Funny Things

It's funny that what you think you feel can be turned on its head so quickly - almost as quickly as you walked in and right back out, leaving a shaky me in your wake.

It's funny how determination fades and you can't remember your original reason for resistance.

It's funny how all of a sudden, you do.

It's not funny when the guilt bridges the gaps between your feelings, reminding you of the obligations you made yourself. Somehow there was a commitment without a commitment.

But the feelings haven't gone. But new ones have arisen.

It's funny how the heart can make space for two, but the mind forces us to believe that there's only space for one. Or maybe it's not the mind at all.

Fuel and Fire

Just a little drop of disappointment, dripping down from my brain, and collecting in between my shoulder blades. It pools, oily black, unshakeable - the gasoline from which hope burns. But all fuel must finish. One day I won't have any hope left to light the way.

Immutability

I am who I am now, who is not who I was then. And who I will be is shrouded in mystery, a blurry figure with an indescribable appearance, and who I will have been is just as big a puzzle. I am who I was, but I am not who I was.

Blank Maps

You, me, a hand, a touch, a pull into some unknown direction. We'll walk through the mist, tethered to each other, and if we have nothing else, at least we'll have each other, fingers entwined, moving through uncharted territory.

But let us be honest; nothing between us could possibly be familiar. Each step we take will be new. We can't choose a direction, because right now, all we have to stare at are blank maps.

tú eres mía

It's gnawing at my lungs again, and sitting on my chest, this little black gargoyle which likes to stare me dolefully in the eye as it drains me of my will. It flashes me a sharp tooth grin before resuming its feast on my happiness.

I know I should shake it off, maybe stake it through the heart, but it's always a temporary death. Always it comes crawling back to my torso and settling with its claws dug into me. I look down but see no wounds on my flesh; isn't that the worst, knowing that something's slowly killing you, but never able to show others the signs?

So I look down again, see its greedy hunger, feel the ravenous tongue and possessive claws. The glint in its eye says "tú eres mía", and I'm struck my how that proclamation rings like a death knell.

Life on the Road

Ah, to have tyres chew the road and spit it out behind us. To chase a horizon that never comes any closer. To stop anywhere, which is nowhere, and down a bottle of water, basking in the silence of no other cars traversing a stretch of highway.

Sure, to sleep in bed bug ridden motels where the chill creeps up your back in the middle of the night. To have to learn to urinate in the tall grass otherwise untouched by humans. To eat cheap food which enters a war with your heart. To not shower for a week until the next motel stop.

That's the reality, yet it doesn't clash badly enough with the fantasy to make it undesirable. Because in the end, when it's us and the road and the never approachable horizon, it's laughter and a heart freed from its strings. It's buoyancy and random turns on the road to towns barely on the map. It's unfamiliar wilderness and untouched beaches. It's sunburn and fatigue and loneliness. But it's life.

Stolen Portraits

Fumble and stagger through the wretched landscape which is my heart; I'm sorry that it's so deformed. Shriek and cover your eyes and I'm apologising for all the horrible things you see there. Shudder, writhe, hug yourself tight; if I had a choice, I wouldn't show you the dark secrets and twisted truths which lurk in the dusty places where no one has ever set foot. What did you expect when you picked a trip into my dreams? There are no barriers where you've gone.

I'll take the camera out and point it in your direction while you're looking the other way. There's no way you'll make it back into reality unscarred, so I should steal a picture of you while I can. And it's selfish of me, but I like it when you venture into my nightmares, because I feel less alone, and at any moment, the door knob might turn and we might walk into Wonderland. If you leave even the gentlest brush of yourself on my battered psyche, my whole life will be better, and I'll cherish the memory forever.

Snap.
Click.
Whir.

I'll photograph away until you're quite faded.

Right Words to the Wrong Person

We laugh and talk and argue until he leans in and softly asks "can I love you?"

The question pierces my heart with a pin and devoids my chest of joy.

"I'm afraid I wouldn't love you back," I reply and the words shift on the breeze, rearranging the expression on his face, until we're tinged with a sad knowledge of the things that can never be.

Spectrum

Who knows, when up is down and left is right, which direction to choose?

When there's only a spectrum splayed against glass, is there any way of knowing which colour is you?

They say that there are plenty of other fish in the sea, but let me tell you how the world actually works: we each are one of the billions of different colours, each of us our own unique shade, seeking for our perfect complementary partner. And let me tell you, it's not easy; there are some who will pretend, some whom you will think "yes! this is them!" but who only turn out to disappoint you. There are some who look a lot like the one you're looking for, only to become the most wrong person you could find. Indeed, everyone is wrong - let's not lie about that - except that one perfect complementary shade, drifting somewhere, a subtle nuance in the spectrum.

