I can go days without cleaning an inch in my house, watching it break down with the bleary eyed lack of care that comes from having one foot in the real world and one foot in another not entirely real one. 

To live with me is to live with something akin to Gollum and Mary Poppins, at once attentive to the needs and raising of all the living things within my house and also unequivocally focused on the one precious bit of ink that needs to be poured from me. 

I am not entirely loveable, and I know that. I know that because sometimes I cannot stand myself and only survive by diving into the lives of other people in my head who manage to make their own mistakes and yet still seem wonderful to me in spite of it. 

But… somehow… strangely enough there’s a person who not only loves me, but also seems to understand me on a level I do not quite grasp. 

I don’t even understand myself, let alone expect others to have mastered the strange language I sometimes spew. 

But he does. Sometimes it looks like the gathering of children to play outside so that I can have a moment to breathe and hear not their voices but those of the characters within my head. Sometimes it looks like a sandwich I had wanted but never thought of for more than a few seconds while working appearing at my side inexplicably (and a hot cup of coffee with it to boot). 

Sometimes it looks like the picture above, when he is away from me, walking in a hall in a building across town, minding his own business only to see a thing unrelated to me in every way. 

Except he sees me in it, somehow. 

Take what you need, the poster says. And people have. He grabs onto inspiration, quick as lightning and although the word “You” is on the poster he sends me a picture of his hand grasping at the bit of paper right before taking. 

“I took it for you.” He says. 

He has his own stories to battle. His own poems to write. Inspiration is a thing I covet, we all who create hoard it with teeth bared, or at least I do.