the spaces in between

"are you currently seeing somebody?"

Vulnerability exists between the spaces of finding and losing. We move through life looking for connections and someone who will want to stay and figure us out. We want to fall in love in places we can tell our children stories about. Give yourself a chance and fall in love in bed with a boy who smells like home. Inhale all of him as he plies you with wine and stories you will laugh at and later wonder why they're funny. Believe him when he tells you that you're beautiful because you are. It's funny how all the perceptions we have of ourselves are things reflected back to us by other people. We can only see ourselves through the eyes of others and sometimes that's all the connection you need. So believe him and see your beauty through his eyes and know that for one night, in a bed on which his body can barely fit with his legs dangling from the edges and movies you barely notice streaming in the background, you are perfect. You probably shouldn't be worried about tomorrow. That might seem like a very cliche thing to say but hear me out: isn't love the most cliche thing ever invented? Chemicals in the body and basic chemistry turned into a stimulation for procreation. So please, tonight, embrace the cliche.

"I haven't been to church in a long time. I have a personal relationship with God though and i'm hoping that He feels the same way"

I wonder sometimes how long crushes are built to last before they are no longer crushes and if we, this, whatever this is and whatever we are has crossed over into something else. I have spent years looking for you in other men. The way only one corner of your lip breaks into a smile, how ugly you look after a fresh hair cut, how you straddle the line between asshole and confident. I don't know which version of you i'm going to meet half the time. i think the fact that i never know keeps me here. This is not the night to fix anyone. I have spent countless nights trying to fix you in between countless bottles of white wine and conversations you never allow yourself to have sober. I have loved all of me out for you.

"your skin tastes like honey"

Well, it is the colour of honey. Listen to him tell you about his family, his father, realise how good you've got it. Don't mention that you're in therapy. You are depressed without any reason. You don't have any traumatic incident from your past, your parents think you're happy and well adjusted and you should be. You don't have anything to tell your therapist, no juicy anecdotes, no stories of abuse, you just know that you're depressed. Frankly, you think you bore your therapist. When your therapist asks if you want to hurt yourself in anyway, say no because really you don't. Forget to mention that you've stopped praying before flights, you might not want to harm yourself but you wouldn't mind an act of God, prayer leaving your lips as the cloud makes way for your plane to lose its fight against gravity. You don't say any of that. Just listen to the boy in a bed too small for his body to fit.

"pennies for your thoughts?"

 I am thinking that I do not want to be here. I have this overwhelming need to love someone and also an overwhelming realisation that I might not be capable of such emotions. Tonight we can't even see the stars because we are all trying to be civilised and electricity and  sky scrapers and lights are all required for civilisation. They all outshine the stars. I'm thinking if we finally make this work, we will not be able to include the stars in our narrative because there were so many lights that night, such incredible lights, we barely noticed the skies.

"apparently, 2:22am is the new 9am"

You nudge him awake by 2. You tell him that he needs to leave. You can't sleep with someone lying on your bed. He smiles, smoothes back the hair littered on your face, kisses your forehead and leaves.

"good morning beautiful"

The last person that called me beautiful loved to love me in french. It's a relief that you can love me in a language that my grandmother will approve of. Vulnerability exists in between the spaces of finding and losing and i am willing myself to be vulnerable. I keep reminding myself that all love ends in heartbreak anyway, it shouldn't matter if it happens today or next week or 50 years from now. it will happen eventually and maybe i shouldn't spend every waking minute waiting for it to come. I laid in bed last night with a boy whose body was too big for my bed, willing him to kiss me but instead i just fit neatly between his arms and conversations and forehead kisses and stolen pecks. It is okay to kiss me, i want to say but i don't. But it is morning now and i have lost all my urge to love to the night.You were too big to fit in my bed, too big to fit in my heart.

love,
leggy.