Beautiful boy,
you never did quite understand the meaning of "I love you".
Not for lack of trying... no never.
Rather because "I love you"' has always had an undercurrent of vulnerability that frightened you, demanded too much of your marred soul, your scarred soul that you spend so much time trying to cleanse..
Like paint brushes in turps I watch you try wash out the essence of your soul in alcohol, you drown your soul in Hennessy, as if speaking those words out loud would be too much for both you and me.
See I love you... to you has always looked like closed doors
and somehow sitting on your lap that night one was re-opened.
re-awakened, somehow I felt your soul bleed into mine and I haven't been able to cleanse myself of you just yet.

You cried that night in my arms, disintegrated a little and I think you thought that I was seeing you at your weakest, but babe...
oh love I had never been quite as enamored as I was watching you disintegrate because in that moment I was granted citizenship into the state of your soul.

War-torn,
in upheaval over a failed love.
The state of the nation that is you was under siege, from a mighty enemy named depression.
Aware of all your weaknesses, the enemy had laid siege to the mainland of your heart.
Crippled by sorrow, the soldiers of your soul lay down arms- unable to put up a fight.
Unable to produce fire rounds any longer.
Unable to move in time to the war torn anthem of late night binge drinking, your soldiers lay down their arms at my feet.
And while your sorrow had decided to reign sovereign- enjoying short-lived spotlight- supreme,
I caught a glimpse of the little left of your heart.
Barely beating,
God barely breathing your chest heaved up and down-  
the sound of your breath the only thing reminding you that you were still breathing and though the war ravaged on... you had called a truce.
You had waved the white flag... meekly before laying it over the bodies of broken promises and late nights that haunt you still.
And I know you're haunted... by what could have been.
Should have been.

And while I was granted citizenship into your soul, there is no road-map because the roads are laden with skeletons that I carelessly yanked out of the cupboard of your heart trying to make sense of the little you have left to give.
I know you watch me trip and fall on gravestones in conversation, secrets buried so deep that I get caught off guard eveytime one yanks on my heart strings in the rare moments that you slip up.
In the moments when your pain isn't buried quite deep enough and this girl with eyes a little too brown has managed to exhume the past... pieces of it.

Emotional labour on the landscape of your heart has left me tired.
Exhausted.
Recently I found a river of peacefulness which we call friendship. Still waters, rippling in the moments I remember how badly I wanted to believe you when you said you loved me.
How badly I wished you'd meant it.  
Quiet waters of friendship, and while petals of of broken promises of an unrequited love skim the surface, it was more than satisfactory.
Recently, I've been surprised at how much comfort I draw from this stream, bathing in it...
I began to float... Comfortable.
Unaware of what was to come.
Love, why wouldn't you warn me that a tsunami was on it's way?
Because baby I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning in you.
In your ambiguity.
In your empty promises.
In your beauty.
I thought I was drinking you in but somewhere along the way I began to drown...
I'm drowning...

One of your soldiers heard my cries.
His name was a drunken "I love you."
And I clutched onto his slippery hand as he pulled me,
exhausted onto the shore named 'I'm sorry'.
I have been lying ashore for a week now,
and while I finger the citizenship of your souls ID card called a whatsapp profile, with an barcode of an archived chat-
I've begun to wonder about intimacy, our safe space...
about us because there is so much u in us right now that somehow the sound of my sorrow has begun to be drowned out by the overflowing stream of forgiveness that I have baptized you in weekly as of late.
My cries have been drowned out as I took you to heavenly heights, hand holding, bible-open.
Eyes closed in reverence.

The same way that your eyes were shut the first night we spent together.
Weighed down by the spirit of a praying womxn you unraveled before me.
Every stitch of your being ceremoniously unraveled with each tear.
Each fear launched with each tear,
like a heat seeking missile into the very core of my being-
received loud and clear.

Unraveled.
The cosmic galaxy that is you enveloped me,
stardust dancing beneath my fingertips as I pulled you closer,
stardust- fragmented and utterly beautiful.

Beautiful,
there is nothing despicable about your brokenness for you are forged from Holy Spirit Fire and an undying love.
Those blue veins that I know you've been tempted to slit open house iron which is literally only found in stardust.
Millenniums worth of beauty flows through your body.
Millennia worth of beauty- locked in each one of your cells.
You are the living breath of Israelite slaves- son of a Lion.
You are the living breath of your ancestors.

You are a glorious, inhaling abyss
and while there are valleys of sorrow housed in your soul,
I have also seen Himilayian-like mountain peaks of your joy,
I have also caught glimpses of the road-map you plan to use to unlock the dreams locked inside your mind,
I have laid eager eyes on the valleys of wild roses that you have planted and watered named 'try again'.

