Happiness is a strange thing.
It comes in small amounts each time.
It is never as consistent as rhyme or as the sunrise...

The space between those spurts of happiness can sometimes be cruel and mean.
Unforgiving.
And as time goes on happiness comes in even smaller quantities,
And those packages are very scarce.

Happiness is a mindset they say.
Well do you think I make the conscious decision to not be happy every day.
No.

Everyone wants to be happy.
But not everyone is.
It takes a lot to be happy.
It's hard and requires work.

Happiness is like a beautiful yard,
It starts out barren,
It is then flourished with the seeds of plants that is childhood.
That is where the yard becomes green and,
As time goes on,
Without constant maintenance the yard begins to die
And sometimes it rains,
Then the grass begins to grow
But... that never lasts long.

For you to remain happy it is not a mindset,
It is a matter of your perception of happy.

So be happy,
Yes.
But also remain happy.

Keep your child like spirit,
Never let your yard die.

For once a plant dies,
never again will it be alive,
No matter how hard one tries

It hits the table.
Your keys.
You sit down and look over at me with a look of love in your eyes, admiration.

Our eyes lock.
They meet and your lips begin to turn up into a smile.
Then it all goes black.

There is no longer light between us, it is just.
Nothingness.
But that is not true because there is darkness.
And for there to be the absence of light,
There had to be light in the first place.

The humming of electricity stops
The click click of the fan,
The voices on the radio,
Stop.
There is no longer sound between us,
It is just.
Nothingness.

But that is not true because there is silence,
And for there to be the absence of sound,
There had to be sound in the first place.

But that is not all.
There is a love between us,
An unspoken love.
The buzzing of our atoms reaching for each other,
The sound of our hearts beating in unison.

I light a candle and our love illuminates the room.
We talk and there is no longer silence. There is the sound of two lovers speaking, Connecting.
And I know then that there is something there.

Our eyes lock.
They meet but you do not smile.
The lights shut off and the buzzing is less significant.

There is no longer a desperation in our touch.

I do not light a candle that night,
Scared that the light will illuminate something in the dark.
Something I do not want to see.

I prefer the dark.
I prefer the dark over an unconfessed lover,
Over the “i do not”s or the “but”s

I prefer silence over the truth.

Our eyes do not lock.
Your lips are pursed together and there is a tear forming in your eye.
I do not hear much.
Just the rustling of you beneath the blanket.

I have my own now.

We go night after night,
Hands to ourselves,
Lips not touching,
Voices not colliding.

How can I be laying next to you and still be lonely,
How can I see you but miss you.

Now. It is like your voice is a commodity,
Something I long to hear,
Something that is scarce,
Something not given.

Our eyes lock.
They meet and you do not smile.
The tear falls down your cheek.

There is nothing.
Just silence.
Because for there to be unlove,
There had to be love in the first place.

The absence of... anything.
Is that nothing?
Or is it just emptiness.

The lights do not go out that night.

I hear the drifting apart.
Feel my feet shuffling to the couch.
I see the loneliness, inviting me in.

I turn off the lights.

I light a candle and I lay down.
The candle illuminating my tear stained face,
The skeletons in my closet,
The monsters in the dark.
It illuminates my darkest fears.

I keep the light off.
I put the candle out,
Hiding my pain.

It hits the table,
Your tears.
And you sit down and look over at me with tears in your eyes, sadness.

Our eyes lock.
There is no longer love between us.
I am alone now.
I go through the motions.
I go to coffee shops looking for love, gas stations, bars.
I speak over crowds in hope our eyes will meet.

I write poems and I walk the streets
Looking for something in someone else’s eyes.
Something you took from me.
Something not mine anymore.

I glance over and see a coffee mug in the air.
Covering a face framed by long black hair. Different from her blonde.
Curls flow down and bounce on her shoulders.
Different from her straight.

It hits the table.
The mug.
You come over and sit down
You look at me across the table.

Our eyes lock.
They meet and your lips turn up into a smile.
Then the lights turn back on.

I believe in love
Or at least the idea of it.
The idea of two people living so perfect in unison, the perfect fit.
Then I met you,
You were the eye of my hurricane.
But the eye will eventually move on;
So you left just as you came.
I believe in love.
Or at least once upon a time I did.

