Perhaps when she looks at you
and she smiles
and says "I'm okay"
she is saying
the most
b
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t
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l
*lie

i speak out to those who feel what i feel

i speak for the quiet ones,
those that feel alone and scared and want to fall into space

i speak for the hopeless lovers, left alone in hotel rooms
to cry on the cold tile floor

i speak out for the people that i know cannot
speak out anymore, their voice box broken amongst the shatters of their heart

i speak out for the failures, for the ones who feel a blow
from their mind when they disappoint someone else yet again

i speak out for the ones that cannot let go of
memories that intertwine every delicate vein in their chests

and i speak out for the lost lovers so buried under
burdens that they are left to scurry for their own form of substance in the empty room around them

i speak out for all of them and those in between--the silent ones, the ones whose
words have never been quieter and minds have never been louder

maybe you fell in love with my smile first even though I hate it, because when you told me I was beautiful it was the first time I smiled in a long time

and maybe you fell in love with my eyes next, because they're a new level of intensity - a new level of madness

and maybe you fell in love with my words last, because those late night whispers were just what you needed when your world was crashing down before you

----------------------------------------------------

maybe you started to hate my laugh first, because you realized most of the time it's fake and I'm not the happy person you need

maybe you began to let go of my hair next, because th knots tied too thickly around your fingers and that's not romantic, that's not ****

maybe you slowly started to despise my words later, because you began to let go of romantic gestures and left me alone to utter my poems in the dark

love changes


you're changing

sometimes things change and we can't control it
and sometimes it's easy to forget that we are only human beings,
incapable of preventing something inevitable.

but i do have to admit, it is a shame when you see someone
you really care about go through such pain
and such emotion and still pretend to be okay to you
because it is as if you are stuck in a box with no opening, and only
a little hole in the box will allow air to flow in.

at some point you don't even want to breath in the air
anymore. sometimes you would rather suffocate so you can forget
temporarily about everything. sometimes you would rather ignore
it all than notice it's there. maybe if you don't admit it to yourself
it isn't true.

but i have been through the "i'm fines" and i know
this isn't the case and no matter how many times you want to
say it, it will simply not come true. no matter how many times i claw at
my skin and the ground, no matter how many times i sigh and stoop my
head down, no matter how many times i cry, i cannot bring back
the month of november; i cannot redo my mistakes.

things have changed back then and circumstances change
and maybe you never did change because i created this perfect mold for you
and expected you would fit in it, but maybe it was my mold that was flawed,
not you. maybe i'm the one who changed, maybe i'm the one that
caused my own pain. that's what i think now, anyway.

i wish i could rewind the hands of time, and i wish that things were
the way they were on a nice autumn day. but they are not, and i have to learn
to accept change, and i have to learn to control my frustration with it
because maybe this was all for the better; i just don't know it yet.

you might be too emotional or too complicated or too caring or too thoughtful,
but know
that you are never
too impossible to love
no matter who's asked

true love isn't verbal communication and even though years and years of watching romcoms has taught me that, i've realised that love is quite the opposite of those hefty i love you's thrown at the end of phone calls and during early morning routines

love is passion. love is fire, pain, angst, and everything in-between. love is the way he looks at you in the middle of his meal and doesn't know how to react when you ask what. love is the way he kisses you harder than you've ever been kissed before in the middle of the dining hall because of the naive belief that maybe that kiss could replace the pain you felt at the time, love is grabbing skin and pulling lips and tightening grips designed to replace words so that maybe you can avoid saying love for a bit longer

love is finding myself in empty streets because i think i saw his reflection, running around in circles in my brain reaching the same **** conclusion that there is no escape route because your mind no longer wants to find one, telling myself that i'm beautiful and throwing in a i wish he could see me and feel proud of an award

but love is also learning to let go. love is telling yourself that perhaps it's better to let them go because somebody told me holding on the rope causes more pain than good and i've finally realised that after all maybe blood in the name of a beating heart isn't okay if spilt for nothing in twisted knots. love is being able to look each other in the eye and tell yourselves that history is history and that you need to move on because it's going nowhere and everywhere and neither of you are prepared for that right now. love is having the spark forever but choosing when to burn it, looking at them months later and seeing it again, deciding years later it's good it ended. love is finding them again in all corners of the world; finding all of them.

but most of all, love is accepting that love will come again.

