The Things I Can't Say Out Loud

  I've never heard your voice, but I know the way how you say my name like it belongs to you. I've never traced your face, still I could draw you from memory— funny how the heart collects pictures it has never seen. I swear you leave the light on in a house I've never walked through. I've been homesick for a place that only exists with you. Everyone says, "You'll know when you know." But I think I've always known— just not who. Though I don't know your face, I still see your features. I can feel your hands before they've ever reached mine. I've heard I love you a thousand different ways, but yours is still my favorite, and you've never even said it. I know your side of the bed. It's the one I've never slept on. Funny how half my life already makes room for someone. Maybe somewhere you're missing me too walking through this world with an empty space shaped exactly like me. You're probably a morning person. I'm already...

To Be... To be cared for is to be loved.   To be loved is to be thought of.   To be thought of is to be yearned over.   To be yearned over is to be chosen.   To be chosen is to be prioritized.   To be prioritized is to be important.  

i think i've spent a lot of my life trying to find the right words for things i was never taught how to say. so i write them down. the things that keep me up at night, the conversations i replay on the way home, the people i miss while they're still here, the versions of myself i haven't quite learned how to love yet. i write about growing up, about growing apart, about wanting to be known without having to explain every little thing that made me who i am. i write about the strange loneliness of having so much love to give and never knowing where to put it. somewhere along the way, we learned to look down when we didn't know what to say. we filled the silence with screens, the empty spaces with noise, and the pauses between us with anything that wasn't the truth. but i still think there's something beautiful about a table full of people who put everything down long enough to listen. maybe that's what i'm trying to do here. set the phone aside. pull up a ...