Step One:
Meet someone.
Step Two:
Become friends.
Step Three:
Spend too much time with them.

Step Four:
Realize that you have gotten along better with them than anyone else you know.
Step Five:
Tell yourself that they're the one for you.
Step Six:
Tell them that they're the one for you.
Step Seven:
Date.
Step Eight:
Fall in love.

Take a deep breath.
This is where it gets tricky.

STEP NINE:
Stay together for awhile...
STEP TEN:
AND AWHILE LONGER
STEP ELEVEN
AND WHILE LONGER
STEP TWELVE
AND AWHILE LONGER
AND AWHILE LONGER
AND AWHILE LONGER
AND AWHILE LONGER

STEP THIRTEEN:
SHORTEN CONVERSATIONS
STEP FOURTEEN:
AWKWARD SILENCE
STEP FIFTEEN:
THEY STOP CALLING
STEP SIXTEEN:
THEY STOP TEXTING

STEP SEVENTEEN:
THEY SAY THEY FEEL DIFFERENTLY
STEP EIGHTEEN:
THEY SAY THEY MET SOMEONE ELSE
STEP NINETEEN:
THEY SAY THEY STILL WANT TO BE FRIENDS
STEP TWENTY:
THEY BLOCK YOU ONLINE
STEP TWENTY-ONE:
THEY BLOCK YOUR CELLPHONE NUMBER
STEP TWENTY-TWO:
YOU CRY
and you cry
and cry
and cry
and cry and cry and cry...

Step Twenty-Three:*
...you fall
and hit rock bottom.

There you have it, ladies in gentlemen:
******* yourself without *actually dying?
...Love someone who doesn't love you back.

I must be floating somewhere in the fourth dimension.
I feel like I’m a formula in quantum mechanics:
Complex and misunderstood…
But if you know my concept well enough
I can be broken down into numbers and logarithms
That even a layman could understand
With a basic knowledge of math and science
Before he drops out of the university,
Because who has the patience
To simplify me?
You're the scientist and mathematician
Who disregarded imaginary numbers
Due to theoretical imperfections
Even if it was your thesis.

When he speaks,
sometimes I hold my breath
like I hold his hands.

Drowning above water,
caught in the riptide of
Lust and Language,
seems like such a foreign concept.

At least it was before I met him.

I can feel my heart
as it palpitates
and the arteries
that throb just
below my skull...

They silently beg me to
let go of what his words
do - the pressure they place
on my lungs.

Winded like prey
who has just flown
from the ravenous predator.

I feel torn apart
more often than saved.

And right now, I ******* hate metaphors.

Who knew it was possible
to anticipate
that the way you may die
would actually be
the only way you ever lived?

Always caught up in
someone else's words.

As we drew closer to the abysmal highway
We stopped by a winery
And I found myself asking
"Is this a cemetery?"
Which is poetically ironic
Because  I imagine my former self
Is buried somewhere in that vineyard
Fore I felt the ghost of who I once was eerily imminent
Among the grape vines that reminded me of skeletons
Barren and desolate
But ripe with possibilities
For a better tomorrow

I've heard it goes, "all is fair in love and war"
I'm not sure I agree
When localities become marginalized
Despite the lack of knowledge
That guerrilla warfare comes in waves
Like crashing tides against foreign beaches
The ones I've never seen
I'm not sure if he'll lose his life
Upon his first deployment
But there isn't much to lose when you've already sold your soul
Can you enlist half a person?
If that were the case, I'd sign up too
And **** the only part of me
That's still in love with you

Meh.

I find myself watching
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Over and over and over again.

I've seen this movie over 200 times.
I watched it seven times in one day
Over and over and over again...

The equivalent of
more than fourteen hours;
more than half of a day wasted
pretending I could erase him too.
I just couldn't stop.

The fantasy was too enthralling...
I wished I had Alzheimer's,
since the procedure doesn't exist,
but if I did, he would have been
the only thing
I could remember.

That was three years ago.
And honestly,
I'm not sure why
I've watched it
three times this week.

I think I'm preparing myself
for the moment
when what seems
too good to be true
finally is.

And maybe when this moment strikes me
like a bolt of lightning,
I won't feel the need to watch it
as many times as before.

Then again,
I've heard lightning never strikes
the same place twice.

I hope for the best
and prepare for the worst.


...Ironically enough,
I hope that I forget
I felt this way
tomorrow.

New memories develop
At such a rapid pace
That I can't seem
To differentiate
The time they were given
And the time I fully received them.

