no .

you hurt me with twisted meanings and
half-formed confessions

with ripping out words from my mouth and
spitting them back; ugly, gruesome, deformed

you are not kind, or soft, or forgiving or
capable of imagining the intricacies of another human heart

you are rash and unyielding and
i hoped i would never have to meet your eyes again

but you've pushed back in and
made me feel small in the places i once felt strong

you have no right standing in my sunlight and
casting me in shadow

but i find myself weak in your dark and
there's a two letter word i can never seem to force out from behind my teeth
when you come near

S.

{Photo: Peta Clancy Works}

Dear Moon

          We blame you for floods
          for the flush of blood
          for men who are also wolves
          and even though you could pull
          the tide in by its hair
          we tell people that we walked all
          over you
          we blame you for the nights
          for the dark
          for the ghosts
          you cold unimaginable thing
          following us home,
          we use you
          to see each others frail
          naked bodies beneath your blue light,
          we let you watch; you
          swollen against the glass
          breathe a halo of steam
          as we move against one another
          wet and desperate
          like fish under
          a waterlogged sky

by Warsan Shire

{Photo: via We Heart It}

art .

You're trapped somewhere between my longing and forgetting
A half-memory, half-god
An exhausting mix of emotions
That never tire of being felt.

I am a dwarf to the lie of you
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a dirt-road town
While you are Michelangelo's David.
Unforgotten through the eras.

But you don't exist in real time -
In solid proof between my fingers.
Just in half sketched drawings
And conversations recalled in so many different ways they might not have happened at all.

I think, more than having you,
I need to shrink you down into a manageable size.
Because no one ever has to think about
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a town 600 miles away.

S.

{Photo: Clara Román 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}

semantics .

"And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts."

André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

{Photo: P.H. Fitzgerald, 46/60)

dawn .

i lay on the roof beside him
watching the stars fade
as the sun made its ascent
into the morning sky

and i wondered where you were
and how it was that you became so far from me

i wondered whether i'd ever know you again
the way i once did -
when i could read your glances and your quiet
better than anyone else's voice

i wondered if you could still locate
the star you called by my name,
and still find the one
i picked for you

and as i raced down that rooftop
in the ripeness of the early day
i wondered if one day i could climb onto building-tops
or trace out constellations
without, also, wondering after you

[you, who still rules my heavens.
you, who still rules my heart.]

S.

{Photo: Leigh Ellexson 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}

there was a boy

whose touch felt like heartbeats, deep and fierce  –
strong enough to loosen their bony cage.

whose voice was an open window in a thunderstorm  –
surging through the heaviness of earth wind and fire.

whose body was the stones of Pompeii –
still standing, after everything.

whose stare was a handgun in a purse – 
unassuming and treacherous 
all at once.

there was a boy whose skin felt like the last page of a novel – 
inked with story. inked with finality.
(we get no sequel here). 

S. 

{Photo: Alatoran: 24/31}

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}

on the thing that's missing now .

something

lacked
beneath her skin
the
girl
that
let the lion
in.
she played a game
she couldn't
win.
she had a heart
but
it
caved
in.

by j.s. (insomniiatic)

{Photo: Viola Cangi Flickr}