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}

because you asked me what's on my mind and i don't know how to answer like a normal person; here is a poem.

i've been thinking lately about
                  skin

catching myself staring at the stranger
      on the café bench

wondering if
           the dimples in his cheeks would
                      feel the same as yours
           with my nose pressed into the crease

[if i could ever love him if they didn't
 if i could ever leave him if they did]

how the cab-mans callouses
    compare to yours
        held tight against my ribcage —
     that extra friction
                      sending me over the edge

if the workman's arms are also used
             to wrap themselves around someone
                               soft and breakable
         when he puts down his saws and hammers for the day.

・・・・・

i've been thinking lately about
           forgiveness

whether you can find some for me
     when this all goes to shit

[if you can start storing it up now
 and slowly letting us go
 before we have to]

and whether i can find any for myself
         for taking it this far

knowing that this is going to
         break us both —
                       differently.

S.

{Photo: Утро вторника}

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}

brown eyes .

you burned the inside of my eyelids —
flashes of
           the morning sun waking up
                                                       to stripe your back through the blinds,
                    water falling across mid-summer skin,
        lashes folding up so close i can feel the breeze,
                   dimples,
                               dimples,
                   dimples.

and your eyes are not the colour of
                                          milked down chocolate
          or silt and soil
                                like you claim —

          they're cherry wood and honey
warm & light & deep & rich —
                        and they don't look away
                                     even when i can hardly breathe
                                                            under their heaviness.

and those eyes read me like a book
                       steady and linear
           one page to the next until you were done
                                                    and i had no more stories left to share.

but i read you like a poem
                        doubling back and again
                                              stuck and gasping
                     at one verse, one word, one jawline
                                         wondering,
                                                          always,
                       how many ways one could interpret
                                            you.

S.

{Photo: Angela Kim Flickr}

the art of being destroyed .

i never thought we'd get here.

when it came to you and me
i had begun to believe that all we'd ever be is
two lost causes
staring across crooked timing with inaudible 'what ifs' awake on our tongues.

two broken-compassed travellers
who could never stay on the trail long enough to collapse under
the same night sky.

but now i see
that we are two stories about the same moment
that sound nothing the same
and yet are both true
and both beautiful.

i was a shipwreck and you were the ocean
and no matter where i went
i was always going to drown
and you were always going to swallow me whole.

S.

{Photo: Memoriste Flickr}

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}

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}

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}

the damage done .

i don't take promises from anyone anymore
that is what you did to me.
i do not look expectantly at my phone
when someone tells me they'll call
then decides they won't.
and when people come to me with wides eyes and excited smiles
i turn away.
i do not memorize what it's like
to touch a body with just the tips of my fingers.
i remember what it was to train my mind to forget
what skin feels like, traced over
on mornings
half asleep.
and that is enough
to not hold on to promised words
from promising lips
any longer.

S.

{Photo: Kate Kinley Photography}

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}

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}

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}

art .

You're trapped somewhere between my longing and forgetting
A half-memory, half-god
An exhausting mix of emotions
That never tire of being felt.

I am a dwarf to the lie of you
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a dirt-road town
While you are Michelangelo's David.
Unforgotten through the eras.

But you don't exist in real time -
In solid proof between my fingers.
Just in half sketched drawings
And conversations recalled in so many different ways they might not have happened at all.

I think, more than having you,
I need to shrink you down into a manageable size.
Because no one ever has to think about
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a town 600 miles away.

S.

{Photo: Clara Román Flickr}

diary of the pathetic .

I crossed land and ocean but it
was never far enough to stop a
reckless soul, aching hands and a
terribly ill-trained heart from pointing north.

You always said you were not the
jealous type, and maybe you're not, but I took a
lover. I took him to numb me and to burn you.

I, who crossed land and ocean to escape
You, who are not the type to be jealous of
Him, who could only guess that his hands were
surrogates
for a tighter grasp and softer touch.

And I could only wonder if maybe you are
the jealous type.

But I haven't heard from you in 113 days,
so I guess
after-all
you're not.

S.

{Photo: Adriano Sodré Flickr}

dawn .

i lay on the roof beside him
watching the stars fade
as the sun made its ascent
into the morning sky

and i wondered where you were
and how it was that you became so far from me

i wondered whether i'd ever know you again
the way i once did -
when i could read your glances and your quiet
better than anyone else's voice

i wondered if you could still locate
the star you called by my name,
and still find the one
i picked for you

and as i raced down that rooftop
in the ripeness of the early day
i wondered if one day i could climb onto building-tops
or trace out constellations
without, also, wondering after you

[you, who still rules my heavens.
you, who still rules my heart.]

S.

{Photo: Leigh Ellexson 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}

timezones .

despite it all (the whole heavy lot of it) i still believe that your hands contain magic and your heart is made of softer things than you pretend.

i sometimes think that our souls were created to fit into each other but something went wrong and somehow we became just a wavelength apart. its as if time got wrinkled slightly, so that you show up too early and i too late and our souls still fit but we are never aligned enough for it to happen.

the nine-hour time difference between your front door and mine has a way of reminding me how distant our lives have become. a gap i'm not sure can be closed simply by boarding a west-bound plane to where we left off, although i'll be sure to let it try.

but nevermind all this. what i wanted to say is that i heard you were doing well, and i really hope its true (i only wish i had heard it from you).

love anyways (always),

S.

{Photo: Kylie Parks Flickr}