haven .

there is a warm bed on the floor of a
cold room
but it is not a home
to me

i cannot feel safe
curled next to a man
who says he wears his heart outside himself—
like a badge
like a hand-stitched emblem on his shirt pocket—
but who maps out the quickest exits
as soon as he enters a room

who has already told me the ways
he will forget me —
the ways he has already forgotten me —
while i am still tangled up around him

.....

you are a burner of bridges
of roads, of highways
you warm yourself
on all the endings you've ignited —
looking holy and alive
as the flames glow you a halo

and i've been trying to find a place
to hide
because
every time i'm with you
i smell smoke.

S.

{Photo: Sayaka Minemura Flickr}

hollow .

it's hard to believe (no it isn't) how easily I fit back into your hand.
how our voices dance back and forth again -
as if the choreography never stopped (i'm not sure it did).
our months of silence melting into the last time i saw you
until there was no silence, only a desperate goodbye to hello-again
one after the other.

your presence somehow cancelling out
everything that came between:
the chill of winter seeping into spring, summer, fall,
the bitterness that bled into my bones,
the side of the bed that i named loneliness (after you).

there are some things that i know in life (things that you taught me):
i know that though we work in theory
we will never work in practice
i know the clock is never on our side
i know the way the world ends is not with a bang but a whimper
(eliot warned but you showed).

but for just one day - today - lets pretend that all it takes for us to be
is what we are in this moment
that the force driving us together is stronger than all else
tomorrow we can put miles between our sea salt lips
and forget our dance for silence
but today lets say the world is what we've asked it to be
since the beginning (a place safe enough for both our hearts).

S.

{Photo: Patrycja Dolata Photography}

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}

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}

I think I might know --

The snow is building up around me these days in a way that would be alarming in another world. A world I lived in a few short months ago, where snow came only as special occasion, accompanied with some degree of awe.

Now, I stand unamazed and unfazed by this phenomenon. Getting buried under the inevitable without raising an eyebrow. Settling into a new commonplace, rather than embracing it with previous childlike wonderment. 

And I feel like this may be some sort of metaphor, for my life currently - and I have some ideas towards its meaning - but I can't be bothered to work out the details.

I only know I've come to forgive you for everything you couldn't possibly apologize for; and that my anger has subsided into a dull 
hollowness that echoes slightly 
when I stand too near the edge.

No, I don't think you should be worried, yet.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

The longest road.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Of Surviving The Winter.

The days are getting colder. It snowed last week and I was outside in it. Wandering around in my cardigan, staring up at the darkness and the white.

You know how I get in the cold. You know I wasn't designed for it. Yet for some reason, I chose here to be my home.

I don't know how I'm going to deal with it. It's November. It's November and I'm freezing.

You'd think I'd have run to warmth, run to the very thing I desire. I like heat best. It seems, though, that I have a perpetual problem of holding on to it, so that maybe, subconsciously, I just let it go. It would not have been my first time..

But I'm here now, and that has to be faced. So I'll tie a piece of home around my neck. I'll hang it there, as heavy as the hopes I carry with it. And I'll brave each winter night, and wait for my escape.

S.

{Photo: Silent Sequoias}