My smile scares you. Everything about me makes you want to run away. You can’t see the beauty in my bones. That makes me sad but it’s okay. Because I can see the beauty in yours and I know that it’s good to feel sad sometimes.

I see it! Yes. Unmistakable. I know it like I know where the stars will lay each night. Buried deep under your skin beneath muscle and tissue and trauma. I see the structure that fortifies your soul and I could not love you anymore than I already do.

Could not love you any deeper than I always have.

To love without hope of ever being loved back is the healthiest form. So as I said, it’s okay.

Like an explosion in my splintered skull, I realized one rainy day as I stood under my umbrella and smiled at you while you glared at me, that I have come to love you so much, so deep, so forever, that it overflowed and I found I had a little left for myself.