You trace the lines of yourself like a map you don’t want to follow,

marking the places you wish were different,  
the curves you want sharper,

the softness you wish would disappear.  

You stand in front of the mirror,

tilting your head, narrowing your eyes,

as if looking hard enough will turn you into something else.  

I watch you.

I watch the war inside you.

And I want to break every mirror in this world

so you only ever see yourself through my eyes.  

Because if you did,

you would see what I see.

You would see a body sculpted from quiet chaos,

a face that rewrites beauty every time you breathe,

a shape that was never meant to fit into anything but the space it already fills.  

You would see a storm wrapped in silk,

a universe too vast to be contained by skin,

a masterpiece that does not need correcting.  

But you don’t.

You don’t, because you have been taught to measure yourself in flaws.

Taught to carve yourself down until there is nothing left but what the world wants.

Taught to shrink.

Taught to erase.

But I am here.

And I refuse to let you disappear.  

So let me show you.  

Let me show you the way your eyes hold galaxies when they catch the light just right.  

The way your skin sings beneath my hands,  

the way your lips curve like poetry before it’s even spoken.  

Let me show you the beauty in every scar,
  
every inch of flesh you’ve learned to hate,
  
every part of you that has carried you this far.  

Let me trace your body with my fingertips until you understand

this is art.

This is perfection without the lie.

This is flawless, not because it is free of imperfection,

but because it was never meant to be anything else.  

Let me love you until you have no choice but to believe it.

Until my hands rewrite every cruel thing you’ve ever told yourself.

Until you stand in front of the mirror and see what I see.  

Not a question.

Not a flaw.

Not a mistake.

But a miracle.

"What are you thinking about?" they ask.

"Nothing." I say.

Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.

But nothing has a name,
 and it curls on my tongue like a prayer I am too afraid to speak.

Nothing is the weight pressing against my ribs,
 the static behind my eyes,


the hands I reach for in dreams only to wake up clawing at the empty sheets.

Nothing is the hum in my bones when the world goes quiet.


The shadow behind my every thought.


The ghost in my periphery that never fades.

I carry her like a sickness with no fever.


Like a hunger that will not break.


Like a whisper that loops and loops and loops


until I cannot tell where she ends and I begin.

And still, they ask me—
"What are you thinking about?"

And still, I say—
"Nothing."

But what they do not understand,
 what they will never understand,
 is that Nothing is constant.


Nothing is endless.

Nothing is mine,

but not yet.

Not yet.

God, not yet.

And it is unbearable.

Because Nothing is in my bloodstream.


Nothing is in my lungs.


Nothing is the pulse behind my teeth
 when I bite down too hard trying to keep her from spilling out.

Nothing is the way my words slip sideways,
breaking, bending, coming undone in all the wrong places.

Nothing is the reason I lose track of time,


the reason my thoughts tangle,


the reason I can stand in a crowded room and still feel


alone.

I could scream.

I could tear my own mind apart just to carve her out of it,
 but I know I would only find more of her buried beneath.

So I wait.

I wait.

I sit in the silence and let Nothing fill me.


I live in the space between now and someday,


where she is not yet mine,
 but will be.

And when they ask me again—


"What are you thinking about?"

I will smile.


And I will lie.

"Nothing."

I can be anyone you want,  
darling,  

I can shift, I can bend,

I can—  

I can break.

Oh, I can break.  

But right now—

right now—

right now I need to be your lover.  

Not a stranger,

not a shadow,

not a

MAYBE ONE DAY…

I need to be the breath in your lungs,

the static under your skin,

the ache in your bones when you wake up too fast and swear you felt me there.  

I was…

But time is a cruel, slow god  
and patience is a cage with rusted bars
  
and I

I

I

am losing myself inside it.  

I can see it.

I can see

US

Not in fragments, not in fleeting dreams,

not in—
  
SOMEDAY

But in a life with walls and windows and hands that don’t let go.

In a world where waiting is over and we don’t bleed for time anymore.

Where I am yours without a clock between us.  

But not yet…

NOT YET

Not yet, so I stay.
Not yet, so I hold.  
Not yet, so I swallow

the madness and let it simmer in my gut

until it kills me from the inside out.  

I do not know how to be patient when the future already belongs to me.

