the damage done .

i don't take promises from anyone anymore
that is what you did to me.
i do not look expectantly at my phone
when someone tells me they'll call
then decides they won't.
and when people come to me with wides eyes and excited smiles
i turn away.
i do not memorize what it's like
to touch a body with just the tips of my fingers.
i remember what it was to train my mind to forget
what skin feels like, traced over
on mornings
half asleep.
and that is enough
to not hold on to promised words
from promising lips
any longer.

S.

{Photo: Kate Kinley Photography}

a lullaby .

there was a night last december when you sang me to sleep.
a husky half-whisper
your heart drumming out the beat.
i tried to harmonize with you but my head was drowned by a pounding force
iloveyou iloveyou iloveyou iloveyou 
and i couldn't form my mouth to spell those words
couldn't wrap my tongue around such heavy things

your lips brushed at the top of my head and i could feel your pulse
in my throat.
it hurt to breathe but i kept doing it
inhaleexhale inhaleexhale inhaleexhale inhaleexhale
and you hummed out your night song
so soft and easy
as if the whole world wasn't charged by the energy of our two hearts

i knew times like that are transitory
and so, before i fell asleep wrapped up in your voice and arms
i tore away a fragment of myself and left it there,
with you.
some nights i still dream to the sound of your heart
ba-bum ba-bum ba-bum ba-bum

S.

{Photo: Julien Chapsal Photography}

a farewell .

you left me sad
even though i told myself you wouldn't

i've still been fooling myself into believing that
none of this can touch me
but it does

i melted into you
and got used to the taste of my words
coming from your mouth

sometimes i think i wished you up
but i should have wished for longer

for the nights to go forever
and the mornings, stretched into eternity
a pot of coffee, fresh on the windowsill

you have a way of making me
completely terrified and completely comfortable

you're a walking paradox
and no matter how long i look
you still surprise me

we're robots, the two of us
only, i'm afraid you're better

because you left me sad
when i told myself you couldn't.

S. 

{Photo: Mondixneuf Flickr}

no .

you hurt me with twisted meanings and
half-formed confessions

with ripping out words from my mouth and
spitting them back; ugly, gruesome, deformed

you are not kind, or soft, or forgiving or
capable of imagining the intricacies of another human heart

you are rash and unyielding and
i hoped i would never have to meet your eyes again

but you've pushed back in and
made me feel small in the places i once felt strong

you have no right standing in my sunlight and
casting me in shadow

but i find myself weak in your dark and
there's a two letter word i can never seem to force out from behind my teeth
when you come near

S.

{Photo: Peta Clancy Works}

Dear Moon

          We blame you for floods
          for the flush of blood
          for men who are also wolves
          and even though you could pull
          the tide in by its hair
          we tell people that we walked all
          over you
          we blame you for the nights
          for the dark
          for the ghosts
          you cold unimaginable thing
          following us home,
          we use you
          to see each others frail
          naked bodies beneath your blue light,
          we let you watch; you
          swollen against the glass
          breathe a halo of steam
          as we move against one another
          wet and desperate
          like fish under
          a waterlogged sky

by Warsan Shire

{Photo: via We Heart It}

art .

You're trapped somewhere between my longing and forgetting
A half-memory, half-god
An exhausting mix of emotions
That never tire of being felt.

I am a dwarf to the lie of you
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a dirt-road town
While you are Michelangelo's David.
Unforgotten through the eras.

But you don't exist in real time -
In solid proof between my fingers.
Just in half sketched drawings
And conversations recalled in so many different ways they might not have happened at all.

I think, more than having you,
I need to shrink you down into a manageable size.
Because no one ever has to think about
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a town 600 miles away.

S.

{Photo: Clara Román Flickr}

diary of the pathetic .

I crossed land and ocean but it
was never far enough to stop a
reckless soul, aching hands and a
terribly ill-trained heart from pointing north.

You always said you were not the
jealous type, and maybe you're not, but I took a
lover. I took him to numb me and to burn you.

I, who crossed land and ocean to escape
You, who are not the type to be jealous of
Him, who could only guess that his hands were
surrogates
for a tighter grasp and softer touch.

And I could only wonder if maybe you are
the jealous type.

But I haven't heard from you in 113 days,
so I guess
after-all
you're not.

S.

{Photo: Adriano Sodré Flickr}

semantics .

"And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts."

André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

{Photo: P.H. Fitzgerald, 46/60)

dawn .

i lay on the roof beside him
watching the stars fade
as the sun made its ascent
into the morning sky

and i wondered where you were
and how it was that you became so far from me

i wondered whether i'd ever know you again
the way i once did -
when i could read your glances and your quiet
better than anyone else's voice

i wondered if you could still locate
the star you called by my name,
and still find the one
i picked for you

and as i raced down that rooftop
in the ripeness of the early day
i wondered if one day i could climb onto building-tops
or trace out constellations
without, also, wondering after you

[you, who still rules my heavens.
you, who still rules my heart.]

