please let me get what i want.

For two hundred and eighty four days, I woke up. I woke up with this bone-deep ache that never went away. I woke up to an incessant question playing in my mind that would never be answered. I woke up alone.

For two hundred and eighty four days, I woke up without you when I woke up at all. The thing about time is that it never does make anything better. It just means more space to think. It means sleepless nights trying to figure it all out. When it went wrong. How to make it better. It means slowly losing my mind. But it never once meant getting over you.

It's funny how the things you think you've forgotten always come rushing back when you're standing face to face and in one swift breath, you remember it all.

You remember everything.

The sky is always biggest right before it rains. That's how I learned to always couple disappointment with expectations since no matter how beautiful something seems, a disaster is always right on the horizon.

The waves are crashing quickly on the shoreline, building a momentum only my heartbeat could match. The rapid pounding against my ribs is getting faster and faster. The water is spilling against the coastline quicker and quicker. The whole world is moving too swiftly.

Until everything just stops—

Just completely stalls with the sound of your voice in my ear. You're the only person that could ever make the world stop. The only person who could ever make me stop. Make my heart stop.

It makes me sad. It makes me smile. It makes me completely crazy. But most of all, it makes me want you.

I can't remember the last time I saw you. Or at least that's what I tell you every time we talk, because I don't want you to know how many times I've replayed the sight of your eyes looking into mine, tears blurring my vision as I watched you walk away.

You look different now, but always the same. Always familiar. I want to step away from you. Distance will always be the thing that saves me so I've learned how to use it every time I'm terrified. And you scare me more than anything.

I told myself I wouldn't go here. I told myself I wouldn't do this again. I told myself I wouldn't come, but I do every fucking time. I want to. I have to. Because I miss you. Because I still love you.

All I can think when I see you is that you don't remind me of beautiful things anymore, because it's unimaginable to compare you to anything less breathtaking than you. I think about the way people change and how things evolve and then I think about the way I feel about you and how it's been the exact same since the moment I laid eyes on you.

I don't have enough words to tell you the story of how I followed you here. To this moment. To a second chance. To a different coastline.

All I know is that for two hundred and eight four days, I woke up without you and I never want to remember what that feels like again.