poison .

i never trusted doctors or technicians
or warning labels on bottles and bottles of arsenic
never trusted your smile

you're a fool to love
but not to say it
because someone somewhere is bound to believe you
and maybe it feels good to make a fool out of someone else
for once

maybe it feels good to drink down
bottles and bottles of arsenic
and not believe the doctors and technicians when they say things like
"you are going to die"

because there's a thing called double jeopardy
and i can't kill twice the fool that already died
the first day i trusted your smile

S.

{Photo: Alessandra Celauro 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}

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}

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}

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}

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}

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}

These dead bones.

I can't find anything that speaks to me these days. Not the sun upon my skin, not the thought of summer fast approaching nor my soon return home. Not even the disappointment of being given up on - being left out in the cold - has sparked any sign of life within. 

Perhaps it's the latter that has hardened me, so I can no longer feel the warning signs of spring the way that I once could. I cannot be moved by the soft and lovely revelations of the Earth. I see them all, and I can recognize how my heart should be melting with the last remains of snow. Still nothing.

All I can think of is the way his heart beat with my head on his chest, and the way it compares to the pounding in my head these days. Life and vivacity now replaced with a droning, empty sound. 

I keep telling myself I need to take the pictures off the wall. I'm leaving soon - I need to pack the memories away. But I can't bring myself to do it. They're the only thing that's bright around this prison cell; holding me to my sanity by not letting the blankness of the room take over.

I guess, if I am afraid of anything, it is that I will be nothing: forever remaining a bare page. I fear that when all the accessories of life are stripped from me, I will be empty handed; becoming only the uniform, off-white walls that lie beneath these photographs. 

It occurs to me that this deep hollowness in me, that even spring cannot seem to shake this year, is only the beginning. And, oh, how that sends shivers up my spine. (And not the kind you gave me.)

S. 

{Photo: Ann He Photography}

Apathy.

I held on to you for so long. And when I braved the let go, I did something I didn't quite mean: I released myself, as well. 

All my life, I held on to something - anything - that could act as an anchor, tethering my actions to some core component of who I was. Something steadfast, resolute.

Now I'm afraid that piece of myself has disintegrated, evaporated, dissipated, and I'm left clutching onto a weight pulling be further and further downwards.

This is not to say that you were keeping me stable, and now I'm off the rails. It is not to place blame. It is not  even to say that you were ever good for me.  It is only to say that the two events happened more or less simultaneously - one single act of letting go - and now I am this person, not attached to anyone or anything, moving blindly through the world. 

And I should tell you that this detachment I live with - live by - has been paying off. It has allowed those boys, who came and swiftly left, to go mostly unnoticed; it has allowed me to face the ending of a chapter with little grief; it has allowed me to slip into semi-comatose. Functioning, but not feeling. 

It is both freeing and deadening to admit that there is nothing inside of you to care for the ones who walked away; nothing there to hold you back from walking out yourself. 

I wish my heart was still full -- I thought I could believe, forever.
It seems forever came too soon. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Amanda Adam}

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}

Happy Valentine's Day

Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

Chuck Palahniuk

{Photo: Flickr 「夜。」}  

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 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}

On Things That Last -- Nothing.

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

{Photo: Flickr Dewberry}

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}

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} 

Choose Love.

In light of this situation, in light of this life, I think it best that we stop and recall the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes: Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

I see no good in wishing ill on someone, for that only traps us in our own cycle of hate and darkness. Remember that light and love are the only weapons we have to drive out the blackness that surrounds us; and indeed, that is what we should long for.

Choose love, dear friends, above hate or bitterness or anger. Choose it so that it can become part of your character. Choose it when you are wronged, and when it it the furthest from instinct. Choose it, because it is our only hope now: it is our doorway to forgiveness, and through that door we will find freedom and joy renewed.

I am sorry for everything that has happened; but remember that more pain will neither reverse nor erase the pain already felt. Remember that you have a choice, and then choose love.

S.

This Fight.

I hope you never know how this feels.

I love you bigger than that.

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}