I do not know how to be sane when you exist in a time I cannot touch.

I do not know how to be whole when half of me is waiting for you.  

My hands shake when I write your name.
  
My thoughts slip like loose threads,
  
unraveling,

twisting,

spelling things backwards—

See?

Se?

Ees?

But they all mean the same thing.  

I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you

and you are not even mine yet.

Yet.  

Yet.  

YET..

I can be anyone you want, darling,  
I can wait, I can hold, I can burn,  
I can wear patience like a noose and call it devotion,

I can

I can

I can

BUT IT HURTS…

God, it hurts.  

But you are worth every second

I have built a shrine to you in my ribs,
lit candles behind my teeth,
burned every whispered thought like incense
and let the smoke of you fill my lungs.

But you don’t see it.
You don’t feel the weight of my hands
pressed together in silent prayer,
offering devotion to a god that does not answer.

You move like gravity,
pulling me in,
holding me just close enough
to taste what I will never touch.

I know this is not love.
Love is given, love is known, love is a bridge.
This is something else—
a ghost, a sickness, a dream that refuses to die
no matter how many times I wake up.

I have dissected every glance,
read scripture in the way you say my name,
built entire galaxies
out of the empty spaces between us.

You don’t know what it’s like
to live inside a story
that only plays in my head.

You don’t know what it’s like
to have your name carved into the marrow of my bones
where even time cannot touch it.

You don’t know what it’s like
to starve for a love that does not exist.

And still—
I keep the shrine.
I light the candles.
I kneel.

Because limerence is nothing
if not the worship of something
that was never real.

I have run barefoot through the gravel of my past,


let it tear at my soles,


let it whisper that love was a road meant only to wound me.

"I lost you."


Somewhere between the echoes and the empty spaces,


between the nights that stretched too long
 and the mornings that never brought you back.

I have sprinted through storms that cracked the sky open,


lightning lacing my ribs,


thunder pressing its heavy hands against my chest.

"I chased you."


Through rain that washed away the footprints,


through roads that led everywhere but home.

I have crawled through deserts of silence,


tongue thick with unsaid prayers,


sandpaper promises bleeding dry from my lips.

"I need you."


Not as a whisper,

but a cry.


Not as a choice,

but a gravity,

pulling me forward even when my legs don’t want to move.

And then—

there you are.


Standing at the edge of the horizon,


bathed in a light that turns pain into purpose.

"I choose you."


Because love is not just about running,


not just about wanting.


It is about choosing—again and again,


even when the road is unkind.

You are not a mirage.


Not a fleeting victory,


not a ribbon to break through and forget.

You are the breath I’ve been chasing,


the gold I have burned for,


the line I would cross again and again,


even if the journey shattered me.

Because what is struggle,


if not the proof that something is worth reaching?


What is endurance,


if not the language of love spoken in every aching muscle,


every ragged breath?

"I reach you."


At last.


At the end of every broken road,


at the edge of every impossible dream.

Let the miles stretch long,


let the night swallow the road whole—


I will keep moving.

Because you—


"I reach you."


You are the final step that makes the journey worth it.


You are the banner I break through,


the arms I collapse into,


the finish line of every dream I have ever dared to chase.

The space between us is not just miles—  
it’s the ache in my ribs when I breathe,  
the way my hands forget their purpose  
without the weight of your hips to hold.  

I am a house with no windows,  
a room where the light refuses to stay.
  
The world feels like a poorly written script—  
everyone else is laughing, but I can’t find the joke.  

I want to kiss you so badly it feels like a crime,  
like the universe has locked your lips in a glass case  
and hung a sign that says Do Not Touch.
  
But I would break every rule,  
shatter every law of physics,  
just to feel the warmth of your mouth on mine.  

I miss the way your voice wraps around my name,  
how it sounds like a prayer I didn’t know I needed.
  
I miss the way your laughter spills into the room,  
a symphony I’d trade my silence for in a heartbeat.  

I want to marry you—  
not in the way they show in movies,  
with the white dress and the perfect vows,  
but in the way that feels like coming home,  
like finding the missing piece of a puzzle  
I didn’t even know I was solving.  

Without you, the world is a grayscale film,  
a song played on a broken piano.
  
I am a shadow of myself,  
a half-finished poem  
waiting for your hands to write the ending.  

