letters to a girl

dear girl,
     only we could get cold feet walking on coals. and i guess i’ve done a pretty good job of letting you know i’ll always be around because i guess that means you never have to be. but, hey, misundertood is so vintage me. they say the ringing in your ears is the sound of you losing the ability to hear that frequency. well, my ears are ringing and my phone isn’t. you are tuning yourself out. i am the moth and you are the bulb burning brightly. sometimes i wish you just couldn’t have fun without me. like i can’t without you. i wish, just for once, that you were “friday night at the library” and i was “saturday morning on the floor.” it’s still you running through my veins, and down my cheeks at night. we sit in the dark, your transparent lies and me, and i’d give up my x-ray eyes not to see. i’m just so jaded by this li(f)e. my ears will always be the shower where your singing voice hides. but when your last summer becomes “last summer,” i hope you’re not singing the blues. i hope you don’t grow up to be the hangover after your youth.
—the boy

dear girl,
      you say you read me like a book, but i read you like a warning label. it is ridiculous how you take advantage of me. i can’t sleep, calculating how many days i can stand not to call you for not calling me back, or how many times i should let the phone ring to make you sweat, or how many minutes i should let you keep me on hold, and all this phone math that doesn’t even make sense. or matter. because you never want to really talk. to me at least. all these mediums of communication and i can’t even reach you. i just want us to talk. i guess the honeymoon’s over. i feel like a christmas present on december 26th. you’ll rediscover me in the attic again next year. and play with me one last time because you’re bored. for old time’s sake. i love you. i really do. but you remind me of the time when i was small, when i hopped the fence into my neighbor’s flower bush and picked a yellow-petaled one whose name i never knew. i thought my mom deserved something pretty that day. she said she loved it, and me for picking it. but it was poisonous. and unsafe for me to touch. i’m not bad at analogies, i just wanted to use a true story. and i suppose that is how i give you my heart every time. with good intentions but poisonous to the touch. yet you come back for it everytime, ‘cause good or bad, it makes your blood rush. for a while. i love you. i really do. but i’m slowly falling out of love with the chase, ‘cause, well, only you could make a cat
hate mice. and the devil cry. and a ghost miss life. and your face.
—the boy 

dear girl,
     these letters could stop if only you’d answer my calls consistently. why can’t you miss me like i miss meals and showers? do you ever think faster than you can type? me neither. i just wonder if firefighters ever use cherry pickers for their namesake. and why they don’t make punching bags that punch back. and why you (say you) love me. and other thoughts that slipped my mind before i could type them. but please consider i am typing this with one hand. the other one uncombing my salt water hair. every time you accuse me of not caring, i wish you could see me when you’re not around. but that would be like peeking at the bride before the wedding. you’re supposed to have faith that i’m as big of a scared, nervous, crying, shaking mess as you are. without knowing for sure. or reading these letters. but that’s just it. you will never know what i am without you. the sober me. in that “me with you” is just me hallucianating off the drug of you. in the most non-cliche way. yet both of those me’s are equally (un)real(istic). just think of me as a character auditioning for real life. a bruce wayne whose secret identity is batman. and for every milisecond of every second we spend fighting, i am thinking of all the painfully romantic places we could go and things we could do.
sunflowers and venetian pools. soon?
—the boy                                                            

dear girl,

i am thinking at a million miles per minute. my thoughts are spilling like melted ice cream avalanches dripping down my fingers before i can lick them off the cone. we are not each other. we are not even each other’s sober idea of love. you’re in love with who you think i am. and i’m in love with how you’ll never know it. i’m in love with how you’ll never know who i’m not. you will never know who i can’t be. you will never know who i can be. i love you in the same way an executioner’s face is his mask. and in a sneaky, selfish way, it makes me feel infinite. when i said i fell for you, it was a freudian slip. and i mean and don’t mean that in every way you can and can’t think of. but it’s only a matter of time before i become the part of me that hates the part of me that’s writing this. believe it or not, i’m the victim. because my split personalities have split personalities around you, and you always marry mr. hyde. and i always forget which one of my selves i’m lying to. i fired the devil on my shoulder so i could be a free agent. if to love is to forgive, then i forgive you but love your sins. he will always hate the girl he loves for loving who she thinks he is.

—the boy.