe]

patch a hole and fuck me through it

“you're useless to me unless you're getting fucked.” that's what he told me. he was my boyfriend, and he was 17 years old, and he said, “if you stitch up all your holes, i'll just cut you a new one and fuck you through it,” so i did. he was my best friend and he told me, “your mouth is just something a hole to stick my dick in. stop talking. just don’t speak at all,” so i did. he tried to fuck me the right way and my body shut down. scratch that, he tried to fuck me the wrong way, but i was told it's the only way. on the bad days, i still believe that. on the good days, i know someday i won't. nobody has fucked me since. it's been ten years and the only thing that's ever been inside me is him, not even a goddamn tampon. he's a thing, i tell myself, he's just a thing you are better than. on the good days, i still believe that. on the bad days, i think he infected me with his inhuman disaffection, with his mental illness, with his disgusting inclination to cut holes in people who don't want holes cut through them, with his terrifying inclination to rip holes in himself in the shape of my name. i wonder sometimes if he found someone who doesn't mind holes cut through them; or better yet, has a thicker skin than i could ever dream of. i want someone who smiles when i mock them. i want someone who knows the difference between lashing out and flirting. i want someone who won't let me beat them at the games we play, and who isn't afraid to lose, because maybe then i'll be able to play my mom in scrabble again. she loves scrabble, and she is very good at it, but i can't play it with her anymore because you made me a sore loser. you taught me i was only good enough when i was beating the house, rolling doubles. you wanted me to do the impossible, and i learned to, and you left me anyway. you cut a hole in someone else while i was still stitching up the wounds you left in me. you weren't the first to ask me to do the impossible, and then left when you found that i could; you were just the only one who left a scar. you didn't think i was human unless i was bleeding. on the bad days, i don't think i am either. on the good days, i remember that if i'm inhuman, then so is everybody else. holes in you, and holes in me. you were angry that you wanted to cut holes in yourself, so you figured self-harm loved company. i don't think anger is inherently cruel if it's pointed in the right direction, but you taught me how to get angry and take it out on anyone who wasn't you. i want to get angry at the right person. on the good days, i know that you cried when you broke up with me because i was finally angry at the right person. on the bad days, i know that you cried when you broke up with me because you never meant to hurt me; you just wanted to be in love, and i happened to get in the way. every day in between, i blame myself for wanting to be with you in the first place because i knew the only reason you started talking to me was to get tips on how to seduce the girl who looked like me, but thinner; who talked like me, but angrier. on the bad days, i wish you figured out how to cut a hole in her instead. on the good days, i'm glad you chose me and not her because i never knew her well enough to know if you would've bled her dry or not. i never knew her well enough to know if she was ever really like me at all. i bleed forgiveness — not everyone is so lucky. i am made of wounds and scars — wounds and scars all the way round. you cut a hole in me buddy, and you fucked me right through it, but i am still standing. i am still bleeding, and i am still forgiving, and i am still human, and i am none of the things you wanted me to be. i am a virgin pure because i choose to be, i am the lover and the beloved, i am kind and angry and can beat you at scrabble, and one day i will be loved by someone who doesn't see any of that as a threat. i will fuck someone without seeing it as holes that need to be cut through. i will unstitch my mouth you taught me was a wound; i will swallow someone down, and i will love every second of it. i will not be ashamed. i will not be made to be ashamed of loving a man, if that's who he decides he is, just because you were one, too. i will not be made to be ashamed of loving a woman, if that's who she decides she is, just because i am one, too. i will not be afraid if they are a musician, or if their fingernails are painted black, or if they listen to the offspring. i will not listen to iris by the goo goo dolls, because i am not that girl, because i never was that girl. i will be happy, lucky, free, and none of it will be because of anyone else but us. i will not find love in the allegory of a person. i will not find love in a hole. i will find love in the way someone feels against my skin, and the way they smile when they lose, and smile when they win, and smile when i get angry, and smile when i tell them they're an idiot, and smile when i tell them they're beautiful. they will be honest, and they will love my honesty, and they will not be perfect, but at least they'll be real. i can only survive off my own light for so long before i start to photosynthesize my brain, my tongue, my black and bloody heart. we are all living in greenhouses just begging to get free. we are all throwing stones in glass houses just trying to get free. we are all setting fire to the paper houses that got built for us in the mad, brave, brutal attempt to feel free. on the good days, i understand that you told me i was only human when i’m bleeding because you wanted to distract yourself from the reality that you didn't know if you were human at all. on the good days, i know you cut holes in yourself in the shape of my dead name as a vain attempt to feel human. on the good days, i'm glad i'll never have to know if you were really human at all.

