When you comfort me with your words

  Is it your soul I reject?

  If I show you the imperfect unpolished core of me in my tears

  And you answer with your hurried honest being

  Is it yourself I reject?

  There isn't time for thinking in front of calamity.

  No time to pick and discard

  Beautify and paint

  So the words I turned my head away from

  Are they your soul?

  And if so

  If so is true

  Are we, my loved one

  Two beings that souls can't touch?

  Are we, my loved one

  Able to love in such a way?

  Is it a tragedy? Is it a life?

  When I cry

  When you cry

  If our ragged edges can't complete

  If they hurt and bleed

  My dear,

  Are we supposed to love?

  You look away with a frown

  Trembling hands that ask me to not repeat

  Any word of that question that will break

  Most of what we ever tried to build.

  But dear one, I need to know

  You told me once, fondly and with laughter in your voice

  That I am the type that can never stop

  Searching for answers once the questions touch my mind.

  You laughed once

  But now your closed-off body is telling me

  That you wish I was anything other but.

  And that

  That, dear one

  Is it not something we should face?

  The nights after my tears were always the coldest.

  You held me so tight in our bed, in our hard-earned home

  And yet your fear-filled eyes turned my body into ice.

  The sobs you hide with rushing water

  And the redness we both face the new days with

  I, of my own tragedy and despair

  And you, of your helplessness and fear

  Of not being enough to the only one you chose

  And hoped with clenched fingers

  To be enough for.

  Your smile painted over breakfast we can't swallow

  My apologies that are repeated over our days

  And your strained features that don't know where to take any of them.

  You are enough, I swear with all my tired broken heart

  And yet in the moment, you can never reach beyond the utter despair that holds me

  And yet in the moment, every part of my being tells you that you aren't quite.

  Even though I long for you in every other way

  Even though I need you in every other way

  It is this particular and only way

  That might be the end of us.

  I wished for change in the worst of those days.

  Wished for a whole other soul

  That might be pretty enough to connect edges with anyone on earth

  But with you most of all

  With you most of all.

  I wished for another being and another name

  Something you can call without it breaking your heart apart.

  And yet on those nights, you screamed at me with fury in your eyes

  That my name is the only one you fell for and it will stay

  And for that, my heart, I cried

  For that, I sobbed.

  For we are so in love in my eyes and in my pain

  For we are so intertwined that love without the heartache is nothing we seek.

  For that we can't, no matter how much we try

  Find a way out of this misery we breathe.

  You wouldn't love anybody else. I can see it in your eyes.

  That in even the darkest moments

  Where anger is higher than any promise

  You still

  Above all

  Look into my eyes like you can't bear all else.

  You wouldn't, and my soul knows the same

  That my love was grown for you and perhaps

  Perhaps

  Finished on you too.

  But is it worth it dear heart?

  Is our love worth all this heartache

  All these tears?

  If you have to hold onto me so tight

  With terror in your veins

  And a feathery smile on your face

  If I have to rest my whole being on your hands just to assure

  That this is where I chose to belong.

  If you need the whole weight of my burdensome existence just to believe in our love

  Are we meant to love

  Should we love?

  I, beyond anything else

  And more than any other wish

  Wished that your arms were enough to hold my battered and utterly incapable of being held self.

  Beyond anything else

  I wished that somehow and without reason or logic

  Your arms will be able to hold my watery and fleeting existence.

  To keep it tethered and centred

  To make it believe in anything other than its own tragedies.

  Even though I tried all my life

  Even though I broke in search of it

  Even though I told myself that some people just

  Don't rest.

  But it is my greed that brought us here

  It is my foolish and utterly hopeful heart

  That ignored all the scars it wears

  And threw both of us in this story I wish with all my heart

  That you never entered.

  Your love was new to my soul

  And in its uniqueness was my fall.

  I couldn't use any walls I built

  For that you could jump over them

  With ease I never felt.

  For that you, most of the time

  Destroyed my walls without knowing they even exist

  Gently and methodically

  One bright laugh at a time.

  I couldn't shut you out with any cruelty I learned

  For that your kindness was one I never saw.

  You were lovely, in every way

  And I didn't stand a chance

  And mostly and honestly

  Didn't want to have one.

  I fell

  Completely and erratically

  Nothing like the elegant picture my heart has of you.

  And yet you caught me somehow

  You said I fell too

  And I couldn't believe it back then

  Looking at your soft unscathed skin

  And your bright sated eyes and soft calm breaths

  Couldn't believe that someone like you fell for someone like me

  When I was lying on the ground trying to catch my breath.

  I never told you those thoughts.

  It was fear perhaps

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  Of confirming that your fall wasn't quite the all-encompassing feeling I struggle to keep inside most times.