Maybe time is relative...
All I know is
That it's relevant
When it passes by too quickly
That you forget to stop and smell the flowers
Which died long ago
But you can't seem to throw out

Because when you do,
You throw away another
Memory
Like the ones you promised
Long ago
That you never would.

I did this for you
And not the universal
YOU

...But him.

I thought that
Things would get better
If I followed his advice
And replaced the old
With new.

Yet now that it's over
I feel like
I am missing
The most important parts
Of me.

I want to blame him
But that is ignorant.
I'm the one who chose
Submission
Over stance

All for a lover
Who I could not fulfill
And who knows
That it goes both ways.

This time
I don't want him back
But I wish,
More than anything,
That I could have myself back
Because I gave too many pieces
Of my self
In order to please someone
That I knew I ever could.

If they wrote about me,
The narrator might explain
The dangers of exponential decay;
Of how I might give my soul
As tribute.
He may call me
A slave to substance,
In more eloquent terms,
And to the inevitable pitfall
Where one hits rock bottom
But resurrects three days later.
The second coming,
But not as pure:
The heroine, but a homonym.

This is a precursor to everything to come in the next year. I believe if I begin to focus on stream of consciousness writing, my content may begin to resemble that of Bukowski or Poe but hopefully not as rapaciously violent or ominously insane. More specifically, I figure in my own storytelling fashion I will account my platonic relationships gone awry based on false pretenses established by reputation of the "societal self".  As well as the romantic relationships that I so eagerly sabotage(d) believing in the assigned repetoire cast upon me by others who believed in seductive over deductive reasoning. When someone calls you something for long enough, you begin to believe it. But unlike others, I can't drown my demons because they know how to swim. I seek catharsis and self definition. I seek growth and competency. I seek understanding, and I seek to turn my version of insanity into something that others can relate to or translate.

your voice never waivers
while you spit your treason
and twist the strings
that force falsified movement
of your favorite marionette:
Me.
or maybe it was the one you taught me how to use
before your ghost was all that remained.
it's probably in storage...
somewhere inside a box marked:
"the things he held most often."
I'm still unsure how the cacophony continues
without weakening or cracking
except when time stops
and God smiles down upon me.
I imagine the rest of the time
he's too busy with bureaucracy
and my guardian angel
is acting as his secretary.

We are the forsaken
God's forgotten you
Yet you stand, still unshaken
Revelations seen untrue
We are the world's demise
Ride the waves of pestilence
First born sons - the devil's prize
The Sun explodes and annihilates existence
We walk in the darkness of the end
Her blood is written on the walls
Struck by plague, she can't defend
Take your breath as you're pushed from the falls
We have no sympathy; no remorse
The apocalypse will take its course

I am in love
And I fight love like a war
I wasn't trained for.

In the simplest terms:
Love is giving someone
the power to destroy you
and trusting they won't.

But how can I trust him not to destroy me
when I have become a mosaic:
picking up my broken pieces,
again and again,
only to arrange them into something
more beautiful than I was to begin with.

I guess this is why I trust him...
Even if he were to destroy me
I'd have more broken glass
to use for the masterpiece
that I've been creating for years.

I wonder if this is all in my head...
I'm no longer an enigma
but a work of art,
and an artist's work is never complete.

I suppose I await the day
when he picks me up
and throws me to the floor.

I swore I heard him say he didn't love me
the same way I love him
and I felt a piece fall and shatter.

I must wait
to add that piece
back in with the others
when I collect the remnants
of who I was before him.

...At least I'm used to it now.

I never had a lover
Who didn't approach me
Without a knife poised behind his back.
Without teeth straight like razorblades.
I fell in love with the eyes...
I assume it's my eyes they fell in love with too.
Permanently dilated.
When I look in the mirror...
When I peer into my own soul,
I open the gates to Hell.
It's as if I can see into Hades,
With a fiery passion that burns holes in the atmosphere
Like greenhouse gasses.
Maybe lovers approach me
Because my demons call to them,
Begging them to send me home.
You speak in tongues
Like an exorcist
Trying to expel my demons.
I imagine I still haunt you,
And that night haunts me too.
You're the woman in the waiting room
Preemptively searching for answers,
Already aware
That results from the bloodwork
Won't ease her strain...
And I am the uneasy doctor
Trying to calm your nerves
Before I break the news
That nothing is as it should be
And never will be again.
I wish you had thought of us
Before I walked away
And you hesitated
So that you could ensure
You didn't miss -
Checking my back for my stab wounds
Which were merely lacerations.
In hopes I'd be another addition
To your killstreak...
But this isn't a video game
And if it were,
I'd be the juggernaut
And you'd be the camper.

