ok i know you want me to be able to tell you how i feel and i know that this isnt the way you would want it but for now this is the best i can do....

when im with you...im not scared to die but ive never been so happy to live...everything makes perfect sence your more than enough for me and i want to do everything that i can to be enough for you....i love how you kiss i love my skin touching yours i love you being in me i love how i feel when you look at me and i can see the love in your eyes...i adore everything about you even the parts you think that i dont like...when i think of you i lose my breath...i dont think "butterflies" is the word i think that they are pterodactyls...you are the sexyist man alive...i dont care about you past i know that you would never hurt me...i wish that i could live in you arms...

I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her….

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The Girl That Loved

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I’m in love, she tells me, and I believe her.

She has said it before, though not in the same words. It is a song she has been singing since before she was conceived—it sometimes seems to me that she had been born for love. It is natural, to her, to be with someone. To want someone with her, around her, inside her: living with her and for her.

She is not perfect. She never claimed to be. She presents herself to the world as she is; fearlessly proud of everything that makes her unique. She is strong and asks—no, she demands to be loved for herself. She is the Counselor, the Playmate, the Lover, the Challenger, the Mother, and the Child all packaged tightly together. Where there are cracks between these personas, there are more connections, between which are tighter cracks—so that in the end, there really is no difference between her many facets, and they blend to make one whole imperfect person.

She is loud. She drinks. She cheats. She has made bad decisions, she has loved bad men, and she has done bad things—but she will always learn. She carries her lessons serenely, because she learns and she grows but she does not regret.

How can she regret?

She told me once: her favorite colors are black, white, and pink. She can never kill a man, because she is a Christian sinner that values the lives of others above her own. She was born in September to a cursed family, and she was only a child until October, which was when she realized that this was a life in which she could not afford to rest. So she began her life early, learning more and growing faster and understanding sooner that everything she did and everything that happened to her was part of her whole picture, her whole portrait, her whole story.

Stories….

She hates fairy tales because they always end happily ever after.

She loves fairy tales because they always end happily ever after.

She used to complain that they always drew people in love with such bright, lovely colors. It was a strange complaint, I always thought, coming from a woman for whom love was made, so I asked her once what color she thought love was.

She had turned around towards me laughing, brown hair brushing across the tips of her ears and across a few of her eighteen piercings, and she told me that it was a silly question, because that was like asking what light felt like when you touched it, or what blue tasted like when you put it on your tongue. I told her that light felt like water, and that blue tasted cold, and she told me that love was—

And she stopped.

Red, I asked, for passion?

It was that, she told me, but that wasn’t all.

Green, I asked, for life?

Yes, she hedged, but it was so much more—

White, I asked, for purity?

No, none of that, she had cried, frustrated. You can’t just say a word and expect it to mean the real thing, she had continued, voice rising. Love is— My friend once took a picture of a tree in a girl’s backyard, she told me. The tree was a bold, brilliant green, and when he snapped the picture he could hear his friends laughing in the background, and he could feel the sun beating on his back, and he could smell the oily scent of sunscreen, and the memory was in his mind, filed away to be retrieved at a moment’s notice. Later, when he developed the film, the tree lacked its luster. The picture called forth the memory of that day, but the leaves weren’t as green and the sun didn’t seem as warm and he couldn’t hear his friends or smell the sunscreen--

I always feel like she’s so far ahead of me. This girl—this sinner, this innocent—has done so much and lived so richly in such a short amount of time that now she knows—she knows something. Maybe everything. Her knowledge always seems so mysterious to me. She relies on nothing but her heart and her intuition to guide her, and I admire that. I envy that. I—

I tell her that I can’t share myself. I listen to her tell a man that she loves him, and I listen to her expand and glow and I hear the words rushing from her and I wonder why I can’t find them in myself. I tell her that I can’t just… share the only thing—myself—that is uniquely mine.

She says, sharing is caring.

She says, if you love someone enough, you won’t want to keep yourself back.

She says not to worry.

I ask her how she can be so sure. I ask her how she can know that she’s in love. I ask her how she knows that this one is the one. The last one was the one, and the one before him was the one, too. Why this one? Why this one? How can she tell?

My heart, she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the word.

I’m in love, she told me, and I believe her.

How can I not believe her? She knows this song well. She’s been singing it since before she was born.

It’s natural, for her.