  It was fear perhaps

  To know I fell into another hope

  With someone who survives falls like they never happened

  To the extent it almost seems like

  They didn't happen.

  My heart whispered your name in awe

  And I hit my chest with tears running down my face

  It is a tragedy waiting to happen, I repeated in hysterics

  Happened, waiting to happen

  Will happen.

  Yet my heart didn't care.

  Defiantly and Stubbornly replied

  That life without love isn't easier than this

  And what of tomorrow I asked

  What of the pain that is coming I pleaded

  Quietly and in aching beats it said

  What of the pain that is now?

  I didn't tell you any of this.

  A coward I was or a greedy man who couldn't think of losing his treasure

  I alluded in peaceful silences

  With a joking tone and light words

  That don't come near to the reality of how much I hurt those who try to love anything I am.

  And you would hum and listen

  Laughing at all the right moments

  Then you would look at me and stay silent for a few moments

  Just looking with a faint smile

  And the replies varied

  And sometimes didn't happen.

  As I was a child begging you to understand

  But never strong enough to tell you in a way that might make you do.

  But once

  And only once, since I'm beginning to understand (and how late it is.) That you were also not strong enough to face someone believing they are undeserving of love

  When your love and heart and being

  All belonged to them.

  You said

  That the people who love me know

  And I was stunned by the utter grief in your eyes

  That I couldn't ask any of the questions that might have saved us from more despair.

  What part did they know?

  That I can't be loved? That I'm hard to love?

  That I'm watery and impossible to hold

  Complicated, tired, unable to give much

  Not having much

  Or, looking at your sorrowful eyes

  That I can't accept love?

  I didn't ask.

  And the moment passed as it is

  But returned in every moment after

  In different words and looks and pain

  It returned.

  And neither of us were brave enough to sit down

  And fix it from the moment it had begun.

  It's something like that I think.

  I never told you any of those things, and I lived on the foolishly confident assumption

  That you needed my words to know them.

  When the truth turned out to be

  And like you said

  The ones who loved me always knew.

  (If I told you this discovery you would laugh

  A tearful fond sound

  And I would apologise to your returning ire

  If I told you this you would say

  "You were always the type to never let go of the answers you found, no matter who says and who does.

  You hold onto them dearly and desperately.

  Sometimes, and you would cry on this, more than you hold onto your loved ones.")

  It is like that I'm starting to realise.

  However late it is, however cruel I was in my lateness.

  I wished forever for arms to be able to hold my being

  And later on, I wished for your arms only to do such a thing.

  But from the moment you asked my name with a curious look

  And from the moment I answered your question and every other one that followed

  You had held onto me

  You had held me in your heart

  And in your care and words.

  You opened more than your arms to me

  You bared yourself to me and only ever asked in return

  That I do the same.

  Yet I couldn't believe that I can ever fit into any space you make for me

  Even when you kept your aching arms raised

  And tearful eyes accepting

  And struggling heart loving

  I couldn't believe

  That it is anything that can accept me.

  And in the long years ahead where you dropped your arms and held onto me instead

  Ruthlessly and viciously and so so defeated

  I wondered

  In so many tears and so many moments of utter self-hate

  If I can ever deserve your neverending tries.

  You would shake your head and beg with exhausted everything

  Hiding your face in your hands and trembling violently.

  I'm here right now

  You would say

  I'm here and I will be here

  It isn't going to change

  Will you ever

  Let me hold you?

  But what if we fail? I would counter

  What if I let you and we fall

  What if we fail and everything dies?

  And your red eyes and bleeding heart would answer instead of your silence

  What is this we are doing if not failure?

  I whisper one night with my ears close to your erratic heart

  How could I ever repent for how I hurt you?

  And your hands would tighten on my body with a breathless laugh

  Love is blind, you would whisper back, and I have been utterly blind for you.

  I close my eyes painfully and wonder if this could ever be the love you deserve.

  And you would answer my unspoken doubts

  With a voice that knows it deserves more

  Yet wants it from just the person its heart chose.

  I'm drowning in you, you have made me drown

  And yet

  I see no light of salvation in front of me

  Either save me and come with me to land

  Or we drown together.

  You would laugh, a broken choked off sound

  You say your existence can't be held

  Yet it has buried itself in me to the deepest part of my soul

  And it won't let go.

  Would you ever

  Just accept us?

  It is the utter defeat in your voice, I think.

  It is the utter defeat that makes this love so hard to bear

  Because even then your hands

  Never let go of my weight.

  I'm okay.

  You would repeat with wild and bloodshot eyes

  And I would rest my head on your back

  Not stopping you from hiding the tears you think will make me let go.

