NEPTUNE BURNS

Saved texts from you

[YOU // Nov. 28 // 2:39 AM]
Your bookshelf is still here. It leans against the wall the way you would sometimes - a part of something I could watch forever. A piece of something owned by nothing but owning everything. I can't bring myself to dismantle it, to make an ad for it on Craigslist / eBay / the street corner. It's empty and everything about it makes me feel hollow. I miss your piles of books and your old journals filled with words. I have touched every square inch hoping you've left me a note: a way to get back to you. But even though there is no paper, I keep coming up with paper cuts all across my palms.

[YOU // Dec. 29 // 1:03 PM]
It was your birthday yesterday and even though mine passed and you didn't send anything I can't help but wish you a happy birthday. Congratulations beautiful - you have lived another year and knowing your breath and mine are shared by this atmosphere of city lights and potted flowers makes it easier for me to know you may never come back again.

[YOU // Jan. 1 // 12:15 AM]
Happy New Years. I lied. Knowing you are out there while I am here staring at your bookcase makes my bones feel heavier and heavier. I didn't even get a goodbye from you, how can I pretend you weren't here. You painted our bedroom mustard yellow, laughed with your raggedy overalls covered in paint as I drew sunflowers linked together around the windowsill of our room. You picked the bedspread - made a palette of Monet out of five dollar sheets and Van Gogh out of sunrises in midnight. You and I made this ours. It will always be ours.

[YOU // Feb. 20 // 10:56 PM]
I hate holding onto your side of the blankets: they are empty empty cold so fucking cold. I can feel the chills echoing along my ribcage but I clutch till I can't feel the trembling. If I hold on tight enough this comforter feels like a body, it feels like soft edges and sharp curves of pink under-toned flesh. It feels like you.

[YOU // Mar. 19 // 2:36 AM]
I can't remember what walking home to you felt like. I imagine it felt warm. Almost suffocatingly warm - my heart was a seed and the roots it grew wrapped themselves around every inch of my body till I was entangled in the vine work of earthbound decadence. Not the sun not the moon not the universe - you were human and no celestial being could dent my sapling heart more than your winter-fell touch. Snowflakes lacing your mouth you were what replenished this soreness. There was never enough of you to hold. Never enough of you to sustain this entwining of icicles and roots. But god damned it was beautiful to be frostbitten in the summer haze of love. Coming home hasn't been the same since.

[YOU // Apr. 15 // 5:30 PM]
If a phoenix could revive itself from its self-destruction, why couldn't you do the same? Loving you was not always easy. There were days when you shrunk into yourself below baggy sweaters and cried in the shower for hours begging for another body - another life - another you. There were nights I would come home to you and hold you as the panic attacks crescendoed into ear-splitting drumbeats that ricocheted off of my heart's walls. There were days when we would be laughing and getting ready to go out for a night of fun - all it took were your jeans being a little too tight, your love handles a little too pinch-able, your upper lip a little too full to send you into a plethora of sobs. And not once did I regret holding you through it. What I regret is spending so much time trying to find the cure to resurrect the Lazarus of your mind that I forgot loving you meant coaxing your ashen heart to fruition even when it was doomed to incinerate itself all over again. (What I mean to say is: if I can love you with the pieces charred and flaming, why can you not love yourself within the remains I cling onto you?)

[YOU // May 30 // 7:49 PM]
What I meant to say when you asked why I hold onto you is that we don't choose who we want. What I meant to say when you asked why I don't move on is that we don't choose who impacts our lives and leaves bruises in the shape of fingertips along our heart. I didn't choose to hold a girl who'd rather run into traffic than admit she's afraid. I didn't choose to want a girl who smells like vanilla and tastes like sugary strawberries. I didn't choose to hold onto a girl who doesn't hold onto me. I didn't choose it.

[ YOU // June 28 // 3:08 AM]
I try not to think about you if I can help it but your sunflower filled walls leave me breathless sometimes when I remember why they are there. I still google if there are trigger warnings before watching a show to make sure you won't get a panic attack. The scent of diluted roses always reminds me of your smell. And sometimes - only sometimes - I catch myself wondering if this will ever stop hurting. [But I still want you.]

For the aesthetic queen who writes pools of beautiful words hyungwoes (the darling babe)