Muse

And even when you're here I'm missing you because you're never close enough. What's fair about this? Me trailing along in your wake while you glide ahead, unperturbed. All I have left is a throbbing space in my chest where my heart used to sit and my pen to scribble useless words. You don't know this, but you have my heart tied to your finger with a string and you drag it along behind you, bruising it with every step. And you don't know this, but my useless words fill pages and pages, dense and black and with my soul staring out from between the lines, hoping that you come across the tattered pages that flew from my hand and were strewn along your path.

You don't know this because I'm too afraid to tell you.

I'm trapped in this cycle again; I sit, I stare, I bleed. I groan, and glance, and hope. I write these entries, doused in melancholia, ready to go up in flames at the slightest spark and thrown to the wind. I run out of words, though the feeling continues on, until I feel like bashing my head against the wall.

And the worst part isn't that you don't know you do this. The worst part is I don't know how you feel. If I could tread another person's thoughts, just for a day, an hour, a minute, I'd wind my way through yours; anything to find whether you're slowly being scarred as much as I am. Why is it we must be separated from those we wish most to know the best?

This is like walking a knife edge - one slip and I could end up falling off either side, either with you, or without you, cut and bleeding. But that's the thing about the razor edge of a knife - even as you walk on the narrow path, the blade sinks into your feet until you feel you cannot go on anymore. But I'll continue for a while yet, because eventually I'll either pull even with you and claim back my heart, or fall, half dead, into your arms.

For Me

I'm doing this for me, because I need the confidence to be me. No matter what anyone says, this time I'm not giving up. I'm tired of feeling not good enough and not proud enough of myself.

Tell Me

When do you walk out of my daydreams and into my arms? Tell me that the time is coming soon, that all this impatient waiting was worth something. Tell me that I'm not wasting my time slowly falling in love with you. Tell me you're not going to be a hand's distance away from me forever, completely untouchable. Tell me at some point you reach out too. Tell me "I'm glad you waited. I'm going to be the girl who changes your life".

Work and Work and Work

How do you know what you want to do with your life, when you know your entire life depends on creation? What do you do when there's no such thing as originality? What happens when the world has sucked out all you have left?

Digging deeper and deeper, hollowing out all the areas beneath my translucent skin, finding fragments I didn't know existed, twisted, distorted, bleeding. And others, slivers of hope lodged in the most inconvenient of places, impossible to get out and throw away. Maybe someday this will all amount to something. At the end of the horizon, maybe I'll find the fabled pot of gold that wasn't at the bottom of the rainbow.

Here, There; Me, You

I hope that you do not think that I don't notice you, for there is little else which grabs my attention. If I look the other way, it is not because I don't care about you, but because I fear that you'll see that I care too much. The only thing I can do is veil myself, in fear that knowledge of how I feel will cause you to punch a hole through my gut, pulling viscera from my stomach's cavity and letting free all the butterflies which have taken up residence there since I first saw you. It might sound violent, but isn't that love?

Trust that I would turn and stare you in the eyes if I were more confident about where you stood in relation to me. I want you to be close, though I fear that you are farther than I would like, and this keeps my feelings locked behind the cage of my ribs, beating a steady rhythm in my heart.You're there, I am here, and one of us must surely be in the wrong place. I cannot help but feel that you are building your confidence as you are building mine. Perhaps we'll begin, not with a whimper but with a bang.

Wells

I'm floating in an inexhaustible well of tiredness, and I do not know whether I can ever make it out again. I don't think that I want to. Taking steps hurts, pushing on hurts, waiting and hoping and dreaming all hurt.

It isn't possible, but most of the time I wish I could exist without existing, like sleeping forever - here but not. It's a mental tiredness, an emotional tiredness, and a physical exhaustion which creeps into my bones and freezes them solid.

Today, tomorrow, ten years from now, it will be the same. You can't outgrow a mantle which grows with you.

Skinny Love

My dear, I could try speak to you in my own words, but I find others more eloquent. And so I think I've found our anthem.

Please love, don't let me waste away on this addictive skinny love. Either cut me loose or come and take what I've already given to you.

Gravitational

What are we heading towards? You, me, spinning in separate worlds, designing our own universes, stopped by the limits of ourselves. Stopped by the limits of each other. What would you say if I told you I wanted you at the centre of mine?

