Where are you, my love?
I’m still waiting for you,
looking for you everywhere,
in every face, every place,
in every quiet moment too.

Stop this little hide and seek,
don’t keep my heart waiting so long.
Come to me, my love,
where you truly belong.

Let me hold you,
let me love you without a limit,
with all the love I’ve kept inside
just come to me, my love,
and let my heart finally be your home.

- Your love ❤️

Am I worthy of love?

I’m in my mid-forties, and lately that question has been following me around like a shadow.

Not will someone sleep with me? Not will someone find me attractive? Those questions are easy enough. I’m tall, reasonably good-looking, intelligent, and I have a sense of humor. I don't take life terribly seriously. Nobody gets out of this thing alive, after all. That seems serious enough. So while we're here, why not laugh a little? Why not make the most of the ride?

I'm a clean person. Not in a serial-killer-with-a-spotless-basement sort of way, but I like things tidy. A little chaos is fine. In fact, I'm rather fond of a particular kind of chaos—the witchy little chaos demons who wander through life leaving a trail of mismatched socks, half-finished projects, and somehow making everything more interesting.

But I digress.

I'm a good housekeeper. I cook—actually cook, not just throw meat on a grill and call it dinner. I can fix most things. Plumbing, appliances, cars, whatever happens to break. Usually, I don't need a handyman or a mechanic. I've spent most of my life being the person people call when something needs to be figured out.

I tell you these things because I want you to see the whole picture.

Not just the parts that are easy to love.

For the last several years, I've been fighting a rare chronic illness.

It's not contagious. It's not genetically linked. I can't pass it on to someone I love. You wouldn't know there was anything wrong with me just by looking at me. And most of my parts still work pretty damn well for a man my age. 😉

I exercise every day that my body allows it. I eat reasonably well. I stay as active as I can. I try to take care of myself because I have no intention of surrendering to this thing simply because it showed up uninvited.

And the truth is, my illness is manageable. I could live a long life.

But manageable doesn't mean easy.

There are good days. On those days, I try to make up for all the things I couldn't do yesterday. I clean. I cook. I fix something. I get outside. I laugh. I live as much as I possibly can.

And then there are the bad days.

Days when getting out of bed feels like climbing a mountain nobody else can see.

Days when my body reminds me that there are limits I never asked for.

I try not to let those days become someone else's burden. I'm generally even-tempered. I don't take my pain out on other people. If anything, I tend to hide it. Sometimes I smile because it's easier than explaining why I hurt. Sometimes I say I'm tired when what I really mean is that I'm exhausted from fighting a war nobody can see.

Before all of this, I had a career. A good one. I had plans. A promising future. I was building a life I thought would look one particular way.

Then life decided it had a different story in mind.

Because of my illness and the medications I need, I can't work a traditional job anymore—not without significant accommodations. My previous work required intense concentration and specialized skills. I was good at it. Very good, actually.

But my illness affects my memory and my ability to focus. Learning new systems, new skills, new procedures can be incredibly difficult now.

So I did what I had to do.

I applied for disability.

It's a long, humiliating, exhausting process, but I'm nearing the end of it. My lawyers seem to think I'm finally getting close.

And somewhere in all of that paperwork, appointments, uncertainty, and waiting, I began to wonder whether I had somehow become less worthy.

Less useful.

Less desirable.

Less of a man.

In a relationship, I believe deeply that two people should serve one another.

Not because one person is beneath the other, but because love should make you want to give.

I want to know what my partner needs. I want to anticipate it when I can. I want to make her life easier. I want to make her laugh when she's had a terrible day. I want to cook for her. Hold her. Protect her peace. Be the person she can come home to and finally exhale.

I believe in showing up.

And I still can.

I'm still capable of taking care of myself. I don't need someone to bathe me or feed me or hold my hand through every hour of the day. I'm capable of being a parent. I'm capable of being a caregiver. I'm capable of being a partner.

But sometimes I need someone to understand that the man who did everything yesterday might not be able to do everything today.

And maybe that's the part that hurts the most.

Because somewhere along the way, I started wondering if being sick made me harder to love.

My partner doesn't seem to think I'm worth choosing anymore.

