I don’t ever know how to say what I need.

But I do need some things. I’m not perfect and I don’t have it all together.

Can we just sit here, right in the middle of this mess and decide that it’s okay not to have the answers? Can we just keep asking for re-fills and remind this coffee shop why it’s important that they’re open twenty-four hours?

But, I need more than coffee, a sugar-free peppermint patty, a blanket. I need words, people, places, stories. I need you to keep talking. I need you to say those things you keep trying to shove out of your head.

I need you to keep talking.

Because I think I need to listen.

I need to know that I’m not the only person who feels lost. That as summer ends, I’m not the only one wondering how another season has passed and how life still seems so stuck.

I don’t need you to tell me a Bible story or write a verse on a napkin for me. I need you to just sit here…and agree that life is hard and that puppies are cute and change is scary, but that things staying the same is even more terrifying. 

I need you.

in the simplest way that I know how to say, I need your questions and your frustrations and the way you stare at the pavement when you think about where your life is headed.

I need you to just laugh when I say something absurd or to nod when I point out a problem that even Solomon himself did not have the wisdom to know a solution for.

I don’t need you to carry the weight of humanity or to say all the things you assume that I expect.

Because I don’t expect anything from you except for you. 

When you don’t have an answer; I still need you. And when you do have one; I need that. I need what you have to offer.

You’re needed. For no other reason than simply because I need you.

and I wish I didn’t always forget how to say it. I wish that words didn’t get tangled and that time didn’t matter. I wish that pride wasn’t the fault that has always anchored these otherwise feeble limbs.

But I do. And It Does. And It Is.

And that leaves me here and you there and just a lot of needing in between. There’s an empty space where words should be and time should stop.

Because you are you and I am me. And for whatever reason the latter needs the former and the former sometimes just can’t imagine how to be needed or to need.

But you are.