I think a part of you felt
That if you kept hurling stones
Eventually I’d use them to build a wall
And shut you out…

Is sadness just another precious thing you have given to me?

Possibly the worst feeling
Is to know you did your best
But even then, it was not enough

So I find myself becoming bitter
You might ask why
For if I were merely sweet,
This pain would have eaten me already

Regret?
We were not well acquainted until just recently
I sit with regret and we speak,
Of wants and wishes,
Of too little, too late.

Mostly we sit in silence,
Because you did not meet the best version of me

The heart dies twice—

First when we realize the world is neither as kind nor good as we once believed

The second comes when we are incapable of believing it to be either

The first is borne from necessity

The second serves no further purpose than to illustrate tragedy…

When you say my name, your voice drips with venom

You cringe at the bitter taste as it rolls off your tongue

When I try to speak your name it becomes heavy in my throat

Stealing away my breath as I churn at the very thought of you

“Some day I will write poems about this but first I must survive it.”

Give yourself permission to survive.

This is how art is made.

In the same way Van Gogh painted his Starry Night from the window of an asylum—

It was the safety of the cell,
And not his insanity,
That lifted the brush.

Never apologize for your art.

We cling to loss
Not because we want them back
But because we drown in the emptiness
That comes with it.

So many words unsaid
Places never reached
Memories we wish to erase

For love?
For love I would do anything
I love in the same way the oppressed go to war
It is never in half measures

Loving you was like spilled glitter.
Trying so hard to clean it up,
But traces of it remain everywhere.
Spreading into every part of my being
And just when I think it's finally gone,
I find a little bit in cracked corners of my heart

Treat my heart like your home
Decorate its walls
Invite your friends
Make it yours like I long for it to be

I don’t write for you
I don’t even write for me
It’s to make sense of the chaos
To greet each terror by name

I want to paint a neat narrative
Give it substance and form
Curse it with the burden of a name
Maybe then, it will make sense

It’s easy to convey pain
Difficult to transform it into art—

Here is how I hold the pen
Here is how the pen holds me
Here are my thoughts,
Over-steeped in empty fervor  
Here is everything and nothing

Even apart,
I have not felt disconnected from you

It is a language I do not understand

Maybe we’ve met before, spent a lifetime together

An eternity passed under the sun

Isn't it remarkable, the way we can know ourselves by knowing others?

I have picked through my remains

And found pieces of you

I look at you and find myself.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

I have loved her more desperately than any god.

I speak of a heaven that only exists when she is near.

She is not made from my rib or my flesh — she is my very soul.

If she ever leaves the place in my chest I’ve now named hers,

I will lock the doors, pull the blinds,

But I will not turn out the light,

So that she can find her way back home.

Is love made meaningless in impermanence?

No, no more than anything else

Still, the world is awash with reasons not to love

I am not convinced by a single one

I tell the night my secrets
And make love to the moon
I write letters to the stars
In the hopes they make it to you

Some day we’ll all be a little older
A little more weathered and restored
We’ll wake up and all this poetry will finally make sense.
Like a locked drawer underneath our ribs,
Fortuitously pried open by storm.

I think the most insidious thing you could do
Is stab someone close to you
Then tell them their pain and anguish
Is the reason you weep

Endings in real life come suddenly,
Often without warning or making sense

I’ve never liked this

One day you wake up only to realize,
It was all a very long time ago
And we are different people

There is no closure
No neat narrative,
To wrap it all up

It is the ancient, absent god, seldom spoken of in hushed whispers among certain literary circles.

Sustained by the fervent prayer of a single solemn supplicant.

Chapped palms raised with the melancholy and mettle of a man who has nothing left to lose.

When the sweet and sublime have passed, I still believe in love as though its existence would cease should I stop.

What do you do when you lose a soul mate?

Not necessarily the romantic type but the judgement-free, kindred spirit.

The one whose soul seemed to understand the fabric mine was made from. That whatever hand knit the fabric of your existence and whichever thread was used to weave your destiny in the world, perhaps brushed against the thread used to stitch mine together.  

I thought that I was yours,
And you mine.

Our threads so perfectly entangled,
That only the sharpest of instruments could separate. And even if we had been careful or courteous, surely it would have nicked our hearts.

Perhaps there exists no thread of life or fate strong enough to stitch us back together.

What would you have me do then?
Which groups exists to support those like us? Are songs written for those like us?

We were not broken up with or cheated on even though it has left us feeling broken and cheated.

What reparations should I make when something has been irreversibly damaged? Who will be left to clean up these pieces?

Who would write a tragedy like this?

You shine,

Like the buckle of Orion’s belt,
Like the intertwined wrists of Castor and Pollux

Two soulless constellations locked within solar flare and interstellar disconnect.

I wonder if you shine because comets trail from your eyes

Or if maybe you are trying to catch the gaze of Orpheus, whose love for Eurydice is dampened by the glow of your smile

Who am I in other peoples stories?
Am I the ripped out page?
The crumpled drawing?
Thrown away after it didn’t turn out right.

To me, I keep the melancholy chapters
And leaf through the bittersweet and loss
Looking for the substance or lesson
Hidden between the rot and the rust.

A sad ending doesn’t make it unworthy of reading.