Sometimes it hits me like a pile of bricks and sometimes it crashes down on me like the rain after the biggest cloud has passed overhead and sometimes it taps me on the shoulder and before I can even turn around it whispers “everything is going to be alright. everything is going to be okay. You will be back in the morning.”

But sometimes I feel like I am being crushed by the weight of a hundred thousand secrets. Everything you’ve ever said. Every single line you’ve ever written braids itself into an anchor. Heavier than any ship that could possibly drag us under. This time it has my hands. And I’m afraid it’s going to take all I have.

And I feel it right in the center of myself. Like I’m a magnet and your whole existence is all the metal in the world and I can’t ever escape. 

I can be invincible if you’d let me.

I can make myself stand taller than all your enemies. I can find so many things to hide behind but not one of them helps me forget how you are feeling. 

She called me “her forever” once. She said my forever was all she needed. And I laugh at that now because we never speak. 

People need other things.

I’ve since stolen that and given it to you. My forever. Your forever. Ours. 

I’ve stolen absolutely everything. 

I steal words on the back of best sellers and sentences from the annotated pages in the book you let me borrow. Sentences written about people I’ve never met and never known. Pages about the people I’ll never encounter. I’ve cut out every single paragraph and wrote it on my own skin in hopes you’d ask me what it meant.

It’s about you, anyway. It’s always been about you. 

I had a dream last night we walked around the whole world in one night. You asked me how we did it and I said “It doesn’t matter I’m dreaming.” 

We were invincible. We ran from everything and not one person would ever stop us. We covered it all, every inch, every square foot on the planet touched our feet and we ran. I’m not too sure how we did it because I can’t run and I don’t think you can either. All of it was ours. It belonged to us. We walked the earth like it owed us something. Let us cheat it just once to make up for everything it’s done. She apologized as we sailed across the Atlantic and she wrote I’m sorry in every single cloud.

I’m sorry for EVERYTHING. 

It doesn’t matter I’m dreaming. I’m still dreaming. I hope I never wake up. 

Because when I’m there I’m everything you’ll ever need. All you wanted. 

Because when I wake up, you’re still there, and I’m still here and the world doesn’t owe us anything.