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AP Jun 2013
One of these days or years someone might invent a time machine.
Then we could go back like you need.
Back to fix what I have stomped all over,
Broken then taped back together best I could.
But I have slippery fingers ( and eyes ) and I broke it again and again.
Until our time machine, reality tells me that the past is unamenable.
So accordingly this breakup was inevitable.
We can't return to the perfect beginning of us.
Perfect in your eyes but not in mine.
So I'm crying but I hope this is for the best.
No other option but to wait it out for a time machine.
Jan 2012 · 717
Lessons from Rothko
AP Jan 2012
The abstract expressionists wanted
to



strip



their work of associations
yearning for pure emotion
I didn't understand
but now I do.

Every song I've heard before
heard now
reminds me of my hollow heart
voices and instruments as phantom limb-reminders.

So I find weird instrumentals
electronic
trip-hop
stuff I never liked, things with nothing tied to them.

No summer love
no winter warm kisses
or new year of uncertainty.

It's my escape
into some kind of sensation
for
now.
AP Jan 2012
"Could we find somewhere to sit? Do you know someplace with like, benches, and a fountain or something?"
He sips at an Icee, less of an Icee and more of a blend of colored sugar and foam because the machine is on the fritz.

Keeps asking he if I want some.
I give in, the idea of our tongues hooking onto the same straw
Slurping up the same brownish slush
Makes me warm.

I know it shouldn't,
that it's wrong to feel this way.

Back to the question,
"You mean like James Street?"
I answer, laugh
Then regret it.
He gets embarrassed
When I point out silly things he says.

He thinks I'm smarter than him.
He's too brilliant for that to be true.
He smiles and turns away his face,
Shyness, feigned or maybe not,
"I should have known that."

We go there now, that place it feels like I've been to hundreds of times with him
But realistically it's probably a few dozen at most.

I tell him it's alright, stop blushing.
So here we are, where we used to sit in a summer long past
I thought I could be with him forever,
Deep and premature infatuation
Though still lingering and creeping back into my fore-mind at the worst times

I feel that something's crept back into his as well.
He's acting nervous,
Keeps saying things and getting embarrassed for no reason.

My chest empties,
I think two years ago
I'd be happier with this.
But it's now.

When I'm home I drift to sleep with one question swimming in my head--
How many people can you love at once?
Sickeningly twee at times? I originally had a second half outlining my second-thoughts, reality, much angrier than what's up here. Not sure if I'll add it back in.
Jan 2012 · 766
Thank God.
AP Jan 2012
He's so sensitive and apologetic
when he remembers
he could lose me.

I like when he has to try.

Maybe he will change,
but who knows.

At least we're not married
with kids
and committed (fully).

Thank God.
Jan 2012 · 1.1k
Joy-Expiry
AP Jan 2012
“Haaa,” I sighed, releasing these stale tensions.
“I know it’s not so fair to be upset,”
But talks of ultrasounds and interventions,
Tinge everything that’s right with mild regret.

I sometimes ache for life as told by family photo albums,
And could-be love, as written in that diary,
Since everything once bright eventually succumbs
To  inevitable joy-expiry.
Jun 2011 · 525
Something novel
AP Jun 2011
I sometimes worry
The pages will fly by
I wonder if I read
Closely enough
Jun 2011 · 674
A life un-private
AP Jun 2011
It’s hard to live
A life un-private.

A seasonal home.

Sleeping on a loveseat,
In a room where the TV is always on.
Constant headaches.
Lights and sounds that stab.
She sits by screens
All
Day.

And wonders why she is sad.

I fear
It will begin to spread.
I can’t escape, especially not at night.

I think I’ll take a shower.
Jun 2011 · 515
Nothing like a disaster
AP Jun 2011
There is nothing like a disaster,
To sweep me with relief.

Beforehand stress and sadness fester,
Rob tranquility like a thief.

But once the impact passes,
And I have straightened some things out,
There's nothing like a disaster,
To make me grateful for a drought.
Jun 2011 · 745
The loudest sound of all
AP Jun 2011
Having been in his chair all day,
It wasn't clear
I did not know.
I did not realize.

At nine years old,
Nine that day, January 1,
How could I be blamed?

I went on about life.
I was not grown,
I did not notice,
I knew no better.

In fact, I don't remember hearing...
My mother's frantic voice,
The intermittent sobs,
The paramedics pulling up.

But in the wake,
In the subsequent hours and days and YEARS,
Ten or eleven years,
I've grown. I understand...

Those things now give me chills just to acknowledge.
I still can not remember the commotion, but that's not what matters.
That disaster didn't shake me, you know.

But his absence is the loudest sound there is.
It's rang in my ears for the past decade or so.
It's the loudest sound I've ever heard.
Jun 2011 · 1.2k
Life in tandem
AP Jun 2011
I’m not sure if
we’ll really spend
our lives as one
sharing days
and
living life in tandem.
May 2011 · 762
Lock the door
AP May 2011
I can't remember my dreams lately. I am frightened in my sleep. I tiptoe around in bed.
Sometimes I explode. He makes me.
I stop thinking about that and him and how I used to tiptoe around the world.
That house became my prison, my whole world.

Odd how something so unpleasant trapped me somehow.

I thought it would be good. It wasn't good. I wish it hadn't happened.
It makes me nervous to think about. I tap my foot very quickly when it comes to mind.

I have to get away.

I did but I didn't; not in my head.
In my head he is still upstairs, across the hall, and I have to lock that door, put a chair under the handle too, so he doesn't hurt me.
He didn't, but I always knew he would somehow.
If only I could have locked up my door, prevented that black mass of air, that stench of pathetic hate and crippling insult from infecting my entire being. A little like this old restaurant I've driven by, still reeking with the stench of tobacco from back when that was still allowed.
He's not here anymore but I can feel it. The afterglow.

After-shadow?
May 2010 · 841
Two-Way Mirror
AP May 2010
I love you; you’re a two-way mirror.
I gaze at my reflection, smile,
think I guess it doesn’t really matter
whether you’re  back there smiling back
on the other side.

Because all I see is myself,
my own happiness,
this happiness of mine
that you show to me
by loving me

and letting me love me too.

— The End —