i. Burn vanilla candles and ignore the scent of her perfume on your sheets.
ii. Listen I know she splits open your ribcage when she laughs and leaves you hollow. I know every part of you feels halved and chasms gape between the chambers in your heart and if you could just trace the crescent-moon curve of her lips you'd he whole again, but fill what is empty with chocolate covered strawberries and moonlight and scented candles. I know its not the same as her. I know.
iii. You make a thousand metaphors about her with things that can never really compare to her but search them out anyway. If she is every single star then buy a telescope and watch the universe burn miles away. If she is dark and heaves with all the heart of the sea go taste ocean water and feel the salt on your tongue. I know it seems like the world took all of the most beautiful parts of itself to make her, veins like rivers and laughs like birdsongs and passion like the white desert sun but you can find these things, you can swim deep in rivers and sit and watch birds and feel sunlight on your skin. They wont hold you like she could but they are beautiful.
iv. She makes you feel like shattered porcelain, doesn't she? Like breaking over and over again, a thousand times and a thousand pieces. And you tell yourself that for her you could break endlessly, like waves that break themselves against the shore with yearning. For her, you tell yourself, anything. But pick up the pieces, maybe; you deserve to be whole.
v. You love her. You love her, you love her, you love her, and you feel it in every cell, like the air evaporated from your bloodstream and she sends floodlight down your spinal column. You love her and you cant. You love her and its hard to unlove her but learn to fall in love with the world.
