a thankfulness

When someone asks you, "what if I become a bad boyfriend one day?" 

Believe them. It's a choice they're preparing for. 

It's a choice to slowly disappear.

So do it. Disappear.

There was no anger or resentment. Or hope. 

My face to the pillow, I did my best not to stay up wondering that long first month, because what was the point? Why did it matter if her name kept leaving your lips, or that she called you at midnight, and that you call her in the mornings before work? Why did it matter that I only cared now, long after the fact like one last laugh?

In being vulnerable with my sister and best friend, I shared that I had--

I had done the thing I said I'd never do on the last phone call in our lives ever:

which was to plead for someone I loved to stay.

"Because I want you."

Gosh, I'm so cringey.

If I had to give someone a reason to stay...

then they shouldn't stay at all.

I never want to do that again.

Fight harder than someone for what we should both equally want.

I felt very small in those moments, gripping onto the ship sailing anywhere, 

but back to me.

I respect myself far too much to do that ever again.

The only good that came of my own last words was how pure they were.

I fought honestly and bravely. No word left unsaid. Not even the word "love". I didn't even say that word like a coward.

I let myself love someone hard, even as he pulled away.

The moment came some unwanted day when I closed my own door and leaned against it.

I hope that in the next chapter of my long life, that someone will fight for me 

the way I did. 

I hope all the love I've given away 

will return as a tsunami, a nightmare tsunami. Too vast and too powerful to deny.

I hope that the someone I'll know in that future courageously 

loves me with a love rooted in responsibility, 

a love nourished with purity and abundance.

And when he whispers close, into the crook of my neck, "I fucking love you", that he says it easily, like breathing still air on an ocean planet, so loud and clear and inescapable that I would shake.

That I would know, it's the kind of love that would never betray my hopes,

and would remember me, all my favorite little things, 

like how very much I like to hold flowers on little strolls,

or how very much I love surprises and trains and midday Vietnamese coffee pick-me-ups,

how I want to be a little small bean, all the time, nose boops and cheek-to-cheeks,

how I like to comfort myself when I'm sad or what it means when I say that 

"I feel small right now".

The kind of love that belongs to me too easily that it feels like second home.

Grip and tug me back if I've gone too far.

Be too easy, too transparent, to really be part of real life. 

Envelope all the other loves and lives

I thought I ever knew about.

And I would have it as equally in return, ready to give again.

I'm not afraid to love. Ever. Haha. What a silly woman I am, if I was.

I'll always wear my heart on my sleeve.

I worked the last 3 months to reshape and conquer the last two feelings I had:

the sadness and love,

into one last feeling. Compassion.

Compassion for who were in those 24-hour diners. When I hugged you for the first time in that parking lot and I knew it was going to be you, for a short or long while, but I knew. 

A fire ball of laughter and hand holding and sweetness that made my belly so warm. In elevators and parking garages and university campuses and delighting folks near and far with my Television British accent. I treated you like my summer escape but then you became more. It was inevitable.

Eyes that saw me for who I was and who I wanted to be.

And if I have any hope now, it's the hope that we will be beyond happy in all the futures we'll have and cannot even begin to imagine yet. And hopefully, none of it together ever again. Because, I did love you after all.

As our ships dock in their respective places in the world, 

as the sun sets on ocean planets,

and as the last candle on the ship burns off,

I let my hands drop to my sides. I close my eyes and breathe in the perfumed night air.

A peach, coconut, salty allure against my black hair.

The moon would shine like a humungous speckled star. That anyone from any part of the world could see at the same time and want a name for.

And hear at that same instance, the whales so playful and so silly, and if zoomed closer, my heart beat.

And if I listened even beyond my heart beat, I would hear the last sound:

a thankfulness,

breathing freely.