Flipping through song after song,
The search begins.
A search for a song that will satisfy my ears.
A song that fulfills my desires.
A song that brings my emotions into focus.
Any song.

The music stops.
I sit in silence,
A peaceful silence of blue,
Or yellow,
Or orange.
Nevertheless, silence.

I hear a ringing in my ears,
The silence brings me peace.
The silence makes me feel safe.
It wraps me in its warm embrace as I close my eyes.

The darkness also brings me peace.
It brings the world into focus
And causes my emotions to begin to stir.

The silence is now stabbing my eardrums
As memories begin to surface.
Memories I have pushed down,
Memories of loneliness,
Of loss.

The darkness behind my eyelids begins to take shape.
Shapeshifting to the monster in my closet,
To the one under my bed,
The boy in the mirror.

I lay still.
The boy in the mirror is crying,
Screaming for help,
He bangs on the glass and I shrink back,
I neglect him and his feelings.

I lay still. I try to open my eyes,
I can not.
I press play but the music does not pierce my internal silence.
I can not move.

I stand at the top of a building.
My feet are tingling,
My palms are sweating.
I begin to walk.

I look to the concrete,
It seems so welcoming,
It encourages me.
Approval.

The space between me and the concrete begins to turn a red hue.
My heart is pounding and the concrete calls my name.
I fall.

Not forward,
Backwards.
Back onto the building.

As my back comes into concrete with the roof I fall through it.
My eyes shoot open and I **** up.
The music is continuing to play.
I flip through song after song,
The search continues.

A search for a song that will satisfy my ears.
A song that fulfills my desires.
A song that brings my emotions into focus.
Not just any song.
A song that will keep away the silence and the darkness,
Until I learn how to myself.

What I dream of is a tree.
A tree one hundred feet high and fifty feet wide,
I dream of that tree.

I come to that tree in the middle of a forest,
In the middle of an uphill climb.
I come to the tree when I need it most.

I dream of the day where I come to the tree and lean against it.
I lean against the tree,
And it does not shake.

The tree wraps its rough brown arms around me
And the bark sheds way to skin,
The trunk sheds way to a body,
The leaves shed way to a head.
I dream of that tree.
The tree that sheds way to a person.

I want arms so strong they can hold the heaviest of burdens.
Arms that reassure me.
I want arms that do not know the cold sting of a blade,
The warm trickle of blood.
I want arms that can hold me tight and tell me “I’m here, there is no need to worry”
Not, “I know how it feels”.

I want the purity of naivety to pour over me.
Pure, untouched bliss to hold me.

I am tired of the blood stains on my shirt and the tears on my shoulder.
I want to leave a stain.
I want to spill tears.
I am tired of accepting them,
For every tear that falls on my shoulder,
The weight grows heavier.
The pain grows stronger.
The pain for those around me.
For those leaning on me.

I want to lean on them,
But they are just paper cut outs.
Trees with no roots,
Or roots that only run the surface.
Leaning on those who lean on me will only lead to me falling.
For these paper cut outs will fall over in a stiff wind.

I dream of a day where someone looks closer.
When a tree that has two eyes,
Two arms,
A nose,
Two ears,
Ten fingers,
And five senses,
Looks at me,
Reaches out their long skin covered branches,
And as the pads of their fingers meet my broken skin,

The tree will tell me to lean on them,
Because they looked closer.
They looked deeper than my exterior
And on the inside I’m a little sapling.
I am a sapling with the weight of the world on my little leaves
And it is breaking me.

The tree will tell me to rest.
They will give me shade and shelter.
Feed me with their fruit.

I dream of the day I will not weigh another sapling down,
Because if one more sapling’s roots are pulled from the ground,
If their leaves fall,
If their stems grow brown,
And their roots fall onto me.
I will collapse —
For I no longer have the strength for two.

I no longer even have the strength.
For one.

Pearly white keys,
Hammers,
And strings.
All laced together in a mahogany symphony.
A piano.

Melodies dance through the air,
Spinning circles round my head,
Making me dizzy with joy.

A tiger dances across the keys and into my ears,
Putting memories of a zoo in my head.
Remembering walking down the tiger habitat.
Hand in hand with my father,
Tugging at his shirt.
He wore green that day.

