Four Letter Words (over 76 Days)

by Kenny Kim

a series i wrote over the course of 76 days.
(by the end you will understand the necessity of four letters per title)



chat

i can’t even delete our chat how can i be expected to destroy everything we had together all of the aching and loving and crying and laughing and smiling and kissing and whispering and fuck i miss you so much you populate all corners of my mind at all times even when you don’t know it, for you are so fucking amazing you occupy my thoughts and bless (curse?) my dreams and allow me to experience all that i wish i could but i know that i won’t ever believe in love the same way because yes i will find someone and yes you will find someone but GOD FUCKING DAMMIT it couldve been us it really really really couldve been us and i want nothing more than to talk to you because i miss you beyond comprehension beyond meaning beyond logic beyond sense all i want is to kiss you all i want is you-

but i cant even have that 

date

i think the hardest part about all of this is that i lied. i lied when i told you that i wanted to cut this off, that i agreed that stopping our conversation was the best way to handle our feelings. i am a fucking liar. all i want is to hold you and squeeze your hand and murmur whispers of love. i want to see you again, but i want to do more than that. i want to LOVE you again. i want to see you again. to be able to talk to you once again, to have what we had, to go back to the conversations of love and beauty we had. i would’ve dated to marry. but you ripped my heart out, just as how i ripped out yours, and i can’t even really be mad about it because god fucking dammit i Miss you. all i want is for you to be by my side. i would’ve dated to marry you. 

please come back. you have changed love. 

12:49

our hands reaching in the pale moonlight a sense of urgency, panic to them whispered sentiments of love, the time spent building to tonight i feel the tug of aphrodite as our eyes finally meet, as our hands go lower and lower, as we can feel the impending doom of our future, hear the thudding silence of the infinite clock as i hunt desperately for your lips with mine, interlocking our fingers and slowly dancing in rhythm underneath the sheets “do you love me?” a universe of love and life and lust buried deep within your eyes, a nebula of all that i am. in the flecks of gold in the brown of your eyes, i see the dark nights of the future the dying bonfires, the worn out chests, but i know that i will lose all that you are, even as we lay facing one another. so i can only say “yes” and press my lips against yours, surrounded in the hues of pink and blue and red and yellow, the hues that define love, all of which i know that i am to lose. 

pain

do you feel this pain as well? the pain that began with searing hot stab wounds that slowly because incisions, that reveal themselves to be wounds that run deep? the type of pain to keep you up at night, to shake you awake? i don’t feel it every day but it’s days like these when i feel it the most and i never know how to face myself whether to hide or to fuck or to cry or to lie or to rage or to fight or to run or to sleep or you occupy my headspace free of charge i know that scars eventually heal and one day, that will change but they are still just as fresh 

back

at the end of a long day i find myself collapsing onto my bed reaching for my phone and typing out the first few letters that make up your name before i realize what i am doing and i stop typing, putting down my phone at the end of a long night i find myself wishing i could enthrall you with stories of the small details of my life because for us, it’s always been about the details that get missed along the way and nowadays, i have no one that i feel i can discuss the details with and that’s when i really feel the loneliness when i am lying there, shamed into silence and sadness i craved the moments whenever i could see your face on my screen and hear your voice and now i am left aching for a reality that can never come back 

more

you exist in my dreams as of late shadows in abandoned benches in suburban ice parlors and in cafes at times, i wake up in a pale sweat who knew that life would always catch up? and i am always reminded that you’ve got a softness to you i can see in the way you look at those who you love the most streaks of midnight wrapped in your eyes it’s the sober love in your expression, how i wish you’d bless me once more with your love and twice again with your touch we always seem to end up at the same roads you’re always surrounded by the weight of what we had become, of what we were to be, of how we had fallen together 

because your kisses remind me of light plums and golden chains and full mugs of all our favorite caffeinated drinks and everytime i wake up in these panics i remember why i hate january (it’s because i love you)