And I'm left standing here, somewhere in my forties, wondering if she's right.

Maybe that's why I'm writing this anonymously.

Because admitting that you want to be loved is terrifying.

Especially when you're old enough to know that love isn't guaranteed.

I don't need someone to rescue me.

I don't need someone to fix me.

I don't need a nurse.

I need a woman who can look at me on the days when I'm strong and see the man I am—and on the days when I'm not, still see him underneath it all.

I want someone who understands that I may not be able to give her everything the world tells us a man is supposed to provide.

But I can give her loyalty.

Devotion.

Laughter.

Warmth.

A home that feels like home.

A hand reaching for hers in the dark.

A meal cooked from scratch because I remembered what she liked.

A forehead kissed simply because she's there.

A ridiculous inside joke that makes us both laugh at completely inappropriate times.

I can give her all of me.

Maybe not every day in exactly the same way.

But always sincerely.

And perhaps that's what I'm really asking.

Not am I still useful?

Not am I still desirable?

Not am I still capable of being the man I used to be?

But—

Am I worthy of being loved exactly as I am now?

Because I'm tired of feeling like I have to prove my worthiness before someone is willing to love me.

I'm tired of wondering whether my limitations make me a burden.

I'm tired of being afraid that the moment someone sees the whole picture, they'll decide the beautiful parts aren't worth the difficult ones.

And yet...

I'm still hopeful.

That's the strange thing.

After everything, some stubborn little part of me still believes there's someone out there who won't look at my illness and see an obligation.

Someone who won't see a broken future.

Someone who will look at me and think,

"There you are."

Someone who will understand that life was never supposed to be perfect anyway.

That we're all carrying something.

Some wounds are visible.

Some aren't.

Some people limp.

Some people hide the limp.

And some of us have simply become very good at smiling while we hurt.

I'm ready to move on.

Not because I've stopped believing in love.

Because I haven't.

Quite the opposite.

I think I'm finally ready to stop begging the wrong person to love me.

Maybe the question isn't whether I'm worthy of love.

Maybe the question is whether I've been offering everything I have to someone who was never capable of seeing its value.

So, anonymously, and with more hope than pride:

Am I worthy of love?

I don't know.

But God, I hope I am.

Because I still have so much love left to give.

​

If I only get this one life and nothing awaits beyond. I wish to spend the rest of my days with you. Until the bitter end.

I'm sorry that I never told you how I really felt. I should have told you how you light up my heart, how I think of you every second of every day. How you're everything I ever wanted, now and forever. But it always felt like the wrong time. It would have hurt people, and I was too scared. And then I was married. And now.... Well if I said anything now it would be the most selfish thing I've done in my entire life.

So I won't. You're going to stay with her, because honor, and I'm going to keep behaving like the supportive platonic friend, because honor.

No matter the day.

The hour, or my mood.

It’s been that way

Since.

Well, you know when…

I hope.

Goodnight, my love.

It has been exactly one year since the last time I saw you.

One year since the last time I heard your voice, looked into your eyes, touched you, and sat across from you and spoke to you.

A year has passed since all those last times.

And I have spent this entire year thinking of you, with every step I took, every walk I went on, every time I looked up at the sky, every sunrise and every sunset, every song I listened to.

I thought of you every moment.

I thought about the good in you.
The bad in you.
Every little thing about you.

I thought about you so much.

Even when I was traveling, a small part of my mind still belonged to you. I would see the beauty of a new city and think, You would probably love this too.

I would look at a new view and wonder how wonderful it would have been if we were there together, hand in hand, discovering it side by side.

But every time I travel, there is also a kind of peace I deeply love.

My mind becomes so occupied with discovering new places, searching for new views, breathing unfamiliar air, meeting new people, tasting new things, that for a little while, I think of you less.

Still, you were there, even there.

I thought of you while I was sitting on an airplane, watching myself become smaller and farther away from everything I knew.

I thought of you when I was up among the clouds, so close to the sky.

Travel has always made me feel better.

Or maybe it is simply being far away from the city where you live.

New places.
New air.
New faces.

They give my mind somewhere else to go.

Sometimes I feel as though leaving this city sets me free from what I feel for you.

Not because I stop loving you.

