i’ve so long wanted to be loved wholly. to be taken in wholeheartedly. without hesitation, without conditions. but i ruin it. i always ruin it. how do you love with a heart that misfires at every touch? there’s a war between my heart and my skin: one begs to be held, the other flinches.

i miss you.

i belong to no one, so i throw myself into work — bury myself in it until there’s nothing left. if i’m too busy to feel, maybe i’ll forget i was ever waiting. i run on empty and call it strength. they say no man is an island, but i’ve grown familiar with the tide that pulls me into solitude. i lined the shores with distance. i’ve made it so hard to reach me, and still, i wonder why no one stays. even my shadow walks away from me.

loneliness is louder when i’m home. it hits different. everything is familiar; the walls hear my silence; the floorboards remember my weight. it seeps into the corners of familiar rooms, curls up next to me in my own bed, calls me by name.

out there, somewhere far, loneliness feels different. it wears a different name, a new face. it feels like freedom; nothing is familiar, and it feels great. like i belong to the world again, instead of just to the quiet. it doesn’t know all the ways i’ve failed.

i miss you.

i can’t remember which way is forward anymore. my sun rises in the west and sets in the east; everything backwards, off-beat, wrong. my days end where yours begin. we’re never in the same light.

i am a peregrine soul, never arriving, always becoming. it’s a pain that repeats with echolalic precision. there’s a rhythm to this pain, like a lullaby stuck on repeat, a broken hum that never quite ends. i try to outrun it. i try to outgrow it. but it echoes.

i miss you.

and i’m angry that i do.
angry that i still carry you like a secret i can’t stop whispering.

maybe i just miss who i thought i was, when you were looking at me, for me.

and still—
i miss you.