she peels an orange and gives one half to me. if i could wear it like a friendship bracelet, i would. instead i swallow it section by section and tell myself it means even more this way. to chew and to swallow in silence here with her. to taste the same thing in the same moment.

the number of hours we have together is actually not so large. please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.

the lamb loves its wolf. the wolf turns all white and starts quivering out of love for the lamb. the lamb loves the wolf's fragility, and the wolf loves the frail one's force. the wolf is now the lamb's lamb, and the lamb has tamed the wolf. love blackens the lamb.

the culmination of love is grief. and yet we love despite the inevitable, we open our hearts to it.

but i miss you to the point of anguish. i'd like to see you and have you to myself — just to myself — for a long, long, while.

it has been raining all night. summer rain. the liveliness of it keeps me awake. i am so happy to have lived.

i will not mention the last time i saw you. my mouth, so far from yours, i said ‘i am afraid i will spend entire years trying not to need you.’ as if i wasn't certain. as if this wasn't my confession.

i missed her so much that i wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. i wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in hyde park, enjoying her view. everybody passing could comprehend how much i miss her. how physical my missing is.

She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and whispered in my ear, “Good night, darling, it is very hard to part with you, but good night; tomorrow, but not early, I shall see you again.” J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

i am lonely when i love because i feel the immensity of the task— the stoking and the tending of love. i feel i can only fail. so i hide and cling all at once. i need you near me, in my house, but i don't want you to find my hiding place. hold me. don't come too close.

as i grow older, much older, i will experience many things, and i will hit rock bottom again and again. again and again i will suffer; again and again i will not be defeated. i won't let my spirit be destroyed.

sometimes i feel connected to you, drawn to you. like there is a thread between you and me that can never break or be severed. i think that's something like love, don't you?

but in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. even darkness must pass. a new day will come. and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

i must endure bad times and the waters will rise, possibly as high as the lips and possibly even higher, how can i know beforehand? but i’ll fight my fight and sell my life dearly and try to win and pull through.

i still fell like the world is a piece of bread. i’m holding out half to you.

who doesn’t know what it’s like to go with a friend to a railway station and then to watch the train take them away? as you walk along the platform back into the city, the person who has just gone is often more totally there than when you embraced them before they left.

i never seem to run out of tenderness for you and because i need to feel you near. excuse the bad writing and excuse the emotional overflow. what i mean to say, perhaps, is that, in a way, i am never empty of you; not for a moment, and instant, a single second.

you just came here to look at me, came to get the old scent again. why don't you just smell yourself?

but try to measure loss. measure the silence of a house, the unheard footsteps at the doorway, the unemployment of the mouth. the waking up, having forgotten and remembering again the full extent of what forever is. with each grave, i think of loss and i can only think of you.

i still don't know if there is a divine plan, but i've come to realize that it doesn't matter. what matters is that we act; that we do what's right when confronted with evil. that's what you did for us. it wasn't the gods that saved us, it was you.

i want to be anonymous and private. i want to talk without talking— if such a thing is possible.