Come back to me.

Or let me come to you.
  
Let me close this distance,  
this unbearable, infinite space  
that feels like it’s swallowing me whole.  

I am not whole without you.
  
I am not anything.

You left without saying goodbye.

Not a whisper, not a word, not even a reason why.

You could have said anything, perhaps told a lie,

But it would be better than nothing, a reason not to cry.

You thought yourself a footnote in the universe,

You were the spirit of my words, every line and every verse.

You taught me how to write,

How to take these feelings to colour from black and white.

You gave me everything, mostly your time,

While I gave you love and words that sometimes rhyme.

But everything I had was simply not enough,

Such that you left me in the dark and in the rough.

I understand that I made mistakes,

But in the recesses of my mind, a pathway paves,

Looking for reasons why you walked away,

From a home built for you, a place to stay.

I want to tell you that I love you, but the words are not there,

A heart once beating with no emotion to spare.

I hope you read these words I've written,

To find all the love yet to be given.

I hope these words inspire you to think,

For your name on my chest, in permanent ink.

This chapter will never come to an end,

For it is a chapter that only you and I could mend.

I found that I dislike sweet things
To save my tolerance for you
And your self obsessed syrup of supremacy

A love letter in milk
Raspberries
Ice and sugar

A sweetness unmatched
A hint of narcissism
In watching you try to taste
the sweetness that you are

An impossible possibility
Oh holy matrimony
A constant pursuit of Fool's Gold

Day in and day out
Textbook tenacity
Personified

But you drink,
And drink,
And drink

Try,
And try,
And try

With two milkshakes a day

Heartbreak in many ways is a small death, all the same.

A part of you dies when regret is born and you can never get it back while wondering what could have, would have or should have happened.

When your food tastes horrible and the colour fades from the world around you and you are left with what only feels like a fever dream. A low budget version of reality and the writers are all on leave.

Why does this happen? Even though we've seen this film before. Different actors on different days but we all imagine the same ending and we know that there is a plot twist at the end when things don't go the way we thought it would. The way we hoped it would.

Is it perhaps that our hopes and dreams are the leading cause of death? Might we all stop romanticising the idea that our lives are one of the greatest films of all time?

Oftentimes the greatest tragedy is not death but rather the fact that we choose to feel nothing at all. That somehow closing the tap is the answer. Turning off the TV so you don't have to see how it all ends.

Unplug the cables. Throw away the disc. Supress the feeling of wanting more. Out of sight out of mind.

But in order to die, one must live. And if the little death is inevitable, why not live like it isn't? What exactly do you have to lose that you haven't lost already?

Your hair is long and beautiful.

In all its darkness second to none and just a pinch of pure gold, seasoned perfectly to taste.

If it is not that then it is easily the ballerina of your finger dancing graciously around each strand in perfect harmony with the vibrations of the universe but only you and I know that you do this when you are deep in thought.

And I know to watch silently as a masterpiece is being created.

I look up at your eyes and I am quickly reminded of our first date, but I often remember it wrong, so maybe you can help me.

Sometimes I see a luscious field of green and the fresh soil through which our romance bloomed and in others, I see the universe, stars, and galaxies locked behind them of which mankind has yet to discover.

So etch my name in history once more for being the first man to float peacefully among your stratosphere.

In my enamor, I greatly appreciate your existence and for everything we have said and done to bring us to this exact moment.

At this moment, in your eyes and the poise of your hair, I am reminded of the stories we have yet to tell, and here’s to hoping that you will always be there to tell them with me.

Because you always had this enthusiasm for well-told stories and it would not be the same any other way.

The problem is that I was taught
to love God before I learned
to love myself.

I can only love that which looks like me because I have been made in the image of God
so I needed you to look like Him to look like me

so I could love you too.

Every love is a choice, I can love Him
as much as I love you because
I can choose to love you too.

I can say ‘I love you too’ because it is easier than saying ‘I love you’ directly.

We don’t truly know what love means

So I kiss the lips of a nihilist
because that is the love I learned to give.

I love you too but I love you, too.

You know the one?

Where I am walking a tightrope, hundreds of miles up in the air, between two oceans and my heavy body swaying violently from left to right as I am slowly losing my balance trying not to fall into the waters we used to wash away our sins.