Oh beautiful boy, you are so much more than the rocky hills of anxiety and pitfalls of 'failure' that you think has colored in all of who you are.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
Oh ------- ------- you are more than your mistakes.

So with this last exhausted exhale I hand back the membership to the nation state of your beautiful soul.
I realized that it was a visa, perhaps a mere day pass for your season of need.
Perhaps I was just a visitor, enamored by both the light and darkness housed in your beautiful bones.

But it's time for me to return to my home state,
Called Corinthians 13.
Don't be too afraid stop by.

Sunday, 10:30AM

I'm trying to resurrect my peace that now looks like a love deformed by your empty promises.

"High hopes... I guess"
she mumbled whilst licking the jay to seal it,
not breaking eye contact for a second.
Truth is, I felt myself doing backstrokes in the ambiguity of her eye contact because I had no idea whether or not she was talking about us, or the 420.

I’ve done it since I was a child,
Collapse onto your lap as if the world was a little too heavy and somehow your body moulds to my form, weight. Accommodating every sigh, listening to the symphony that is the sound of your tummy gurgling late at night.
I can no longer fit into your arms, I am no longer your tiny footed photocopy. I have now grown strong, powerful- forged from the flesh of a titan.
Somehow, I always want the world to meet you but I know I don’t talk about you nearly enough.
It’s because no words could ever accurately capture the nuance of mother nature that is you.
And you are my mother, the force of nature from which my biological cloth is cut.
You are home in the most primal sense and I am in love. In love with the way you carry yourself, soft hands, kindness rubbing rythnmic circles on my back when I feel sick.
You are the foundations of my soul on two legs and I will always be thankful for the nature of your love, firm but constant, like a waterfall.
In a constant stream your love has broken rock, moved mountains and convinced me I can do the same.
You are a force of nature, powerful beyond belief.
You are my mother, and I will always be your child.
Standing in the sand storm of life my feet will always remain firmly planted on the ground, well aware of the roots from whence I came. You are the freshest breath of life that I have been lucky enough to be nurtured by.
You are my mother, warrior, laughter in inappropriate moments.
You are my healer, you are the wind that blows the sea that is me , onto the shore- further each time. Destined to achieve more.
You are an ambitious icon.
You are the love that vibrates in each of my cells, you are the boldness in each step I take- affirmed and aware that rejection has no claim to me, pales in comparison to the great love I have received.
You are my mother,
Four words which will never begin to capture the power of who you are and what you mean to me.

I had never cared much for astrology
Until she asked me
"which star is the brightest?"
And I realised I'd been staring into the sun.

I interrogate art,
It's just my nature
And you are art,
So inhale deeply on those cigarettes that you love so much because I always quietly imagine what it must be like to be nestled so tenderly between your full lips.
Inhale my love,
because I love how calm you become when you strike a match against the Lions match box as if this is the 80's and you're
Kurt Cobain because I know his songs don't quite capture the angst that rests just below the surface of your grin.
And God when you grin it's like watching a ******* make love to a client,
It's like breaking all my own rules
I feel like I'm watching something I shouldn't but I can't walk away because I am the client and when you look at me like that it's like I'm set ablaze.
And I haven't even described your touch
and in all honesty I can't
because who would be bold enough to claim that they have wrapped their hands firmly around the wind.
How could I begin to describe the way it feels when you touch me because something about your presence alone
is intimate even if we're standing next to each other in a packed room.
Your touch is like a scalpel against treated flesh, precise, intense, purposeful but most importantly healing.
You hurt
almost with the intent of healing
because how else do I describe the fact that I am a woven tapestry and with one tug of my thread you have me unravelled.
I still haven't figured it out,
when it was that you figured out how I worked.
Perhaps it was in the moments where I was so engrossed in studying your every action you realized that you had created your own personal anthropologist but that implies that I had the upper hand
and we both know that isn't the case.

You are my muse and even your lipstain left on an empty glass of lager is enough to keep me occupied.

You are my muse and every emotional outbreak fuels my desire to document all your actions even faster, like a deranged professor I detail your actions trying to calculate when exactly it is that I became engrossed within the art work that is you.

You are my muse and every utter of your lips is like you wrapping your hand around mine and running the pen along the page.

You are my muse and I enjoy watching you smoke because I always wonder if I'll savour the taste of your lips the way you do those cigarettes. Somehow I'm sure I will.
It's an addiction really, to the way you occupy space,
like a curator in a gallery with one artwork alone -
I am completely absorbed.
I feel like an artist charged with restoration of something magnificent except I donno where the restoration is taking place, within You or I.

You are my muse and God I wonder why no one warned me that art speaks back.

"But God... they're all I've ever dreamed of?"

" My child, why do you dream so little for yourself?"