Try.

Sometimes all it takes is everything you have and a spoonful more.

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Self-Sabotage.

I am sorry for the nights I spent by your side.
They ruined me, when they were supposed to make me whole. 

The pieces I gathered broken from the hardwood floor don't feel like they belong to me any longer.
Tarnished surfaces, splintered and worn, and edges that could slice you deep if you aren't watching what you're doing. Cutting and bitter. 

It's a terrible thing, but perhaps necessary, and perhaps more common than a heart would care to nod to. And perhaps, it wasn't you after all, but my own tendency to disappoint myself. A terrible - addicting - game that you are a card in. 

Go back to start - do not collect a thing. 

S. 

{Photo: Lexis-Olivier Flickr}

Breathe deeply -

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry 

{Photo:  Adriano Sodré Flickr}

Winter winds.

Isn't it so that time disturbs most everything?

More than anything, I fear putting myself within your grasp because time has a terrible habit of sweeping me away before anyone else can.

And yet it seems that love unused burns the strongest and the longest.

I think, if you took me back to that night, when you brushed my forehead with your lips with whispered words for only my hearing, forcing things to change, I think, I would have answered you differently. But who can know?

Time keeps ticking forward and this story is buried in the past.

S. 

{Photo: Emma Llensa Flickr}

Breakable.

I am not gentle with the heart - 
I do not want to hold one. 
I do not long, like others, to share mine - 
To find someone to trade with. 

I want, still, to wander free. 
I do not want to claim an aching pulse, or be responsible for steady beatings -
Because who can run with so precious and delicate a thing?
I want only to roam; whole and alone.

Your heart would be too heavy a thing to carry,
When I leave. Again. 
And my own heart, yes. It would be missed, still in your grasp,
When we go our separate ways. (We will). 

You see, a heart is a difficult thing to give and then take back.
It does not move cleanly, from chest to palm to chest. 
It gets damaged in the process. Torn.

And they all say that it's worth it. But it's not.

I am not gentle with your heart.
Because I cannot hold it.
Though, desperately, I wish I could,
Choose it, instead of fear. 

S.

{Photo: Blanca García Flickr}

Constant state of leaving.

I wish I was around long enough to say how I feel.
I wish I could feel.

S.

{Photo: Julia Trotti Flickr}

Grasp.

"I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that are concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it was. I think that's why she always struggled with God. And I think that’s why she struggled with love. She couldn't touch it. She couldn't hold on to it and make sure it never changed."

"Sometimes it's those things you can't touch that you need to hold on to the most."

Carrie Ryan

{Photos: Erik Bockenstette Flickr; via We Heart It}

Broken radio.

You found me wandering, alone, dead of night; seriously considering crashing on a bench on the side of the road. Not for any grand reason, only because no place felt right, so a wrong one would do just fine, thank you.

But it wasn't fine for you, because you came for me. Scooped me up from the pavement with a quick laugh to cover over worried eyes. I was an inconvenience. But still, you didn't seem to mind. 

We drove to the next town. And when that wasn't enough, we drove through two towns more. We drove past the house I didn't want to be in, and you didn't stop. You didn't even ask. Maybe you could tell from the way my body went rigid and my breath held, but you knew that it wasn't yet time. We kept going. Another town, another box-full of half secrets. Letting the car saturate with all the words unsaid. 

And I have more to thank you for than a long nighttime drive. I owe more to you than gas money. 
You know more of me than I'm used to, but I could get used to you. 

S. 

{Photo: Carrie Lynn Flickr}

Subtleties.

I didn't want to kiss you goodbye,
that was the trouble,
I wanted to kiss you goodnight.

Ernest Hemingway

{Photo: Pietro Lodi Flickr}

Cold Coffee.

He leaned in and kissed her ear before leaving. Stirring her awake with his I love you's. 
She couldn't help but think, if he really loved her, he would let her sleep. 

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Spoken//

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been". 

Kurt Vonnegut

{Photo via: Karina Vlasova}

Ruined.

I felt my heart break today. Crushed under the weight of a crippling disappointment - in myself. 
No. But not heartbreak, really. More like the feeling of a heart being suffocated. Slowing down. Fading. 
I don't know how I became this. I don't believe in me anymore. 

