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.

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.

Squabling

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

The False Finish

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

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?

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.

Dashed

What if I leave and it turns out to be just another city?

Someday

For fear of my pulse fading, I sit hunched over a tiny notebook, dipping into it with a black pen, skimming the thoughts in my mind. One day they'll be pieced together into a story. One day.

Someday, when they're finished.

Smiles

When your time is cut short, you learn to appreciate every second you have. And so it is with you. We only have moments, if that, to laugh, to talk, to smile, to inquire about the wellbeing of the other. Somehow in those few moments you've collapsed into a niche in my heart and planted a flag in the ground, proclaiming it as your own. When we miss our time, I miss you. When I don't see you, I miss you, like the you in your niche is tapping your fingers impatiently against your knee, wondering what's taking us so long.

And sometimes I think it doesn't mean anything. But then I'm leaving, hands full, and you're walking past. You catch my eye and smirk, and every part of me wants to drop everything I'm holding and wave. But I can't. So settle for trying to give you a smile back, though it turns out to only be half the one I'm giving you in my heart. But I hope you know anyway.

Breathing, Sleeping, Dreaming

You're sitting on my chest and stealing my breath away. I want it back; it's tiring going through life panting with every step. But I cannot wrest it away from you. You stole it from me, but I let you have it. I could not have stopped you if I tried. And that's the truth.

You're crashing through my dreams. I want them to be strange and crazy, and to help them assuage the loneliness. But you're there and I'm weak. You've cut me off at the knees and I don't want you to leave me alone. You're out there, swimming on the backs of turtles and screaming out from a stage, and I'm always here watching, listening, reaching for you. And when the morning breaks, I find myself alone in a too small bed, cold and with an aching hole in my chest. But that's what my life is now.

You're sitting on my chest and I want you to grab me by the hand and show me how your lips work against mine.

Big, Small

I am small and feeble and you are big. But you too are small, so you puff out your chest, raise your voice, and make enough noise for a whole army. It's in these moments that I realise that I am bigger than you.