Thursday, June 20, 2013

Some Times and Some Days

Sometimes I'm lost, crawling through a heavy fog that dampens my senses and steals my sense of direction. Sometimes I run and wake up in the morning with bruises. Splotches of purple and blue and red, splattered across my skin, and I'm reminded of the time I spent with you. Before you went away.

Sometimes I scream. I turn the music up too loudly, letting it thrash the walls and burn my ears and cascade around me in broken fragments of melody. The neighbours don't hear anything but the beating drums and the guitar riffs that scratch the calm from the air. Eventually I lie down on the mattress on the floor, the place you wanted it to be, and try forget that my head throbs with words that remind me of you.

Someday it'll be gone, those last slivers of you. Someday I'll not lie in the dark and remember all the times you smiled at me, or the way it felt when your arms enclosed me. Someday I'll forget.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Intangible Losses

We all lose things along the way. Sometimes they're small things,  like toothbrushes and pens and socks that disappear without a trace. Sometimes they're larger, like car keys or credit cards. But the worst things to lose are the immaterial, the things that were almost palpable, but hovered just out of the reach of your fingers. Sometimes it's deliberate.

We shed, you see, the way snakes and cicadas shed their skin, leaving imprints of ourselves behind, even as we venture on, altered. Humans are volatile things, and sometimes will try rid themselves of things that aren't ready to be gone; those people are left with gashes through their flesh and thoughts that run around in circles.

But sometimes people will lose things they weren't aware they had, those intangible things that sit in the back of the mind, ghostly companions to the conscience. And those people have lost the most grave thing of all: themselves. But not all who are lost need to be rescued. Some just need time to reorient themselves.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Tabula Rasa

It used to be there, hovering in the periphery of your mind, a blank shape in a squalid landscape. You used to trip and stumble and find glittering things in the grass and hold them up to the light to catch the colours. Now everything is being erased. Because that thing that used to hover is growing, rolling over the desolation and swallowing every blade of grass and every glint of silver and every hint of sky. It's washing away everything. You're turning into a blank slate.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Same Coin

Mistaken and Hoping are the two friends you wish you never made; one is a certainty you would rather not face, and one is the impossibility, waiting to happen.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Organic

An organic mess curled up in the dark, weeping tears of tar. Because nothing produces darkness like a fragile, broken soul. Held together by tape and weak glue, your soul's leaking out the edges and pooling around you on the frozen cement. You don't know what day it is anymore.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Weekend Midnights

If I could sit outside in the freezing cold every weekend midnight, I would. And we could talk about books, literature, travel, the corners of coffee shops and the niches of ruins, the gibbons in the trees and the rivers you can kayak up in the Pacific.

But whatever you do, don't mistake it for something it's not.

Because while I'm sitting there, shivering in the cold and laughing and talking and theorising, I'm waiting for the morning, when I'll see her.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Pretty Misery

She's the kind of girl you fall in love with, over and over again, until your heart is so full of it that your chest constricts and pain shoots through your lungs. And it's the kind of love that will slowly kill you, because you're a statue to her, a furnishing, not a person to be considered as a lover. Because you're you, steadfast and protective, and she's flighty, a butterfly that flits from beautiful thing to beautiful thing, and sometimes even to the bad things, so that sometimes she finds herself crawling back to you with broken wings. And you always heal them. Because you're in love with her and that's what you do; you heal her and you hope that she'll thank you in kisses one day instead of smiles.

And you hope that the restless soul in her finds what it's looking for, because she's down in her pretty misery and you can't lift her out of it, though you try and try and try, tugging at the ropes that she reluctantly allows to bind her to reality. But really, she's gone. Some days she doesn't come back. You worry that one day will be the last day you ever see of her. And you know this should carry you backwards, away, but it doesn't; you're drawn ever forward. Because you too are drowning in your pretty misery.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Straight On

You're just a mess that needs cleaning, a shriveled heart that needs watering. A ticking brain that needs winding. And an empty soul that needs illuminating.

But you walk down a road with weeds growing through the tarmac, and no one seems to get through. So you're alone in the middle of the highway, and you're not sure if the way you're going will lead you straight to hell, or to another dimension, but you know it's too late to veer off it now.