(I miss your arms today.) 

S.

{Photo: Flickr Adriano Sodré}

Thunderstorm.

There's something funny about that one night. Not one of those pictures turned out.

Which adds a little magic, no? All those moments, so charged with energy and secrecy, were never recorded. Just a handful of terrible, terrible photographs to remember or forget it by. Only up to me  - and you, perhaps.

Really, I don't know how I even hoped to capture it ; how I expected to hold electricity in my hand like it could last there forever. 

It was all a little like that. A lightning bolt. Deadly, fast, and brilliant. A flash that disappeared before I could trace the shape, or get it down on paper. Glorious and blinding for a blink, then gone. 

Yes. We were a little like that. 

 S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

There it is//

You don't want to hear the story of my life,

and anyway I don't want to tell it,

I want to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -

a few people just trying, one way or another,

to survive.

Mary Oliver

{Photo: Theo Gosselin Photography}

Storytime.

Sometimes when our faces were so close - touching
You only really had one eye.
It was in one of those moments when I swore
that I loved you.
Cyclops charm, I guess it was.

(I guess it was.)

S.

{Photo: Flickr Dan Mountford}

Constellations.

Will you take me to where the stars are brightest,
one more time?
Where they touch down and make their homes
upon your soul? 
Because I tried to memorize how our bodies moved
and how rocks felt against clothes-less feet 

But time carried me away before memories were sealed
So, now, I move in clumsy circles
stubbing bare toes on harshest pavement.

Have all the constellations fallen down,
A giant flood of unclaimed wishes
Followed by pure darkness?
Because I'm trying to explain the lack of freckles in
These barren night expanses, and 
Heaven refuses answers. 

Will you lead me back through blackened roadways
So I can show you to the place
I lost my heart.

S.

{Photos: (c) 2012 Thomas V. Davis}

Wayward noise.

You want to cry aloud for your mistakes.
But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.

by Mary Oliver

{Photo: Flickr 陳雪梨}  

Prompt.

Priorities 

Seven hours ago the clock stopped its rhythmic onward movements and paused awhile to admire the sun hovering over the water banks, the melody of the song birds floating above the forest pines, and the dance of the children on their daily march up the hill.

Not everyone noticed this rest of seconds. Carrying on, instead, as though the universe was not an alarming, and devastatingly lovely place. (A place so worthy of their simple attention.) Their schedules refusing to lend way to magnificence. 

And there it is: the tragedy of humankind. That one could pass by without breaking to applaud the world in its splendor; not reeling as all creation unfurls itself within our grasp. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr T.D. Smith}

3,000 miles

I was a far walk from home, yes. But you left first, I do believe. For every step that made our distance, my thoughts stood near to you, and yours danced away with the changing winds.

I could never tell you all the things I did to kill your memory. Or how each progressive thing only etched you deeper in my brain; a more drastic comparison to make. Much of who I was, I lost, trying to rediscover who you made me. Trying to find that comfort you handed out so easily, and too quickly stole away.

I lied through my teeth to hold close to a new "comfort". But it was an empty bed I made; an empty bed we laid in. And you would still be miles away when I would wake, sharing pillows with regret. 

Though through it all, I would make no thing different. Not your timing, not my naivety, not a moment of the heart-chaos, for the way you held me as you said goodbye. Arms wrapped tight as they used to; enough to ease my soul, enough to break me. 

I could not take a single change at the risk of just that memory. 

S.

{Photo: I Love Wildfox}

Irregular Beating.

Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger 

for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.

Edgar Allan Poe

{Photo: Flickr Lack Of}

Forever ago.

I would tell you what I don't miss about you, if even one thing could come to mind.

S.

{Photo: Lauryn Holmquist Flickr}

Destruction.

There is no escaping the demons gnawing at your mind, twisting realities into an ever dark abyss - or if there is, you choose not that road. You told me once that you would make it through; after a night on the edge of it all, but here you are again, dangling your toes, tempting the winds and rains to knock you down for once and all.

The poison in your mind has spread deep down to your heart and stolen the warmth out of your smile, and I'm not used to such coldness in brown eyes. You're killing yourself off, you know. Still receiving air but refusing life. Taking in the remedy that destroys you. 

