Dear Captain Fantastic,

They're a number of love stories
I've told but never ours.
It's my favorite one.
 Its the only one that ends without a sour taste in my mouth.
The only one I still pray for.
I pray for you. Did you know? Do you ever hear my prayers?
I pray the way mother's pray for their children
and women pray for their husbands.
Prayer is a woman's best firearm is something my mother says.
I don't think she meant for me to use all my Ammo protecting you.
I don't think she meant for me to pray for you so hard.

But, I find sanity in knowing that even in the moments when
 I choose myself over loving you God will love you for me.
In the moments when you would look to me look to him.
I'm not nearly responsible to hold your heart in my hands without dropping it.
I fear I already have, but I want you to know.
All these years later,
All these boys later, '
All these scars later,
there's not a smile in the world that warms my heart more than yours.

I know loneliness. I know her well. She has become familiar to me.
And perhaps I have let her root herself into the places I should have kept for someone else.
Someone like you. Who loves everything about me. From the way I laugh, to the way I smell.
She also knows me well. She also knows how I hide myself in dark corners when I break.
But rather than coax me out tenderly the way you would, she laughs. she laughs. she laughs a heavy hearty laugh. And I suddenly remember there is no one else.

I wish I'd never forgotten how to love without breaking. Without leaving.
I wish you'd never left. and sometimes even now when I know I cannot ever begin to love you in the way you need we sit on a beach you and I. That one we spoke about. And I stare at your smile, and you stare at the ocean. and I know this. this is the closest feeling I'll ever feel to heaven,