“I used to romanticize having to fight for someone to love you, but as I sit here mourning someone who is still very much alive, I realize, that there’s nothing romantic about having to continuously convince someone to love you.”
I hope you find me between the dog-eared pages of that book you so adore.
I hope you see me between the spaces of the words that dress those pages as beautifully as the day I first met you.
I hope you see me in the foreign eyes you will no doubt look so longingly into; searching for what we once shared not so long ago.
I hope that you taste me in the coffee from your favorite cafe, as the cream spirals into new found galaxies and the sugar you sprinkle becomes like stars in its universe; lost to its infinity.
I hope that you hear my voice in that song you have constantly on repeat, in the morning birds song and in the night traffic as you lay awake in bed. In the rain that pelts against your windows, like angry protestors begging to be let in.
In the howling winds that skirt the shadows of your skin, between the beats of your heart and breaths of your lungs, I hope you hear me.
I hope I’m still on your mind,
Because you’re still on mine.
The boy wore his stories on his skin. A tapestry of every adventure and misadventure, every love and regret, every person he ever met.
Each piece a reminder of a time when that was what he wanted most. Of a time spent chasing memories and stories to tell when he was old. He wore his skin as a testament to the world that making a living, didn't always mean you were living.
Oh Honey. It was, however fleeting, perhaps my fondest memory.
You see, we could be across the room, or right beside each other, and it still wouldn’t matter, our eyes always searched for the other.
Meeting her gaze and for a few seconds, silence. Not the awkward try-to-fill the quiet silence, no. but the one where hearts seemed to speak. The one where souls sighed in the comfort of company and dared to peek.
And in a world where time waits for no man, it stands still and stares, as if jealous of the heartbeat we’d just stolen for ourselves.
Silly boy.
You don’t cage a sparrow,
You let it go.
And pray it returns tomorrow.
“Why are you so broken?” asked the kind lady
The young girl hesitated for a moment before answering, almost as if gathering the courage to speak. “Because I get attached far too easily and fall in love too hard much too fast, and so it hurts a thousand times more when people leave.
And people often do.”
The boy found comfort in ink.
Oddly enough, in the type that went on paper,
And the type that went in skin.
The boy loved ferociously,
With everything he was, is and ever would be.
He loved.
Stripped and bare he gave his heart to the world,
Cracked open his ribs and said, this is me.
And for a long while I had lost my voice. The fire within had fizzled out and was no more than mere cinders. Embers that once roared in this furnace now barely whimpered, snuffed out like a butt at its pitiful end. Emptiness had taken over, leaving behind this echo chamber of self doubt and pity. A chamber that seemed to grow in its destruction, a paradox in itself. Demons from every nook and cranny armed with every devastating thought emerged.
And though try as I might to sate their ravenous screams, my will was weak.
I was weak.
Ready to relinquish what sliver of will I had the audacity to hold unto.
And yet somehow months later I write this. Somehow on a night like this, I found within myself the words to put to paper. What was once lifeless and cold now started to see life. A budding flower that despite the ash and sludge and smog and dread and death, rose.
Perhaps it was then that I had let go of every expectation and hope that someday things would go back to the way it was.
Perhaps finally
I had let
go.
Maybe I should go, maybe I should leave.
Maybe I should turn away from the door I’ve been knocking on for so long, hoping to be let in.
But how relentless should love be? When do you decide to move on? How do you decide to let go? It doesn’t matter how much or how badly you want a person, you can’t make her love you; or let you in.
So all you’re left with doing is loving her, unfettered and unbridled, till you can love her no longer. And so you give and you give, until all that’s left is a painful echo of the abundance that once was. A chasm of happily ever afters, once upon a times and a graveyard of every vision you’ve had for your future together; where each epitaph reads,
“for the moments that turned to memories.”
Perhaps then…
Perhaps then is when you should leave.
When there’s nothing left of you to give.
She was that book you really enjoyed but struggled between savoring word for word and devouring in an entire day. Between voraciously reading her stories, learning all her secrets and tracing your finger across her spine, relishing every page as you opened her up.
But the absence of her was like the spaces between the words before the end of your story.
Necessary.
He traced fingertips across the ridges of her scars, like reading braille to a wild ones story. It told tales of epic wars with demons only she could see; entwined in battle so legendary, mere mortals believed it to be myth.
You see, she fought demons and self-doubt and rumors and herself.
Every single day.
Familiar souls have also drawn their fair share of blood, both knowingly and unknowingly; some she forgave but could never forget.
And yet despite all that still she rises.
Now isn’t that lovely?
You wouldn’t know it if you saw her, steel rimmed glasses sat quietly atop the bridge of her button nose, uneven only when it krinkled just before a sneeze. She had this burgundy smile that housed the prettiest of bones, and I swear life was better every time she shared them with the world. Auburn hair ran down her back, wild and untamed. She smelled like whiskey, smoke and adventure only a select few could experience.
On your darkest of days,
remember.
Remember that it took the collapse of stars and the death of planets for you to be exactly
where
you
are.
What are we without love, but withering shells of almost forevers and happily ever afters.
Tangled limbs amongst crumpled sheets,
Our lips waged a war that left little to no sleep.
Ashes to ashes, bones to bones,
Skin pulled so close we’ve never felt so alone.
She wore her chaos like Gucci and tasted like infinity, so much so galaxies adorned her while she bathed under a waning moon.
Her freckles scattered across her face, like a star spangled sky on a cloudless night.
A pair of ocean eyes that pulled you into every sunrise and sunset, every nightfall spent under warm covers in your bed.
Jet black hair that housed the wildest of dreams and her every nightmare held deep within, ones you promised you’d cradle to sleep.
She was forever, all rolled into one.
She was stained glass,
Fractured beauty,
More perfect in her broken
Then anything whole.
Art that saw angels walk amongst the pews,
In a world full of demons;
Blinding kindness
In dark unforgiveness.
She is innocence personified,
Courage exemplified.
And though she cried for a little,
She was the reason
Why storms were named after people.
So often I rummaged through my heart,
Trying to find the words.
But try as I might,
The paper remained empty;
And perhaps I couldn’t have described it any better than that.
Maybe love was meant to be selfish.
Because there is no worse feeling than seeing someone you once loved be absolutely fine without you.
Fall not for the skin that drapes those lovely bones,
But for the heart that lays pounding against her chest, begging to be let out.
For the dreams and wishes she cradles behind her hazel eyes.
Fall for her strength, and the scars that adorn her.
I pray I have the privilege of experiencing with you the indescribable,
In the most inexplicable of ways.
Perhaps our purpose as humans is to burn.
To burn with passion for the things that greatly move our heart.
To burn with love or the once strangers we now call friends or if we’re lucky, lovers.
To burn with rage at the infinite nothingness for having placed us on a floating blue rock, to squeeze the most out of life, only to rip it all away.
To burn to cinders and smoldering ash for a life well lived, full of scars and stories..
Oh what a crime it would be to arrive safely at deaths door with yet so much unburned fire within us.
Fascinating isn’t it? How when we’re filled with joy we bare our bones for the world to see.
