i fell in love with your
eyes, but then your eyes became
pits of darkness inside life's plum and it
wasn't quite okay with me but i dealt with it because they were
yours.

i fell in love with your
heart, but then your heart became
a ball of wires of darkness inside your chest and it
wasn't quite okay with your mother and least of all me but i dealt with it because it was
yours.

i fell in love with your
hair, but then your hair became
packing straw inside of a barrel made of mahogany and it
wasn't quite okay with your deadbeat dad and least of all me but i dealt with it because it was
yours.

i fell in love with your
lips, but then your lips became
cold and too much like your great great great grandmother's and it
wasn't quite okay with your brother and least of all me but i dealt with them because they were
yours.

i fell in love with your
words, but then your words weren't
heard and it wasn't quite okay with anyone
least of all me but i dealt with it because they were
yours.

i fell in love with
you.
but then you weren't you and it wasn't quite okay with
me.
it was okay with me least of all.
but i deal with it.

i deal with what you were.

past.

i promise you that you will get a little more three-dimensional;
i promise you that you will stop feeling so consistently flat,
so deflated,
and i promise you that the world will change into more of a scary place but that
you will escape from it
with your head held high.

present.

i know that life isn't treating you too well right now.
i know that you are hurting yet at the same time denying yourself,
denying your chance to hurt,
and i know that the people in your world twist your perceptions every day but that
you will find harmony with them
in simplicity and silence.

future.

you promise me that life will get better.
you promise me that my world will be moulded into something involving him,
involving the boy with the crooked glasses.
and you promise me that someday the world will be changed through a few small words:
i adore you
in simplicity and silence and with my head held high.

love is love.

i hate to dull you with drugs.
to deaden your vibrant colours is to
desecrate a sacred temple to the prophets of madness.
the lead prophet beats a drum in my temples,
calls me to him with elaborate poetry
that spills from my head through my
veins to my fingers -
my elegy to you will never be allowed
to be said aloud.

serotonin
hurts
my
head
and
inextricably
more
so
my
heart­.

drugs can't help me.
they never have.
creativity is king.
medicine is usurper.
i will have to fight it
off.

our love was not made for movie screens.

our love was made for slow-burn tv dramas;
for the two schoolkids in the street's high school
barely grazing adolescence
who - fumbling - find a graceful love amidst
the corner shop and cobbled streets
and throw it all away for a second chance at a life
torn apart by carefully orchestrated constructs
of one lover's written word.

our love was not cultured by typicality.

our love was created through inside jokes;
nights of fireflies rocketing around in my chest - of you
warming me up from within
through all manner of crooked smiles and worries and
hands in my hair and
fingers linked with mine, lying on top
of my scrawled poetry i'll never admit is written
to you.

our love was made through careful planning;
through the nurturing of a friendship that turned into something more;
through a whispered confession followed by a laugh
followed by a written word saying just the same -
yes.

our love is yours.
please do not give it away.

i wish i could paint your eyes on my heart
to watch over my wanderings -
perfect swirls of bark and moss and sparks and
heavenly respite from what the world brings to us.

we may be together
a unit
just the two of
us
a pair of
pairs of eyes
blinking
in a world of ache and closed lids and doors
but we are.

and that, my love, is
enough.