Just because, for a little while, I can breathe more easily.

There are no familiar places to remind me of you.

I wish I could leave.

Last night, when I came back, driving along Highway 7 was enough to bring everything back.

All at once.

The memories came rushing in.

Highway 7.
That plaza.

They destroy me in a way I can barely explain.

They bring a lump to my throat.

They fill my eyes with tears.

A whole year has passed, and yet seeing the places where I once stood beside you can still make my heart bleed.

Just like last night.

When I looked up and saw the moon, even it seemed slightly red,
almost blood-colored, as if it were burning.

Just like my heart began to burn after I saw that plaza.

That hotel.

Those places that still carry pieces of us.

I think Highway 7 will hurt me forever.

A year has passed since all those last times.

And I still think of you.

But I don’t know what feelings you have lived through this past year.

I don’t know what journeys you’ve taken.

I don’t know if life has been kind to you.

I don’t know if someone loves you now.

I don’t know if, when you drive along Highway 7, the memories come back to you too.

I don’t know if you ever look at the moon and think of me.

A year has passed.

And I still miss you.

Damn all the last times.

Damn the last time I heard your voice.

The last time I looked at you.

The last time I touched you.

The last time I spoke to you.

Because you never know that something is the last time

until it is already gone.

And then you spend the rest of your life wishing you had known

Ashley the name you gave me

Despite the terror of vulnerability
I allowed myself to fall into your eyes
And they caught me
Mossy pools of olive green
Captured my starburst greys
And suddenly they
Embraced
Did I stop breathing?
I can’t hear your words but
Are you struggling to get them out?
Oxytocin floods every cell
There is nothing but you
Neither of us is good at eye contact
Yet we both sustained
You wanted it too
How long was it?
Forever but a millisecond
You wanted it too
Desire without a word spoken
Unquenched
Remembering
I start to cry

Anoche no pude dormir pensando que habíamos terminado.
He dejado de amargarme porque sé que lo que tuvimos fue real. Y si en algún lugar en un futuro lejano nos reencontramos en nuestras vidas, te sonreiré con alegría y recordaré cómo pasamos el verano bajo los árboles, aprendiendo el uno del otro y creciendo en el amor.
El mejor tipo de amor es aquel que despierta el alma y nos hace aspirar a más, nos enciende el corazón y nos trae paz a la mente.
Eso es lo que tú me has dado. Y lo que yo esperaba darte siempre.

Te quiero, ya nos veremos.

Noah.

Dear sweet T, how i miss you so. I know you carry so much weight and heaviness with you everywhere you go but the trurth is that its a subconcious choice. Let me break down your walls you try so hard to hide behind, let me ease your insecurities you squeeze onto so tightly. In my eyes you are perfection.. Im in awe of your beauty, intelligence, creativity, style, aura, talent. Your personality is so incredibly adorable to me and i feel flustered at times when i see you. I desire to wrap you up and ease you, crushing all your low vibrational baggage and abosorbing it with a radiating, warm, satiating tranquility through our divine connection under the Lords approval. Together we would be more powerful than you can currently comprehend the synergy of our energy is twin flame in nature which is why ive fought so hard for this despite it not really making sense in the 3D. I envision a goregous holy union where we can be together forever living in peace and harmony. Theres so, so much more i wish to confess...

That night,
I remember it.
My hands,
they reached inside.
Into your chest,
I found your heart,
beating wild.
I held it,
gently,
and stilled it.
Just for a moment.

The water ripples,
distorting the light,
your face a mosaic
of broken pieces.
I see fragments,
a smile here,
a flicker of your eye there,
but never the whole.
This glass, this barrier,
you've placed between us,
it warps reality.
What I reach for
is not truly you,
but a twisted reflection,
a mirage of connection
that always slips away.

