on fire, and who we've become.

i called you an old flame
to a new friend
who has never heard your name out of my lips
before

an old flame

it makes you sound like a candlestick affair

simple, small
a dinner for two
glowing dimly on
the outline of a person i could love
or did you just flicker away?

i should have called you a furnace

deep in the belly of the beast
heating everything up from the inside
thawing out the winter of my bones
defrosting a human heart
we weren't sure was there
until it started beating

i should have called you a bonfire

fueling the drunken nights
the summer nights
when everything was good
but your warmth made it better
more alive

i should have called you a wildfire

taking out everything in your path
swallowing up all the cities we dreamed for ourselves
in one great gulp
raging, as one does, until everything you touch
changed

(i lived through the night
but
for better or for worse, i'm not the same).

S.

{Photo: Rita Ji 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}

day fifty-three.

i've been a little lost. 

the loneliness is palpable in this city. i've brushed past him on subway 5, holding a briefcase but no expression. i've heard them on the street: whistling as the girls pass by. i've seen it in searching eyes, in forced smiles, in the cellphone that never gets put away. 

it's swallowing me. and it is dark and it is terrifying. and i can't quite stand to look it in the face because it is more than i am ready to feel. these are the things they should have prepared us for.

i am trying to find my way. 

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Photography}

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}

Inadequacy.

(All I have are cliché words, so maybe those are all I'm good for. 
And nothing moves me anymore, so maybe this is all I am.)

Do you want me to tell you how his lips taste, how his breath feels mixing with mine? Less intoxicating than how I imagined yours to be; one million times better than what you left me with. That's how.

I underestimated loneliness: my fatal flaw, this driving force. So easily disguised as affection - willing me near another, even when the other isn't right, isn't perfect.

And I haven't yet made my mind up. I'm still fighting through these pros and cons; still waiting to follow my own advice; still clutching at the wounds you left.

What I do know is that every time I'm with him, it gets harder to remember what your voice sounds like, and that must count for something.

S.

{Photo: Flickr Animus}

Before - and the Aftermath.

I just realized it's going to kill me:
Everything that we are not, and will never be.

As much as I want to go back, I don't.

There are things that I wanted to leave and never have to see again.
There are feelings that I didn't want to resurrect from their long time grave.
There are situations that must be faced, that I can not even think on.

I know how this story is supposed to end.
And I'll let it - end, that is.
But let these words be mine
And let me say them how I choose:
With vehemence, or sorrow, or something deep and stronger still --
Something more than malice or heartache could hold.
-- The left over fire of a passionate soul:

I love you still. 

XXXX

I hope you're happy. 

You, with all the words off your chest. 

You, with a pair of ready arms to fall into. 

You, safe at a distance of a million miles away.

I hope you're glad I read what you wrote 

sitting in an overcrowded bus in a strange city; 

tired and alone. 

I hope it gives you joy to know that I was brought to tears 

amidst the strangers, the hard plastic chairs and the bright city lights. 

Surrounded so fully, and yet, more alone then I've ever been. 

Infuriated by your selfishness, your timing:

Everything you were and weren't and won't ever be to me.

I hope you find delight in the way you've played me so completely,

and the wicked way you reached to pull me back just as I let you go.

And I hope you are pleased to know that I don't care. 

I've ripped the blinders from my eyes and you don't own me anymore.

I do not love you still. 

S. 

{Photos via: Tumblr; We Heart It}

Hidden Meaning.

All things are written in code, crafted by the masters of language. Everything that isn't - the few words of honest nature - get buried inside it all; making it more difficult to decipher anything real. It soon becomes a muddled stream of partially coherent verbs and nouns and adjectives. 

But what did you expect? 

That it would be simple?

Well it is. When you cut out the excess, bit by bit, you see what the puzzles always form to say. :

Everything. Means. Nothing.

I'm sorry this is not what you wanted.
But what did you expect?

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Frederica Erra}

The Words On My Lips.

Written By: I Wrote This For You

And when we speak now, seldom as that is, the old language returns. I wonder if it makes old names make guest appearances in your mind. If you can feel the skin of my neck near yours one more time. Do you reach across the bed for a shape, no longer there. Do you remember it clearly or is it all just memories of memories. Is there still warmth from my fingers tracing the contours of your skin, left somewhere in your body. If you smell the smell of how I used to smell in a crowd, do you think of these things. Is something missing in everyone else's or someone new's voice. Will they never know quite how to laugh or breathe just behind your ear. Do they know what you look like when you want to leave a party, when you've had too much of people. Could they rebuild your body out of clay if they needed to, because they've touched it so many times. Does your back still arch the way it used to when I still kissed you. 

Does an old singer sing an old song on an old radio. 

Do the lyrics still shake your fucking soul. 

Did it sound like this?

You were everything I needed, and now all I need is for you to remember.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

The Broken Years.

I dare say I still reach for you through the empty spaces, just to see if you will answer. Of course, you never do. I don't know who to blame for that; or if blame is necessary.