i don't remember the first time i kissed you but i know for certain it was between when i last called him on the phone and when you took the bobby pins out of my hair and somehow in between that time frame i went from feeling my physical body shrink under the crushing weight of reality to feeling my heart start to rediscover its heartbeat before it completely stopped beating

i don't know when you first started to fall in love with her or when you last looked her in the eyes and decided that leaving would be near impossible to do but all i can say is that if you look at her the way i look at you then maybe i can understand you wanting to go back and i can understand that losing a friend might be worse than losing a lover, but just know that the sunrises we've greeted together will forever be etched in my mind
amidst telling me to be careful there are echoes of you're beautiful's and rooms full of laughter filled from tickles and silly eskimo kisses and even if we were doomed from the beginning and she has your heart entangled in a web strong enough to convince you to leave me know that the soundtrack of all those pink floyd albums we listened to together are always going to remind me of the endless nights we spent together when i was convinced no matter if everything around us burned down we would stay more alive than ever in the fire
i need to be honest with you - i've whispered to countless broken hearts that my eyes cannot reiterate anything others did and no matter how hard my body is squeezed i'll never be able to transform into her when they wake up in the morning, and sometimes i wish i could just because i know you would be happier than ever; maybe happier than i could ever make you; but that doesn't mean that i'll stop trying to make memories of the ashes from something long forgotten
i'll try to build a shelter in your heart to protect it from the storms, i'll try to make you strong enough to face the hail, i'll try to engrave my smile in your clothes so that you can remember we're all imperfect but sometimes even pros aren't faking it, i'll try to show you that hips were made for dancing together in the least likely places, and i'll try to get over my fear of being picked up, i'll try to learn to trust, i'll try to remember that not everyone lies and that maybe, maybe it'll be okay

maybe it wasn't a mistake when our lips clashed together like the way the tide crashes into the sand 46 days ago, maybe it wasn't a coincidence that your couch felt more like my home than my bedroom did, maybe it's not a mistake to give this a try

but, maybe

maybe it is

I hate that feeling
at the pit of my stomach
when I know I've
done something terribly
wrong

I hate that feeling of
impending doom
when it is just
expected that something
like this will happen
and it is no
surprise

I have a feeling that this won't end well
but something inside me keeps pushing me forward
and I catch myself looking forward to your texts and your presence
to your smile and your complaining

i realize i look at you the way that they all do now,
that long list of girls that admire that smile

but i look with a tint of concern too when i know that you're hiding things
and you don't want to say them but they weigh on your shoulders more
than your backpack

i also realize i don't want to begin anything again
because anything now will be half-assed
and will just cause more pain than anything else

but when she hugged you today it bothered me in a way that only i can say
and when she talked to you today and when they all talk to you
and you respond with effortless smiles and pay them all
mind and joke around about how the timing is all off for them to talk
i secretly wish that they could all go away because they are a reminder
that this shouldn't happen again

i remember the first day we really talked. it didn't take long for me to seep through the your interior and wish that you would soak all of me into that passionate heart of yours.

you made me laugh harder than i had in a while - a genuine laugh, a genuine smile. she joked around about whether we were becoming best friends or not. we both laughed it off, but my eyes gave it away anyway.

i remember strike one and i had no idea your heart was elsewhere and you had no idea hers was too. i was in denial. there was no way that this would happen again, the whole liking thing hasn't been going all too well for me and i wanted to keep my promise that i would not hurt myself again.

but the power of your sympathy and the radiance of your eyes kept me in place.

i stood motionless in your shadow for a while, until you slowly opened up to me and whatever quality you saw in me back then that you deemed worthy enough to lower some of your mask to. and i was so willing to take that mask and throw it on the floor, but you made sure that i could not do that without grabbing some of mine too.

i got to feel the delicacy of your presence; i understood what girls raved about. and i thought i would be different - the girl who broke the barrier to get to your heart and take it away. but i was wrong and there's nothing i can do about it.

my emotions hit me harder than the tiles in my bathroom floor that i hit knowing that you wanted to be completely and utterly with someone else. knowing that everything i interpreted was analyzed wrong and that nothing meant anything to anyone but me.

and i tried so **** hard to get back up again and i finally did but i can't last months and weeks were enough to send me crumbling down again, this time taking you with my fall. and i thought that there was something. i think that there is something. but something is defined differently by everyone and my luck hasn't been all too great for it to contain a positive connotation.

