did not
tell you:
“I know we are strangers but just for a
moment, I want to
pretend that we are in love, and that we
finish each other’s
sentences and that there is no place we’d rather be than right Here.
If it’s not too much to ask:
Just for this moment, I don’t want to be alone.”
They wanted to say:
“You say I love you but we both know, when you say it, you are trying to remember the first time you said it, because every time you say it after that, is just a shadow of that time. And we know we change, we accept that, so I’m hoping that one day, we change into the kind of people who mean it again.
So I say, ‘I love you’ but I mean, ‘I believe I will love you again, one day.’”
“I want you to discover a kind of paradise in my eyes, a way to swim into me and then feel us sinking together into some kind of newness.”*
Back in the dream I ask you if you would burn with me, if I burned, and you tell me that you’ve always burned for me, and in the dream, I believe you.
And I’m sorry if I hurt you by not being there.
I’m sorry if we let the clock turn while we
weren’t looking.
I’m sorry if you thought things were going to
turn out differently.
I’m sorry because I thought things would
turn out differently.
I’m sorry about getting old.
I’m sorry if you still miss me.
I’m sorry if I still miss you.
I’m sorry if there are days
I’d rather write about anything else but you.
Sometimes I’m sorry
everywhere
I go.
As a child, I would cry when someone took something away from me.
When someone would say, “You have this. Now you no longer have this.”
You think I have grown up. I have not.
It still hurts when the things and people I love are taken away from me.
The truth is, I have just learned
not to cry as much.
They will say:
“You can’t fight this.
What are you doing?”
And you will reply:
“Fighting this.”
They will ask:
“Why don’t you talk?”
And you will answer:
“Because even if paper is cheap,
I’ve still spent a fortune on you.”
They should’ve said:
“You should know: I kept every ticket.
Because I want to remember
every good place we went.
Even if the movie was horrible.
Even if the concert started late and it rained.
Even if the train took us
somewhere we were never meant to go.
I want to remember.”
Surely, if love is a storm
then all you need to do
is be brave and get in a boat.
But you should know,
the best people
can’t be found
on any map.
We could give each other’s hearts participation trophies and take each other home to our parents and say,
“Do you see? I told you I was real.”
Because you make me real.
Remember:
You cannot nail words or water to a board.
All our words have ever done, is leave our lips, and become air.
And I hope you get what you came Here for, even if you don’t know what it is, even if you walk away feeling like you’ve left something behind.
I just hope you take something from all this.
How do you tell them?
“You have changed the way I love, by the way that you loved me.
I love differently now.
Maybe even less.
Maybe there’s less of me to love.
Maybe there’s more.”
I want you to know
I saved up a little today.
Because I know I’ll need it.
I was sad a moment today,
when I had no right to be,
when I should’ve been happy.
Because I need something for later.
I know a moment will come when I’m weak.
But I’ll open the one
happy moment I saved today.
And live to see tomorrow.
—why do you talk to ghosts?
—because so often, the living don’t listen.
Why do we talk to anyone?
Say:
“So when I die, bury me beneath the world, beneath landfills and flower beds, beneath my parents and my brother and my sister, bury me beneath my partner and my child, bury me beneath every good thing, so that if anything good happens, it happens to the good things and people I knew and know.
Because dying is for the living, and we all owe each other favors in the end.”
“Do you know why this hurts?”
“Why does it matter if we know?
Would knowing make it hurt less?”
“Maybe.”
“It hurts because we have hearts.
It hurts because we’re human and we need to hurt this way, or we’d be something else.”
And we’re all looking for the one strange trick that’ll make us happy. We’re all hoping it’s something we can buy or something that will change us just by thinking about it, like being in the now, or letting go
or enjoying what you have
or setting a goal
or taking up a hobby.
We all miss something or someone we’re not supposed to miss. We’re all pretending to be something that we secretly don’t want to be. We all think we know what we want sometimes and we think we’re dedicated and strong enough to get it, until we’re distracted. We all stay up late at night writing sentences in lists that start with the words “we all” in the hope that whatever we feel, we don’t feel it alone. Don’t we?
Surely?
And back in the dream I play you
our favorite song.
I am looking straight into your eyes
and I say, “How are you Here?”
and you smile and shake your head
and become paper in my hands.
In the dream if I see you again,
I will shake you by the shoulders,
and be angry with you
and cry.
“Sometimes, I hide in a coffee shop because I want to hear my name being called by a stranger, by someone
I haven’t disappointed yet.
And you can hide so much, you forget
what it’s like to be found.”
And you wanted to say:
“How can I help you, when what happened to you, happened to you before I got Here.
You think if I went away, your problems would go away.
But I’m just a person. I’m not your problems.
Your problems, are your problems.
What happened to you, happened to you
before I got Here.”
And you wanted to say:
“Every time I think of you, I try to think of a
blank canvas instead and I try to replace the
picture I have of you in my mind, and then the
hand of a ghost takes mine,
and paints a picture of you, anyway. ”
Maybe I will eventually unsay every good thing
I meant to say.
Maybe every good thing I meant will
become a blue line, stretching
into infinity.
And I wanted to say:
“I have had
every conversation
we never got to have
with myself.”
And in the end:
You don’t have to know everything you know.
Forget the things that hurt.
No one’s stopping you but you.
Maybe people will call you stupid when you
tell them you don’t remember being hurt.
But sometimes, being called stupid would
hurt less than remembering.
And in the end:
I hope you can close your heart like a
flower between these pages.
So that your heart can open again.
So that you can leave behind every bad thing
that’s hung on too long.
In the end:
I really do hope you find what you’re looking for, and I hope you find something new to look for after that, and I hope some part of you is always looking and that you discover that searching is something beautiful we all do.
I hope you never stop looking for you.
Every word you can say.
You hurt me.
You were meant to be kinder than you were.
You were meant to be better.
And I was owed more than this.
And you let me down, when I thought you
were the only one who wouldn’t.
But I will throw everything that hurts to the ground
and leave it where it lies.
But I will carry on, despite the world.
But I will become what I needed.
Because I am, and I will, and I can.
And so, I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forget you.
Because I owe myself better.
And in the quietest moments of the world,
I can say that I love me.
I owe myself the best of me.
And no one can take that away.
Because everything I feel is real.
And I belong to the goodness, kindness,
and love that moves me.
I do the hard work of protecting my heart,
from the people who would hurt it.
And I’m awake to me even when I’m sleeping.
And lastly, you should know:
You cannot fix me because I am not broken.
And even though everything has changed, I am still more me than I’ve ever been.
When you close this book, your story will carry on,
in the kindness you show yourself and others.
When you close this book,
you will remember your heart,
and take it with you.
From Here, to there.
To there.
To there.
To there.
To good places.
To the truth that speaks in every moment.
To the little things that are real and matter.
To yourself, to the grass, to the poem, to the song the universe sings, to your great big silence, to your list of things, to your arms, to your mouth, to your heart,
and at the end of everything:
Here.
Because in the end, I am pointing at your heart, and you and every word you needed, were Here all along.
Here.
Here.
Here.
Also by Iain S. Thomas:
I Wrote This for You
I Wrote This for You and Only You
I Wrote This for You: 2007–2017
I Wrote This for You: Just the Words
Intentional Dissonance
25 Love Poems for the NSA
I Am Incomplete Without You
How to Be Happy: Not a Self-Help Book. Seriously.
300 Things I Hope
(If you have found one good word in here worth saying, take it,
and say it to the person who needs to hear it, today.)
Check out these other great titles from Andrews McMeel Publishing!
Every Word You Cannot Say Page 3