[windysharpe]

every. single. volume of 'how to pretend to be straight for her' makes me cry endless tears, and every time i drown myself in sadness, but i wake up much stronger. i know how it feels to love Her - someone so close yet so far away, a friend so close she owns her heart - and you cannot possibly imagine how thankful i am that someone else has written such beautiful words i'll never be able to write. thank you, windy. l hope when you fall, you fly.

you’re a very good soul. i hope you’re happy, darling. i hope when you fly, you soar.

[windysharpe]

home is the thing you run from

I sneak out of my mother’s house every night after she goes to sleep. I call it her house because it is not my home. Home is where I’d feel at peace. Home is where I’d know my own name. No one calls me by the right name. I want my name back. During the day, I tell the boy with curls and buck teeth and eyes like a lightning strike to call me Eddie. He never does. At night, I don’t care what he calls me. At night, I am always me no matter the name because the people who puppet me put their hands to sleep. I don’t sleep much.

I make it seem like there’s a body in my bed with the pillows in case my mother comes in. I look at it. I wonder if, maybe, it doesn’t matter what’s in my bed as long as something is sleeping: human, ghost or monster. I wonder if, maybe, I am the ghost haunting my own body. I wonder if, maybe, my mother doesn’t care what’s inside me as long as she can control it. I look at myself in the reflection of the window. I look human but I could also be a monster and no one would ever know it. I open the window. I climb out onto the roof and jump off. I stick the landing and look up at my mother’s bedroom window. I run.

I take nothing with me but a five dollar bill and my name. Eddie. Eddie. It beats with every crash of my heart against my ribs, begging to be released. It breathes with every gasp my lungs take, greedy in the stifling air of this monstrous town. I have seen the face of evil and I have devoured it whole and now it lives inside me. Evil broke my bones and I just put them back together in the shape of a boy. Evil is the ghost who made its home inside me. I want to be me, but I don’t know who that is. I want to be me, but I don’t know if I ever really was to begin with.

I am always running, it’s just that sometimes I’m not allowed to look like it. I am always running, it’s just that sometimes my lungs can’t take the pressure and they burst open, flowers blooming and choking me stiff. Those flowers are beautiful but the puppeteer rips them out root from root when my inhaler comes out, useless and empty of any real power. I am scared more than I cannot breathe. My head is sick more than my body is. The puppeteer would have my hide if she could lick my brain, if she knew that I know how I am not sick or dirty or broken. I am Eddie. I am Eddie.

My name is alive inside me as I end up in front of the lightning strike boy’s house. I grab a stone and toss it at his window, one for every time I thought of him tonight and was ashamed of it. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. The boy I love comes to the window and opens it. He is always himself, unashamedly, unabashedly. I wonder if he knows I love him because I love his freedom. I wonder if he knows I love him at all.

He smiles down at me. Eddie, he says, and it sounds like home, the home I’m not allowed to know, the home I’m not allowed to live within. I smile back. I always fashioned myself Juliet; the broken bird waiting for someone to save her. But maybe I was never broken at all and neither was Juliet; we were just waiting for somebody to tell us that we can save ourselves. I remember the lightning strike boy setting my arm in place when it snapped, when evil tried to make its way inside us. Evil laughed in our faces. Evil came in the shape of a smile. Maybe the true evil lived in our homes all along and we never knew. My evil had strings and an inhaler in a hand outstretched; my boy’s smelled like a vodka tonic. We all have people who long to control us, but in the end, they never say our true names. None of them know the things we love without them.