I am a prisoner
of the present.

The monotony of cacophony
subdues the depth of calm.
The tyranny of sound
will not cease and desist.

But for a moment I am free:
I hear nothing; I feel nothing.

         Sanity.

            At least that's how I perceive it,
But only for that moment.

A single engine's burst
or the song which birds chirp
reinstate the madness
from which I run.

I suppose this is being human.
I should have been a cloud.

I am thoroughly addicted to you
And I have been for years
Much like I am to coffee.
But you're analogous to the kind that's decaffeinated...
I guess I just like the taste.

Sifting through photographs we never took
Because I didn't have the courage
Or the heart to save the memories
No matter how fleeting they were
And sometimes I still feel your presence
But you seem farther and farther away
Like driftwood floating in an open sea
You are my ship in a bottle
Fragile and complex
A love I didn't need
But developed ardor anyway
Kind of like that old **** carpet
That made me nostalgic for the 60's
Even though I wasn't there
And never could be

Creating new memories
like the ones that disappeared
when you lied and said forever
despite my lack of fear.
I can't erase you completely
but the day I do I'll cry,
and from the moment forward
I'll understand I've died.
The understudy
did a better job
than I ever thought he could.
He stole the heart,
on one knee
the day I said I would.
When I told you, "Break a leg"
I wasn't speaking in such literal terms.
But, in honesty,
I'm glad you did
so that I could learn.
He holds me tight
through night
although I push away.
The thought of you,
a heart untrue,
how can my dreams still come true?
This is what goes through my mind
when he asks me what is wrong.
Until I find a better way,
I'll pretend that I am strong.

Really?

When you're left with only a bullet
I'll be the barrel you're gazing into.

I'd rather be your itchy trigger finger...
the deciding factor; not the cause of death.

If we swapped positions,
I guarantee you'd choose to be the scope.

Watching,
     aiming,
        waiting.

I bet you prefer ****** rifles
with the distance in between us.

I prefer pistols
because you're too close for comfort.

Every time the walls echo,
I hear explosions and gun shots.

Sometimes I hide under my pillow,
like a soldier in the trenches...

but your memory is between my sheets,
and you know exactly where to find me.

See... I feel like you're cheating,
But nothings fair in war
       or love.
And did you even love me?

I'm in a skirmish with myself,
and the ghost of you is on the side
of me that I don't recognize anymore.

The scariest thing in the world
is to be haunted
by someone
who's still alive.

Whisper to me that you hate me
so I'll leave the window open.

Come and go as you please.
I beg pardon for the invitation
but if I can pretend I have a choice,
maybe I won't be the one
with the barrel in my mouth.

From ashes to ashes.
From dust to dust.
I'll search for you forever;
While floating, I must.
Maybe I will follow you
Because I will leave before you do...
And the Universe will bring us back together
Lest I fly forever and ever.
I could come back as a butterfly
And fight the wind, a battle cry.
I was born just to die,
And I pray that after I will fly.
But it's possible I'll stay on Earth
Instead participating in a rebirth.
I could be your ghost this time...
It's only appropriate.

I try to drown my demons
but they know how to swim
I thought everything from hell burned
but I guess this can't be true
maybe it froze over
the day I left you
I may have a drinking problem
but from what I learned
in chemistry class
Alcohol is a solution.
with that being said...
why are my problems
unsolved mysteries?
Like the old television show
I guess it's because I killed
the only part of me
that made any sense:
You.

But it's hard to catch a criminal
after the first 48.
it's been a year.
So I'll never be caught
but I'll be the one
who carries the burden
like Atlas
with the world on my shoulders.
maybe I'll defy the gods
and hurl it into the Sun...
I guess
I've always wanted to watch the world burn.

To the person who helped me see the best in my self:
It’s about **** time you see the best in you.
It’s about time you cut the ties with the people like me,
The ones who need you. The ones who want more. The ones who will love you when you don’t want to love yourself.
Because we’re probably less than you expected,
But we need you to find what makes you want to wake up in the morning.

To the person who loves himself just enough:
Be strong. Be resilient. Be young. Be adventurous. But most importantly, be exactly who you want to be.
You get one life. Love and be loved the way that suits you.
Be who you needed when you were younger.
Grow and flourish.
Maybe I’m the sapling.. because I’m pretty sure you’re the soil.

To the person who knows himself:
Wander far and wide.
Meet everyone you can.
Befriend them all; they mean you no harm.
But make haste as you gather your thoughts and belongings.
You’re the vagabond I long to be.