  I would rest my head and whisper tiredly

  After another cold night of love not being enough.

  You are not okay.

  And your whole body would tremble and shrink

  Screaming at me

  What do you want me to do?

  Just tell me what I can do

  I will do it but just

  Your voice cracks on the words and you fall, and I follow.

  Hiding you from the world but most importantly from me.

  But just tell me something. Anything.

  I don't know how to love you anymore

  Then shouldn't you stop?

  I ask blankly and your nails imprint on my arms that are caging you

  Do you think it's that easy? You would question with barely repressed rage.

  Should it be that hard?

  Should love be that hard?

  Your body would shake violently with your sobs

  And I would nod to your repeated whispers with closed eyes.

  Selfish, selfish, selfish

  I tighten my arms around your body and I nod

  My foolish greedy selfish heart.

  We should end this.

  My words hang in the air

  Bring a stillness that makes it hard to breathe.

  Your fingers twitch in a memory of your stubborn heart

  Your brave stubborn beautiful heart.

  But they still.

  They still and I exhale all my hesitant thoughts

  We should end this

  I repeat and your breaths are shaky.

  Staring at the table not looking at me

  Vacant eyes telling me you're thinking of our story

  From start and

  To end.

  Your face is pale

  And your body is frail

  We both know

  I took from you much more than you should give.

  Your fingers twitch again

  And mine do the same

  I raise my eyes to the ceiling and blink away the tears

  Holding on isn't the answer anymore

  Perhaps it never was.

  I tried

  You whisper in a tired voice

  I tried to love you but you

  Looking me in the eyes with a hollow laugh

  You make it impossible to be loved.

  My heart shrinks and I silence it with trembling breaths.

  I'm sorry

  Your eyes sharpen with the usual ferocity you used against my self-doubt

  Only this time it is only against me and I

  Welcome it with accepting everything.

  I deserve your guilt until the day I die and perhaps beyond

  But that is not the point of this.

  You lean on the table and push my chest with your finger

  (How my heartbeats still quicken, how they still call.)

  The point of this

  Is that your heart deserves more than you give it.

  Your cold hands hold my face gently and with a familiar sadness.

  I loved you

  In all our moments I have loved you

  But I can't love you for both of us

  I can't love someone who thinks they can't be loved.

  Your fingers map my face with slow longing movements.

  I loved your heart and soul and brain and being

  And I would have drowned if it meant holding the existence you liken to water.

  Your fingers stop at my eyelids and gently close them

  I inhale sharply when your lips meet my closed eyelids

  One after another.

  Your whisper warms my face and makes the tears fall

  But it isn't about me

  It's about you.

  And until you brave the waters alone

  It's time for me to leave.

  I sob desperately trying to breathe with my eyes clenched shut

  And I feel your tears joining the warmth on my face.

  You breathe your final words into my lips, where our salty tears join

  Trying to give me the bravery you always seemed to have in front of my wavering fears.

  You will always be loved.

  You say, surely and slowly

  Like it is a mere fact of life.

  You just need to accept

  Not deserve, or win or be worthy of.

  Accept your heart

  Accept that it can be loved

  And when you do

  A sobbing sound cuts your words and I hold onto your hands that still, at our last moments, hold me so gently

  When you do,

  I will be there to show you my love.

  I rest my face and once again my weight on you

  With horrifying sounds that I can't stop

  Speaking of my misery and pain and utter fear of a forever inability to be loved.

  Yet you only hush me with gentle sounds

  And let your fingers wipe my tears for the last time

  Hoping that I can come back to you

  Hoping that the pain in our story has a happier end.

  You take a breath and slowly let go of my desperate hold on you

  Being kind even in our end.

  Your forehead touches mine and I can't open my eyes

  Can't see you leave or cry once again because of me

  And maybe for the last time

  Yet you whisper and I can't ignore

  Look at me.

  I can't ignore

  My eyes open slowly and my vision is blurry

  Yet I can see the soft and sad devotion in your eyes

  So so honest in a way we couldn't be before

  So so brave in a way only you could be.

  We don't need any more words

  Not when even in your eyes

  My existence is so carefully and lovingly cherished.

  I'll learn

  Your eyes soften and you nod

  You will.

  And I love you

  You nod again with a small smile

  You do.

  Thank you

  I sob again

  Your body deflates with a relief so strong it makes you close your eyes.

  No, thank you.

  And when the door closes and the silence returns,

  I lie on the ground listening to my own heartbeat

  That I silenced in my fragile wish to not be hurt.

  Listening to it talk in soothing tones

  We will try.

  It promises

  And I softly rest my hand on its sounds

  We will

  I assure

  For both of us.