I wish I could coax you out from whatever corner of yourself you've locked yourself away in. I wish I could believe that that corner does exist. 

I'm clinging so desperately to another you, of not so long ago. Oh, how I'm willing that person to claim himself again. Bright mind to bright future -- not this. 

Please. Just. I want to believe that you will be okay.

S.

{Photo: Joe Coleman Flickr}

Release the hounds.

Heaven has its dents.
I'll let you know, you aren't perfection,
But you're close,
and that will do, for me.

I'm finding happiness doesn't come as tidy as it leaves;
It rises from the memory
Of the hundred sorry nights
you just had to survive.

And congrats, you're still alive,
but it's gone again.
A hundred more.
A giant mess stretched on the floor.

You can set the wolves upon us now.
They'll run us down, but we can drive.
Do you know how you will die?
You'll be alone, but not tonight.

S. 

{Photo: Search-the-Wolves Flickr}

Dimmer.

I don't claim to have ever known the love of another. I have nothing but the feeling of my chest caving under the weight of two easy stares to measure against that poetic verb. 

I'm getting better at occupying the chasm, though. I fill it with music and words and empty touches, reaching moments of near contentedness. But too easily does it drain at the sight of ebony hair and a sweet smile dancing in a faultless rhythm, while I clap clumsily on the side. 

Mind you, I am thankful in my own way. My nomadic spirit rejoices - singing a melody of freedom - beside my longing soul. Fall in love with other things, it tells me, with languages and places and people you will never meet, with strangers in the check-out line. Fall in love with the mysteries of the world, with knowledge, friendships, and the perfect cinnamon latte before you let the sun outshines the moonbeams. 

And that adventure is something to behold, when it isn't so distracted by a grin in another direction. 

S. 

{Photo: Adriano Sondré Photography}

Before the dawn.

I am done with my graceless heart, so tonight I'm going to cut it out and then restart.

Florence Welch

{Photo: Viola Cangi Flickr}

Fade to dust.

I stayed up until the earliest morning's gold touched down and unfurled itself at the worlds edge. So sure, I had been, that I could stop tomorrow from coming if I could hold steady my grip on today. But it shifted in my grasp. I have only hours until the world wakes up around me and forces me to accept this movement I'm enclosed in.

You never told me why you didn't wait.

I've guessed that the moments I missed carried you away in the end. Often and again, I remind myself that that's okay - with words so simple to repeat and so impossible to feel. But I will try again this new day: it is good this way. 

S. 

{Photo: Alexander Duvall Flickr}

Damage.

If you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones/ Because most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs/ Setting fire to our insides for fun/ Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong. 

And if you're in love, then you are the lucky one/ Because most of us are bitter over someone/ Setting fire to our insides for fun/ To distract our hearts from ever missing them. 

But I'm forever missing him.

by Elena Tonra (Daughter)

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Daydrifter.

All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.

But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.

D.H. Lawrence

{Photo: Alexander Duvall Flickr}

"What If -"

I told myself I wouldn't write about that night. And even when my mind flits over it, taunting me gently with delusions of grandeur -- placing emphasis on insignificance -- I am quick to correct it. To strip away any romanticising of the evening, and force it to remain as it was: Calm, natural, and - for what counts - meaningless.

 That human part of me longs to pick it apart. To piece together something from nothing, as the saying goes.

But if I know me, I know that the story I'd like to create is a little too enchanting; a difficult one to put down. I know this because I've already had to. Many times over. I spin an small parting word into a soliloquy, a comment into a ballad. I forget that the pair of us are strangers, really. And not good ones at that: continually running from the others life. Or was that only me? (No).

When I look back on the past year, I see how our lives were so shaped by our movements. I - we - could never stand stoic long enough to see anything beyond the moment. There was never time to allow things to unfold. That was our mistake. That - and my insufferable need to bar myself from saying, out loud, what I assumed you already knew. 

You asked a question, before I disappeared again - off to bask myself in the forgiving sun of Italy, and give my heart to France's charm. Almost rhetorical. But I knew it wasn't that. 

I answered wrong. 