You're still a blurry image to me, slowly coming into focus, bit by tiny bit. Every small discovery is a fountain of delight, every encounter as terrifying as the one before, but more enlightening. If I was a photographer, that's how I would take photos of you: focusing on the details of your body, so close it would be impossible to distinguish the rest of you; so close that every body who saw them would think themselves your lover and ache for you, though they know not who you are. I'll make them see you the way I see you. I'll make them want you the way I want you.

And you, oh, it's a struggle with you. How do I quell the addiction that I've formed with you? How does someone break a habit? For now I'm content with this slow gravitational pull towards one another; the problem is that I'm counting on a collision. What if we're two ships who just pass each other in the night, completely unaware of the other? I might not be able to put myself back together after I've crunched against the shore. What am I supposed to do if there's no more you in sight?

You're still standing behind a veil, you're still impossible to see. I have an outline, a general notion, but little else. What's going on behind those beautiful eyes? What thoughts do your neurons relay? What sparks desire, what stokes lust? Better yet, what entices love? Is there an edge that you're standing on, looking over the precipice down below? Do you feel the urge to step over it, into the empty space? And is it me you're hoping to see at the bottom? Are you, too, hoping that gravity will cause us to collide?

Lightning and Thunder

It's lightning and thundering and I am thinking of you. I wish you were here and I could light some candles and read to you in the dim firelight. We'd leave the window a little open to smell the earth dampening from the post summer day rain, sighing in relief as it cools.

It's thundering and lightning and I am here without you, thinking of all the empty spaces you leave.

Yours, Mine, Ours

I would like to do something for you - I would like to make you proud. There's nothing more that I could possibly want than the thing which I could present to you and say "this is yours. I did it for you".

Trinity

A whisper, a tear, a heated accusation.

A yell, a pause, a laugh.

A minute, a silence, a memory.

A scent, a touch, an obligation.

A moment, an action, a history.

Bellows

You every so often fan the flames in my heart, till they flare and sear my lungs. And every time, they die back down, hoping that they'll get the chance to rise again.

Night Dancers

Let's have us a dance at midnight beneath a shimmering sky; you and I will twirl and your dress will billow out behind you. We'll stand at the top of a rich baroque building, monarchs of the sky, watching over those who do not possess what we have. We'll have the company of the statues which line the roof, and the moon, who smiles at us, her children.

You in a black dress, with a blood red flower in your hair, me in a three piece suit and a scarlet tie to match. We'll be a pair, don't you think? Rake your nails along my arms and I'll bruise your lips with mine. Recite murmured poetry in my ears and I'll growl you lascivious suggestions. Let your hand creep across my bare stomach and I'll start nibbling your neck. I'll pull you into me and push you against the balustrade till your dark hair fans over the precipice, staring into the beckoning space below. We'll become vertiginous, but not because of our height above the ground; I promise we'll be riding a different high.

No one will look up and we'll have only the stars to reign over us, winking as they watch our encounter twist and turn and writhe in pleasure. We'll choreograph as we please, changing the steps every time. If we wake up in the morning, purple where fingers grasped, then we know we'll have passed an excellent night.

Would You?

If I pretended I was a drummer, would you drum along beside me? If I pretended I was a wave, would you crest with me? If I pretended I was a flower, would you try to kiss the sun as I do?

Could we create our own beat and crash with our own sound, and touch a warmth that belongs only to us?

If I wanted to be a lover, would you let me be yours? Could I trace a forefinger along the length of your arm, down the centre of your chest, from your larynx to your navel? Would you shiver?

If I wanted a best friend, would you volunteer? Would you laugh at nonsensical statements and jokes that hardly make sense? Could I talk to you at midnight and be sure that you wouldn't mind replying and comforting me in my loneliness?

Would you laugh with me? Cry with me? Make fun of me when I deserve it? Would you talk about books and films and music with me? Would you invite me along when you go places? Would you smile when you thought about me when you were away? Would you miss me?

Would you say yes?

Bodily Illusions

It's not about the moment, it's about what comes after. It's not about the blood, it's about the scar. It's not about the pain, it's about the feeling of healing. It's an illusion.

Skeleton Walking

Sometimes it would be nice to just rip the skin off my bones and walk around, a bare skeleton. Whatever festers inside can slink out, a mass of black tar against concrete. There'll be no more burning skin where a blade has scratched the flesh. There'll be no more fingernails to dig into layers and layers of cells until it reaches bleeding muscle. I'll have a life that I didn't have to dream of walking out of.