All is quiet here.

I've been moving from one city to the next. And while each change in scenery is welcomed, I cannot help but feel that the weather is following me; pinning me under its spell. A lonesome grip held by the chilled and dampened grey.

I long for the rising of the sun, even just to remind me that it's real. To awake the frozen skin I'm covered in; to reveal the colours of the earth, hidden in plain sight, gone unnoticed without illumination. 

I had hoped that leaving the country would open up the doors to inspiration and revive this deadened piece of me. Instead I still feel underneath it all. Buried deep under some weight I cannot name, apart from even the comfort of words. (My words, that is.) I've found there is no easy stream of language overtaking me. I'm met with silence, growing ever more disturbing to my heart.

The quietness of the land does little to comfort me. What should bring a soft relaxation brings rather a raw desperation. I find I cannot open my mouth to speak here; each sound echoing in this valley. 

And while beauty surrounds me down every bend, it too is burdened by the stillness and the grey. I feel that it longs, as I do, to come alive.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

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}

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}

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}

Darling, Stop Running.

you can’t make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.

by Warsan Shire

{Photo:  Eleanor Rask}

The Key.

I have found how to be happy with a man: Give him no credit. None. Make deliberate, cold, unceasing assumptions that he has no feelings, that he cares for you in no way, and that he will never do you one good thing. Be content in the fact that he has no heart. No desires that stretch beyond his own body.

You will find happiness, just so long as you never let go of these basic understandings. You can enjoy that stupid way he smiles when you kiss. The freckles that pepper his shoulders. You can fall in love with his inconsistencies - while always being sure of his one consistent nature, to never truly love you back.
Do this. Because when you find, with devastating clarity, that you have been wrong, and that his heart is just as prone to feeling as your own damaged soul, your world will shatter. You will have lost everything saving you from the hell that awaits you when you wake up and realize that he can.
Do this. Because without it, you will see his failures, each shortcoming. You will want more than he will give. You will be continually brought to the very edge of what you can bear - and then brought back too abruptly by some sweeping act of redemption. He will cease to be able to keep you constantly satisfied, it will be a life of ups and downs, weeks of dinner for two followed by months of smashed plates and weepy kisses. His faults will seep through in the morning coffee that he left too long, they will creep their way through the unfixed cracks in the wall paint, they will call your name when the game is going and he wants another beer. 

Do this. Before his humanity stretches your heart in new ways that you wouldn't have thought capable, before he drives you so crazy with the amount he can be everything you've ever wanted and still not enough, before you let him so far up on that pedestal that he only has room to let you down. Do this, so you know he's lying when he whispers those three cliché, stupid, stupid, stupid words in your ear, so softly that it tickles. Do this, do this, do this. Find that easy, safe, and endlessly stale happiness. Or don't. And open up a world that is full and meaningful and frustrating and so so worth it. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Kari Devereaux}

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}

This Is My Apology.

I am not the same one who walked away all those months ago.

I know you told me not to change, but who are you to demand that, and who am I to listen?

I've tossed away - and given - the best parts of who I was. Now only this remains. 

Sometimes I whisper my own secrets out into the air. I am nothing, I say, as the emptiness opens up and swallows my words. Yes - and you are alone. 

1am, and he kissed me on the nose and stared at me with those intense blue eyes, illuminated even in the dim lighting.

"What is it?" 

"Nothing. I just like the way you smile." 

It's the soft moments that scare me most. My heart wasn't built for caring, and besides, I can't shake the way your body felt. Yours felt better, and yet, his is real. 

2am arrived and I turned away from him - the darkness clashing with my bare white skin. I couldn't face the way he looked at me. "Stay the night, please". I don't like who I am anymore. 

5am blinked by and the ceiling tiles made faces in the dark. I thought they promised the world would be beautiful, but I don't see it; there is no strength left in these bones to fight for it anymore. 

I'm sorry for the disappointment I've become. I should have listened. 

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Don't Hold Back All Your Love For Someday

You are young. So you know everything. 

You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. 

Without fanfare, without embarrassment, 

without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. 

Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, 

and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me. 

There is life without love. 

It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe.  

It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. 

When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, 

the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the 

sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable 

pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth 

and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls 

plunging and steaming – then row, 

row for your life toward it.

Mary Oliver

Six Months Later.

My mind is in turmoil. I am feeling too many things to make coherent words string together. 
(Finally, I am remembering what it feels to be close - the familiar comfort of being enclosed in two strong arms and held steady with one.)

The truth is, I'm not sure if it was out of loneliness, spite, or blind emotion. I've been refusing to believe that I acted out of real feelings - for nothing could be more dangerous to me. 

I won't let myself feel right about this.

It seems I haven't finished letting go of you - as far away as you are. (As far as you've made yourself.) But I know now that I can. The hands; the lips; the eyes; they are all ready to meet mine. And I am standing at the brink, deciding if I dare. I've long since admitted that there is nothing for me with you, yet something holds me back even still.

A whisper or a hope. Something I dare not touch with heart or mind. 

Come find me and make this right.

S.

{Photo: Flickr Posternaks}