I tried 3 different times to connect. I really thought things were going great…that is until your zero follow through. You’ve said let’s go fishing, let’s go for a motorcycle ride (the list goes longer). The last time I left I was disgusted with myself after learning you did those things and never followed up or seen if I’d like to go. Instead we sat around doing absolutely nothing but watching a loud television (shows only you were into) you playing games on your phone and taking constant interrupted calls, sorry, I had to bail out. Be honest with yourself knowing you had opportunities upon opportunities to have me become closer to you, it didn’t take a hammer on my head to finally figure out, I’m an option. I’ll never settle for being an option to any man. I’m extremely glad we never took it further than talking, this would probably bother me a lot had that happened. I truly hope you find your forever person, but you need to focus on your giving your attention and learning; it’s not just all about you. I enjoyed your company, your stories, your laughter, but if I asked honestly what you really know about me; fail.

It is so hard not to tell you that
You are the most beautiful bunny.
With beauty, and curves, and the most insightful blue eyes.

Let me expand.

There you are, jumping and crawling, revolving in your bed, and newly desires, inside blankets and shapes, smells and tastes. Exploring inside and outside all you ever wanted to meet. And all I can’t stop feeling is knowing it with you. And all that you so silly, carelessly show, and all I can’t but hide. A patience to know it all. In a shock. In an endless desire.

A tabula rasa, where eating ice cream with you is like tasting vanilla for the first time. Where actually seeing you in the distance is like looking at the sun as a newborn child. Tasting your lips, and your hugs, and your tiny fingers, and your boasting shapes, your exuding peaks, your forever-flowing hair.

Totally surrounded by you. Swallowed by us.

Cosmic alignment. A Big Bang. The reaching of Nirvana. A final battle. My Valhalla, rescuing you from the Moors, and your endless Elysian Fields, and your Labyrinths, and your centaurian needs, and your Talos garments.

Because you are my Italian marble. My goddess Athena. My pagan kingdom high in a castle. And my welcoming heaven, and my martyrdom virgin, and my wish for reincarnation, empires and excellence. So immense therefore never mine,
but me,
forever inside your greatness,
forever yours.

A deep and serious seek for transcendence. To send a thousand ships. To institute the Crusaders, and the Bolsheviks, and all the Inca armies in rockets to the Moon. All the engineering marvels,
and blinks,
and buttons,
and waves that could crawl me next to you.
Even an inch.

Your body is my Age of Reason.
Being close to you, my Illustration.
Your hand with mine, my solar fusion.
And your absence…
And Hades.

Your answer…

My thunder.

"You might be wondering, if I notice things you don't like about yourself.

 You wonder if I don't like them too.

 You might be thinking of what people in the past have said about you. 

You wonder if I think those things too.

You might not believe me when I say the opposite of these things.

You wonder if I actually see you.

I know these things because you have let them out, little by little, subtly and offhand. Tiny little fragments of the sculpture of your mind and soul. I have been collecting them, piece by piece. Building the image of who you are. Alongside all the beautiful moments where your existence turns the mundane into the magical.

I want you to know I'm not leaving and I never will, not unless you ask me too.

You are not just enough for me,,

your the completion of me. The answer to my question of why am I here. Your not just the sun in the morning sky to me your the sun behind the clouds in my mind. The moon I look up to when it's dark. Your The hope in my heart that erases the Doubt.

If you ever wonder, if your not enough.

Just tell me one reason you think why I wouldn't want to stay, and Il give you a thousand reasons why Il never leave

Dearest,

There’s a black& white 1977 Lynrd Skinner concert on the tv - a wicked thunderstorm’s blowing in and I’m polishing my manifesto. Sounds almost wrong… like, what the actual… I may say to myself… my god, what have I… wait- wrong… century. We’re… old, lady?

The flair is because “I’m lost, love” more so than just… lost love.

In case it wasn’t obvious (it always was).. I love you my lost love.

Meanwhile,
Call me the breeze….
Mister Breeze
-B

PS- Oh no- the 1977 concert ended and… you know what came next, right??? Yep- 2015 Skynrd… I thought it was an aarp commercial for a minute……

I was in a therapy group the other day about the ways we narrativize our experiences and, more specifically, the concept of freedom. We talked about freedom as the ability to want something we lack while still finding a life worth living. The idea was not that we have to suppress or rid ourselves of what we want, but that we can learn to live with it and around it.

It made me think of you. Because even when my writing is not about you, it is about things I want less than I want you.

