my heart .

you died for real today, my ghost.

you've dropped into a pool of grief that has been building for some time and i'm not quite sure when the dam will break but the water is getting high.

when people ask who hurt me; who made me see the world differently and then left me alone to deal with the view, it was you. i don't tell them, but it was. you did it years ago and you did it today. you showed me how evil life can get, not out of cruelty and not to scare me, just to let me in.

i wish i showed you how far i let you in. you were allowed into places that no one else has come close to touching. i let you in without knowing, yet, that it is from the inside that a heart can be damaged.

i loved you first and i loved you deep.

deeper than i ever let you know and i'm sorry for that — but there are some places even words can't touch, and you lived there. you still do.

you fought and slayed your share of demons, Ben. i hope you've found the rest you always deserved.

love forever,

S.

{Photo: Anthony Delletiglie 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}

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}

solidarity .

no one expects you to survive this
we are all mortal here
[and in the moments you forget, the world
will either seem too big for you
or you will feel bigger than it
and neither one will do you good
or change the fact that]
we are all mortal here.

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Flickr}

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}

Surgery.

When he came to, so I'm told, they asked him what he last remembered.
"She had eyes shaped like almonds."

And they didn't know what to make of it. Of course.
No one ever knew quite what to make of us. 

I don't think we ever had a clue what we were doing
And I don't think either of us knew why we outgrew it when we did.

But one day we didn't fit together, and somehow we both understood there wasn't any going back.
So when I packed my things that evening, you didn't ask. 

And all this time later, I still think that's what I liked the most.
How words were never a necessity for us.
How almond eyes said more to you than what I told you that day.

And either way, you made it.
Even though we failed. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Elif Tanman}

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}

Chess.

I think we may have reached a stalemate; stuck in this place of indecision, anticipating our demise. I was never any good at games, and you were never any good at playing fair.

I want to talk it out. Even just to know why you chose these steps. I want to see the patterns of your mind and understand your motives. If I could have that, I believe, I'd give up everything. Full surrender.

Instead we have this - this tension and this silence. And this feeling that, no matter how we play the end, we both lose somehow. 

(Your move.) 

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Flat Lining.

There are worse things than being in love with the wrong one.

(I just haven't felt them yet.)

S.

{Photo: Flickr Mary Robinson}

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}

What I've Become.

Please let me go as unscarred as possible.

I do want to see you. I do. With everything I'm made of, but I know that would damage me. Deeply. So I'm left to choose the weaker path, of running. Of hiding my weary, dirt-streaked, bruise-stained body behind lies of dead cell phone batteries and strict nightly curfews; I choose to never face you again.

And I like to tell myself I'm brave anyways. At least I'm escaping, I say. But it's no good. I know what a coward I am, and I despise my weaknesses.

I know if I saw you, one last time, just the two of us, it would all appear. A mess of confessions and confusions and anger and pain, and a horror worse still: desire.

So I will hide away until I can leave this place for always. This time I won't turn around; I won't stare back at you as drops race each other across the pane, wondering on what ifs; I will not ready myself for some glorious return. Because I know now that there will never be one. I won't think on your life, at all, any longer. I'm really leaving. 

I just have to make it out alive.

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

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}

The night when joy began -

I know it flawlessly
Every detail stitched with precision
Upon this mind, that longs to lose it;
That longs to leave it buried
With the rest of untold stories.

I know you won't, but I remember

That small moment - not quite asleep,
When you pulled me closer
Holding me just nearer than what made sense
Oh but somehow, this heart settled.

I breathed in that moment
Knowing it would soon be lost.

Back then, I scarcely recognized it for what it was:
The beginning and the end of me.

S.

{Photo: Flickr Lauryn Holmquist} 

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} 

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.

What we won't speak of.

I would write my heart upon a page, if promised that you'd never see.

But no such promise will be made, so this remains in mystery. 

Don't ask me; I'll only lie. 

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Everyone Is Leaving.

I could say something about the smallness and instability of life, but those words are all used up.

I don't understand why these things happen. I don't understand the significance of life. I have yet to determine why I'm here - why anyone's here - and then, all so suddenly, not.

Sometimes I see so much beauty in the day; sometimes I feel as though I'm getting a grasp on meaning and purpose.

Today is not like that. My heart hurts.

XXXX

I'm losing my faith. I can feel it escaping from me with each passing breath.

I've been thinking about human life. What if all we really are is a strange combination of atoms; a brilliant number of chemical reactions; a jumble of neurons, protons and electrons. What if that's all we are and nothing more.

What if they're right and we're meaningless and finite.

I still pray for comfort.

XXXX

I was so close to telling you everything. I haven't figured out if I'm thankful I didn't, or if it was the worst mistake I've made. 

Either way, it ends the same. Either way, we die: dirt and dust.

Sooner than we originally planned for, I think.

S.

--- Sorry, the world is dark today.

Please understand.

I haven't put a word to how I feel about you yet. As far as words can go, they still haven't reached here. Not that I can find, anyway. And not in a sappy love-song kind of way. No, I'm not saying that I have some kind of love or a passion that goes deeper and further than language. Just a feeling I haven't had before.

I could try here, to write out what I know. To put the pen towards honest words; honest feelings. But you know that would open me up more than I am willing, making me just a step further out of my boundaries than I can allow.

You can - and will - read between the lines and answer for yourself; you're probably better at finding the words than me.

-- There are a handful of things that I fear in this world. The deepest of these, the ones that I think on most, are the ones surrounding relationships. Any relationship. Any closeness.

This is where I stumble. This is why I fail. And this is where you brush up to the border; sticking your foot in the door and scaring me, for I have not yet become the person I need be.

I will never be her. Not so far as I can see.

I already know what you need, and - most importantly - what you don't.

I am the latter - please understand.

S.

{Photo via: Favim}

Is Love Alive?

This could be the end of everything,
so why don't we go somewhere only we know

Keane

{Photo: Jeremy Snell}