I can feel the wind running wildly through my hair as I am looking down despite the cliché advice people tell you when they know you're afraid of heights.

But I can't help it.

I see you all the way down there, sweeping the floor of your empty living room because you refuse to keep any furniture. That's where you and I cross our legs in silent protest against those who think floors were made only for standing.

Our little sandbox. Where you and I talk like we get paid weekly to do so. That's probably why you keep them so clean.

You say 'Maybe' a lot.

I think 'Maybe' is this little alternate universe shaped like a handbag where we shovel all the things we don't feel like dealing with after your morning coffee.

Maybe that's why we're so happy.

You don't even like coffee. You just like what it does to your body. You take your milk and sugar with coffee.

While our time together may be a happy memory to look back on, I'm wildly distracted by mother nature laying waste to my hair as if I didn't just spend a whole 45 minutes getting it just right.

It's cold up here.

I finally lost my balance. Simply because you looked up at me and smiled and in so doing, balloon on the loose, there I went.

And now I am met with a mouthful of salt.

All I give you are middle fingers like ornaments, gifts for you to only look at and you smile anyway, you smile for the both of us because I am hiding mine and you know how bad I am at doing that.

Luckily you taught me how to swim.

Letting go is accepting that something better is waiting for you on the other side.

It's realising that the person who, you hope, will take a bullet to the chest for you is actually the one behind the gun,

Even though you still have time to jump out the way you find yourself debating wether you even want to.

See, we very quickly forget that closeness is a lot more hurtful and damaging than we lead ourselves to believe.

It’s the valentines day morning in the kitchen alone with a cup of coffee, in your pink fluffy robe, fervently reminding yourself that the only love that matters is the one you give yourself yet you know that is a complete load of ****.

It feels cold outside but it’s really not, that’s just you.

You used to be my pink skies and cotton candy clouds but now everything is grey, rainy and miserable.

And it makes me want to cry.

We're going in a different direction now and I am not the one who pulled the steering wheel.

I no longer see my open fields flooded far and wide with cherry blossoms and all the green sparrows have flown away.

They are crying now and I can no longer hear your voice.

Instead, it is all a barren wasteland. And the sand is not even at least the beautiful orange the Sahara desert always is.

All the portraits in my castle have gone blank. The castle itself, war torn, brought down to rubble as a result of the battle I fought within myself.

I may have lost the battle but I have not yet lost the war. I hope.

Unfortunately, our worlds did not collide as subtly as I had prayed. It was a violent mishap, an event outside of time.

I sit silently and alone in the centre of my dreams as I have witnessed them being violently washed away by ocean waves with my hands tied and bound by my admiration for you.

You like beaches right? That has to mean something, maybe a reason for you to stay a little longer.

You are my Dystopia.

But dystopia is subject to interpretation.

And what is yours will never be mine and what is mine you do not even want at all.

My dystopia sounds like it belongs in a book, but we all know how long that lasts.




*Be sure to check out Utopian Dystopia Pt. 1!

She said to me:

"Don't you wanna go on an adventure?"

Literally seconds before taking the wrong turn.

I always remembered our car rides for everything they were not.

Trips down to the convenience store felt like driving down the highway at a hundred miles per hour,

With a view of the entire cosmos to our left.

They felt like driving through the night only to watch the sunrise pollute the ****** sky with it's pink and gold hue of sheer contentment.

It is looking up at the sky to find the purest of cotton candy clouds.

And for some reason, I always picture you trying to take a bite out of them.

If this is what a trip to the convenience store feels like then I can only dream of what Route 66 holds.

On our adventures I catch myself looking at you with joy in my eyes,

I want to say something but I do not know what.

All I know is that I am glad you were in the passenger's seat.

You are my pink skies with candy floss clouds

My open fields flooded far and wide with cherry blossoms

and green feathered sparrows singing tunes of your favourite songs that sound kinda-something-sorta like your voice,

The walls in my castle populated perfectly with portraits of you

and you already know portraits are my favourite.

Somehow my imagination bound beautifully with my reality such that I could tell no difference.

You are my Utopia.

But utopia is subject to interpretation.

You like candy floss occasionally, pink is not your favourite colour and I do not even know what your favourite flower is

Without forgetting to mention, you prefer beaches.

