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}

relapse .

you've been seeping back in
spreading through my veins
a sickness

first in dreams
then in faces i let myself forget
                         
then calls, too blurry-eyed to see the screen
           yet somehow typing out your number
                                                                       muscle memory
old texts dug up from centuries past
a graveyard of memories, excavated — they should be dead
                                                                           but somehow

somehow

it's you again.

you're back.

S.

{Photo: Angela Kim Flickr}

unanswered —

questions for the woman i was last night 

how far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps?

how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short?
why do you find the unavailable so alluring?
where did it begin, what went wrong, and who made you feel so worthless?
if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you?
all this time, you were begging for love silently
thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you
you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin
and what about the others that would do anything for you?
why did you make them love you until you could not stand it?
how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful?
where did you learn this, to want what does not want you?
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay?

by warsan shire

{Photo: Ennevia Flickr}

lessons .

things i wished i'd been taught:

        how to respond to a man that won't leave him angry
or me sad.

        no.
reverse that:

          that won't leave me sad
or him angry.
 
                     there.

i think that makes a difference.

                      there.
another thing i wish i'd been taught:

                  how to put my needs above
                      someone else's wants.

         my whole life has been filled with firecracker men
loud and fast and angry
      that burn for a second and then blow up
                          in my face
           and disappear in a mess
                            of smoke and debris.

                                               that live for the reaction.

                and i don't think i've ever been taught
                                 how to stop a fuse that's already lit.
                                          or where my body will be
                                                                                                     least likely
                                                    to get caught by the shrapnel.


                i wish they had been taught to be softer
i wish i was taught to be stone.

S.

{Photo: © quentin de briey/photography}

alchemy .

i've found you in the silence

when i'm alone or in a crowd of strangers

i've found myself missing the softness between your calloused hands
& the laughter on your teeth

& i know we were insignificant — 

strangers colliding on our way to bigger things

but i think you dropped your pen — 

something small and insignificant

& i think i picked it up

& after all this time it's turned to gold in my pocket —
heavy and significant

but it's yours not mine —

all too heavy for my two arms to carry

something bigger

than we were

so that i've found i'm now missing your blackberry sweet kisses

& the sound of your voice first thing in the morning

before either of us had opened our eyes

saying not now not now not now to the early-light
& right now right now right now to me

& i'm sure you left these moments in that
apartment next to mine

before leaving that old town for good

but i brought a button home with me
that turned into a diamond in my suitcase

& i can't seem to let it go.

S.

{Photo: Lily Little Flickr} 

pretend .

you covered me with burnt kisses —
with siren songs
waving your heart outside yourself
like a beacon
but it was just illusion —
smoke and lights and mirrors
aimed at those with simple minds
and i came running.

you tore me down
not all at once but in strips
thin as paint
one room at a time
until my body was made only of
the most basic elements —
nothing of substance
nothing to hold up to the light.

you seduced me with lips that tasted of
clementines
and words that sounded suspiciously like
my own
recited backwards.

· · ·

i only wish i had learned to speak firmly without
sounding mean
i wish i had taught myself the art of
grace
in tension
and strength
in the sea of vulnerability you swept me into.

i only wish
you were everything i imagined
and i was the person i wrote as myself.

i wish
but we don't exist outside of the walls of what-might-have-been.

[don't listen to a word i've said
i've been crying bathtubs full
of crocodile tears since you left me.
trying to find the last shred of you
i lost somewhere inside these veins].

S.

{Photos: woronowska dorota Flickr; Laura Makabresku Photography}

wreckage .

when he found me i was a pile of bones and embers and broken words
a kaleidoscope mess
who said yes to things that made me sad.

i let him tear out pieces of me and
wear them
i watched him parade them around like a trophy
that he had won —
conquered.

and i found that when i went to
pull myself back into something i could recognize
i was missing some important bones
to stand on
to reach
to run.

i found my embers did not reignite
because he had stolen the ones
that still glowed
and left me the ashes.

and i found that the shards of words and promises
that once made up my soul
no longer fit together like they should
no longer held meaning —
pages of my favourite book ripped out and
tossed to the wind.

and i hated him
for a long time.

hated him for coming to me when i was weak
for taking what wasn't his
for sitting on my chest until i couldn't breathe anything but him.

but i have learned
that i still
can dance on broken bones,
that there are parts of me that will catch fire
even when i'm most numb,
that i was born with a pen at my fingertips
and i could re-write every last word that i lost
or i can leave the torn and crumpled papers where they are
and write a new part.

S.

{Photo: MillyCope Flickr}

tracks .

this house shakes when the train passes through town
and i've been sitting on my floor trying to feel it all. everything. 
waiting for something to finally give way
and send this old brick building falling
onto the nighttime traffic. the lovers, the brokenhearted, 
the people who believe in late-night apologies or ice cream runs. 

it isn't working.
my sensory neurons have all given out (it's about time)
my legs are too weak to walk to where you are
my mouth has forgotten how to say things like "i'm sorry" and "please take me back".

and i've been trying to see how this makes me feel
but all i can feel is the goddamn train.

and.

an imprint of your hands on my neck
your lips on my waist.

and yet
still.

i can't connect these marks on my skin 
with the way the blood pumps through my veins
can't make out a clear path between the places our skin met
and the place in my brain that knows how to feel and express and understand  
that knows, 
when it comes down to it, 
what it all meant.
what you meant.

and i've been thinking
that if i don't get some feeling back under my skin
i'll hitch a ride on the next train through town
and see where i go.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

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}

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}

poetic perfection //

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

Marty McConnell

{Photo: Julia Fot Photography}

origins .

