untruth .

i'm trying to be honest
              for a change
but you look better when i say
      your hair smelled of lemons
             and
 there was an aftershock when i kissed you
         so strong i needed to hold you
              with both hands
                   to steady the seismic tremor
that started in deep
                       and spread to all corners of myself

    and i look better when i
             tell you that i still wanted you
                            the night i took you to my unmade bed
               and let myself undress you
                    with my eyes closed

but i can't sleep with your head next to mine
                 and i've been pretending i don't know why
      but i think you know, already
                                    (you've been pretending too)

                                  it's funny —
being right after all this time
                 like some sick i-told-you-so
                           i've been playing with myself

and i see now that in this light
                          i don't look so good at all
                but your hair has never smelt of lemons
                                and you weren't there the night the ground
                                                 did shake beneath my feet
                                  and,
                                       help me god,
                             i still can't seem to tell the truth
                                              the way i need to:

you are not my sunlight                                                                  

and i will never be your clear night sky.                                                       

S.

{Photo: Margaret Durow 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}

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}

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)

Astrocytoma .

Iridescent and belonging to all the light  

            of the constellations, 

This was how she used to be –   

            a luminescent contrast to the greytones. 

But there are chemicals taking her now 

            capturing the luster of youth and  

coating her body with a blankness:

            A canvas untouched, 

                                or since faded. 

Her mother remembers her as a flame 

            There’s nothing wrong with being still 

                        she tells herself, 

But she remembers when her girl would leap 

            with all the energy of the sun. 

There is heaviness layered behind 

            pale green eyes 

That sprung up somewhere between 

            test tubes and CAT scans and negative results. 

She can’t fix this. No one is fixing this. 

There is a fault in the framework – 

            they’ve found the problem but not the answers 

So what’s the point in all the dim rooms and 

            holding tight to words like ‘hope’ 

                        if everything perfect fucking dies? 

S. 

{Photo: Jacob Sutton Photography}

my ghost .

I was there when you taught yourself guitar - I listened through basic chords and tireless picking until you got it right. I would climb up after you in the giant tree behind your house - we'd kick at the moss and track the sun through the sky. I answered every time you called in the middle of the night - turning up the radio so my parents couldn't hear. We'd talk for hours, but I can't remember what about. 

I was there when you told me what you did to make it all go away. I cried into my bed that night because you failed, and I couldn't imagine if you hadn't. 

I was the one you called after you broke down. Psychosis. I brought you in a coffee you weren't supposed to have (largewithcreamandsugarplease). I sat with you in white rooms and listened to you explain yourself, but you didn't. 

I came back again, anyways. I brought you coffee again, anyways. 

I came back until one day they told me to stop coming back. You couldn't see me anymore, and I haven't seen you since.

And yet, I still hear your last words, haunting:

"Maybe you have already died. I know I have." 

S.

{Photo: Misshosna Flickr}

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}

say sorry.

you spilled into my life and made a messy thing of my heart. 
and i don't quite know how to forgive you, 
because you ruined me
in an irrecoverable way. 

i have another boy i'm supposed to be writing about now, 
but he's not the one i keep finding fragments of, under my skin. 
and, still, he's never held me like you did. 
i don't think he can. 

i don't know how to forgive. 

S.

{Photo via: Tumblr} 

deep underneath //

toe to tile
backbone to barren floor, frigid -
chills to clammy skin
a gravity that sinks deep into the gut

you are drawn to low things
fallen fruit and dirt between the cracks
down and damned,
                                 already

and you are made from darkness
low voices clinging to cigarette stained walls,
you found comfort in your riven body being
far beneath brainwaves and scorching eyes

a safe haven in the fault lines that run
from the refrigerator to the stove
and in the smell of alcohol and Clorox mixed
all pulling you further in

the ones on foot can trample you, still
but you are a million cutting shards (broken)
this is why you chose the ground
flat-spined, invisible

down and damned,
                                already

S. 

{Photo: Sbiaditoricordo Flickr}

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}

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}

Spoken//

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

Kurt Vonnegut

{Photo via: Karina Vlasova}