diary 1

the sinking feeling deep within my stomach when i reach to see you destroying yourself, i cannot make myself act with grace to soften your fall so i instead harden it with words of concern. the way your voice echoes back into my ear from the broken signal of my speaker, i can smell it on your breath from across the street. is it hurting me as much as it is hurting you? i bite back at your suffering with the only way i've ever known and wonder if you've ever known wellness. because that is all i want for you. the back corner of an art class, the reflection of a screen in my eyes, a manmade hill within an unfamiliar home, i think i've loved you since then. i do love you but no time feels right, because i cannot use it in desperation to keep your head above water. i want it to carry the weight of how i hold it in my heart, something natural and given, something we know but do not take for granted. not a ploy in a way to keep you from the bottom of the ocean. i want to feel it purely against your skin and for it to linger in the air as the sun rises and sets. all i hope that you know that whatever the choice that needs to be made i make it with you in the center of my vision. i love you.