The idea of staying never occurred to me. Not in any serious sort of way.
I was raised on an island but I was not born on one. You were. 

The idea of leaving comes to you in a romantic sort of way. 
A "maybe-someday" that you poke at when things get dull. 
It never came to you as it did me: as a necessity. As a very act of survival. 

We are two different species, I'm coming to understand. 
I killed myself loving you, and it's taken me years to realize that we do not breathe the same. 
To realize that when you say "home" you think of one place and not thousands.
To realize that I can love you in spite of this, but it will kill me. 

You have built your life in small things. 
You let an ocean you can swim become a barrier. You let mountains you can climb fence you in.
And it's taken me a while but I think I understand why, when I left, you didn't do the same. 

You were born on an island, and I was not.  

S. 

{Photo: Tamara Lichtenstein Photography}

new territory .

you are a country i want to learn. a culture i want to bathe in until my fingers prune up. i want to carve your language into my walls until they've been chiseled so deep they have nothing left to do but crumble.

you don't scare me with your history. with the wars that have already been fought and lost upon your ground, leaving you scarred beneath the wreckage. i don't mind the mess.

i want to discover the secret places. the ones the ten-day tourists never find. i want to know your safe areas and the ones i'm not supposed to go to after dark has fallen.

i don't want to just visit. i want to live in you. to walk every day with your air in my lungs. to search you over without a map because i will make my own. i will rewrite it a thousand times and i still won't get it perfect, but it will be my life work to try.

i want you to be the last country i go to, and me the last traveler you allow within.

i want to find my home in you.

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Photography}

claustrophobia .

I never had a problem with tight spaces until I met you. You made my life so goddamn unbreathable. You, with your phone calls and your line of questions. You fired them at me and I didn't have a chance. You placed me in front of my grave and BAM BAM BAM, I'm down, buried under everything I never got to answer because you knew. You already knew. You thought you knew, so you buried me. But you didn't know. And now I'm underground, closed in by particles and dirt, and it's not unlike being with you, because you were like that, so close that I couldn't breathe. So maybe suffocating here is better than in your arms but I don't think so. I think you made yourself insufferable, I think you got so near because you wanted to drive me away, and I think you left me before you let me speak because you did know. You knew, but you needed to pretend that it was me not you who couldn't stand small places. And the thing is that I could, until you shot me down and I got trapped under the weight of everything but your lips. Because I could live with phone calls and lines of questions. It was when they left that I fell into this pit. 

S. 

{Photo: Tamara Lichtenstein Flickr}

[the hard way]

what do you say to the one who still has your heart 
after too many unclaimed years?

we would have fizzled like water on embers. 
we would have burned, long and deep. 
we would have hit the wall in a trillion sorry pieces. 

but i would have loved the chance to try.

S.

{Photo: Pilar Zeta's Blog} 

I Don't Believe You.

He said I love you and it was soft and drawn out and utterly believable in every way it could be but I still didn't trust the earnest eyes and parched lips.

He moved his fingers on my hips like he was tracing the outlines of his heart or marking paths between my freckles. 

An organ in my chest moved in ways I thought could equal love, but it didn't quite make sense because of logic and basic biology. Because I know sensations aren't always real: you can feel heat when you're ice to the touch, movement in complete stillness, consciousness while dreaming. 

And you can feel something for earnest eyes and parched lips when the chemicals triggered by fingertips on skin don't balance out in the end. When all he ever was, was a handful of sensations that don't equate to much; don't equate to enough. 

And who cares now. He was lying, wasn't he.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

cardiac arrest.

the heart is a many-ridged thing

not two curved pieces folding into each other
it has nooks that no one’s ever told you about
            it shrinks and then explodes
                        with something thick and awful and necessary.

it has valves and doors and windows
and you crawled in from underneath the floorboards
            you poisoned the water
                        you hid yourself in a crevice.

you hid where my fumbling fingers could not pry you loose
            where I could not rip your leeching flesh from me
                        without first tearing away fingernails full of my own vein and tissue.

my heart pumped you through me
until you became part of the system; thick and awful and necessary
            until even my toes needed you to survive.

and that’s how it went for minutes or years
            I don’t know
but one day you slipped out
            you creeped out from the chimney or the front door
                        you left and you never asked, never told me where you’d go.

not here though. 

            not in that unreachable place in that corner of my heart.
                        not in the place you ruined inside me.

you tore those veins and tissue fibers when you left
and all your poison turned sour
            seeping down until even my toes
                        ached with a rigid bitterness
                                I can't get free from. 

S. 

{Photo: Adriana Petit Flickr}

>>>

"I think we're just gonna have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that."

Margot Tenenbaum

{Photo: Vassilvasilic Flickr}

Feelings Won.

He was drunk and clinging to me in the way I hate but am flattered by,
whispering nothing consequential. Nothing he'd remember in the morning.
Being pulled away by jealous arms
that were never quick enough to stop a small-kiss or soft touch. 

I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from moving when he told me
in all his drunken glory that he likes me. He really likes me. 
I hate - as I've always hated - when someone can make me 
do something I don't mean to. Even smile.

It isn't fair because he's drunk and I'm sober enough 
to know better than messy words and ear kisses.
Sober enough to not let it get to me,
but it does. He does. 

(I hate this).

S. 

{Photo: Sea Swallow Me Flickr}

Unspoken.

"And how, when walking down the street he placed his palm against my neck in a way that I've spent every day since hoping some other man will do without me having to ask."

Meg Fee

{Photo: Valentina Castro}