I hardly trust myself to think on those days - irrelevant as they are - for fear that I will somehow alter the details. Dulling or skipping or smudging some small moment that meant something to me then. I don't want to lose it altogether, but the possibility of remembering it wrong seems a greater tragedy.

It isn't you anymore, though. I feel I should tell you this, so you know I'm not entirely lost. No. Not you, but rather, the comfort you brought. The illusion of safety I felt in your arms. The ease by which we existed together. 

It's difficult for me to find that here. By now, I'm nearly a full-time cynic, with little time to count my blessings, trust there's love, or hope for peace. Maybe 19 is too old to still hold on to magic - an age to stop waiting for that miracle, and instead, face the discordant song of reality: "You are alone; the strongest arms let go."

S.

{Photo: Flickr Kelley Smith}

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}

It's Complicated.

There are a few things you told me that keep spinning in my head.

Some words hit me with tidal wave force and searing pain, leaving me breathless on impact. Wounds reopened, tender at the touch.

And others, said in whisper, remain as such. A quiet voice, coming in-and-out with each breath. I listen through the silence, and hear them play their soft and subtle tune, and wonder at their meaning. These leave a wound of their own; though I know not intended. I suspect you have yet to guess their weight.
I'm broken in half now, and I know there's something beautiful about that. That incomprehensible beauty that comes with being completely torn down: the rawness. Vulnerability. But the feelings hold no glamour, as artistic as the fallen human paints itself. There is no glory in this state of living, only the alluring idea of authenticity that accompanies the shattered soul. And that is not who I am.

Oh, my heart hurts something fierce these days.

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Promise.

Please don't see how broken I've become:
The way the words and lies have made me numb.

Please promise you won't look as closely as before.
You need not know me anymore.

[Yours always,]

S.

{Photo via: Favim}

Still turning.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends 

Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

{Photo via: Image Fave}

Parting Speech.

This is the end. We're over now.
Don't blame it on the girl I once was,
Because her promises were real --

For that part of me will always love that part of you.
Trapped in a time and place so far from where we're standing;
Buried in a history no one can take away,
And none can remake.

No. Blame it on the constant turning of the earth,
and the way my hand fits into another's.
Blame it on the freshly fallen snow,
And the human need
To be loved.

S.

{Photo by: Benj Haisch Photography}

So much to never say.

Your silence creates a loneliness inside of me that echoes. Deep and empty.
You really left me hanging, this time around. 

When it comes, I must die a bitter old woman - or sooner, a cynical young soul.
They can write books about the one who never loved. 

That's what they were told. 

I think I need to find some daylight - 

Before I fade. 

S.

{Photo by: Flickr Mischelle} 

News.

This is a lot more difficult than I imagined it being; though I did imagine this day.

I've always wanted the best for you. But I couldn't let go of the hope that that meant me.

But it's not. It doesn't.
And in logic I knew that, I wished for that. But it's the accepting it - the seeing it in action - that lends to the trouble in my heart.

Don't get me wrong, because I am happy for you; really. I remember, once, thinking up what you needed; and it's what you have now. Yes, I am glad for you.

It's just that my selfishness imagined hot chocolate chats, and mistletoe dances, and cookie dough food fights, and now that picture is changed. She changes things a lot.

And part of me wants that. I want your happiness. I want you to have someone who will stick around; someone who will appreciate your good cooking, that side-ways grin, your ridiculous laughter and those sarcastic comments through every season.

But another part wishes you had seen that you already had that; that somebody already did -- somebody that's wishing she wasn't so damn far from you these nights.

Congratulations on finding happiness, though.
I'll find my way too, one of these days...

S.

This Fight.

I hope you never know how this feels.

I love you bigger than that.

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

The sounds of loneliness.

It's taking my breath away, the way a song can flood my mind with the past. I'm really drowning. Drowning in the long - frequent - drives, in the late nights spent with you, in all the things that I forgot to say racing through my mind.

I forgot this loneliness, but it's a not a feeling I despise. Instead I let it crawl back to me in its old familiar way. It comes to hold my hand through the cold, grey months. It latches onto my heart and grabs a hold of my mind (again). There is something odd about this feeling - something addicting about the ache it creates in me. I remember it all.

And I welcome it back. Maybe I ought not wish its return, but there is that something about it. That familiarity that I accidentally long for. Maybe I'd rather - sometimes - fall back and drown in an aching comfort than march forward and upward and past it all.

But it sounds ridiculous like that, no? Unambitious, perhaps? Very well, I am stupid and lazy. But it may be said, clearly and soundly, that some of my most fond memories were in that time. They were in the car rides by myself, in the late night visits that ended too late and too soon, in facing some battles by myself, and in the music that surrounded me all the while. So today I reach for that old friend - the dull ache that kept me company when my heart was beyond the reach of human touch. I let it take me again, to a place where I felt many things, and nothing at all.


S.

{Photo: Junkiesky Tumblr}