happy birthday

6.27.23

your birthday is in four days and i have no way to wish you well, so another letter will have to do. this will be the last one i write to you.
the fire sign in me is so drawn to the water sign in you, i've always found it kind of funny that way. it's like that greek mythology quote i used to always tell you back when we were teenagers - the one where humans were created with four arms, four legs and two heads. in fear of their power they were split in two, always searching for their other half. in the last sixteen years i'm not sure i've ever thought you aren't that for me.
my brain has been blank since the 24th of May and my dad still asks about you. i've learned my lesson about mixing my liquor with thoughts of you. i don't think june could move any slower now but that's probably a personal issue. i haven't been able to think of anything but you, my head has been full of you: my heart is so full of you. you have already fallen into the arms of someone else - that fact changes nothing for me and everything for you. i wish that i could be who i was before you: before i knew how you like your eggs, experienced seasonal depression. how you call pizza rolls pizza pillows and you sing little tunes to yourself throughout the day. the fact that you are a cancer sun, scorpio moon and capricorn rising. you used to pick berries with your grandmother and whenever you drink gingerale it reminds you of her. you giggle when i kiss behind your ear, your southern accent becomes more evident when you've had a few beers. you sit cross legged on your bed and you bite your lip when focusing, you know so much about movies and music it blows me away. the first night we slept in the same bed you fell asleep on my chest, your hair smelled like sandlewood and the rest of my life. you have lived a hard existance and still remain kind, you have strength beyond your years. you're afraid of your own shadow and you do not believe in yourself - i want you to know i have always believed in you. i know everything about you, yet now i feel as though i truly know nothing at all.

i wish i could go back to the days before i listened to music or read poetry and didn't feel like i was looking through a lense i shared with you. i processed your mind into my heart so fast that it has become a part of my being. some days i just want to hear your voice, listen to your stories, smile and laugh at your adventures. be happy for you. other days i hope you choke on the life you left me behind for: love is a wicked set of checks and balances. sometimes i am certain that you have made yourself comfortable with your false gods of "not responsible for your feelings” and “so clingy” and whatever else you tell yourself to make yourself feel better. your silence festered a fear inside of me i did not recognize, asking you for the bare minimum and being told it's too much caused me to become completely unhinged. i'm not proud of my actions within our ending but i want you to know i tried so hard to keep it together for you. but i believed that you loved me and cared about me and wanted the best for me and i invested in that. because you told me you did, i do not bear any shame for it.

part of me thinks i've convinced myself you don't really care about me, part of me still believes you. my misguided strength tells me that i hope one day i will care just as little about you. i sit and remember how you were irresistable and chaotic, a memory so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness: almost. and i remember watching you start to take your steps back, drift away slowly. you were making your exit as quietly as the water in my palms. something i could never hold onto, you slip right through. i should've trusted my suspicion about your silence, it was dangerous and i just figured it out. i can accept you no longer want me, you just didnt know how to let me down easy. so you led me to pull the trigger - to make the ending i didn’t want at all happen, for you. and i left my trust in pieces inside of a dollar general parking lot in north carolina. i left my sense of security at apartment 5's door, somehow knowing there is no next time in our story. i still wish nothing but your happiness. i hope your hands don't shake when you think about me, as if memories of us could inflinct any emotion. i hope you won't flinch when a stranger at the coffee shop orders a drink with my name. i hope you will exhale the dust that is our history and inhale the promise of your future. i hope that you soon learn to acquire a taste for the word "love" on your tongue, and that it is never tarnished by men or women with poison on their lips. i hope the fire you feel in your gut is never fueled by hate, or your embarrassment over your past, or shame for things you could not control and destruction that was not your fault. at this point i've said "goodbye" to you so many times that it's lost its flavor, but i guess that's just the final word.

anyway this is my last letter to you so i will get to the point: happy birthday, honey. my wish for you this year is that you continue to bloom. that you find your art inside of the sunshine, grow your strength as tall as trees. i hope your community holds you close, i hope they see the wonderment in you.i hope in time you find the safest love, someone kind to your heart and your body. someone who nurtures your inner child, someone better than me: perhaps the mythological half of you. i don’t believe in god yet, here i am… holed up in lower michigan, praying so hard that the best is about to come for you. i know you’ll never see this but it wouldn't matter either way.

july first you’ll find me here with my whiskey neat, reading your favorite poems and hoping that somewhere out there you’re as happy as you can be. you’ll find me celebrating a love that was timeless - celebrating the better half of me. i hope this is the start of a beautiful journey - you deserve the world. i hope you always remember how much i love you, i hope one day you can find it in your heart to forgive me. i hope one day i can forgive you, too.

all my love