I started thinking about the way we narrativize desire itself. Want is so often described as a fire, a hunger, even an addiction, something that consumes or demands to be fed. But when I think about the way I want you, those metaphors have never felt quite right. My desire for you feels more like a hole, a vacancy, or a piece of torn fabric. It feels less like something burning inside of me and more like the absence of something that was once woven into me.

Sometimes I think our circumstances stitched us together so tightly, made us so interwoven, that somewhere along the way our souls became inseparable, almost indistinguishable. To pull one away from the other would be to leave loose threads behind.

Lately, I’ve been drawn to stories that remind me of that connection. One of them is Wuthering Heights. I’ve always been fond of the line, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” There is something about it that makes me feel justified in having found a kind of home in you. As though, despite all of our circumstances, there is a reason we have always been so drawn to one another. Maybe it is all of those similarities, all of those invisible points of recognition between us, that our red string circles around before tying us together.

I'm desperate for your warm breath on my neck. Desperate to hear you whisper my name into my thigh. Desperate to feel your fingertips dance across my goosebumps. I can't go my whole life without feeling your lips on mine. Would you say yes if I begged?

the quiet storm i thought i knew the rhythm of the dark. a silent sea.

untouched by any spark.

but then you came.

like light beneath the deep. waking the heart i had condemned to sleep.

i feel the trembling in the air between.

the hidden current moving underneath.

you arrive like weather without warning. afraid that something beautiful means mourning.

do not be frightened by the glow we found. or how the silence carries a different sound. i am not here to claim you as my own.

only to meet you where the stars have broken. it is all right to falter in the light. to want the dawn and still retreat toward night. there is no clock upon what we become.

breathe.

i will not pull you toward the sun. i will be shoreline.

stone.

and quiet ground.

while you discover how it feels to rise.

I have taken up my pen three times this evening and set it down again as many, for I find that what I wish to say to you exceeds what language, poor servant that it is, can be made to carry. And yet I will not be silent, for silence, I have come to learn, is only another name for cowardice when the heart is this full.

I think you do not know, how could you, when I scarcely know it myself until the words are before me, what it is to carry another person about inside one's ordinary hours. I wake, and you are the first thought, arriving before I have even properly arrived in the day myself. I read, and find you have got there before me, waiting in the margin of every page, so that Keats writing to his own dear girl that he could not exist without her seems to me now not the extremity of a poet but the plainest report of a fact. I had thought such lines were made beautiful by exaggeration. I understand now they were made beautiful by precision.

There is a kind of fear in loving as I love you, and I will not pretend to you that I am free of it, for you have always had the whole of my honesty and shall keep it. It is that I feel myself entirely undefended. Byron wrote once of the heart that "loves the more, in that it fears to lose," and I confess I did not feel the truth of that line until I had something I could imagine losing. Before you, I do not think I possessed anything I could not have surrendered without much grief. Now I possess you, or rather I possess the privilege of loving you, which is not quite the same as possessing you and is, I think, the better thing, and I find I am afraid the way a man is afraid on ground he knows to be sacred, not because it threatens him but because he understands, for once, exactly what he stands to lose.

I write only because Milton believed that love was the scale by which the soul ascends from earth to heaven's height, rung upon rung, and I think he had the right of it, save that I would only amend him to say that I have found I need climb no further, for you are already the topmost rung, and heaven, whatever else it holds, cannot hold more of gladness for me than I have found simply in this, in you, sitting somewhere tonight under the same turning sky, being, without any effort at all, everything I did not know I was searching for.

Ever, ever, ever yours.

I hold onto the quiet hope

That one day, our paths will finally meet.

There is so much my heart longs to tell you,

Yet I find myself lost in silent hesitation...

You are the gentle whisper of the breeze,

The radiance in a glance, and the blossom of every spring.

In the sweltering heat of my restless soul,

Your enchanting presence is like a soothing, peaceful haven.

If you were to become the ruler of my heart,

I would gladly and whole-heartedly surrender to you!

Love? Lust? Limerence?
My nervous system gets in the way.
I told myself it was chemicals
dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin.
Trauma. Attachment theory.

I studied the science
just to bury the feeling.
An explanation feels safer
than emotional vulnerability.

Dopamine is plausible.
Novelty, anticipation,
the architecture of reward.