He says, I thought I was Flynn Rider. I don’t have enough hair for you to climb. I say, then come to me. He does, and as he lands at my feet, I ask him if he likes running. He smiles and says, I like you. I grab his hand and we run into the night. There, we don’t need names to still be ourselves. He says, our friends will never let us live it down if they find out we went running around town all night in our fucking pajamas. I shrug and keep running. He doesn’t know that all I do is run, even without him, even without our friends, even and especially without my mother. We run to the school and I buy him a coke from the machine outside the building. He leans against the cool brick and when he looks up at me through his eyelashes, lightning strikes. We kiss because it is dark and we are young and there is nobody around to tell us we are sick and dirty and broken for wanting to. There’s a lot my mother doesn’t know. There’s a lot my mother will never, ever find out.

We ditch the cans and keep running and when we laugh, we don’t sound like the evil that tried to feast its way inside us. We don’t sound like our mothers who don’t understand us. We don’t sound like anyone but ourselves. I drop him back off at his house and, because I’m wheezing a bit, he asks if I brought my inhaler with me. I shake my head and smile, broad and proud and brave.

I don’t need it.

[windysharpe]

a conversation between the heart and the apology, vol. 2

So, you’re leaving again? So, I’m leaving again. Are you at least sorry this time? Oh, don’t be stupid, you know I’m sorry every time. You, of all people, know I’m far from stupid. Maybe you are. You couldn’t even graduate from high school. Isn’t that why you left the first time? Stop it. You’re right. I’m sorry. But I deserve to be angry. You walk out like this thing we created out of dust and blood and storybook pages means nothing to you, like I mean nothing to you. You mean everything to me, absolutely goddamn everything. Every sunrise and every star in the sky, they all scream your name. That’s not why I’m leaving. You know that. I know, but, god, it feels like you take my heart with me everywhere you go. You do the same. Maybe we should trade. Don’t be daft, you know I wouldn’t want it any other way. Hey, you know it isn’t fair that you blame all the leaving on me. I leave for our mutual benefit. It would be too messy if I stayed. Your arms are wrapped around someone else right now. But where’s my heart, darling? Where’s my heart? Where’s mine? Buried in the same open grave as mine, bloody and still beating. Maybe I should throw my whole body down there. Sometimes, I feel like it’d be easier to die than to keep living with a hole in my chest. Fuck off. Keep living or I’ll kill you dead. I can’t do this without you. Do what? Love him. Love anyone. Love myself. Don’t lie. You’ll love yourself with or without me. Sometimes, I’m not so sure. I have to go. Will you leave me with something? More than my heart? More than all of my love? More than a promise to think about you every time my lips touch anyone else’s? Touch mine. You only ever have to ask. Come back soon. Please, please come back. Sweetheart, you know I can’t stay away for long.

[windysharpe]