Here’s to you:
Another round, please.

You are not my movie script ending
But you're an action sequence.
You are not my Shakespearean romantic tragedy
That I profess to an audience with eager, open ears
Even though I might like to...
Like the woman at the bus stop
Who asked me what time was.
I offered an estimation
Because the battery on my watch had died
and I avoid checking my phone
Out of fear of your responses
Or my lack of communication skills.
We romanticized common conversation
And the minutes turned to months.
The next thing I knew it was January.
I guess I didn't understand her question.
Albeit, you're my new year's resolution
Which could be the apotheosis
Of 2015.
Although the year just started,
I'm assured that nothing could matter as much.

Dawn rose over the extended horizon whilst I floated away from my vehicle, toward the shoreline over which it loomed. Dressed in a shade of black reminiscent of midnight when stars refuse to shine, I mourned the loss of my innocence. I mourned the loss of you.

As a narrator speaking in first person, I must mention I also speak from personal experience. I had already made the most abated decision of my life... the decision to **** you. To **** the best part of me. The statement is merely figurative because there is no blood on my hands, yet I have a inkling that there will always be a blade poised behind your back and a genuine but soft smile resting upon your face. Maybe I am mourning the idea I developed to become you, meanwhile your true colors hide amidst the treacherousness awaiting those who approach too quickly. I still reside between unabated fervor and regret. How is this possible?

I replay the scene as if it were the gut-wrenching ****** of a romantic movie cast with individuals whom we know are only actors, but the light in their eyes begs to differ so we fall victim to their charade. Played out so beautifully for all the world to see if it feels so inclined, we watch them pretend to fall apart and they make it look so graceful. In reality, life cycles forward and time is my favorite tragedy. When I fell apart, there was no elegance in my breakdown. I mourned you then, and so it continues.

There was once a ring, long since forgotten, but eerily stuck in my memory. It is my ultimate contradiction. I am tormented by the final laceration, removing you: my innocence. This is my side of the story, but you were better than any actor who ever lived and you hid your treachery like guns from children. I wrote the word "forever" on your chest with my fingertips, but you chose to ignore the F, one R, and one E.

"OVER"

I mourn the day I killed this part of me. The same day you showed your treachery. Curiosity killed the child who found your favorite weaponry. If I recall correctly, it was just the right size for him: a .22 caliber pistol... but why on Earth would you leave the safety off?

Now I understand why I am floating away. Oh dear God, no...

Engulfed in flames,
I stand alone
burning for you
whilst you feed the fire.
Doused in gasoline,
I feel overcome by the purity
of a cleansing pain
with no desire
to scream for help.
Feed the fire.
I've burned for years -
All for you,
but in retrospect, it was for me too.
It's been so long. I concede.
Raise my arms; fall to my knees.
No more anger.
No more pain.
All nerves fried,
much like my brain.
But I am conscious,
although unaware
of the crowd
who stands and stares.
I cannot see: not with my eyes
that have since been seared
by love's demise.
But with my heart, I do decree:
I burned for you.
I burned for me.

Do you remember the first night we spent together?
It was during the snow storm of the decade...
And you could have made it home,
But I didn't ask you to go.
"Stay."
Ever since that day, I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box...
Like the one the commemorated our engagement
On February 14th.
I tried desperately to tear my way through it.
Like if I ate every random combination of those chocolate pieces,
I'd burst through the cardboard from my gluttony.
Stay.
I think you cracked it open
So I could search for something else.
Something better, something different.
I crawled out... only to find that you were the standard
That I measured every other human being to.
Stay.
But I went.
And you didn't say, "Go."
You didn't say, "Stay."
You held your tongue
Like you used to hold my hands
When you told me something to make me smile
Or that everything would be okay.
Stay.
A year has passed
Since I ignored what I knew my heart wanted.
I'm still inside that box -
The one I left only to return to -
But it's been long since thrown away
And I can't find my way out...
I don't think I ever will.
I don't want to tread through garbage.
I think I'll stay.

A field of stars laid me to sleep
Behind my heavy eyes.
I realized how small I was
In the span of everything.
How little space
I must've taken up in your life
When you allowed me inside.
How often you saw my face
When you closed your eyes
And opened your mind.
Opened your heart.
Then shut it just as quickly.
I still wish upon stars
That I will find my way home to you.
I know it's as far off
As one of the foreign countries
That I've been dreaming about...
So I'll rest tonight
With a vision of sunrise
And imagine that you are the Sun,
illuminating my darkest crevasses.
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon
Where to shine is blasphemy
Because I was never meant to see your light.