and now, emotional breakdown number three has yet to hit me but i can feel it coming down the tracks of my mind like a freight train containing in it all of my regrets and a gun to shoot down all of my confidence. and i swear every day she gets more beautiful and i look in the mirror and see myself become uglier and uglier and i see you radiate more and more and i wish that i could say something and grab you here with me so that we can look at the constellations together and not speak but just feel our presence and not think and not over complicate things but i cant.

and i never will be able to.

you are the closest thing i think i have ever had to perfection

you are the cliche perfectly imperfect to me; you are the pathetic love story teenage infatuation boy who makes me smile more than i should when i think of you, the boy who makes me want to stay with him for the rest of the hours in the day, the boy who makes me wish i could stop time, the boy who makes everything feel right

you are what makes my day complete

your laugh, your eyes, the way you always smell like clean clothes, the fact that i have stuffed my head in your chest enough to know your scent, the way you're always warm, the way you do things just to make me smile, the fact that you always continue the conversation even when we have nothing else to say, the way you say my name when you're concerned, the way you hug me, the way you just touch my hair, the way it falls back from your touch as paralyzed as i am

you are more than just a boy

you are my 4am thoughts, you are my 2am thoughts, you are my thoughts all the time, you are the lead in my pencil, you are what forces me to write, you are why i look forward to the mornings, you are the reason i dont study and cant sleep, you are the reason i want to sleep, you are why i constantly stay on my computer during class, you are what fuels motivation, you are the only boy i cannot lie to, you are the only boy i have never wanted to lie to, you are the only boy i have ever thought was this worth fighting for...

there is an invisible barricade*

sometimes i stand in a pocket of space with you where it just feels right, where everything seems to melt away, where i go home and listen to songs and just think about you, and hear the words "we might be dead by tomorrow" constantly from my computer speakers, telling myself that one day i will send you that song so you can understand that today is for today because there may not be a tomorrow and yesterday has already gone, but i know that deep down i can never get you to understand this

your presence lingers far after you leave

when you walk away i don't want you to; i've never wanted you to. it sounds ridiculous but your presence makes me happy and i don't understand it but i just understand that i like the feeling and i don't want that feeling to end, and when you leave it does end, but you seem to stay in my memory for a long time after that

i am frustrated

i am frustrated with how much i happen to like you, with how much you impact me and how happy you make me, because this puts me out of my element, and i am frustrated that there seems to be so much potential between us, there seems to be so much happiness, i know things about you no one does, remember? and i will always be willing to learn more because i do not want to stop learning more; i learn more about you everyday...

i am scared, too

the prospect of whatever this is that we have, whatever you want to call it, scares me too, because that means that we have to sacrifice a friendship in the name of something better, knowing that it may end. but i am willing to drop everything and sacrifice it all for this, and i know that deep down you are too, and i know that right now if you ever see this you will say i do? and i will respond, gently, with a you do, because sometimes things mean something more than what we think they do, or they mean more than we are willing to admit them to

when will the barricade fall

let me perform a coup d'etat on your heart, let me break down the remnants of previous love and pain and let me build my own wall there, myself, one that you and i will stabilize throughout time, together. let me let your guard down, let me let you finally fall on a cushion, let me be the person there at 4am, let me be the one there in your worst moments and your best, during summer nights watching the sunset, during winter nights when the dark encompasses everything and everyone

Where do I go from here?
Where do I go from all the effort,
all the emotions, all the thoughts,
all the dreams, all the wishes,
all the poems, all the hints,
all the implications?

Where do I go from this moment in time,
from waking up every morning wishing
you were mine?

Where do I go from these heart beats,
these sweaty palms,
these nervous laughs,
this inability to be calm?

Where do I go? Do I tell you I'm lost?
I'm confused, I'm bewildered,
and I think I can see the cost.

Can you tell me where to go?
I don't want to find my own way.
I'm waiting for you to show,
just waiting for the day.

I don’t know what I am yet;
I don’t know what I’m meant to be.
Do I change the world on step at a time,
or do I have evil in me?

I don’t know what I am yet,
I don’t know how to find,
That little piece within my soul,
I feel like I’ve left behind.

I don’t know what I am yet,
I don’t know how to change,
The thoughts that engulf my mind,
A continuing whirlpool I can’t rearrange.

I don’t know what I am yet,
But I do know one thing,
When I’m in my darkest moments,
I have something to cling.

I don’t know what I am yet,
But neither do you or you,
And I welcome your mind to the manifestation,
Which is only felt by few.