Dear Stranger...

There are things I didn’t realize were present until they were absent. Like how good you were at waiting until the last minute when you had way too much time to get ready, or your uncanny ability to find unattractive features in the most attractive of people. How did you find me through the maze of uneven smiles and self-conscious gestures I somehow fall into? Don’t you see the lack of asymmetry in the lines of my face? Did I not trip you up with the awkward gait I took towards you? If I was one to bet, I’d say love had made you blind to all the things that are so undesirable about this fragile heart of mine.

(by Emma Connors.)

We were in a lonely hotel on the side of a busy highway where I could hear the cars drive by so closely that I felt as though I could almost sense the lives of the people inside of them as they zipped past. I watched our night through the reflection of the television screen as you brushed back my hair and whispered I love you’s into the sheets of paper that covered us. I stayed up late to watch the progression of our sleeping habits replicated on the dark screen. You turned and I turned into you, you moved and I moved, we breathed. And when you woke up I watched your face through the screen as it lit up, before you kissed my forehead with promises of good morning’s to come. We both knew they were numbered, but we played pretend inside the haven of those thin walls. As for myself, I watched us like a documentary I couldn’t take my eyes off of, and wished it would only be so easy to replay the episode when I was miles away in another lonely room that was fuller, but so much less whole.

(by Emma Connors.)

(Source: theemotionalrescue)

Sometimes it’s the simple thoughts that say the most. I would draw you a picture on paper, write it out so that you could read between the lines and fill in the spaces with your own life. But some things beg to be told in perfect detail, like the time you told me you’d walk around the world for me and I asked you to prove it. You stopped the car at the side of the road and pulled me out to lead me to bushes named America and sign posts called India. We tight-rope walked across road lines marked Africa, and you dragged me by the hand over to the trees you dubbed Europe. You picked up a stick and said that it was my island, and where I went you would follow. When I got back to my room I put that stick in a box to keep and drew out two round trip tickets to see the world. I can’t make this into something you relate to because this heartache is my own.

(by Emma Connors.)

The dull ache of the last page in any given book. The feeling of loss after waking up from a good dream where I can still feel your kisses on my lips. It’s the unexplainable connection I feel to people and places that aren’t real except in print, and my lack of connection with living, breathing souls. I know the memories are still inside of my head but my recall, at any time but night, is less than sub par. Your skin dances on mine, and I can almost envision the musky sereneness of your scent, the shade of brown your freckles were, the way your eyelashes crossed at the corners. I picture you driving us down streets I’ve never been as they flash behind you through the open window. And the sun shines in your eyes, but you’re looking at me, and I’m laughing too loudly for anything to make sense. But the more I try to evoke these memories, the harder they are to hang onto. My words feel like they’re falling off the page as I write them: and with them, their meaning.

(by Emma Connors.)

(Source: theemotionalrescue)

Leave the lights on so I can watch the day fade from your eyes. We hide under red blankets that whisper loudly of your presence when you’re gone. I remember waking up to mornings shining bright out of the mouth that leaned in to swallow me whole; into a place I was safe. Where your fingers played at the strings of my voice as though I was a guitar long out of tune. I wanted to sing for you, paint pictures of places like that tree that lost all it’s branches, but to me it looked like love. I hold out for things that are broken, I look for beauty in destruction. And I sit shaking under red blankets, hoping that if there is enough beauty in the ugly things of this world, you will be able to look at me, too, in all my nakedness, and see the love I want you to feel.

(by Emma Connors.)

(Source: theemotionalrescue)

What’s stranger, still, is that something so small could keep me alive. Your arms envelope me like the summers I wasted when I was younger. Burn marks on my ankles from days I raced to get away from you instead of relish in your embrace. I can smell the honeysuckle in your exhales and sigh relief that the times where nights came later, and I had less chances to sleep in your dreams, are over. Our clocks have now synchronized and I find my breathing has become less like thunderstorms and more like the sighs of certain days. If I could explain to you, simply, how a glance from your eye can speak eternities to my heart, or the touch of your skin can confirm my very existence, then I will truly be able to say I have loved you past my capacity. I will be able to say I have lived.

(by Emma Connors.)

(Source: theemotionalrescue)