"A FIELD GUIDE TO LOVING YOURSELF….When you’re second choice, you will alwayscatch yourself..."

“A FIELD GUIDE TO LOVING YOURSELF

….

When you’re second choice, you will always

catch yourself wishing that they had

had the decency not to love you.

Because not being loved doesn’t sound

half as bad as

not being loved enough.

So you fashion your heart into a cigar box;

you give it a clasp, a hinge, and a lock.

You package up old loves gone stale.

You haze the room of your rib cage

with secondhand smoke.

You brag about the ones who almost loved you

like they’d loved you, and hold the burning

to your lips.

You paint your mouth red with

the cherry of the cigarette,

whatever it takes to feel beautiful,

without them.

The love you’re looking for looks

like a fourth story apartment,

like a window with a view,

like a blanket across the back of an armchair,

like candlelight in the living room.

It looks the way Christmas at your mother’s

never felt. Love looks

like drowning and flying all at once; it looks

like a one-way plane ticket.

It looks like you, darling.

It looks just like you.”

- A FIELD GUIDE TO LOVING YOURSELF, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)