kiss

i don’t quite remember how to kiss. i left my ability to do so when i left you. that’s not all you contain. you contain all of my hidden memories and the wrinkled shapes my eyes make when i soundlessly die of laughter and the much more faint smile that i develop whenever i see you in your natural element. you contain all of my tears and my desperate, whispered sentiments of love, back when we had little time, back when we had no time. you contain my soundless sobbing, my empty stares, and my outraged bursts of passion in the weeks afterwards. you have all of me. and now i sit here, bitter, because i have forgotten to kiss. i have forgotten how to smile, how to laugh, how to love. i need no one but you to teach me, no one but you to wrap your body around mine and hold my face in your hands. i need no one else to wake up besides in the morning except for you, with the sunlight hitting your brown eyes in a way that hits me harder than anything ever could. and i know that you have to be beyond me. that you have to heal, that you have to carry yourself out of the darkness that existed between us. but that is why you have left me. that is why i am still here. because i still love you. and that is why i can no longer love no longer laugh no longer smile no longer kiss because i no longer have you 

take

take me back to 10 months ago when we lay staring up into the cosmos and every now and then, i steal a look at you your soft figure resting on the wet grass and dew your lips soft and glistening in the moonlight, you smile, and i find myself staring at your face take me back to ten days ago when we lay staring at each other and for as long as i could, i memorized your features, your eyes, your smile in the sunlight, you smile and i found myself staring at your face once again, still ever as entranced as i was 10 months ago 

fear

i am characterized primarily by fear a lot of fear goes into most, if not all, my choices. the fear of being late, the fear of being wrong, the fear of losing someone. but i am also transfixed to the idea that everything resets to a happy place; everything will be all right. i long for this to be my reality. but i am bound by fear more than i am bound by this unrealistic worldview. and so i find myself clinging to those who understand me on the deepest level, for it is those who can empathize with me (to a fault; i despise being pitied, and i take care to not step beyond the line) so when i feel myself shutting down, locking out other thoughts because you invade every single memory and idea that i have, i cannot help but try but to wipe you out from memory. the act of doing so, however, hurts me more than anything. every single act of attempting to forget your smile and your laugh physically stabs me. not to mention the fear that i feel. but my fear doesn’t matter i just need you to be happy and so i do it all to keep you safe 

fall

we met soon after the ides of march, the overwhelming sense of a bright spring still apparent in your rosy cheeks and your small, but budding smile but with summer came the sadness and the tears, the confessed love and the awkward laughter and the assurances that everything would turn out alright and as fall came we began to realize that, just as how nature began to crumble, so too would our love inevitably have to fall apart, even as we resisted and winter marked the darkest time, as the light in you eyes vanished for the time we spent apart and your smile fell away from me i saw you in spring once again in the way that we had first met and the light is back in your eyes the light that i missed for months and i smile now knowing that your smile can start to take flight after the four seasons even if it isn’t for me 

love

the details are why i fall in love how you walked past a mirror, alone and made a cute noise and adjusted ur shirt how our hands seemed to clasp just one second too long before letting go how you swing your feet as you grab the table as you sit, leaning forward how your body moves as you dance entrancing me with how you move and i see you in everything nowadays in the way the light glints through the window in the way someone with your hairstyle passes by in the way how someone copies your idiosyncrasies i fall in love, again and again yet must always remind myself to kill it kill it before it can kill me 

four letter words

remember when we banned all the four letter words in the world? we thought it would help us but all it did was harm us even more we thought we could stop all of the months of sadness, of pain, of torture but we were building the weakest of walls “fuck” brought out the emotions that we tried so desperately to shove down and when i told you “i miss you” it only brought with it a feeling not unlike being choked because we always knew the four letter word that would follow “and i love you” and the walls broke time and time again and its good that you’ve now built the walls to be stronger between us but i find myself leaning against them every once in a while and placing my hand against the wall and hoping that you’re on the other side, hand on the wall 

i think i’m hoping for all the wrong things 

but i think i’ll keep hoping