Friday, May 31, 2013

Capture the Flag

Oh, you clever girl. In the game of subtlety, you're winning.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Roads That Lead

I'm  sorry if you ever felt that I left you on the side of the road, howling at the tail lights of my car as they made white streaks into the distance. But the truth is that it would have been you leaving me sooner or later. And then what would I have done? It is the manner of my existence that I cannot bear the thought of being left alone by you.

In a list of things that would kill me, that would grace the top spot. So excuse me if I seem distant when we talk, because I'm really dreaming about a world where you and I coexist as entities free of the fates of one another. But I'm also dreaming of a world where I wake up next to you and not have to wonder if we'll share the same bed again.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm just a deer caught in your headlights. And you're hurtling right at me.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

The Only Things We Remember

The months went by and I didn't spare a thought for you. I've no doubt you did the same. But walking through a familiar place, seeing a familiar face, is as unexpected as awaking in Wonderland. The brain didn't register that you would still be around, that people didn't cease existing once they'd left a room.

So you caught my eye for half a second, while I pretended to be engaged in conversation with someone else. And now I wonder if I should have said hello. Now I wonder whether you really wanted me to. Your face was saying something, but I'm terrible at reading the map of someone's soul. And then the moment passed.

There are questions running through my mind, tripping over one another; like, 'can we transgress who we are?', and 'what was that look in your eye?'. But the biggest question I ask is 'am I seeing light where there is only shadow, because I don't want to admit that I'm afraid of the dark?'.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Poetics

Everything I wanted to say is tricking away, diffusing, like fragile light. The tongue cannot push out the correct words into the loaded air, for it won't take anymore sounds, too full have we made it in the afterglow.

Instead I'll take a camera and have it focus on the sheets tangled around your legs, and then the way the light pierces through the curtains to trail over your hips, highlighting the ridges of your ribs. I'll take a photo of your ear, for all the things it has heard, and your eyes, for all of me that you have seen, and your lips, for all the places they found that I did not know existed.

Or maybe I'll leave the clicking shutters and whirring of film canisters for another time and simply lie by your side, my fingers entangled in your hair.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Ghostly

It's been months and months and months and I've spent all this time with words dripping through my mind, but drying up at the tip of my pen. I crept through the corridors of my thoughts, trying to find from whence they came, as though I could trap them at the source and have them gleam back up at me from the paper's surface.

I found naught but dead ends.

And then I came to the realisation that they are an embodiment of all this time that I have spent chasing you through my dreams. I cannot hold them, because like you, they are insubstantial.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Time It Goes A-Changin'

Oh, I used to think myself so clever. Nowadays I don't think half so highly of myself. But perhaps that makes me a little more wiser.

Half Real

The words in my fingers and on my tongue disappeared, caught off guard by the sight of you. Now everything's on fire and burning, my ambitions of words and worlds and half real people crumbling to grey ash. Now there's only you, the only half real person. Everything I dreamed. Everything I despise. Everything I want.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Mind Tricks

It's all over from where I stand, isn't it?

But it won't ever be. It's an ongoing battle between want and need, and cold rationality. It comes knocking and my mind during my waking dreams, barging through the closed door and painting my world over with white. Erasing you.

Somehow my subconscious tricks it away though, like a will o' the wisp taunting and teasing and flirting across dangerous moors, until it's far enough away that you return, draping yourself over the neurons of my brain and filling my synapses with nothing but thoughts of you - your smile, your hair, your light dusting of freckles, the dress you wear and the coffee you drink and the books you run your fingers over but never buy. Inescapable.

I could lose myself in losing you.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Characters

You're really just a character in my head, playing the part I assigned to you. But the strangest thing is how discontent with this sits on my heart, and all I want is to know what you're really like. What is this charade? Won't you take off your crown of silence and let it sit on someone else's head for a little while? I'm sure there's much to say if you let yourself be free of silence's curse.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Squabling

Giver, Giver, Taker, tell me, are we on equal footing now?

Sunday, February 17, 2013

To Be With You

Wherever you go, I'm stumbling after you. And though you don't make me quiver and shake, I think it means I'm not afraid of you.

In the dark, my heart is whispering "you've haven't known each other for very long, but it feels like a lifetime. Don't let this go."