there was a love song in our future

Where do I even put any of my things now that I don't have to hide them? I suppose I can get CD shelves instead of hiding the discs under the floorboards. I can hook up the colored lights around my room instead of hiding them all in my closet, packing them all away when I had to leave the house on vacation so she doesn't find them. Hang the disco ball in the living room, maybe. She would hate that. It doesn't matter now. My boyfriend comes over when we have band practice and casts judgement on all of my new decorations. I let what he says hit my heart and bruise it even though I tell him to screw off. I can only imagine the look on his face when I show him my new room was the same look my mom had when she found the loose floorboards in my childhood bedroom hiding all the rock music a strict Korean mother could never approve of, was taught every Sunday in church she was not allowed to approve of. The band goes home and I have my secret monthly phone call with you. It's the one hour per month where I feel like myself. While the phone rings, I wonder if we were Icarus in this story. Did anyone really deserve the spectacular show we put on? You called me the rockstar, the sun, the girl on the run. Who knew you’d be the one with waxen wings? Maybe you flew too close to me and burned alive. Maybe that’s why you ran. Maybe we never deserved the love we got. Maybe this all happened by accident; god had to correct his mistake. That’s what my mother told me when she caught me crying about him at age 18. I'm 23 now and I don't cry anymore. I don't think I can; the world beat it all out of me. With a drumstick in one hand keeping a steady beat on the coffee table and the landline in the other, I tell you about my new apartment. The shower has terrible water pressure, both sinks leak and I carried the mattress up the stairs myself and dented the wall in the hallway in the process. I did everything myself. When I told my boyfriend I was going to carry the mattress up a flight of stairs, he’d laughed and said I’d pay money to see your shrimpy arms carry a whole bed up some stairs. You tell me it's very rock and roll, knowing it'd make me smile. You say you wish you could see it, wish you could've helped set up. Neither of us say my boyfriend should've been there, even though it’s true; it’s unspoken and unnecessary. You do say you miss me. I tell you something to distract you, knowing if I let the dam break, the water will never stop flowing. There's a piece of you with me everywhere I’ve gone, even in the places you've never stepped foot in. I miss my mom, I miss the dam, I miss so much about the life I had before you had to leave. You're my ex-boyfriend, but I don't care the repercussions of my current boyfriend finding out about our conversations; I feel seasick when I haven't heard your voice in too long. I shut off the lights. I close the blinds. I tell the dam that I fucked it all up just to hear his voice go soft and sweet like all the sugar I was never allowed to eat in my mother’s house. You say, oh, darling, I can't see how it's possible for you to fuck anything up. I hear I love you in your voice, words neither of us have ever said since the first conversation we’d ever had. Those words poured out of me, true, simple, too much of a fact of this universe to not be said out loud at least once. I will never forget the surprised smile that bloomed like a botanical garden, like a greenhouse across your mouth, holy and alive. We’ve never said those words in that order since, not to our mothers, not to the significant others we’ve used as replacements, placeholders, and certainly not to each other. I miss you, goddamnit. It tumbles out of my mouth without my permission. Now that I'm allowed so much, I need it all. The dam is broken. The water rushes in every crevice of the town we met in, allowing the love we carefully composed on sidewalks, music shop back rooms, doorways, living rooms, to float. I know he hears I love you, too answering him back from my bass drum heartbeat that's been echoing inside me since the first time I put stick to cymbal. He certainly remembers, he was standing next to me, eyes fond and a guitar in his hands. Ah, still cursing god, I see. If your mother could hear you now. His voice is dripping honey, so palpable I can almost reach out and taste it. You told me before you left for the other side of the country with an acoustic guitar and a lopsided smile that I deserved the whole wide, wild world and that you were going to do your best to give it to me, whether you could touch me or not. I wish I believed you then. I led myself to believe that distance would destroy us and killed what we had before it did. But now, alone and scared for the first time in a long time, I wonder why I didn't. Your eyes burned alive with flame and smoke, so much so that my mother, strict and scared that love of anyone else will take me away from her, could see it just as much as I. She loved you too, despite her best efforts not to. My immigrant Korean mother loving a white boy who had fallen for her daughter; if only my poor excuse for a father could see her now. She thought you would be the one to take me away from her. So did I. Maybe you were, in some strange way. I loved you then like I love you now, even though I belong to someone else. I'm just not sure if that matters still in the worlds we've gotten caught up in, thousands of miles apart. I hope it does though, because in my heart, I take a chance with my drumsticks and all my dreams that you were there for the birth of and hitch a ride to California. In my heart, deep down within me where those dreams I learned to ignore live and breathe, even now, I fly. I hope your waxen wings are still intact from when we flew too close to the burning, blazing sun. My beautiful boy. I hope you want me to come back for him.

[windysharpe]

How is your mother. If its ok to ask

very sweet of you to ask. up and down, down more lately. we’re awaiting some news on her health that has us all anxious.

sorry I haven’t been posting very much, friends. I’ve been feeling shy and sad lately, to put it simply. get ready for an influx of poems, though. some things have been queued. much love to all of you, and thank you to this anon who asked this, she would be glad to know she’s thought about.

[windysharpe]

a conversation with the ghost who lives in my wall

How old are you? Old enough to remember. Are you okay? Now that I’m not alone. I remember loneliness. It was devastating, will-stripping. It took everything and left me with only my hands and all the half moons my nails bit inside them. Do you hear the ball I play with at night? When I can’t sleep. It rolls back and forth behind my head. It gets me seasick. Do you ever sleep? Not anymore. I still have dreams, though. I dream of sailing away on a boat that will help me forget the horror of the life I once lived, the life I live now, stuck in this wall. Do you want me to get you out? Can you? I’m not sure. Not without help. I love when you bring other people in this room. It reminds me of the company I used to keep. Tell me about your old friends. My sister was older and loved me, even when my mom and dad did not. She kept me safe. When I was in school, I had the boy with blond hair. He played with me on the swings, even when no one else would. I don’t remember anyone’s names, but I remember their beauty. Even the man who killed me. Beautiful, the way his knife gleamed in the moonlight. Beautiful, the way his eyes shone with regret and shame. Beautiful, the way he apologized as my blood ran cold. I wish I could keep you safe. You do. There is no pain anymore. Only when you are gone. I’m sorry for all the blood you’ve seen. I’m sorry for all the blood you’ve seen. I’m sorry for all the people you had to leave. I’m sorry for all the people who left you. I wish I could help. I wish I could help. You do. You do, too. What’s your name? The silence and peace sleep brings. What’s yours? The wind that whistles through open car windows. I ask again, are you okay? Only when I remember. Are you? Only when I remember.