S.

{Photo: Leigh Ellexson Flickr}

mid-wake .

you've been in my dreams for weeks now
   through these listless, too-hot nights

        you come to me in a haze of amber-tones
in crowded streets.
   
   or alone.

            at the edge of the milky way,
   or a parking garage.

it doesn't matter.
it ends the same.

me,
    trying to fight my way back through tangled sheets
           to where you, wordless, stood.

waking with the cruelest sense
                       that something real
        slipped through my grasp
     and something right
is gone again.

S.

{Photo: Guillaume Kayacan}

there was a boy

whose touch felt like heartbeats, deep and fierce  –
strong enough to loosen their bony cage.

whose voice was an open window in a thunderstorm  –
surging through the heaviness of earth wind and fire.

whose body was the stones of Pompeii –
still standing, after everything.

whose stare was a handgun in a purse – 
unassuming and treacherous 
all at once.

there was a boy whose skin felt like the last page of a novel – 
inked with story. inked with finality.
(we get no sequel here). 

S. 

{Photo: Alatoran: 24/31}

timezones .

despite it all (the whole heavy lot of it) i still believe that your hands contain magic and your heart is made of softer things than you pretend.

i sometimes think that our souls were created to fit into each other but something went wrong and somehow we became just a wavelength apart. its as if time got wrinkled slightly, so that you show up too early and i too late and our souls still fit but we are never aligned enough for it to happen.

the nine-hour time difference between your front door and mine has a way of reminding me how distant our lives have become. a gap i'm not sure can be closed simply by boarding a west-bound plane to where we left off, although i'll be sure to let it try.

but nevermind all this. what i wanted to say is that i heard you were doing well, and i really hope its true (i only wish i had heard it from you).

love anyways (always),

S.

{Photo: Kylie Parks Flickr}

on the thing that's missing now .

something

lacked
beneath her skin
the
girl
that
let the lion
in.
she played a game
she couldn't
win.
she had a heart
but
it
caved
in.

by j.s. (insomniiatic)

{Photo: Viola Cangi Flickr}

one, two, infinity .

you have a mole under the corner of your left eye and it was the first thing i loved about you.

you have a scar that runs down your stomach that you got while play-fighting in the woods when you were six, and it was the 5th thing i loved about you (after your lopsided grin, the ruddiness of your cheeks, and the calm of your voice).

you have a patch of freckles on your right calf that look like ursa minor, and I'm not sure what number this was because somewhere after five i stopped counting parts and started seeing a whole. 
and this would have been terrifying had it not happened so slowly and so without me realizing that the pieces were adding up to make someone who would, one day, become a part of me.

if you like, i could write the whole long list of everything you made me love, but i've found the things i didn't fit easier on a page: 
when you stopped smiling with your teeth, 
how your words became smaller and more sharp over time, 
the look on your face when you said goodbye and meant it. 

and i understand the goodbye, i do. it's just, some days i miss that mole under your eye. 

S. 

{Photo: Ian Richardson Flickr}

ps. hello my lovely readers. this month marks 3 years of writing in this space(!), and in all that time the appearance of this blog has remained mostly unchanged; this month i decided change was due. i hope you like the new look! i also just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who reads and comments on my posts, you mean more to me than i know how to express. thank you for your kindness, encouragement, and support; i genuinely love and appreciate every comment and i'm sorry that i'm not better at responding to them. i'm going to try to be more interactive, so if you have any suggestions for the blog, any writing prompt/subject ideas you'd like me to try, or any questions about myself, i'd love to hear them! i also have an email you can contact me directly at: eachinfinitehorizon@gmail.com . thank you all again. 

on things more alive than me:

the mid-morning tea
burning my tongue
when i haven't burned for anything
in years.

the cherry-blossoms
lining my street
fearlessly unfolding
to the world.

the moon
pouring into my window
to reveal something different of herself
each night.

the currents 
coursing through my bedside lamp
when all i know is how to be
static.

S. 

{Photo: Mine}

phantom limb .

i find loss comes the hardest when forgotten 
for a moment, for a time

and then i reach for where you ought to be
with words i ought to say and find you 

nowhere

i can't use fancy words to dress this up
i don't know how
i don't know how


i don't know how

S. 

{Photo: Viola Cangi Flickr}

on the one who made me afraid .

i'm not sure what it was in your life that made you feel that
you had to shout to be heard 
and only violent hands could get your point across

i'm not sure what made you think of manipulation as
the only way to get what you're after
and faux-kindness something you can sell to the highest bidder (for a time)

somewhere in life you mastered the one-sided argument
and learned to twist words till they sound nothing the same as
when they came out

your voice became a siren in my nightmares
and i used to hear it right before i feel asleep, then re-awaken
heart pounding

and even after i got out, making sure i'd never cross your path again
even then i'd peek around corners and speak in hushed tones
and hold my breath when the phone would pierce through the silence

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Margaret Durow}

sounds and meaning .