In part, because I didn't understand your meaning when the words first broke the silence. But, I think more than that, because it didn't matter. It shouldn't have, anyways. But as it consumes me softly, day by day, I see that it must matter more to me than anything I've known before.

I wish I had been brave enough to let you see then what was inside my heart - 

and what was not. 

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Advice.

'Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.'

Truman Capote

{Photo via: We Heart It}

All is quiet here.

I've been moving from one city to the next. And while each change in scenery is welcomed, I cannot help but feel that the weather is following me; pinning me under its spell. A lonesome grip held by the chilled and dampened grey.

I long for the rising of the sun, even just to remind me that it's real. To awake the frozen skin I'm covered in; to reveal the colours of the earth, hidden in plain sight, gone unnoticed without illumination. 

I had hoped that leaving the country would open up the doors to inspiration and revive this deadened piece of me. Instead I still feel underneath it all. Buried deep under some weight I cannot name, apart from even the comfort of words. (My words, that is.) I've found there is no easy stream of language overtaking me. I'm met with silence, growing ever more disturbing to my heart.

The quietness of the land does little to comfort me. What should bring a soft relaxation brings rather a raw desperation. I find I cannot open my mouth to speak here; each sound echoing in this valley. 

And while beauty surrounds me down every bend, it too is burdened by the stillness and the grey. I feel that it longs, as I do, to come alive.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

These dead bones.

I can't find anything that speaks to me these days. Not the sun upon my skin, not the thought of summer fast approaching nor my soon return home. Not even the disappointment of being given up on - being left out in the cold - has sparked any sign of life within. 

Perhaps it's the latter that has hardened me, so I can no longer feel the warning signs of spring the way that I once could. I cannot be moved by the soft and lovely revelations of the Earth. I see them all, and I can recognize how my heart should be melting with the last remains of snow. Still nothing.

All I can think of is the way his heart beat with my head on his chest, and the way it compares to the pounding in my head these days. Life and vivacity now replaced with a droning, empty sound. 

I keep telling myself I need to take the pictures off the wall. I'm leaving soon - I need to pack the memories away. But I can't bring myself to do it. They're the only thing that's bright around this prison cell; holding me to my sanity by not letting the blankness of the room take over.

I guess, if I am afraid of anything, it is that I will be nothing: forever remaining a bare page. I fear that when all the accessories of life are stripped from me, I will be empty handed; becoming only the uniform, off-white walls that lie beneath these photographs. 

It occurs to me that this deep hollowness in me, that even spring cannot seem to shake this year, is only the beginning. And, oh, how that sends shivers up my spine. (And not the kind you gave me.)

S. 

{Photo: Ann He Photography}

Surgery.

When he came to, so I'm told, they asked him what he last remembered.
"She had eyes shaped like almonds."

And they didn't know what to make of it. Of course.
No one ever knew quite what to make of us. 

I don't think we ever had a clue what we were doing
And I don't think either of us knew why we outgrew it when we did.

But one day we didn't fit together, and somehow we both understood there wasn't any going back.
So when I packed my things that evening, you didn't ask. 

And all this time later, I still think that's what I liked the most.
How words were never a necessity for us.
How almond eyes said more to you than what I told you that day.

And either way, you made it.
Even though we failed. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Elif Tanman}

Apathy.

I held on to you for so long. And when I braved the let go, I did something I didn't quite mean: I released myself, as well. 

All my life, I held on to something - anything - that could act as an anchor, tethering my actions to some core component of who I was. Something steadfast, resolute.

Now I'm afraid that piece of myself has disintegrated, evaporated, dissipated, and I'm left clutching onto a weight pulling be further and further downwards.

This is not to say that you were keeping me stable, and now I'm off the rails. It is not to place blame. It is not  even to say that you were ever good for me.  It is only to say that the two events happened more or less simultaneously - one single act of letting go - and now I am this person, not attached to anyone or anything, moving blindly through the world. 

And I should tell you that this detachment I live with - live by - has been paying off. It has allowed those boys, who came and swiftly left, to go mostly unnoticed; it has allowed me to face the ending of a chapter with little grief; it has allowed me to slip into semi-comatose. Functioning, but not feeling. 

