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}

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}

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}

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}

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}

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}

Travel Companion.

We called you in the middle of the night. Lost and wide awake.
We figured you'd know just how to untangle us
from the twisted roads and dead ends.

I was always losing my way -
A specialty of sorts.
But then, you were always there
To guide me or to get lost alongside.
(Though - come to think of it - you probably knew just where we were.)

But anyways. That's over now.
You can't still be rescuing me
From my mistakes and missed turns.
It's time I took responsibility for all the backwards one way streets,
and learned to read a compass.

And maybe once I understand the positions of the sun, 
And how the stars align to form a roadmap in the heavens
Maybe then, I will find my way back to you. 

S.

{Photo: Flickr Tamara Lichtenstein}

The Words On My Lips.

Written By: I Wrote This For You

And when we speak now, seldom as that is, the old language returns. I wonder if it makes old names make guest appearances in your mind. If you can feel the skin of my neck near yours one more time. Do you reach across the bed for a shape, no longer there. Do you remember it clearly or is it all just memories of memories. Is there still warmth from my fingers tracing the contours of your skin, left somewhere in your body. If you smell the smell of how I used to smell in a crowd, do you think of these things. Is something missing in everyone else's or someone new's voice. Will they never know quite how to laugh or breathe just behind your ear. Do they know what you look like when you want to leave a party, when you've had too much of people. Could they rebuild your body out of clay if they needed to, because they've touched it so many times. Does your back still arch the way it used to when I still kissed you. 

Does an old singer sing an old song on an old radio. 

Do the lyrics still shake your fucking soul. 

Did it sound like this?

You were everything I needed, and now all I need is for you to remember.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}