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Pickings

One day while we're driving through the clouds, chasing the road through the mountains, I'll turn around and ask you why you came. If you smile and say "because it sounded like a silly adventure," I'll know I'll have picked the right person to share it with me.

Where I Go

"Where do you go," you asked, "when you stare out into space?"

I told you of mystical places where the sky was forever streaked with pink and the water always ran clear. Places where all furniture hung from ceilings, and where all beating hearts were connected as one. Where zebras were spotted and giraffes were striped, and where lions had sets of horns growing through their manes.

I told you of lines that never met and train tracks that never ended; of phosphorescence that made our teeth glow green and our nails look like claws in the dark; of dizzying heights where sky became ocean again, and looming depths that crept upon you when you turned your back. I told you of the contours of a body, caught in morning light, and of faceless crowds scrambling up the outside of skyscrapers; of creatures that looked like desks, and desks that looked like creatures.

I described sorrowful music that played from the mountains in winter, embracing the pines with melody, and the tinkle of waves dancing with mermaids on island shores. I mimicked the circling carrion crows that sounded like cockatoos. I spoke of crumbling graves under curtains of light and I danced the dance of the dead. I told how I mourned the loss of it all as it dissolved into dense blackness before my eyes.

You nodded and walked away.

And it wasn't till later that I realised you were really asking if I was thinking about you.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Of Love

What would I know of love, curled into a ball in the middle of the night, feeling the emptiness of where you're not? What would I know of love, hearing a song over the radio and wishing that I was singing it to you? What would I know of love, biting my lip and sneaking glances in your direction? What would I know of love, hoping that today you might turn around and pull me into your arms?

Nothing, I suppose.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Vagueness of Reality

Neither here nor there, stuck in a vague stasis between sleep and awake, a blurred reality where nothing could possibly be real. There are no chances for moving forward, nor opportunities for looking back, and everything is blank.

I want this cross roads to stop giving me chances and lead me on a straight path, where all the decisions are clear. If you're in front of me, I want to know.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Despite a Quiver

Our skin is fragments of lyrics and musical notes, etched into the pattern of lines and whirls. Some places it glows with the radiance of summer, and others, hidden in the crevices, hold the things we're too wary to speak.

Though your spark shines brighter than the dimness of the crowd, it's not your light that I want to kiss. Where your secrets linger and your lips quiver to speak, I will kiss you. When your body shivers and you're sitting at the end of your bed, I'll kiss you. When you're sticking to the shadows in the brightness of the sun, hoping that winter will never come and shatter the steadfast summer, I'll kiss you. When you're gripped with that nostalgic heartbreak, I will hold you in my arms and kiss you.

When the cold threatens to break the windows, slay the house, capture your sorrowful soul, I will keep you warm. Whatever prince you loved, whomever broke your heart, whichever pieces you're missing, I will love you.

Winter Never Comes, Paper Aeroplanes

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Knowing

It's your smile, the one you got when you walked in and saw me; the sneaky half one, as if you knew that I'd been waiting to see you. What could I do but smile back?

It's your stopping by just to say hello; you might have been leaving, and I might have been hoping for it, and you stopped as if you knew. What could I do but let my hands shake?

It's your knowing that I would do the same; I might not have needed to stop, but I did, and you laughed at my lame joke as if you knew that I was hoping you would. What could I do but be self depreciating?

What could I do but come back again, though I knew it would look suspicious, just because I knew it was the last chance I would get for a while. What can I do but feel that this isn't going to go anywhere?

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Flickering Walls

I used to say that I don't break my promises. But looking back on all the times that have passed, it turns out that I do. They're not the promises I made to you, or to her, or to him - they're the promises I made to myself that are the hardest to keep.

They're rife with pins and needles, pinching and pushing and hurting every which way I turn, reminding me of the work I'm supposed to be putting in. I'm not though. I'm collapsed in four walls of flickering screens that like to play back the blankness of my mind, the white noise of my thoughts, the dreams of you, the dreams of her, and stifle me with a lack of air. But every time my fingers reach out to touch them, or grab a pen to capture strands and weave them into words on a page, they cut to blackness, stopping my air supply, choking me infinitely.