[windysharpe]

so who is .. bird

she knows who she is. that’s enough for me.

I don’t give out the names to the people I write about in my poems. it would be an invasion of privacy and it would make both of us uncomfortable. they will stay titles.

[windysharpe]

I don't know how long it's been since you wrote "how to act straight for her" but when I first read that poem I was miserable and lost and in love with a girl that purposely hurt me over and over. Now Ive stumbled upon the poem again and I got to realize how much happier I am now. I'm surrounded by people that genuinely love me, I've cut that girl out of my life, and I'm confident in my sexuality. I feel like in a way your poems played a big role in my growth over this time, so thank you so much

it’s been exactly a year and two weeks since I published vol. two, anon. look what just a year can do. imagine what the next year, and the next after that, will bring. I’m so glad you are no longer suffering from toxic love. I’m proud of you for getting out and I’m glad you’re confident and surrounded by a good support system. I’m immensely humbled that I did anything to aide that. be well, traveler. blessed be.

[windysharpe]

“What happens if I save you?” you ask. It’s a dangerous question. You weren’t supposed to know you already did. But it’s too late now. The shield is up. Your bag is packed. Your sword is at your side. There are galaxies between my sword and yours, even though you moved hundreds of miles closer to me. I feel like a splinter in your spine, my hands tied behind your back; I cannot leave you, though I try, god, I try. Our friends think what we have is toxic. I think what we have is lost. We used to be perfect, but we are splintered straight down the middle, cracked, all the light inside the both of us seeping out.  There’s a Japanese tradition called kintsugi. When a piece of pottery breaks, they repair it with gold, filling the cracks with the most valuable thing they have, making the piece far more valuable than it was from the start. We’ve done this so many times over that I think we’re priceless. But there’s also a symptom my therapist calls amputation: cutting someone off entirely, feeling nothing, absolutely nothing, that you did before. She says I do this all the time. She says I’ve done this with you so many times that the sutures are coming undone; we are ripping at the seams. She says the relationship is never the same after amputation. I wonder how many limbs we have left. I’m angry at you, bird. I’m furious. You led me through the fire and then left me to burn. You slow danced with me in my living room while my dog watched on from the couch and then went home to call your boyfriend. Did you ever want me? Or did you want to feel good under the thumb of my love? I’ve been told it’s like a hurricane to be loved by me. Did you just get swept up in the storm? Well, I’m done. I’m done breaking our love and repairing it with everything valuable I have to my name. I’m done cutting off our legs and sewing them back on ten days later. I’m done with the unhealthy cycle we’ve created. You said you were excited to see what I’d write when we walked together in the woods. Well, here it is, bird, ghost, sun, dynamite, living art, salt in the wound and the bandage that covers it, everything I’ve ever made you into, everything the next person will call you and everything you’ll forget I did. In reality, darling, there’s no saving me. At least not by you. The only sword and shield that could fight my battle are the ones in my own two hands. We were a rush at the beginning. I got caught up in who I imagined you to be and the glitter on my cheeks made you feel like this was more magical than it was. But all we were was a wanderer and a liability who kissed in the dark and then slowly left each other behind.

glitter, gold and amputation by windy sharpe

[windysharpe]

We leave a paper trail of glitter and face paint, go to concerts of the same three bands and pretend that's gonna save us. Play quarters 'til we bleed or puke or both, wonder if our fathers know how to love, wonder if the concerts are numbing something, healing something or creating something. We smear makeup like war paint across our skin in dirty mirrors, poorly-lit bathrooms, and think, I know I'm supposed to think I'm pretty either way, but, man, I look so beautiful covered in gold.