Images of a butterfly landing on my finger prance through the space between me and her and land on the tip of my nose.
It is pure happiness.

They say a butterfly will land only on someone pure with bliss,
It lands on me as I look over at her.
Her fingers gliding so effortlessly across the smooth ivory,
This song is music to my ears.

Her hair falling so effortlessly on her shoulders.
She looks at me and smiles,
Her eyes crinkle at the corners as music flows from her fingertips.
She is her own symphony.
Her laugh the drums,
Her voice the flute,
And her singing a chorus of violins.
She is a symphony to make Beethoven blush.

I gape in awe at her beauty,
At the beauty of the music,
The music filling the space between us.
She looks happy.

Her hands dancing over the piano, A smile lights up her face.
Highlighting her grin
And her chocolate brown eyes.
The dark brown curls flowing down from the top of her head.

Our arms touch.
I can feel her symphony in my bones,
One of sadness.
One of hope.

I feel her happiness resonate through my arms and send chills down my spine.
The sound of her fingers running across the piano keys are drowned out by the pounding of my heart.
Bump bump.
Bump bump.
I can feel it in my throat,
And I lean in.

The music stops.
Our lips touch.
I can feel her beauty resonate through my body.

Pearly white ivory teeth,
Perfectly parted lips,
And breath.
Laced together in un pelle symphonie.

Hey you, yes you, the one reading this page
I would like to make a vow
At this moment, offstage
I will love you for now.

You are probably disappointed, I figure as much
But before you stop reading, please, hear me out
Forever is a long time, though I am sure you’d be touched
But please, take my hand because I love you right now beyond any doubt.

Today is the only given, leave tomorrow to chance
So in the mystery, lay your lips on mine
There is no need to leave, not at least without a second glance.
We may have not been made for each other but right now is all I need, for right now you are mine.

When two cars crash it is a cataclysmic event,
Glass shatters,
Airbags burst.
Things break.
People break.  
There is tragedy.
When two cars crash there is a crack and shards fly.

Look up at the sky during a car crash,
The glass in the sky twinkles like stars
And how beauty can found in something so broken is beyond me.

But look up at the sky.
See the stars twinkle like the shine in your eye,
It is beautiful.

When two atoms crash,
Energy is released,
Heat is given off,
Light is blinding.
Bonds break.

But look up at the sky after an atom collision.
The light you see is from that horrible thing.
The beauty is blinding.
How something so catastrophic could be so beautiful is beyond me.

But the stars shine bright with chemical reactions
And atoms colliding.

Someone somewhere crosses a ‘t’.
Someone somewhere dots their ‘i’.
How something so mundane could become beautiful is beyond me.

Look up at the sky.
The crashing of two things is never good,
It ends in pain,
Or sorrow, Or brokenness.
Every time.

But when two souls crash?
When two hearts collide?

Lay down and look up at the sky,
Rest your head on my chest
And someone once told me love is always reckless.

So look up at the sky,
Tell me, what do you see?
Stars?

Those reactions that created our universe were reckless
They were random
And how beauty can be found in something so reckless is beyond me.

Look up at the sky I tell you,
What do you see I ask.
“A moon,” you say,
“A moon as skinny as a sliver.”

You rest your head on my chest.
I tell you to look at that moon,
“Remember it,” I tell you,
“As long as it floats in the sky, our love, this everlasting perpetual love, will never die.”

Because how can something so mundane,
A rock in space,
Be beautiful.
I understand.

Just a set of eyes that crinkle when you smile,
Teeth that turn up at the corners when you grin,
Ears that perk up at your name,
Lips that curl to the touch of mine.
All placed atop a face.

How could something so mundane be beautiful?
Because it is not mundane.
It is not cataclysmic.
It is not reckless.

What it is,
is love.