That's why I can't sit in here and write. I can't be in this building, home in other ways, but never this one. When it comes to the life I want, to the things I want to say, to the words that I'm going to see bound in thin cardboard and packaged off to shelves, I have to find them outside somewhere. Anywhere but here. Don't be fooled by the flickering walls; they're as solid as they are tormenting.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Fear

I don't know where it comes from, this low level buzz of anxiety that courses through my chest and makes my stomach lurch. Do other people feel this way? It's like waiting for some kind of doom, and it's incapacitating.

Don't You?

How do you know? How does anyone know? Is there something that can tell you whether it's really true, or whether it's a figment of your imagination?

You like me, don't you? If I were to try guess, I would say yes, but then, I've been wrong before. But never has this happened before, when someone wants to talk to me as much as you do. You continue a conversation when it ought to have finished, and I go on, afraid to let it fizzle out, because it's nice, it's entertaining, and it means I get to snatch a few extra moments with you.

You like me, don't you? That's what this is about? Or is this another straying path from cobblestones to weeds?

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Stupid Resolutions

Every time I resolve to give you up, you're back, there where my eyes can't help but dart to you. I wish I could stop it in those moments, to prove that I can rid myself of my addiction to you.

But the truth is that I don't want to stop. There's something about hanging on to something so unattainable that's appealing, like standing at the edge of a cliff and holding your arms out to fly, knowing that if you really jump, you'll only tumble to the bottom, a heap of broken bones and blood flesh. But all the same, it's nice to feel the wind tug away at you, tempting you forward, even though you're at a stalemate; underneath the temptation is a tough resolution to never let it take you.

So you'll never take me. But I'm going to continue standing on the edge with my arms out, just so I can feel the heartbreaking loneliness and longing that reminds me that you're still there, and that I'm still here. It's breaking to know that you can heal.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

How to Disappoint a Lover

It's the high level of anticipation, the waiting all the time, even in the busiest of moments, of seeing you again soon. Every moment is an agony, a twisted myriad of fantasies, equally as dark as they are happy. It's a smile in the darkness of a bedroom at night. It's a pinnacle of light during a series of unrelenting boring days. It comes.

It arrives. And you're not there. It's a hole in the place where there used to be a heart. 

Acts of Bravery


It's supposed to be an act of bravery, a way of leaping into the unknown, tethered only by your own faith that you will make it. That's what letting go is.

Most times you have to edge up to it, test the waters before you decide not to drown. But sometimes, on rare occasions, everything in your body will tell you that the time is right, and you have no choice but to suck in that last deep breath of air, and let your body relax into the momentum of your jump. While you hang there, suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, you know that nothing could go right. You also know that nothing could go wrong. You've no choice but to let it happen.

An act of bravery is living.

Friday, January 4, 2013

The False Finish

Beginnings, beginnings, beginnings. Why is it that sometimes they feel a lot like endings?

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Smudging

I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I'm lost. It's confusing, this thing we have going on, like it could perhaps be more. But I don't know if that's wishful thinking or whether it's a vibe I'm getting from you. But I know you don't have to start conversations, and yet you do it anyway. You must like talking to me, at least.

Every time, I feel like I leave a little bit of me behind, something for you to chew and savour before you digest it. Each time I hope it means you'll want some more. It appears to be working because you're the one who initiates more of a conversation than we might otherwise have. And it wouldn't be so noticeable if it weren't for your terrible conjunctions from one idea to the next, like you want to keep me there with anything that comes to mind next. Or maybe you do actually care about things you ask me to tell you. Somehow you're rubbing your thumb around my edges, softening me where I was all hard, razor lines. I'm coming off on your fingers, and you're taking part of me with you.

Undecided

Something put a gun to my imagination, pulled the trigger and blew out the fantasies growing there. Now I can't even dream. Can't even relive the old ones.

Who can tell if this is a gift or a terrible punishment?

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Hall of Fame

Sometimes it's the ordinary days that can be the most enjoyable, especially when they're pegged to be extraordinary. Take your pictures and put them all over the walls, leave them hanging in the hallway of your mind to remind you of the times that could have been lost. Create something worth keeping. Do something worth remembering at a time when someone expects you to do something else. Plan something last minute. Mark your hall of fame with ordinary moments that feel extraordinary.