jamais vu

I’m 20 years-old. Good grief.

Bwah-ah-ah-ah

Why on Earth do we only have night time cough syrup when I’ve already slept 14 hours? Preparing to be forever drowsy.

I like how you mispronounce words sometimes. How you fumble, stammer and stutter looking for the right ones to say and the right ways to say them. I appreciate that you find language challenging, because it is, because everything manmade is challenging. Including man, including you. When you sleep on your side, I like to map the constellations between your beauty marks and freckles. The minuscule mountains that sprinkle your back. I like the tufts of hair you forgot to shave and the way you smell when you haven’t showered in a while. I like the sleep left in your eyes. That you think my opinion of you is so fickle that it could change overnight. I enjoy seeing you insecure, vulnerable. I like to watch red steam light up your cheeks, a spreading mist of shame when you think you’ve done something unacceptable like missing a step on the stairs or not having the perfect answer to something I’ve said. It’s like you honestly don’t know how wonderful you are, it’s like you have no idea. The burns, the scars, the blacks and blues on your face/body/heart. I like your hard, ugly toenails and the layer of fat that lines your belly, the soft parts you try to hide. It’s okay to be soft, sometimes. I appreciate your ability to get inappropriately angry as much as I appreciate your willingness to apologize afterward. I like how your passion manifests unpredictably and uncontrollably, how your feelings cannot be caged or concealed, how you’re incapable of apathy. I like how you can’t dance, how you have pedestrian taste in music, how the worst song on every album is your favorite. I like how enthusiastic you are when you hear it, it’s like you don’t know how terrible it is but I’m thankful because maybe you don’t know how terrible I am. I don’t just put up with/settle for/accept your blemishes, your flaws, because they are tangible and I can hold them inbetween my arms and legs. I can like your flaws, I can love them. I can do it flawlessly.

Is “the inherent goodness of honesty” even a reality, or just a childish cornerstone?
Why is deep honesty so scarce in so many interpersonal relationships?
I only want to be real with you.