I'm so not sure what this is or where it came from. I've been writing fragments and leaving them like a trail of cookie crumbs to follow my most recent love story back to my chest, where my heart should belong, so I can rely on getting out of this mess safely, but I haven't done much with the small ramblings. I just figured it was time to publish something, so I wrote.

I think this love story doesn't have a happy ending, but I'm not entirely certain it's a love story at all, so maybe it doesn't need one.

Words: 1,167

You're just the boy with the most pretentious name and I'm just biting my tongue until I taste blood because it's hard to remember sometimes the metallic tang of silence. I don't know what's expected of me so I repeat the words "I am sorry" like a prayer because my mouth hangs open otherwise and I need something to cling to. I need something to hold.

If you are a star, I will flatter myself as another and we'll paint constellations across the empty night sky with our words, words, words. And oh! what we will say. The hours we will spend chattering away about nothing and everything and all this, every last sentence, just to delude ourselves. The thing they never tell you about stars is the danger of romanticizing them. We shine bright, so bright, but we're an infinity apart and I can't draw you closer. I can't write the lightyears away and maybe that's the definition of tragedy.

Sometimes I look in a mirror just to remind myself I exist and then you break the glass and I fall for a little while. I'm not sure of much anymore, not sure of what I'm doing and who I am because I'm much more lost now than I have ever been before. This is home, I tell you, and my lips quiver a little because I've never been a good liar. This is home and it is burning. This city is on fire with the hundred places I'd rather we be.

Your fingers linger and I can't think of much except how haphazard things always start and how neatly they end up. I can tuck our story into a nice little box and tie it with a ribbon. Story structure dictates that we have a beginning, middle, and end, but I've always muddled the parts together and I've never been one for linear timelines and I'm getting more than a little confused because I don't know where to start. I could start at the sun, maybe, and trace my steps back to your door but my knocking goes unanswered sometimes and I'm tired of taking journeys across oceans to arrive home to silence.

I want to be the girl to make you smile but I'm not sure what jokes to tell and I'm not sure how to know what your laugh sounds like anymore and I'm worried my heart is too heavy for you to understand my brand of comedy. I'm just the girl with eyes like dinner plates and you're just the boy I wrote a poem about. The poem detailed the defenestration of a kitchen, the destruction of a set of china. I want to tell you that, tell you how much I long to rip into your skin and lay ruin to all that is pristine because I want to tell you that it's alright to not be perfect. I don't want to tell you that I scribble poetry in the margins of my notes, so I don't bother to mention the rest.

I can imagine us in twenty years, we are seated at a café in Spain with coffee mugs clutched in our hands. This is the date you've always looked for, the girl you hunted a world over just to find at your doorstep too late. I'm that perfect breed of mistake that will loosen your tie and take you by your hand until you do something crazy. You know I fit you like a glove, cling to your right hand and keep the chill from seeping into your bones. You know I'm the type of girl they write songs about and I know you play guitar and probably have a melody just for me.

I'm a beautiful girl with hands like ravens and a soul like a swallow and you swear you don't want to cage me but I see the way you eye me up. So I move a little closer and I whisper nothings in your ear because the sky is open and lonely, and I've never been good at being on my own.

I've been mourning the death of my teenage years the way one mourns a comatose lover. I'm forgetting what the nights on the beach, a little booze and a fire, are supposed to feel like against my freckled skin and I'm forgetting how sweetly boys roll my name off their tongues when they are trying to charm me into bed. Maybe I've never known the good times they write books about, or maybe everything I've learned has led me to the anticlimactic days of my early adulthood, the weeks filled with libraries and tea and boys who never do more than kiss my cheek.

You told me once that you believe in love and I believed in it too, in that moment and for the first time, because I believed in you more than I had ever had faith in anything else. I've since been betrayed by each shooting star that's pierced the sky and I've cursed your name every time. The thing about expectations is that they rise like the tide and whittle away at the walls you've built up to keep the disappointment out until you're flooded. I'd rather be a ship than a house, though, so I can bail the water from my cabins and keep paddling out to sea. I'd rather forget where I've come from so I can get where I'm going without the pains of loneliness you inspire. I've never been homesick for a place that isn't home, but I am now and I suppose that's just growing up or maybe that's just falling in love. I can't tell the difference anymore.

I'm a cynic and a romantic and you're a little boy who's always wanted to be a superhero. I'm no damsel but I'm in distress because I'm awfully good at self-destruction, terribly wonderful at ruining everything, and always so talented at making things fall apart. If I offered you a poisoned apple, you'd turn your back and I'd take a bite because I've always been spiteful like that.

There's a moment every night when your words become lazy with sleep and you wish me sweet dreams and almost throw in an "I love you" but cover it up with a hurried "goodnight." You don't think I've noticed, but I live for that heartbeat because it's easiest to play pretend when there's another actor on stage. It's easiest to romanticize the boy with a movie star name when he's reading lines off of a script and lying to the moon.

"I'm sorry," I'll tell you one day and you'll know what it's for. I'm a mixture of irrationality and sense and I know you can't find logic in the way I grip your fingers when I see you smile, but I'm trying the best I can. They say home is where the heart is and my chest is aching because it's you. It's always been you.

Reviews would literally make my night. I've noticed a huge decrease in the number of reviews on each chapter and it makes me sad. I don't share my writing outside of this website (aside from one little thing, which I'll detail in the A/N of the next chapter if/when I feel like writing) and I love getting feedback.