I.
Things did not end the way i hoped they would have ended, and I apologize about the mess I left behind, but - for what it is worth - I loved you. I would have walked through fire to tell you that, and I practically burned with the hell we both went through. Every night, I clutched the phone and pressed it into my skin until I almost feet your breath sinking into me. I held on to your voice disappearing, and I cradled the sound waves like they could grow into something that loved me enough to stay. I hardly said anything in those conversations, and that was not my fault. I left my lips against yours the last time I kissed you, and I do not want them back. So, I wrote you letters instead and I told you how empty my hands felt and about the way I set my clocks back so when you woke - I did, too. I told you about how I almost went crazy and how the silence came in with fangs and sucked my bones dry; how I tried to call for help but only knew your number. This is not supposed to sound angry, but God, I loved you so hard I hated you. I hated you for leaving and coming back to kiss me and leaving again. I invented new curse words after you left the last time. God - you leaving hurt. You hurt me and then hurt me some more, but the pain was there only because I knew how good things were. So I guess I probably owe you a thank you; for everything. Thank you for the 2 a.m’s. Thank you for the post office and for giving me a reason to buy stamps. Thank you for coming back to kiss me in the first place. Thank you for all of the Sunday’s. Thank you for breakfast in bed. Thank you for dancing with me. Thank you for all the heat and all the fire and thank you for the rain. The rain helped me grow and I lack any knowledge about gardening, but I know about the seeds and rain and dirt and some more dirt. I think I will turn out fine. I think spring’s coming soon, and I am growing, and one of these days I intend to wake up okay. I intend to wake up okay even if you are not there to say good morning; even if you are not there to kiss me awake.

II.
The week after you left things were all salt and open wounds; burning and burning with nothing to put out the flames. I want you to write me back even if your words tell me about the moons you saw without me, the craters that fit your feet perfectly. But your arms are too busy reaching for hands that are not mine, and cannot talk to you yet without wanting to kiss you. This situation is not your fault. You do not know how to be the opposite of soft moonlight or a black hole or a galaxy. You do not know how not to be beautiful, and I do not know how not to notice. You are not mine to give love letters to anymore, but every poem l create manages to still be filled with words about your hands and your collarbones like you might come back to thank me one day for the lipstick that stained your skin like wine. I hope I made you drunk enough to forget the bad parts of this all. I hope you remember the way our veins weaved together before the knots started to form. I want to kiss you still, God - I want to. But I am scared I might taste someone else’s lips there, and that almost killed me the last time. I will write you again someday when I know how to stop comparing you to skies and planets and other unreachable things. I will miss you until then because that is the only talent that I have. Watching people go and then writing about the parts they leave behind like every love that ends up in a grave deserves a eulogy. I hope hearts know how to come back from the dead and I hope they know how to pull arrows out of flesh because my hands lack any motivation to do anything but remember you.
III.
It is 6 pm on a Tuesday, and I find myself standing outside in the cold listening to the buzzing of the telephone wires. On the good days, I can pretend the buzzing is actually your pulse. On the bad days, it is the sound our bodies made the last time we said goodbye; all silent humming and electricity. Baby, my heart needs your hands to pump me back to life again. I have been nothing but a flat line since you left. My lungs are out of breath; sitting here listing all the ways I would hold you if I could still reach you but there is so much sky between us. I am praying to a Texan moon about you but you are still just as oblivious under an Australian sun as you happened to be when you stood right next to me. I told the stars to give you this love letter the next time they see you, but they too occupied burning through space to send a letter they know will go unread and so I decided to sigh the letter through the phone the next time we talk to each other, and maybe we will set towns on fire when our conversation runs through wires just to get to each other. The fires we set will go unnoticed; we once set towns to flames before and we already know what this smoke tastes like. Baby, this could give me cancer but I would still call to hear your voice again.