One day I plan to tell you how I really felt feel about you, without the wordplay and best guesses. One day I plan to spell it all out in a language we can both speak and comprehend.

You will know that day is here when my heart is bleeding onto everything I touch. When my skin is all but screaming to be wrapped up in your arms.When my every bone quakes at the sound of your voice.
(Or am I back to wordplay?)

You will know it is that day because it will sounds like this: I loved love you. 

I love you, dammit. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Anna Blundell}

it's okay .

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes
you cannot even breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
you have cried yourself to sleep enough times
that you are down to your last two percent, but

         nothing is infinite,
         not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day
you are going to find yourself again.

by Finn Butler

{Photo: Elmira Minkina Flickr}

catharsis .

I had a glass or two, just to take the edge off
And it worked for a while
But morning comes early on late nights alone
No one knows better than I do.

I chased you down with deep red wine
And still you bubbled to the top
Making me regret every sea-parting kiss
And the nights we forgot about gravity.

People have written novels and plays -
About the way your voice sounds in the dark
And where they went to get theirs back -
And I'm beginning to realize they've been healing me (slowly). 

So forgive me for reaching for their words
Instead of picking up the phone
This time.

S.  

{Photo: Laura Makabresku Flickr}

tempest .

"Women like me do not fall gracefully,
we stumble over our spines, trip over
our vowels, and collapse into your arms.

Our hearts are open books,
Russian novels containing fifty pages
on the way your voice drifts across
the telephone wires each night.
Our hearts are first drafts,
unedited verses about each and every 
person we have ever loved: the stranger
on the subway, the girl who gave us a balloon,
the boy who stole our virginity
but not our heart.

Women like me will love you from a distance
of a thousand syllables while laying in your bed,
we will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible,
and when we leave you will finally understand
why storms are named after people."

by M.K. Wilde, Katrina

{Photo: Emily's Tumblr}

abyss .

You asked me for my deepest darkest secret. A secret I'd told no other living soul. 

What I think you may not understand about secrets is that those type are not down in the depths without reason. They aren't there to whip out at cocktail parties or ballet lessons or even at 3AM in the bed of your best friend who you tell most-everything to. They are absent for a reason. 

I think when you asked for this secret you meant to ask for my vulnerability, but what you asked for is more than that, and you need to understand this. 

Because the kind you asked for is so ugly that you do not even tell it to yourself. It's something you know is there - you can feel the weight - but you cannot look it squarely in the face. That's why it's kept underneath. 

Someone somewhere once said ignorance is bliss and I believe them, because once you know the deepest darkest part of someone, you cannot forget. So I can tell you things I have told only five, two, even one other person, but don't you dare ask for more. 

You cannot handle dark and deep. This is what you need to understand.

S. 

{Photo: Elif Sanem Karakoc}

still .

I can see right past your fake thick skin
You've been writing about me again
My lips you swore off as a sin
But sweet temptation took you in. 

My skin is thin, I do admit
Your every touch still bruises it
Still, my dead heart's fire was re-lit
So as to grant me one last kiss. 

S.

{Photo: Laura Makabresku Flickr}

globetrotter .

I'll see the whole world over before I see the day you lay yourself at my feet and say you're sorry for all the nights you kept me guessing. For all the days you didn't tell me the whole truth. For every time you watched me spell 'I love you' with my eyes, but pretended you were blind.

I'll see the whole world over before you'd think to call. Before you'd think to tell me about your new life, and job, and the girl you met at the bar who you 'guess is your girlfriend now'. Before you'd think to ask how much of you is still beating through my veins and know I'm lying when I tell you none.

I'll see the whole world over but you'll still be the seven wonders wrapped into one. You'll still be a country road on a clear night when every single star in heaven can be seen. Still two arms tight around my waist that no landmark or brown-eyed stranger can erase. 

And I can see the whole world over but I'll never find a place where you don't reach me still. You have tainted a world you've never seen with kisses I've never felt, and I'm not sure Earth is big enough for both of us. 

I promise if there's a way to Mars, I'll take it. 

S. 

{Photo: Nicole Tierney Flickr}

to a friend .

It's still not real, Andy.

I'm still praying to a God I'm not totally convinced in that you'll find your way home. That you'll walk in from this longwinded joke; a sideways grin overtop your apology.

I hate how longwinded you've let this joke get.

I hate how the last time I saw you I cut it short to go read a book when I should have gone down to the ocean with you. 

I hate how people use past tense to talk about your smile now. How your embraces were enough to turn a bad day into something magic. How your laugh was the centerpiece in a crowded room. 

Everyday is full of you, but it's an empty-full. You left, and yet, I'm not sure how to rid of you from everything I see and touch and hear. 

You left and we're all trying to live without the sun but it's gotten a little too cold to bear. 

Please come home now.

S.