the moon, the grief, the moon returned, by windy sharpe

[windysharpe]

We don't need an army to rally behind our love, we don't need no rings on our fingers or a paper signed by someone we'll never see again. We need falling asleep on the floor with the lights on, hands entangled between us, both of us wondering who will break the dam first. I cut your hair myself that night, a pair of dull scissors with every light we could find in your house all in your living room. You loved it and I wondered, not for the first or last time, if you loved me, too. I should've told you I loved you on that stupid fucking ferris wheel, but, I'm afraid of love dying from love being expressed at every possible turn. So, I told you nothing when you asked me to tell you a secret and you plucked a piece of glitter right off my cheek and took a star right out of my eyes. I hope you still have it. Maybe it's tucked away in a drawer your boyfriend will never look through. Maybe it's in your coat pocket, stored away in the closet of your new home, waiting for winter to come around again. I miss that star, but I won't ask for it back. They all belong to you anyway.

stars in my eyes, stars in your heart, by windy sharpe

[windysharpe]

I want to immortalize you. I want to write you down, take your freckles, make them periods; make your eyelashes into commas; make all the blood I hope you'll never spill into question marks, exclamation points. But, that's the point, isn't it? Even when your blood spills one day, all the writing I've done to try to get down your laugh, your palms, your fingers tangled in my hair, it makes you live forever. I want someone to stumble across these poems one day, hundreds of years from now, and wish they could've known you. I want all the people who will ever read my work to know that you are something I could never write down perfectly, that nobody could ever hope to capture you right. Your smile, eyes squinting in the sun, my heart trying to leap out of my chest and into your hands, it's all beautiful. It's all something even the sun himself could never rival. I'll keep comparing you to him anyway. And so, the moon fell for the sun because, how could she help it? He lit her up, even on her darkest days. He was always there, blazing, fighting for her to always hang in the sky, fighting to prove that he would never leave. You love someone else right now and that's okay; I've braved the face of my love for you on the coldest of days and never once turned around. But, I told you that i would stop lying, so I have to say that I will miss being able to kiss you even though I only got to do it for one perfect night, will miss trying to show you how deep my love goes. But, you know all this already. You know that I could be writing this poem for you swaddled in a blanket at five in the morning. You have read the words I scream to paper and you have not run. You have told me you love me instead, even though you hold his hand. So, I will not run either. It is getting colder, but giving up is for hearts much smaller than mine. I told that to myself once a long time ago, long before i got to look at you at the top of a ferris wheel and think that I could never give you up, and I will not forget it now. You are a work of art I got to immortalize, and when I die, I'll be glad your name was poured all over the art I tried to make live up to your perfect name.

the sun, the ghost, the bird, by windy sharpe

[windysharpe]

You touch me and it feels like a gas fire, burning me to a crisp. You look at me and it rips me open, you say my name and it's a holy choir. But, despite all of this, despite all the feeling in both our hearts, you do not love me. And, so, I walk away, like a moth tearing itself from the warmth of the light. Someone will love me. Someone will love me. Someone will love me, and it's time I get used to the fact that that person will not be you.

a ship sailing away from the face of a lighthouse, by windy sharpe

[windysharpe]

