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alex heath May 2018
i hurt myself tonight.
a thin red line on fair white canvas,
painting my emotions into my skin.
and i don’t know any other reaction
to the tempests in my thoughts
than to shut out the pain
with another perpetrator.
i hurt myself tonight.
but for now, it’s the only pain
i feel.
i can no longer sleep, for the image of your face intrudes the drowsy blackness under my eyelids that calls me. and your words are louder than the choruses of the tired.
alex heath May 2018
we’re like a puzzle, dear.
a constant struggle to find our match,
the piece with which we fit.
and all the while referring to the
example on the box, an image of
a puzzle perfectly plenary,
cookie-cutter courtships of two
jagged-edged squares
just looking to fit in.
and the sea of polygonal
cacophony, swept by the tides
spawned from the puzzler’s searches,
grows ever-increasingly frantic as
the elusive match hides amongst
the others, like a needle in that
hellish and predictable haystack.
in impatience, he concedes to the
concealing pile, and continues on
to the next piece of the puzzle.

but he’ll return, for the game
will not be complete
until we two final pieces
meet.
****** poetry written at 3 AM: the perfect coping mechanism.
alex heath May 2018
somehow,
your thoughts will always drift to them.
you fingers will always gravitate to theirs,
and you will wonder how to take them.
you will revel in the sight of their hair
whipping past a corner, or
their lilting smile lingering on the
tips of their lips.
you will remember the memories you've made
sitting on a bench as the sun sets over the lake,
or driving past twelve, on a cold spring night.
to the flirtations, the tears, the confessions you've made,
and you'll feel all the love you have for them
resting in your heart like the coals of a dying fire;
waiting for a reminder of the heat of their emotion.
but now, even though you've been together
for months and months on end,
they're leaving.
you've missed them so much,
and yet you've never had them.
they've deserved a seat in your heart,
and yet you've never offered it to them.
you know what you have to say, to stay in their thoughts
and to remind them of the memories you’ve made.
and as those last moments arrive, you look into their eyes,
and you try to say those words,
but all that comes out is
"i'll miss you"

but you already have.
insignificant in the bigger picture, but the only thing on my mind as of now.
alex heath May 2018
i don't know how to tell you i love you.
but i do; believe me, i do.
with all of my heart, and all of my soul.
here i present the essence of myself.
welcome, to every fiber of my being.

i know you'll never trust me,
but believe the words that
fall off my lips like the
tears that lingered on my cheeks
when my feelings were unreciprocated.

and believe me, because in the matter
of love and human emotion, a false
i love you is worse than scorned
romance, because at least love turned bad
was pure at one point.

and i try; or lord, i try.
but the world stages blocks in
the path that leads to the end.
and sometimes, it's harder to push past
without hurting yourself in the end.

and here i sit: this room in which
i have both everything and nothing, and
i don't know which one i have lost.
is it wrong to love you? or is it right in the end?

— The End —