I knew it didn't work like that.
I knew loving someone was always going to be a game.
Whether or not you admit that,
is always up to the players involved.
I chose to play,
I chose to revere in the wins and try to overlook the losses.
(I never really could.)
It wasn't even necessarily a game of luck,
like people would assume,
because there was no Cupid's arrow.
It's about the way someone words something purposely,
the way someone grabs your hand with urgency,
the way they meet your lips,
like they're introducing themselves in every form,
like you just deciphered their entire childhood from the tip of their tongue.
Love is just a game,
love is a waiting game.
One where you sit and gaze
at a wall full of time zones,
a wall full of clocks at different hours,
and you don't know what the hell hour you're in because they're all the same to you.
2 a.m. and 2 p.m. become identical,
night never leaves.
The moon never sinks back down for the sun to rise,
there's no beauty to the sky if it's never lit,
maybe that's how you perceived me,
like a sky that's never lit,
something that can't be beautiful if all it is,
is darkness.
Overwhelming,
monotonous,
deafening darkness.
I'm sorry for being a vexed loser when it came to love,
always lamenting about the pain,
and how you bluffed.
How you cheated.
How you caught me off guard.
How you played so unscrupulously,
while I was still learning the rules.
How you didn't think to tell me
love was a game,
until you had already won.

I guess, it just felt a little strange. Usually I was always drowning in my thoughts.
To the point where it consumed me. My...my mind...at times,
was my demise,
as much as it also saved me.
But, there were these moments where I lived.
And, it was beautifully tragic because, he knew exactly what it was.
He didn't just hear or see it.
I guess, we as humans,
just feel these moments.
He knew me well,
he understood my laugh.
I learned who I am and why I exist. And I told you to never doubt that I am an extremist.
When I cry, the universe shakes a little. But, when I smile and laugh,
I am selfless.
I just gave and gave my soul to him. He could close his eyes and still dance with every detail.
I was alive.

                      
                          ~ A. Almoudheji

More than in passing I almost thought "maybe I should apologize for leaving,"

but life is leaving, and I’m sorry to have lead you otherwise,

I violently grow apart from everyone that matters, because the solitude feeds me and I am sick,

do not try to decipher this in a rational way, like I am in love with rain, then when it’s over, I am in love with the strange blankness.

I play Russian Roulette with ingenuity and always lose and convince everyone I am not a corpse,

only pretending to be,
only waiting
for my chance to be alive again.

I can only find it in me to keep going when the night is louder than my grasp on reality.

Late at night if you catch me and let my thorns find your veins,

you’ll find the heart I’ve patched up and surrounded with briar because I’m sick of being broken,

you’ll find my scars and the places I’ve stitched together with my own sinew,

this is where I’ll love you with hurricane walls, the fury of a tempest at your command,

if you find me here I’ll give you my whole being with a fierceness that would break a mother’s heart.

Watch movies about daughters who killed their fathers,
you are obsessed with paintings that are crude words written in children’s crayons,

and your wife exhausts you,
you can’t stand how
her shoes match her gardening sheers,

your house is intentionally or unintentionally patriotic
red doors, blue shutters, white vinyl,
hey I’m successfully sedated,
it’s so much easier this way,

I don't even have to drink scotch to fall asleep by 10,
"at least I don't have to pay women to **** me,"
I was proud of you for that one,

everyone tells you "I’m one of the good ones,"
chairs set in an illuminati triangle around the dinner table,
you ask your daughter how school was, she says
"spectacular," the poison trailing from her mouth to
the carpet to your loafers,

cameras everywhere,
through the window,
through the drapes
your wife is on a dinner date with your boss,
your wife is in a motel with your boss,
your wife just wanted to **** a powerful man for once,

you sell me **** in your garage,
my dad sent me to an institution but I fall in love so easily,
I watch your daughter in a shadow on the lawn at 11pm,
I convince your daughter not to **** you,
convince her to run away instead,

hours of film of small private lives,
the glare from the window pane
not enough to obscure how embarrassing people are,
but I love you for this,
the best footage being
inanimate objects dancing in the wind,
it’s proof I think of forces in the world
we don’t recognize at first til we feel them,
then we can’t stop recognizing them,
then we can’t stop trying to get them back,
then we spend our whole lives in pursuit,
of that evasive silent lightning strike,
moments before a kiss from a beautiful sad girl,
how it hurt a very specific part of our chests,
but like in a good way;
like in the best way possible.