It is both freeing and deadening to admit that there is nothing inside of you to care for the ones who walked away; nothing there to hold you back from walking out yourself. 

I wish my heart was still full -- I thought I could believe, forever.
It seems forever came too soon. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Amanda Adam}

Darling, Stop Running.

you can’t make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.

by Warsan Shire

{Photo:  Eleanor Rask}

The Key.

I have found how to be happy with a man: Give him no credit. None. Make deliberate, cold, unceasing assumptions that he has no feelings, that he cares for you in no way, and that he will never do you one good thing. Be content in the fact that he has no heart. No desires that stretch beyond his own body.

You will find happiness, just so long as you never let go of these basic understandings. You can enjoy that stupid way he smiles when you kiss. The freckles that pepper his shoulders. You can fall in love with his inconsistencies - while always being sure of his one consistent nature, to never truly love you back.
Do this. Because when you find, with devastating clarity, that you have been wrong, and that his heart is just as prone to feeling as your own damaged soul, your world will shatter. You will have lost everything saving you from the hell that awaits you when you wake up and realize that he can.
Do this. Because without it, you will see his failures, each shortcoming. You will want more than he will give. You will be continually brought to the very edge of what you can bear - and then brought back too abruptly by some sweeping act of redemption. He will cease to be able to keep you constantly satisfied, it will be a life of ups and downs, weeks of dinner for two followed by months of smashed plates and weepy kisses. His faults will seep through in the morning coffee that he left too long, they will creep their way through the unfixed cracks in the wall paint, they will call your name when the game is going and he wants another beer. 

Do this. Before his humanity stretches your heart in new ways that you wouldn't have thought capable, before he drives you so crazy with the amount he can be everything you've ever wanted and still not enough, before you let him so far up on that pedestal that he only has room to let you down. Do this, so you know he's lying when he whispers those three cliché, stupid, stupid, stupid words in your ear, so softly that it tickles. Do this, do this, do this. Find that easy, safe, and endlessly stale happiness. Or don't. And open up a world that is full and meaningful and frustrating and so so worth it. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Kari Devereaux}

Travel Companion.

We called you in the middle of the night. Lost and wide awake.
We figured you'd know just how to untangle us
from the twisted roads and dead ends.

I was always losing my way -
A specialty of sorts.
But then, you were always there
To guide me or to get lost alongside.
(Though - come to think of it - you probably knew just where we were.)

But anyways. That's over now.
You can't still be rescuing me
From my mistakes and missed turns.
It's time I took responsibility for all the backwards one way streets,
and learned to read a compass.

And maybe once I understand the positions of the sun, 
And how the stars align to form a roadmap in the heavens
Maybe then, I will find my way back to you. 

S.

{Photo: Flickr Tamara Lichtenstein}

This Is My Apology.

I am not the same one who walked away all those months ago.

I know you told me not to change, but who are you to demand that, and who am I to listen?

I've tossed away - and given - the best parts of who I was. Now only this remains. 

Sometimes I whisper my own secrets out into the air. I am nothing, I say, as the emptiness opens up and swallows my words. Yes - and you are alone. 

1am, and he kissed me on the nose and stared at me with those intense blue eyes, illuminated even in the dim lighting.

"What is it?" 

"Nothing. I just like the way you smile." 

It's the soft moments that scare me most. My heart wasn't built for caring, and besides, I can't shake the way your body felt. Yours felt better, and yet, his is real. 

2am arrived and I turned away from him - the darkness clashing with my bare white skin. I couldn't face the way he looked at me. "Stay the night, please". I don't like who I am anymore. 

5am blinked by and the ceiling tiles made faces in the dark. I thought they promised the world would be beautiful, but I don't see it; there is no strength left in these bones to fight for it anymore. 

I'm sorry for the disappointment I've become. I should have listened. 

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Don't Hold Back All Your Love For Someday

You are young. So you know everything. 

You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. 

Without fanfare, without embarrassment, 

without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. 

Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, 

and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me. 

There is life without love. 

It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe.  

It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. 

When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, 

the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the 

sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable 

pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth 

and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls 

plunging and steaming – then row, 

row for your life toward it.

Mary Oliver