Bianca Sparacino

I know that it will seem like they have changed, like they have laid to rest everything your heart opposed. After all, they were your best friend. They loved life into you, art into you. They knotted memories to your collarbones, kissed light into your sadness. They were everything to you. They were your future, your safety.

Make him laugh, it is the most beautiful sight. Grab his hands in the street and dance with him. Make him breakfast in bed. Kiss him in front of all of your friends. Wear your love happily, let it shine through your eyes, let everyone know that he is one who enlivened you. Be proud of him, be thankful for what he inspired within you.

Sometimes, the girl who smiles the biggest holds the biggest hurt. Sometimes the girl who encourages everyone around her needs to be told that she is appreciated, that she matters; sometimes she needs to be encouraged herself.

I refuse to fall in love with the idea of who you can be if I were to nip and tuck and patch and sew you into someone else. If I were to throw a blanket over the baggage in your ribcage, only focusing on the prettiest parts of you. I refuse to love you in halves.

Suddenly, love was mornings spent laughing until I cried. It was having someone make time for me. Love was airport gates, until it turned into “I am moving across the country to be with you.”

We don’t need space because we want to break up, or because we don’t want to spend time with you. We need space because that is how we nourish ourselves, that is how we feed our souls.

You stopped loving them the way they deserved to be loved; you stopped fighting for them the way they needed to be fought for.

I want to be your best when you are not your best.

When you kissed me you became,
the echo of my words,
the tangle in my voice.

I will not spend another slaughtered night trying to figure out if life is treating you well, or if the sun sets beautifully where you happen to rest your head.

I will devour you with my eyes.
You are vivid.
You are bright.

Fall in love with someone who does not make you feel like you are hard to love.

Remember — you have not felt it all. The world still has so much left for you.

Years ago I made the decision to believe in you. To truly, and wildly, believe that you were waking up at 9am on a Sunday morning wondering if I existed, too.

Happiness will leave to help you grow, to help you feel things it only ever would have masked within you.

You deserve to find someone who will only ever want to add to your fire, someone who will use their own matchstick heart to encourage your passion, to magnify your flame.

I watched as my parents tried to love like addicts, as they tried to take what they needed from each other to fill their empty spaces.

You were finally ready.