Looking down at the ocean below you, you wonder what would've happened if you had asked him to stay? That could've solved all this heartache, you think, all this storm inside you at the mistake you made attempting to marry the other man, the man you'd dreamt about your entire teenage years, at the right boy's eyes growing more and more wet as he stood there in the airport terminal, telling you he loved you but he had to leave. He didn't ask you how you got past security, he didn't ask you if you loved him back. These were moot points. He left. He left, so neither answer matters now. What if you had told him you loved him earlier? Would he have listened? Would that have arrested the development of the monsters growing inside him, clawing at the beautiful parts of him, shredding them to ribbons? They ask you to tie your hair back with them while you fuck on the scratchy carpet your bedroom, in the kitchen, on the living room floor, in the damn bathroom of the bar, but never in his bed. They're the ones patting you on the head and telling you you're pretty, and isn't it great he's not obsessed any longer? This uncaring bad-boy facade wearing you down to your thinnest layers, until you finally tell him everything inside you except the thing that would've gotten him to stay. He should've said he loved you, but you should've, too. Lying by omission is a game you've both perfected at this point, but maybe it's time to come clean, he thinks, when you ask him if he loves you and he answers "of course I love you," because what is there left to lose? He knows at the end of this conversation, he will be sitting on an uncomfortable airplane seat with all of his belongs packed in bags above him, save for the sweater you stole sitting innocently in your dresser drawer, and you will be standing alone, watching the escalator for far too long, begging him to come back and finish what you both started. You'll never know that when you asked him to meet you on the bridge the day before he left, kissing him back after he kissed you and asking him to start over, start fresh with you by his side, he did come. He did see you and smile, wonder how the hell a rainstorm so beautiful could blow through the parched land of California. But, he listened to his gut. He knew he needed to get out, but he was never leaving just because of you. He was leaving because that place you loved was killing him. You were the catalyst to something much larger than either of you. You tell yourself this at the ocean crashes against the rocks beneath far beneath your angel-white heels. He never said goodbye, but he told you why. Said that if he did, he would never leave, and you wish he would, wish he'd say goodbye just so he would turn back around and unpack his suitcase, even if it meant not being with you. He loved you, he loves you, and that is, in the end, just as beautiful as it is tragic. He loves you, and he left. You love him, and you never said. Now, it is too late. Now, he is happy, even if it is without you, and you were left in pieces on the couch you used to eat tacos with him on, used to fuck him on, used to watch pointless documentaries on holidays meant to be shared with family on, and now you never will again. You are standing, contemplating the drop, with your back to what was supposed to be your new family. And, isn't that the point? He became your family, the closest thing you had to healthy. But, maybe a healthier alternative doesn't mean the healthy alternative, and he knew that. He became more enlightened than you could ever hope to be, but because you don't share that enlightenment, you group him together with all the men who have abandoned you, even if you say his name with reverence on your tongue as stand on this cliff-face. The man of your childhood dreams abandoned you at this runaway train of a wedding as you peer into the abyss in a lace white dress, your father left you as a child and never apologized for it, only came back when he needed your money, your boyfriend in college didn't love you enough to stay, and this boy. This airborne boy who flew 2,000 miles to escape this town, to escape you; you say all their names with vitriol, with malice and spite and spit them into the sea, but not him. And, in the end, you don't jump off that jagged cliff into the waiting arms of death below. You don't jump, because there is revenge to plan, there are fathers to send away, there are still fires to set. And there is a boy 2,000 miles away who would be devastated at your funeral. You might never see him again, but you don't need to to feel the effect of what he did to your life. He taught you that you don't need to set fire to everything you lose. He taught you that self-hate can be left behind, can be in a life you don't lead anymore. He taught you that it's okay to love someone and have that be enough; no sweeping musical numbers, no black-and-white toned dance breaks, not anymore. Just a boy and a girl, two people who dream of better lives, and who sometimes need to leave love behind to reach them.

a seaside memorial of lost love, by windy sharpe

[windysharpe]

For the anon in love with their best friend, I was in the same painful unreciprocated boat for so many years. But recently someone else blew into my life and suddenly looking at my best friend didn't hurt anymore. I can't tell you how good it is to finally be held and loved by someone who loves you back. The position that you're in is so hard. But don't lose hope, my friend. The universe will send good things your way. And when it does you won't believe how happy you can be.

thank you for this, my darling. this helped me as well. I’m so glad you’re happy. be well, the both of you.

[windysharpe]

Hey. I'm going through a pretty rough patch right now with my best friend who I've been in love with for years. I just wanted you to know that I really relate to your poetry and I've been scrolling through your poems for the past hour. I've been trying not to cry throughout all of my hard times but your poems finally made me acknowledge my feelings and get my emotions out. So thank you. You're an amazing writer.

oh, honey, I’m so sorry you have to go through this. being in love with your best friend is one of the toughest feelings out there. I wish love could always be reciprocated, but that’s not the way love works, and that’s not what makes it beautiful. love is beautiful because it’s selfless, because it gives without ever asking in return. it expects nothing and gives everything. I hope someday soon your love meets a mirror instead of a wall. best of luck out there. blessed be.