i have been through lifetimes of trouble
in the sixteen years i have been graced by
biology. i have learnt the power of words and
what they do to a person. i have spun webs of
silk to protect my soul from everybody around me, so much so
that i fear i may never reach
you.

but, when - if - i do,
i swear to you that i will expand my parameters, that i will
re-***** my barriers and protect you fiercely.
you will be everything to me.
to you, words will not be weapons.
to you, i will dedicate my life, no matter how small
it
may be.

because, after it all, how could i not love you?

brown-eyed boy has given up on me.
i am not enough for a future professor, a future professor
myself. my heart bleeds out over him, but he couldn't give less of a
****, the ****.

but i'm through with it.
i'm learning how to love myself through lack of love from another,
because he could never:
sing like i can.
act like i can.
love like i can.
be like i can.

i am in love with a future professor.

why?

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.

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 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.

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 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.

it has come to me that i have never truly known anyone.

speech comes through filters,
through carefully constructed creative collisions
and decisions on what words we should allow to
spill through those iron gates we call
lips.

the people i think i know the best -
the boy with crooked glasses who i can burst my heart upon
and trust him to bear the darkness with a cheery grin;
the man with a crooked bow tie who allows me to critique his jokes
as if they were works of art;
the person behind the stained computer screen i now work at
who takes in my streams of consciousness with a mind that
reads painlessly into them but will never quite understand -
are not the people that i know best.

those people are the ones typing at screens like mine;
those whom i have never spoken to and most likely never will;
those who look out at sunsets like the one i see through the library window and think,
'why can't i paint that with words?';
those who understand that words aren't a gateway to a person -
they are a rabbit-hole that hurries you down through analysis and
worry and
mistakes
into

cold hard truth.

and i realise as i sit here -
a battered blue folder and curling textbook piled next to my computer canvas,
a blue backpack deflated on the floor next to me,
freezing from lack of heating and lack of person -
that i do not know anyone better than

you.

it startles me how industrial veins creep through the sky and into
sunsets.
it seems rather poignant to think that
sunsets mean the end of days,
but maybe they mean the end of nature.
maybe in a thousand years
humans will be looking out at
glass domes.

maybe the sunset will be constant then.

maybe we will love it.

maybe we will leave it.

for now, i keep my vigil.

ever since i was born, there's been a hole
in my heart. i clumsily blocked it with
cotton wool, pasted it over with
purple-patterned plasters, and
left it to heal.

it never did.
then i met you.

you seem to know everything, to know
far more than i could ever aspire to
about mending hearts. you took out some
disinfectant, wiped away
the peeling violet, picked out
the ***** of snow with wooden tweezers, and
pressed your hands to it.

i don't know how you did it, but
you
knitted
me
back together.
and
even though i still need the occasional push, the
reassurance that your hands will be there when i need them, that
they want to be there,
you fixed me.

thank you.

i wish that i could
climb into your skin. that would
be all i would need.