I am eighteen and I like watching sunlight spill in the spaces between my fingers.

I think you should stay. The doctors said there’s a gap between our hands that shouldn’t be there. They said that it would stop aching eventually but it would burn until then. They said you can’t be homesick for another person, I don’t believe them though. My legs don’t like walking into rooms that you’re not in. Last night I couldn’t sleep in the bedroom because my knees wouldn’t take me up the stairs. My thighs had told them they missed your hips. Nothing is agreeing with me. I’m going to a cardiologist tomorrow just to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Look, the thing is, I’m already on fire for you, I’m already leaving my doors unlocked and my windows open, I’m hoping you’ll crawl back into bed with me, I’m hoping I’ll wake up with your hands around my neck and your name in my mouth. The doctors will call, I’m sure. They’re going to say ‘there’s a blockage, and it’s leaking but it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before.’ And I’ll tell them ‘yes, it’s my arteries, they’re tying themselves into knots, they miss him too.’

—— Azra.T “I Am Somehow Always in Mid-Search For You.”

Stop it. You are not worthless or hopeless or helpless. There is nothing less about you. There is nothing lacking within you. You are a poem made out of matches that haven’t been burned yet. You’re not an abandoned building or the Christmas jumpers that you knitted last year that no one, not even your grandparents wanted to wear. It always starts quietly, it always starts with a whisper and you’ll spend the first few years of your teenage life thinking that nothing loud is going to happen to you, that your insides are the kind of quiet that look like a hospital room after someone died, stop. Think fuse, think burning candle, think a wave that starts at the horizon and breaks the sea.

—— Azra.T “slow burn”