How miserable it is to be that desperate. To love someone for no reason at all but because you are compelled to. I needed him, and he didn't need me. I loved him enough for the both of us, his portion and mine. I begged for him throughout the day to notice me, threw myself at his feet, let his approval in disproportionate measure dictate my worth. How could he love the scum on his shoe. How could he love me. I didn't know how to respect myself. How miserable it is to be that desperate, to be a coin clanking around in someones pocket, in fear of being spent. He spent me readily, traded me in for something bright and shiny of his wanting.

These days I want to be called Billie, a gender neutral name that stems from the name William, which means Desire and protection both. I commend my subconscious for bringing me that one. Seems I've always been drawn to this name. The last biological man I loved was named William. He is the only one I can think of that didn't go on to find his perfect love. Everyone I've dated, if even for a short duration has after me found the one they were meant to be with. It should be smiled upon I guess. I should feel happy for them, that I loved them, that I showed them, that they found what they wanted, even if it wasn't me. I cant help but feel cheated though. I cant help but feel as if its all utterly painful. That I want to watch them crash and burn into their perfect partners, who aren't me.

I can say that aloud now. You've found everything you want, but they aren't me. For every woman you dated after me, and the fairytale you collected, the work you amassed and went on about, shoving it in my face with a heavy puffed chest and a full faced gloat...they still will never be me. That haunts you. I know it must. Because as much as we are miserable inside, we are miserable for each other, and we cannot escape it. I write you nearing midnight, I speak your name, I revisit our notes and play our songs. It is a torture that claims me in the dark silent moments when I am overcome with laughter for the sweet moments that were so ripe with meaning, juice seething out trailing sugar on the sides of our mouths, dripping off our chin...oh interlacing fingers when skin felt the best and we didn't have to think the obvious, that we didn't match. We matched in energy, in spirit in flesh... once again always the luminary orbit compulsion. You once called us twins. I think you knew then what I knew all along, we were always claiming it in kind, trying to mirror something deeper we couldn't quite put words to. We still cant can we. We still cant figure out why the other creeps into our minds if even for a moment in all that claims us now. With this identity we've so fondly shaped, we've so proudly mended, and yet this crooked hook of a question mark always looms. If it didn't you wouldn't write me for coffee, asking me to provide wide eyes and head nods, be an audience to your monologue. You want me to hear you. You need my acknowledgment as I have convinced myself I need yours, only in your selfishness you have what I do not, a sense of self and self respect. Those are the rippenings of selfishness I admire in you, very little but mostly this. I instead have spent so much time trying to mold, to fit, to say love me please Ill do anything, even if that means changing myself. I remember you berating me on the street corner, how I could take all the humiliation in the world, how I would crawl on all fours and lick the city streets if you would only take me back, how I gave to you my skin and said I would sacrifice it for marking, would let you cut into me, let you claim me with ink and brand me with shame, if only it was a shame relating back to you, if only it meant that you'd still be there, that id keep something. That I'd have something. Oh little girl you were so scared to be thrown away. So often I begged didn't I, like a homeless dog awaiting scrap, whining for warmth, so often I let you whip me and even when I felt scared I'd remove my cower to skulk back to you.

You once wrote me that you loved loving me. And maybe it was just for the love itself. I swear we were always moths, we were always seeking out some light in the other, ready to be destroyed by it. How fatalistic, how self destructive. And here I am. Its been almost three years and I miss you like it was yesterday. I can think of you when you were 16 and I was 19 and we were in the Shakespearean park in golden gate, and that look of wonder on your face and how much I knew I loved you then, all that I saw within you. See you were right to tell me that I loved something I saw in you, but not in the same way that you made it out to be. It wasn't that I didn't love you for you, I loved you for all that mattered. Oh this dingy personality, it only gets us so far, but you held onto it so tight, you probably always will. Why is it people are so fast to prove this identity they've created, as if to say they are a collection of things. I am my emo music, I am the color yellow, I am the science books on the shelf. Youv'e told yourself too many stories over the years, clung to the darkness that said you couldn't love fully, that no one could really love you. That I was all an illusory game, a romance novel dogeared for manipulative recitation. Sex was real, it was the moment of impact, flesh on flesh, it was a memory you could come back to, but love, love was always too painful, too much of a fairytale that didn't allow for commitment or faith. I get that now. I get how we are in many ways the same with our darkness, the proverbial child in the corner that cries to be picked up, but cries louder the nearer anyone gets. We say one thing and mean another, always. Like when you tell me how happy you are and you want me to hurt, you want to see that I long for you, and at the same time that I want for you to be happy. Both are true.

You wished that I was tougher, that you were softer, that I could trust and push and you could be the home I'd hoped for. I'd like to see our battle as something we did together even though it pushed us apart. I'd like to think I wasn't some victim, a name in the long list of lovers you've discarded over the years.

We've shared videos and poems, we've spoken through our guises and even directly at times... all in all we wanted a beautiful puzzle, we wanted to be seen but worked for, we wanted to be loved fully. I don't think I'm projecting, I don't think I was alone in this. After all you called us twins.

You told me to look up the lyrics:

There is no life imaginary that divides us, the sky reminds me of all the science that confines us is all in our minds. cus in the sun in the warm warm sun I can see your love and im the only one and im keeping to myself, but in the night in the cold cold night I can see your love never lose sight...I can see freedom where I dont need anything no. Through the shame to indifference to all the children strange all the soldiers fighting war, get up more I see them I see them where freedom world, where I can see everything , I dont need anything no...where god is the only king.

Maybe you had just thought of me, thought this was my song....

regardless I don't know how to not think of you without longing and sadness. I cant be with you, but I will always adore you, I will always love the light in you, I will always see that, I will always want the best for you, and hope you want the best for me... still I long for your love, approval respect, admiration and care. I hope you think of me, that I am not just some thing writhing under your skin you want to rid yourself of, or a faded memory, a collectable gone missing in the shed.

Sending you love D, much love.

Always, K