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}

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}

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}

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}

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}

one, two, infinity .

you have a mole under the corner of your left eye and it was the first thing i loved about you.

you have a scar that runs down your stomach that you got while play-fighting in the woods when you were six, and it was the 5th thing i loved about you (after your lopsided grin, the ruddiness of your cheeks, and the calm of your voice).

you have a patch of freckles on your right calf that look like ursa minor, and I'm not sure what number this was because somewhere after five i stopped counting parts and started seeing a whole. 
and this would have been terrifying had it not happened so slowly and so without me realizing that the pieces were adding up to make someone who would, one day, become a part of me.

if you like, i could write the whole long list of everything you made me love, but i've found the things i didn't fit easier on a page: 
when you stopped smiling with your teeth, 
how your words became smaller and more sharp over time, 
the look on your face when you said goodbye and meant it. 

and i understand the goodbye, i do. it's just, some days i miss that mole under your eye. 

S. 

{Photo: Ian Richardson Flickr}

ps. hello my lovely readers. this month marks 3 years of writing in this space(!), and in all that time the appearance of this blog has remained mostly unchanged; this month i decided change was due. i hope you like the new look! i also just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who reads and comments on my posts, you mean more to me than i know how to express. thank you for your kindness, encouragement, and support; i genuinely love and appreciate every comment and i'm sorry that i'm not better at responding to them. i'm going to try to be more interactive, so if you have any suggestions for the blog, any writing prompt/subject ideas you'd like me to try, or any questions about myself, i'd love to hear them! i also have an email you can contact me directly at: eachinfinitehorizon@gmail.com . thank you all again. 

sounds and meaning .

One day I plan to tell you how I really felt feel about you, without the wordplay and best guesses. One day I plan to spell it all out in a language we can both speak and comprehend.

You will know that day is here when my heart is bleeding onto everything I touch. When my skin is all but screaming to be wrapped up in your arms.When my every bone quakes at the sound of your voice.
(Or am I back to wordplay?)

You will know it is that day because it will sounds like this: I loved love you. 

I love you, dammit. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Anna Blundell}

it's okay .

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes
you cannot even breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
you have cried yourself to sleep enough times
that you are down to your last two percent, but

         nothing is infinite,
         not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day
you are going to find yourself again.

by Finn Butler

{Photo: Elmira Minkina Flickr}

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}

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}

Tainted //

And all my woe is that now people are accustomed to say "Yes, jealousy is love,"  

and would excuse a bushel of venom because one grain of love is dropped into it. 

Troilus & Criseyde
edited by Gerard NeCastro 

{Photo: Lydia Greenaway Flickr}

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}

>>>

"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}

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} 

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}

Will you still have me?

I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.
I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive.

Jodi Picoult

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Breathe deeply -

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry 

{Photo:  Adriano Sodré Flickr}

Grasp.

"I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that are concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it was. I think that's why she always struggled with God. And I think that’s why she struggled with love. She couldn't touch it. She couldn't hold on to it and make sure it never changed."

"Sometimes it's those things you can't touch that you need to hold on to the most."

Carrie Ryan

{Photos: Erik Bockenstette Flickr; via We Heart It}

Cold Coffee.

He leaned in and kissed her ear before leaving. Stirring her awake with his I love you's. 
She couldn't help but think, if he really loved her, he would let her sleep. 

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}