Dear Dan,

002.

February 2, 2013

Drawing my hand back, I almost stopped breathing as he stirred in his sleep. I was drawing my own constellations on his back, I draw one star to represent all the ways I love him:

1.      For the way he had touched me last night.

2.      For the way his back dips in and out like a wave that's never going to crash onto the shore.

3.      Because he is beautiful.

4.      Because he thinks that I am beautiful.

I watch his breathing pattern turn from completely calm to irrational and nerve-wracking, and I don't question the way my hands immediately reach out for him and pull him in as if I have any idea what the fuck I'm doing.

I forgot to add to the list of things I loved about him was the way my sheets gripped his back like honey after a nightmare.

I love him the way my bones love to crack after a long day and I love him the way a mother loves the name she chooses for her child.

"Hello gorgeous," he whispers, and immediately I am watching the pulse of his neck and the way his pupils are adding to the sunlight, and I watch his face as realization slams into him that he had yet again fallen asleep in my bed.

"Hello gorgeous yourself," I say, and brush the hair from his forehead.

"I really enjoyed last night, you were perfect," he tells me, laughing.

I roll my eyes. I watch as he stands but I am not cold, I am warming from the way his body is shifting, and immediately I am heated and in need of him.

"I can't remember how good you were," I say, and it's a suggestion, he knows it.

He raises an eyebrow and laughs. "I could jog your memory, should you wish, Grazia."

Lust fills me from places I didn't know I had, and I want him to crawl into my mouth and bang my brain into oblivion.

He's got a narrow v of his hipbones like an arrow directing traffic and I can't stop staring at the way his whole body looks and god, I want to run my hands over him as if to make him realize what he does to me and the way I've been looking at life recently.

I am a hungry wolf and he is my prey. I want to lose myself in the light of his lips and cast shadows made from sin.

I pull him into me and kiss him like he's been underwater his whole life and I am his air.

With his hand, he weds my thighs, carefully saying I do with the way he pushes them apart and slowly devours me with one lick. I can't decide if I want to spread his body like butter on my sheets or kiss him in beautiful cities and fuck, I'm in love.

I want our ribs to interlock like fingers, and I want the valley of his hips to rise to the mountains of my pelvis. I do not hesitate to scream out as he tucks his fingers safely inside of me, and out, and in and I climax without warning.

If only he knew what crosses my mind when he is across my body. With a beautiful laugh and a body so killer I'm not sure if I'm laid in my bed or my grave, he kisses me with so much fever I can feel my next life.

"I am so in love with you, you're mine," he whispers.

It's suddenly a law: I am his.

I laugh out in excitement, or was that a scream from the way his hand had crept downtown again? "As long as you're mine, I'm yours."

I lean into him as if I am the moon and I am about to hit him, he is earth and he is on fire, immediately undressing me everywhere. "Fuck me. " I beg and he wastes no time.

November 28, 2014

I had been finding small pieces of myself all over and I didn't have enough hands to pick them all up. I've never missed someone as much as I miss him and if I could have it my way I'd erase the memory of him on top of her, and erase the fact that he needed someone else to satisfy him because I never could. I thought it might have been a trick of the light and I didn't see her cherry-fucking- stained lips around my boyfriend's dick.

"Grazia," I turn to see him waving me down. "Wait," he calls. He grabs underneath of my arm and pulls me towards him, and even though I'd love to rip his throat out, I feel the weight of the world on the outside of my body pushing me toward him. "Where are you going?" he is out of breath. "They said you were like, leaving," he whispers.

"I'm going home," I tell him.

"But you said you were spending Thanksgiving on campus this year," he furrows his eyebrows as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Things change," I say. "But you knew that already."

"Are you going to hate me forever, Grazia? Come on, it's Thanksgiving and you're leaving? When are you going? I'll come with you." he offers.

I look him up and down and scoff. "Nothing here I'm thankful for this year. I don't think that'd be wise of you, or me."

He drops his hand from me as if I've burnt him and steps away from me. "But you," he stutters. "I don't understand Grazia," he says.

"You broke my heart," I answer.

"So you're leaving?"

"Who am I going to eat with this year if I stay?"

"Me." He shrugs. "We eat together every year, Grazia, why would this year be different?"

"Holy shit," I whisper, and I look at him as if he's the hardest equation to solve and I am the dumbest person in the world. "You really don't get it, do you? Did you think this whole thing was a joke or something? We broke up." I explain.

"I know, but-" I stop him.

"You don't even get it, things are over between us. You fucked me over my own grave and I could smell myself rotting and every time I see you, or see her, or see both of you, I feel wrong."

"Are you staying or going?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to stay," he says.

"Then I'm going."

"So if I said I did want you to go?"

"I don't know, you didn't say that."

"But if I did?"

"But you didn't."

He settles into his defeat the way he settled into warm bathes with me once upon a time. I watch as regret floods through him, and guilt partners with that regret and suddenly he's a ball of something neither of us could recognize.

"So that's it? We broke up?"

"We broke up," I confirm.

"And I won?"

"You won," I tell him.

"Okay," he whispers.

"Okay."