They said we won’t work,

and I just think that’s stupid.

Hearts pick people, not places,

and it kills me that your place happens to be in the arms of another.

But it doesn’t mean I won’t love you like you live next door,

and it doesn’t mean it won’t be hard.

I’ve never missed someone so deeply who I haven’t actually lost,

and missing you is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.

Watching all the other couples share all of the small things—
like making you a warm cup of tea in the morning,

or falling asleep to the sound of your heartbeat,
 instead of a silent goodnight through the phone.

But it’s all worth it,
 in the moment I get to run into your arms,
 a place I call home.

It just drives me crazy, not being there with you,
 but it would be far worse to simply not be yours at all.

I will wait as long as it takes,
 I will fight as hard as you need,
 I will love you as much as I can,

because hard work and seven-hour plane flights 
are a small price to pay for the forever 
I can’t wait to spend with you.

Loving you is like saying,

"I'm alive."

Maybe we just weren't meant to be.

But that's okay.

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.

The passage of time is a funny thing.

A cheeky little devil.

Convincing us that somehow it's out of our control.

But maybe it's not control we desire,

Perhaps it's the fact that it leaves us behind.

That one day we will just be a footnote in orbit.

Left nothing to memory but a tombstone.

And even then that fades.

The passage of time is a funny thing.

A cheeky little devil.

Makes you think that life is short,

When you actually have all the time in the world.

Maybe we just wanted to be kids for a little longer.

Watch the sunset for one more hour.

Feel a romance that lasts a lifetime.

But a lifetime is all we have.

A lifetime bound by consequence neither good nor bad.

Maybe we just pretend that this all ends.

We know it does but let's acknowledge it for once.

Tell her you love her.

Stay outside a little longer.

Take bigger breaths.

Sleep a little later.

For this all ends.

The passage of time is a funny thing.

A cheeky little devil.

For making you think you have none at all.

A commodity outside of manufacture.

But you have all the time in the world.

And the devil can't tell you otherwise.

It takes 20 seconds to make a decision,

That will turn your life upside down.

But it might be the best you've ever made.

Yet you held back because of fear.

Because you looked at the time already spent.

So don't waste a minute longer.

And just kiss her, you fool.

Because the passage of time is a funny thing.

A cheeky little devil.

So don't let it control you.

I never planned on falling for you,

Or feeling joy when I usually prefer being sad.

The way I see all the details you quickly forget,

The constant pain in my cheeks from smiling too much,

I never planned this at all but I want more.

They always said there was more to life,

But I never believed it until I met you.

You're the "more" and you brought the "life" with you,

And I wonder if you're fatigued at all,

From running through my mind at all times.

And now I find myself dreaming with my eyes open,

Of what it feels like to have your skin touch mine,

Or what our life will be like a few years from now.

I never planned on falling for you,

Or wanting to be better so I feel worthy of you.

I never wanted to open up the way you inspired me to,

But I knew it on the day you showed me the stars,

And I fell for you because they looked like your eyes.

I fell from grace in trying to land among the stars,

But now that I've fallen I just hope you'll catch me.

With your soft and sweet hands,

wrap them around me,

And tell me you've been waiting,

Because I never planned on falling for you.

It finally happened.

The moment we both waited for.

Like two blushing pilgrims ready stand,

To smooth a rough touch with a gentle kiss.

For saints have hands,

that pilgrims hands do touch.

It's the way I felt when I kissed you,

For the first time.

In my bones running fire,

My soul returning to water.

You stole the air from my lungs,

Only to breathe life back into me.

Like every part of me I thought buried,

Awoke with the touch of your lips.

You felt it too.

Yeah you I'm talking to you.

The weight lifting off of our shoulders,

For how long we've carried desire.

Oh dear Saint,

Let lips do what hands do.

What happened once,

The pilgrims pray for many more.

You are my deepest desire,

The source of my joy,

In your eyes I see my future,

my home

and the love of my life.

