Lauren Hurst

I’m not sure that I’ve been in real love, but I do know that I have run barefoot in the rain four blocks like a pathetic goddamn Nicholas Sparks novel in attempts to hold onto something I never second guessed to call love.

I want to know you at the end the way I knew you at the start, so pure and untainted.

Realize that parts of you were once the centre of a star, the heart of a burning light.
Know that you are, quite literally, part of an endless cosmos.

See I’m convinced the antibody is a perfect concoction of one-part distance and two-parts deflection. I’m well practiced in the art of hiding behind humor as if making you laugh could possibly mask the insecurity. I want you to know that my defense mechanisms are less about letting your best parts in and more about keeping my worst parts out.

I am the town you spend moments wrapped up in on your way to somewhere else, somewhere safer. I am the place you refer to with gentle wonder and ambiguous phrases, like ‘it was exciting, but I never got a chance to explore it’.

My bed grows three oceans wider and four arctics colder on Sunday mornings.

The frequency of your heartbeat shifts down two octaves, it’s out of tune just enough for others to notice, but never question why. This is the subtle sound of losing yourself.

What if the deeper that emptiness carves into our souls, the deeper we allow ourselves to be filled with happiness? If that’s the case, doesn’t that make this kind of living so excruciatingly beautiful?

I see you in all of the people I have loved before you — in bits of their kindness, their regret, their glimmers of silent forgiveness. I see parts of you in myself, in my own insecurities- things one day I hope you will love.

It’s a confusing thing, following small talk protocol with someone who once lay in bed with you spilling conversation like red wine, clumsy words staining the most intimate parts of you.

He’s a map that always leads in the same direction, no matter how many routes I take the only place I end up is home.

I resented the way I couldn’t control you, the way your busy hands outreached mine and changed everything I wanted so deeply to remain the same.