Your life is not an episode of Skins. Things will never look quite as good as they do in a faded, sun-drenched Polaroid; your days are not an editorial from Lula. Your life is not a Sofia Coppola movie, or a Chuck Palahniuk novel, or a Charles Bukowski poem. Grace Coddington isn’t your creative director. Bon Iver and Joy Division don’t play softly in the background at appropriate moments. Your hysterical teenage diary isn’t a work of art. Your room probably isn’t Selby material. Your life isn’t a Tumblr screencap. Every word that comes out of your mouth will not be beautiful and poignant, infinitely quotable. Your pain will not be pretty. Crying till you vomit is always shit. You cannot romanticize hurt. Or sadness. Or loneliness. You will have homework, and hangovers and bad hair days. The train being late won’t lead to any fateful encounters, it will make you late. Sometimes your work will suck. Sometimes you will suck. Far too often, everything will suck - and not in a Wes Anderson kind of way. And there is no divine consolation - only the knowledge that we will hopefully experience the full spectrum - and that sometimes, just sometimes, life will feel like a Coppola film.

Don’t fall in love with a curious one.
They will want to know who you are, where you come from, what your family was like.
They will look through your photographs and read all of your poems. They will come over for dinner and speak to your mother about how their curiosity has taught them things of use to her. They will ask you to rant when you’re angry and cry when you’re hurt.
They will ask what that raised eyebrow meant. They will want to know your favorite food, your favorite color, your favorite person. They will ask why.
They will buy that camera you liked, pay attention to that band you love in case there’s a show near by, they will get you the sweater you smiled at once. They’ll learn to cook your favorite meals.
The curious people don’t settle for your shell, they want the insides.
They want what makes you heavy, what makes you uneasy, what makes you scream
for joy, and anger, and heartbreak.
Their skin will turn into pages
that you learn to pour out your entire being in.
Don’t fall in love with the curious one.
They won’t let a sigh go unexplained.
They will want to know what they did
Exactly what they did to make you love them.
Year, month, week, day.
“What time was it? What did I say? What did I do?
How did you feel?”
Don’t fall in love with a curious one because I’ve been there.
They will unbutton your shirt
and read every scar
every mark
every curve.
They will dissect your every limb, every organ, every thought, every being
then walk back home and eat their dinner and never return your calls.
You will never be their lifelong expedition. The heart is a mystery only for so long.
There is no ache like loving a curious one
who chases every falling star and never catching one.
Who comes and sees and conquers
and leaves.

I’ve fallen in love with a curious one.
Maybe one day he will take the train back home
and be curious enough to read one last message from me
carved on a seat.

“There’s a curiosity in you that will move mountains some day
as effortlessly as you’ve moved me for years.