I will look for you in every lifetime,

And find you in all of them.

I vow to give you unwavering support,

Be your biggest cheerleader,

And your closest friend.

I promise to listen to you with an open heart,

To share in your dreams,

In your fears,

In your struggles

And in your victories.

I will make all of your wishes come true,

No matter how many sneakers it takes.

I commit to creating a life with you,

Full of love,

Full of respect

And boundless happiness.

I will speak only with a soft voice,

And I'll remind you every day

That you are the most beautiful woman alive.

You are my everything,

In this life and the next,

I vow to love you for all that you are.

One day I will wake up to find you
next to me, only an arms length away.

Feeling the touch of your warm embrace,
First thing in the morning.

The first light of sunshine will touch your face,
And set those eyes of yours on fire.

Your sleepy smile,
Knowing that you look for me even then.

Our mornings will be full
Of our famous whispered words.

Your tender kisses
And the safety of being in each other's arms.

The whole world outside will wait for us,
In that moment, we are all that matters.

I long for the day we share long and loud breakfasts,
While we laugh about all the mistakes we made.

Every day starts with the simple joy of being with you,
But that is nothing more than a dream.

I hold this dream close,
Knowing every day we get a little closer.

But all that is nothing more than a dream,
A distraction from this destructive life.

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

The absence of love makes you think about every kind gesture.

The little touch of fingers,

The kindest smiles,

Random acts of love.

Looking for intimacy in the smallest spaces.

The need to find love in every little thing,

To make up for what you didn't have.

You don't ask for love.

You look for it everywhere.

Don't open the door.
The people outside sound nice
And they have chairs, tents, food,
Drink and more importantly, good company.

They say they care, they say they want to see you better
But it feels like a lie, it hurts more than they know,
It feels like deception, a plot to ruin you from inside.

It's probably true and it might be.
But we don't open the door.
We never open the door.
We let them stay outside because it's safer.

The house is a mess, everything is *****.
And they expect it to be clean.
They think you have it together,
They think it's so easy.

I never answer the door,
I don't want the company
And I don't want the sympathy.
It all needs to be left as it was.

The people are scary,
Their comfort hurts
And it makes me want to disappear
Because things won't change.

They say they want to help
But they can't, no one can.
It's me myself and I
Resisting the urge to die.

They don't know the story,
They don't have the time to listen,
But it's too much.
It's just too much.

The knocking doesn't stop.
And I'm never going to open,
Because if I do,
They will stay and I will leave.

So maybe it's a way out.

Like Oranges:

I peeled away the layers
To expose the deepest parts of you

I held in my hand the shape of you
In all your imperfections

And I knew then and there
that this was only the beginning.

Like Clockwork:

I will spend all of my time
Trying to find you

In this life and the next,
And the next, and the next.

I can't remember how many times it's been,
But I know that every time I see your face,

My heart says it's "it's been a while"
Not "Hi, My name is..."

Like Alchemy:

The first law of equivalent exchange,
In order to receive, something of equal value must be given.

I made a deal with the devil,
To find you across time,

And because of that promise,
We will be struck with grief in every lifetime,

Because of a stupid little deal,
But I will endure all hell on my shoulders for an eternity with you.

Like Tragedy:

We won't always win,
Because it's you and me against the world.

In some lifetimes you are mine and mine alone,
In others you are a screenplay to only be admired,

In some lifetimes you are an atom away,
In others you are the words I write on this parchment.

In some lifetimes we are everything we want to be,
In other lifetimes we realise we have to wait for one more.

In all lifetimes however, I will look for you.
No matter how long it takes.

Like Heartbreak:

I miss you dear stranger,
Someone I haven't even met yet.

But it hurts because you're not here,
Even though I know you will be,
If we are just a little more patient.

Our story is very long,
Impossible to tell with mere words

But we will write in this life,
And the next, and the next, and the next,

For a love story across time.

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.