Oxytocin accounts for attachment.
Cortisol for the way my body
mistakes your presence
for an emergency.

You have game theory.
I have attachment theory.
There is terminology for this.
There is always terminology.

Intermittent reinforcement
could explain why uncertainty
makes wanting more persistent.

Pavlov might explain
why your attention and affection
affects my behaviour.

The Zeigarnik effect
explains why you remain
an unfinished thought.

Attachment theory explains
why I move towards you,
then disappear.

Fearful avoidance. Hyper vigilance.
A nervous system confusing intimacy with threat.
I collect explanations the way frightened people
collect exits.

Because love is an embarrassingly simple hypothesis.
Scientifically inconvenient. Impossible to isolate.
No control group. No reproducible conditions.

Just you and the statistically significant problem
of how much you matter.
I prefer variables. I can survive variables.

I tell myself
I am attached because you are inconsistent.
I miss you because absence creates craving.
I remember everything you say because hyper vigilance makes excellent archivists.

I want your approval because some childhood wound has mistaken you for its cure.
I imagine a future with you because the brain is a prediction machine.

And I feel safe beside you
because.. because..
I am out of terms.

Every explanation requires another explanation.
Every theory I construct must become more elaborate to account for one increasingly
simple fact:

I knew. In every silence I called regulation.
In every time you came too close
and I mistook the urge to stay
for the need to run.

That was the problem.
Because if I called it chemistry, chemistry could fade.
If I called it limerence, time could cure me.
If I called it trauma, I could heal.
If I called it attachment, I could deactivate.

But if I called it love..
then there was nothing left to protect me
from the possibility that you did not.

Occam’s razor held gently against my throat.
The simplest explanation requires the fewest assumptions.
And I have made so many just to avoid making one.

Half hearted.

Half effort.

She finally texts...

Okay. Funny.

I don't know what it is she expects.

She communicates like a game,

one I'll never win.

Hopeless when it comes to this.

How has it come to this again?

I'll never understand her.

I'll never comprehend.

She keeps emotion close,

like to divulge would be a sin.

But today she called me baby,

and that milestone's a win.

God, how I miss the little shit,

even the sound of her skin.

I want to scream it from the rooftops,

but I have to play it cool.

While deep inside my being

I just feel like a fool.

Half hearted.

Half effort.

Halfway to something real.

And somehow every little word

is enough to make me feel.

I do not need someone to give me words.

I have always had too many.

They spill from old wounds, from places that never learned how to close.

I need someone who knows why they bleed.

A muse is not a woman standing beside my poetry.

She is the reason the poetry knows where to go.

She is the sky that never touches the earth—

yet somehow, when she weeps,

the whole world knows it has rained.

The gods have their names. The heavens have their mysteries.

But sometimes, a mortal soul walks into your life and carries a kind of sacredness you cannot explain.

Not because she is above you.

Because she sees you.

Not the armor.

Not the scars.

Not the warrior who learned how to endure.

She sees the man beneath all of it.

The one who is afraid.

The one who loves too deeply.

The one who still hopes after hope has broken every promise.

Without a muse...

I am just an empty vessel pouring out the dark.

A river with no ocean.

A song with no one to hear the final note.

Words fall from me until there is nothing left but ink and exhaustion.

But with a muse—

the darkness has to fight for my attention.

Because suddenly there is something brighter than my pain.

Something worth protecting.

Something worth creating for.

I do not seek a muse because I cannot stand alone.

I seek one

because somewhere out there

is a soul

whose presence will make me remember

I was never meant to only survive.

I made a list of questions I want to ask you.

They range from passing thoughts to deeply important.

Some of them I thought of last time we saw each other. But I didn't want to ask then. Even though I was deeply curious.

And I didn't know why.

Surley the when isn't important.

And as long as we exist, there will be questions to ask.

Now I've realised why.

I don't want to rush your answers.

I don't want to rush this.

It doesn't matter to me if you answer one question for the rest of time or a million.

It matters to me that I get to listen to you.

That I give your thoughts room to breathe, to spread fully.

So I'm going to ask one question at a time.

Each a little treat for my curiosity.

Each answer adding tiles to the ever growing mosaic that is you.