Spoken//

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been". 

Kurt Vonnegut

{Photo via: Karina Vlasova}

Ruined.

I felt my heart break today. Crushed under the weight of a crippling disappointment - in myself. 
No. But not heartbreak, really. More like the feeling of a heart being suffocated. Slowing down. Fading. 
I don't know how I became this. I don't believe in me anymore. 

(I miss your arms today.) 

S.

{Photo: Flickr Adriano Sodré}

Thunderstorm.

There's something funny about that one night. Not one of those pictures turned out.

Which adds a little magic, no? All those moments, so charged with energy and secrecy, were never recorded. Just a handful of terrible, terrible photographs to remember or forget it by. Only up to me  - and you, perhaps.

Really, I don't know how I even hoped to capture it ; how I expected to hold electricity in my hand like it could last there forever. 

It was all a little like that. A lightning bolt. Deadly, fast, and brilliant. A flash that disappeared before I could trace the shape, or get it down on paper. Glorious and blinding for a blink, then gone. 

Yes. We were a little like that. 

 S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

There it is//

You don't want to hear the story of my life,

and anyway I don't want to tell it,

I want to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -

a few people just trying, one way or another,

to survive.

Mary Oliver

{Photo: Theo Gosselin Photography}

Storytime.

Sometimes when our faces were so close - touching
You only really had one eye.
It was in one of those moments when I swore
that I loved you.
Cyclops charm, I guess it was.

(I guess it was.)

S.

{Photo: Flickr Dan Mountford}

Constellations.

Will you take me to where the stars are brightest,
one more time?
Where they touch down and make their homes
upon your soul? 
Because I tried to memorize how our bodies moved
and how rocks felt against clothes-less feet 

But time carried me away before memories were sealed
So, now, I move in clumsy circles
stubbing bare toes on harshest pavement.

Have all the constellations fallen down,
A giant flood of unclaimed wishes
Followed by pure darkness?
Because I'm trying to explain the lack of freckles in
These barren night expanses, and 
Heaven refuses answers. 

Will you lead me back through blackened roadways
So I can show you to the place
I lost my heart.

S.

{Photos: (c) 2012 Thomas V. Davis}

Wayward noise.

You want to cry aloud for your mistakes.
But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.

by Mary Oliver

{Photo: Flickr 陳雪梨}  

Prompt.

Priorities 

Seven hours ago the clock stopped its rhythmic onward movements and paused awhile to admire the sun hovering over the water banks, the melody of the song birds floating above the forest pines, and the dance of the children on their daily march up the hill.

Not everyone noticed this rest of seconds. Carrying on, instead, as though the universe was not an alarming, and devastatingly lovely place. (A place so worthy of their simple attention.) Their schedules refusing to lend way to magnificence. 

And there it is: the tragedy of humankind. That one could pass by without breaking to applaud the world in its splendor; not reeling as all creation unfurls itself within our grasp. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr T.D. Smith}

3,000 miles

I was a far walk from home, yes. But you left first, I do believe. For every step that made our distance, my thoughts stood near to you, and yours danced away with the changing winds.

I could never tell you all the things I did to kill your memory. Or how each progressive thing only etched you deeper in my brain; a more drastic comparison to make. Much of who I was, I lost, trying to rediscover who you made me. Trying to find that comfort you handed out so easily, and too quickly stole away.

I lied through my teeth to hold close to a new "comfort". But it was an empty bed I made; an empty bed we laid in. And you would still be miles away when I would wake, sharing pillows with regret. 

Though through it all, I would make no thing different. Not your timing, not my naivety, not a moment of the heart-chaos, for the way you held me as you said goodbye. Arms wrapped tight as they used to; enough to ease my soul, enough to break me. 

I could not take a single change at the risk of just that memory. 

S.

{Photo: I Love Wildfox}

Irregular Beating.

Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger 

for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.

Edgar Allan Poe

{Photo: Flickr Lack Of}