Illustration by Van Gogh (Starry Night Over The Rhone)

Wishes
by Juppy Arroyo

Sometimes I’m the happiest man alive and sometimes I’m just happy, and sometimes, when I’m not, I feel like I’m not enough – like I’m not good enough or I’m not strong enough or I’m not confident enough or I’m just not enough. And sometimes, when that happens, I start to make wishes. I start to wish that I wasn’t me and sometimes I wish I was something else, just so you can look at me and say “Hey, that guy’s something else.”

Sometimes, I wish I was the essay at the end of your final exams that you were instructed to write subjectively. Because I want you to know that when it comes to you and me, there are no wrong answers. Your words will always be welcome and your happiness will always be right, even when you’re wrong, you’re right. I want you to know that you can tell me anything, that you can tell me everything, without being scared that I’ll tell you everything you don’t deserve to hear. You see, I will always be on your side, and sometimes I wish that you would walk up to me and tell me that the sky is yellow and the trees are blue just so I can look at your face, wonder how on Earth something so perfect could live in the middle of all the imperfect, and ask you “What shade of yellow?” and “What shade of blue?”

And sometimes, I wish I was your jewelry. I want you to look at me the same you way you look at a 5 carat diamond ring, I want to be wrapped tight around your fingers like a golden promise with the first day of our lives engraved in our smiles, I want you to wear me proud around your neck like I was beautiful, like nothing would go better with your dress and your shoes and your eyes than me. I want you to be scared of losing me.

Sometimes I wish I was the lullaby that would sing you to sleep, and keep you away from violence and awkward silence, sometimes I wish I was that first tear drop that fell from your eyes when you cried so I could fall and bounce, take with me every ounce of your sadness, and make a splash that would echo my I-love-you’s for days, sometimes I wish I was a pair of wings so I can grab on to you and let you fly, sometimes I wish I had coins in my pockets so I could take you to the places you want to go, sometimes… sometimes I wish I could make you breakfast.

And sometimes, I wish I was the sun. I want to be the reason you wake up in the morning when you feel my warmth on your skin and hints of me through your closed eyes, I want you to look for me on the days I hide behind rainclouds, and I want you to miss me on the nights when I go to bed too early and you want me to stay just a little while longer, I want to look at you through the lenses of a heart-shaped magnifying glass and start a fire inside of your chest and make you hot for me. I want you to see me like the sun. I wish I could light up your day and give life to your flowers the way the sun always seems to.

I swear, sometimes I get so jealous of how it gets to kiss you whenever you step out into its light.

Wishes

Photograph by Giuseppe Talierma

Bad Habits
by Juppy Arroyo

Hi, I’m Juppy. And if I’m going to be honest, I should tell you that I’m not really a good guy.

In fact, if I'm going to be honest, I should tell you that my life is broken string of bad habits and misplaced trust and my fixation on self destruction, I mean... I drink, and I smoke, and I make promises about drinking and smoking that I don’t really keep like “I’m gonna quit.” Or “This is my last one forever.”

But if I’m going to be honest, I should tell you that when I met you I decided that I would stop trying to destroy myself because I finally found someone to live for, and you make me feel like the only thing I want to drink is the rose in your cheeks.

I want to take shot glasses full of your dreams until I become the reason you wake up in the morning, smiling.

I want to suck in the sadness in your frowns and take a drag of your laughter.

I want to light up your smile.

I want to get high when I hear your footsteps walking toward me and feel like I’m going to die when I hear you walking away. I want to need you.

I want to get drunk on the sound of your voice every night and wake up with a hungover heart every morning and each time I do I want to tell the world that last night was the best night of my life because I know it was, because it always is with you. I want to tell my friends about how wasted I was that every minute I couldn’t taste it, your name on my lips, was a wasted sixty seconds, about how I bought you flowers and you gave me the hours we spent talking about love and life, how it’s all about giving instead of taking and making who you love happy, about how you should jump even when you’re scared but I couldn’t bear to take that leap of love without you.

I want to wake and remember that I drunk dialed God a hundred eleven times and left him voice messages asking him for a favor. I was like, God, I found an angel and she’s even more lost than me and all I want is to help her find her place among the stars, so give me rainbows or lightning bolts and I will climb up either one with her on my back just so I could help her shine, but at the end of every slurred sentence and every drunk please, I asked him 111 times, if I could keep you. 111 times, I asked him, if he could let you be with me.

I want you to be with me.

You see, I think you’re my angel.

You make me want to wipe my soul clean and start over and get rid of all the habits and all the history that’s stuck to my skin – you make me want to be clean.

I’m sick of falling in love asleep on bathroom floors coughing up the ghosts of everything I used to be. I want to go home, but first I need to find home.

And with you here, I feel like I have.

I swear, one day I’m going to walk up to you and I’m gonna say “Hi.”

I’m Juppy. I don’t drink. And I don’t smoke, even though I do keep this lighter in my pocket just to remind me that every now and then I’m gonna need to start a fire the way you lit a fire in me,

And if I'm going to be honest, then I should tell you that I am in love with you.

I am so deeply, so madly in love with you.

Juppy Arroyo

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