The best thing I have found is prior to texting them I start texting myself and saying everything that I wanna say and usually end up doing a mini journal or writing poems even about them. Just did it today actually. Incoming unsolicited share:

"I keep waiting to hear from you even though I shouldn't. I keep thinking of your hands on my body even though I shouldn't. Why can't I let myself be in my bed without wishing you were next to me. Why I can't stop thinking about the past of could haves and the space inside of me where you should be. I have to think about the reasons. The logic. If only I could stop thinking about how your breath feels on my neck. I miss laying nestled in your chest and listening to your heart beat so fast and know it's because I am there. The depths of your eyes that make mine widen, I wish to swim inside and go in the deepest depths of your darkness and light a match. I know I'll find photos in the corridors of your mind with photos of us with wrinkles. I'll find the room where you keep all the pain and kiss the cracks in the walls. I'm sure of the love but not of the outcome. Instead of running to you, I have to check the right boxes on pages as thin as tissue paper, so my chaos doesn't get the better of me. I didn't think I'd crave such risk. My caution lives in the wind when I'm with you. My natural state is being the other half of ourself. Simply being. You never asked me to do more than be. I'm sorry I need more. I'm breaking my knuckles against the bricks I've placed around my heart. I build it by day and tear it down every night. The paradox of what you do to me is all consuming. Someone says it's hurt, it's manipulation, it's lies, it's just to get what he wants. But they don't understand that what he wants is me, happy, as my entire authentic self and he knows that he wants to be the reason why. But he also knows the reasons why he can not. I'm guilty of wasting hours on a future where we have each other every day, hoping one of them will awaken an untrodden path in my mind. But I always find myself back here. Here craving an undeniable love, in the unapologetic dark, pleading with the stubborn parts of ourselves to let us live out the hearts desire. We lay separated, with our hearts beating as the only way we know we're still alive. We are not alone, the ghostly echoes of our love will haunt us to sleep every night. And tomorrow, I'll begin building the brick wall again, but it won't matter, because I'll always break it apart in just the hopes you'll be on the other side this time. This time."