You like puns, peaches, foxes and fairies but my world has none of that, I want to accept those but you will not have it any other way.

I want our worlds to collide but in a more subtle way, but when that kinda thing happens it is almost always apocalyptic

So, what is yours will never be mine and what is mine you do not even want at all.

My utopia sounds like it belongs in a book, but we all know how long that lasts.




*Be sure to check out Utopian Dystopia Pt. 2!

At this point I am so disconnected from myself

that if one day I ever decided to take my own life

it would be premeditated ******.

The countless midnights I've spent with tears running down my cheeks,

Wishing you were next to me and I trying to imagine the tender touch of your palms against mine,

I sit here madly in love with you but I'm wishing I could unlove you,

If only one could fall out of love as fast as one plummets into it,

But gravity only pulls downward.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

But roses aren't really red they're kinda this weird shade of apple

And violets are far from blue, they're actually purple

See these are the lies we tell ourselves so the rest of our stories make sense,

Like I keep telling myself that "I love you's" are best said in twos

But I think the chances of that these days are about as good as trying to find a violet that's actually blue so

In that case

Roses are apple

Violets are purple

Good luck trying to finish that one

Because my "I love you's" are lonesome.

You ain't ever gonna know what it's like

Watching painfully from a distance

Your story as a romance film

Where I am both the writer and the viewer

But someone has taken away my pen

And put your film on rerun

Not knowing how painful it is to watch.

Oh Father, if this is hell then show me the way so I may absolve my sins and wash away this punishment.

Amen.

We will carry this silence between us

And let the atmosphere tell our story

Because we both know we won't.

I love you is too generous for you

And I hate you is too permanent for me

And we've both agreed there's no in between.

So we will carry this silence between us.

As the atmosphere tells our story

Where we will both be waiting

For one of us to break the silence.

I was not your cup of tea

you said, as I begged you just to take one sip.

You would walk into her room to find an awful mess. All the stars in the universe laid across her bedroom floor as she had plucked them one by one unsatisfied with every purchase.

No wonder I didn't see any stars last night.

I found her curled up on her bed crying. She said nothing was wrong with the most beautiful smile on her face simultaneous to her tears flowing like graceful Nile river wannabes.

You could see her pain. She was really ****** when it came to hiding it.

Sometimes you'd be looking straight into the eyes of pain, but you'd momentarily fall in love because it's so beautiful.

Despite her pain and her messy *** room there were days where she loved herself more than anyone else. And those days were frequent.

And on those days you could see how truly beautiful she is. It's like God took much longer when he made her, kinda like he was finessing her design.

I told her exactly that once and she replied:

"He made me weirdly pretty I think, like not normal pretty. Weird pretty. Idk."

She drew mindlessly.

Her pen gliding across her page like a figure skating demonstration.

So smooth, and precise but most importantly, beautiful.

No one ever really understood what she drew, an erratic and wild display of imagination curvy, rigid and sharp.

Like her tongue.

She illustrated her mind for the world to see, she laid herself bare. I looked upon her wilderness and read it like poetry.

I wish I had the courage to open myself up the way she did. God, I fell in love with her poems.

Yet she hid her poetry among these pictures cryptic, where she turned her pages into metaphors.

She made mine look inferior.

So I fell in love with an artist.

But an artist who drew for another.

It’s been raining every single day for the past 21 years…

Every time I try and go outside, it’s always cold, grey and pouring with rain of the most substantial kind,

Everything looks just as sad and miserable as I do. I honestly can’t remember the last time it was ever sunny outside or even the last time I saw a colour other than grey.

I’ll be honest, there are some days where it’s just a light drizzle, and there are a few more colours than grey out, but everything is still wet and cold from the previous day that I just don’t want to bother.

Sometimes I’d begin to wonder how it’s even remotely possible for it to rain this much for so long. And even when it does stop raining for the night, everything sort of feels like there’s hope for tomorrow, but as soon as I wake in the morning,

more rain.  

I’ve come to explore my own house with the same curiosity of that which I wish to explore the world, but to me, the outside and the inside are one and the same because that’s all I’ve seen for the past 21 years.

