Late Night Voicemails

i. I look for you everywhere. Did you know that? Like there are these invisible markers of this insignificant shared life that didn’t matter to anyone other than us. 

ii. The memory of you is a physical thing. It resides somewhere between my stomach and my heart and it eats away at both, radioactive decay that rots me from the inside out. It hurts. But I like the evidence that we were something real. 

iii. You left the dog tag I made for you for your last birthday in my mailbox. You were always a goal oriented person. I think that was supposed to hurt. I don’t know why people talk about love like it’s a dagger in your heart. It isn’t. It’s a million paper cuts that live on the bottoms of your bruised feet. Not enough to kill you, just enough to make every step a little unique slice of Hell. 

iv. Is that why you left? The way love meant something more to me than for everyone else? 

v. I don’t think that’s why you left. I think you left because you’re a coward. You’re a coward and you’re afraid and you’ve always been afraid but I love you anyways. Never did like science but I’ve got a million hypotheses, a million variables to test when it comes to me and you. 

vi. It’s not me and you, not anymore. Now it’s me. And you.  

vii. Here’s the thing. Love exists out of time and I think I’m stuck in that fragmented heartbeat before the clock strikes midnight and my life must go on. I’m waiting, I’m waiting, I’ll always be waiting for you to remember that you are bigger than your fear, bigger than the monsters hiding in your proverbial closet. 

viii. My love is bigger than the monsters too. Open up the closet, love. I’ll be there when you do.

Words by  L.A.L.

Photographer: Fernando Paz
Model: Mala Argüelles