It is silent tonight. Dead silent. Not the kind of silent that I usually experience, today it is truly... silent. I’m gonna tell you something. There are eight parts of me. Eight people with names that all are a part of me. They coexist in my mind, having conversations, warning me, being paranoid. Sometimes... it gets a little crowded in there. So I live for nights like these. nights where my mind is silent, everyone is tucked away in bed. For no one is talking. I think without refrain, enjoying my thoughts because when it is loud, my thoughts do not feel like they are mine, and the ones that are do not feel safe. Almost like someone is always intruding into my mind, so I live for nights like these. Nights where I can bathe in my own thoughts, sit in peace and quiet for it is peaceful. it is serene. So as I lay up, looking at the moon, I think. I think of all the places I would like to go, the people I would like to meet and I smile. I smile at the thoughts playing through my mind, memories I like to relive only while I am alone. I begin to think of my father. Of all the Starbucks dates, I think of him holding my hand. Or of him picking me up and throwing me up into the air before catching me, always catching me. Finally, I think of him leaving. And I cry. I look up at the wavy image of the moon, distorted by my tears and I smile. I let the tears fall down my cheek and I stick my tongue out, tasting the salty liquid running down my face. My tears hit my knees and they fall to my bed. The pain slowly leaving my body. I feel a lightness in me as I get to relive these moments, normally tucked away for safekeeping. I get to miss him. I swing my knees over the edge and sit on my window sill, dangling my feet off of my two story high window. Memories flooding my brain, my mouth curls up. I feel my feet tingle with fear, I remember days at Disney land, skipping down Main Street. I long to be a kid again, carefree and.. well happy. But I can not. So I settle for the silence. I settle for tonight. I settle for peace. I settle for reminiscing. I settle for right now because I know tomorrow I will have to tuck away my hopes and dreams, I will not be able to wish upon a star. I know tomorrow it will not be silent. So I sit and look up at the moon and its stars and I smile. I settle for, freedom.

At the age of four, I woke up screaming because of the monsters in my room,
The ones lurking in the corners, waiting to pounce.
I imagined beasts the size of elephants creaking my floorboards,
Scratching my walls.
I hear unearthly voices calling my name.

I scream
And the voices silence.
The scratching stops.
The creaking ceases.

All is silent,
But I am scared of the silence.

My mom wanders in,
She holds me in her arms and I listen to her heartbeat.
Thump thump.
Thump thump.

It is the only thing that does not change.
It is the only steady thing,
For her arms quake with fatigue and her voice wavers as she tells me all is okay.
All is not okay.

At the age of six, the voices stopped.
The scratching stopped,
The creaking, too.

But there were new voices,
Voices that traveled through the walls from my parents bedroom.
The creaking turned to crashing, the voices to screams.
No one really payed any attention to six year old me,
Life moved on without him.
I was left behind,
Left stuck in that moment.
Life was a blur.

Then something happened—
Something strange,
Something great.
I met her.

Eyes of the ocean, hair of the sand.
I went swimming.
I got lost and I did not want to be found.
I was lost at sea.
I was blind but I could still see.

She made life slow down.
Everything was good.

I heard the birds chirping.
I saw the sky blue.
The scratching stopped,
The voices and the creaking, too.
I slept safe and sound,
Without waking up to monsters in the corner
And without screams in the night.
I slept and did not wake up scratched from the demons in my chest—
She took them away.
She made me happy.

The scratching turned to whispers,
The creaking turned to laughs,
And the voices turned to I love you's.

There was no more screaming or growling in the dark corners of my room. She made me happy.
As time passed we grew closer.
We kissed,
We held each other
And, well, it was a roller coaster.
One with many ups
And some downs.
It was exhilarating.

But, the thing about roller coasters is that they always come to an end,
With a stop that lurches you forward, making you want to go again.
But, you have to get off.
So we lurched to a stop, and we got off.
We said our goodbyes, and I love you's.
And then.
There was no more you.

There were no more monsters in my closet,
But now the voices were in my head.
The scratching on my door was now on my chest,
And the creaking turned to the quaking of my bed
As I shook back and forth.

I could not relax.
The voices came back.
The pain came back.
She loved someone else.

There are now monsters in my closet,
But they are not the size of elephants.
They no longer bare teeth at me;
Instead, they smile—
There are two monsters.
She is one.
The one she loves is the other.

And I will not be able to stop from thinking where it went wrong
Because I will have all the extra time to think and to overthink.
Then I realize.

/it/did not go wrong.
Nothing went wrong.
It was not a single moment.

It was a series of events in which she fell out of love as I feel deeper in it.
It was cruel as I tried to make up for her missing love.

Because one can only love with all of themselves.
Not with all of someone else.