I have tried to go outside while it’s raining, multiple times actually. At first, I think I can handle it, but then the water just starts to flood my shoes, my legs become heavy as does my clothes, and suddenly it feels like I’m walking around with twice as much weight as I should be.

I haven’t seen my friends in ages, they always tell me that I’m never around and I’ve been so distant. It’s like they can’t see the wet monsoon outside like I’m the only one experiencing it.

I’m truly beginning to think that all this rain is just a ‘me’ problem. I feel like I can go outside and just tell the rain to stop, it really feels like I could do that, and I’m pretty sure I remember one of my friends telling me the same thing.

But it’s not that simple.

It’s been like this for so long, everything around me has been destroyed by the water, the plants have all died, the wood in my house have begun to rot and there’s just too much damage that has been done. If the rain ever does stop, there’s so much to rebuild that it might as well rain forever and take the world with it.

Hi beautiful,

Love lives here, and we’ve got a room to spare.

Signed,
Forever Yours

You told me I wasn’t good enough.

I was the pile of spare change you’d never use because they were so low in value they made you feel cheap.

But there’s so much of me at once that I’m worth more than your hundred dollar bill.

The warm golden glow of the sun peeking so eagerly above the horizon at the crack of dawn,

when you can feel the warmth on your skin as you open the curtains for the first time in the morning,

it makes you tingle and your hairs stand on end

as the goosebumps lay land right the way down your spine.

You know that feeling right?

I hope you do.

When you look into the sky and there’s like five shades of orange and five shades of blue in the middle, a mix making magic and you take a moment to truly appreciate how ******* beautiful the sky is,

when your heart feels heavy and you know that weight is nothing but appreciation for the world.

You know that feeling right?

I hope you do.

I really, really hope you do,

‘Cause that’s what it feels like every single time she smiles.

Your quirks,

I like them.

Writing creates a paradigm.

Much like a camera, it is a paradigm that we can look through in order to see the world, or create one, from a different perspective.

I decided to step away from my art and look at the lens itself instead of looking through it.

What I found is that we are able to paint pictures with words, pictures that don’t exist and we can create artworks with those pictures that allow you to see them in the most magical way possible while knowing that each artwork is different and unique depending on the person that composes it.

It is being able to travel the world as we know it through symbols and letters while not moving an inch from where we are in time and lead ourselves to a beautiful yet twisted sense of duality.

Maybe it’s the feeling of godhood in creating life, worlds or even stories yet I am still human but I become a god outside of time.

I take my imagination and make it tangible.

They say actions speak louder than words but I am a writer and words are all I have. So, maybe one day, as these words drip from my fingertips they will find you and they will drown your thoughts with beautiful pictures and hopefully, you might just understand,

Why we write.

They say actions speak louder than words,

But there’s still a reason why the pen is mightier than the sword.

I felt lonely.

I felt it so strongly that I began to smell it, maybe that was just my decay or maybe that was just me,

No excuses.

I felt like the tortoise and the hare, except,

there was no tortoise and I was not the hare.

It was like watching the last star fade as the sun began to rise,

like watching the last light of hope leave, they left me for the passionate lover,

The lover I could never be.

I went to God for help but he just gave me the rope instead, and it was at that moment I realized,

God is dead.

And now I am too.

I imagine our lips replicating the palms of pilgrims, touching fervently with intent,

Passion

and Love.

A love for something that exists not with us,

but an epiphany, a space of mind within our own epistemological plane that you and I may dwell in,

together.  

As we fabricate a reality that exists within a space of time where it is weakened to time itself.

Our kiss is the extension of time, a creation of maddening and temporary immortality.

You and I become gods outside of time so, just like the palms of two blushing pilgrims ready stand, pray to me.

Pray to me.

And I’ll pray to you.

You were so good at origami.

You were able to fold these complex shapes and designs as if they were just exercises for you while I was okay at it, but yours were always better.

It seemed to come so easily to you and I had to try so hard, I tried to make mine as good as yours but they just wouldn't have it,

I think that's what I admired really,

the fact that you were so good that I aspired to fold simple pieces of paper as good as you, I think I fell in love with your art.

I ended up falling in love with the artist too.

But you always made them better than me.

If love is inferiority then I don't want it,

if loving you is comparing my origami to yours then I don't want it,

if my love for you fuels these words, then I don't want you reading them while you think of someone else.