You agree with me, saying
that I have taken them out of your mouth.
Yes, correct,
like literally.

I dared.

I'm not scared of the rain
and storms.
Yes, I am guilty of being a dreamer,
so what?

Travelling used to be fun,
crossing borders
without showing the passport,
welcomed with wide smiles,
no questions asked,
for there was no questions to ask.

Not scouring the suitcases,
no patdowns, no fuss.

No metal detectors, no police, no guns,
just handshakes and hugs,
warm 'Hi' and 'Have a wonderful time'.

Travelling used to be fun.

Love isn't blind,
blind are those,
who never loved.

They call him weird.
He doesn’t belong to their world.  

He doesn’t fit,  
so they label him a stranger,  
a bad guy.  

But he wouldn’t harm a fly;  

he is too good
to be.  

One of them.

It was your name I fell for first.
An instant name crush when I saw it –
two names I’d never have considered putting together,
but how beautiful, how unexpected.

Of course I fell for you name first.
Names are so much easier to fall for:
all the possibility in Florence, its softness, its grandness,
all the temptation in the way Delilah slips off the tongue;
the potential for a story about a girl named Ilaria Winter.

-

I fell for your style next, then your hair,
then the way you introduced yourself with both names
and then the way you spoke in class.

I think I stared at you too often, and I’m sorry.
I didn’t think I was being obvious, and I hardly thought
you would notice (someone as boring as) me.

But you must have, and I’m sorry.
I’m sorry you talked to me for the first time at the station,
when the train was fourteen minutes late, the moon looked
strange in the sky and I was contemplating jumping onto the tracks.
I’m so sorry you spoke to me at the train station of all places.

Yes, train stations have so much potential for beginnings,
but it’s far more likely they’ll be about endings,
about the fleeting, the slipping, the moments of going separate ways,
the longing for home and the crying into books kind of moments.

-

(But thank you, thank you anyway, for talking to me and knowing my name
and complimenting my hair and my boots and my clothes.
I wish I could have told you I loved the way
the bow in your hair matched your heels but I couldn’t and I’m sorry)

-

How disappointing it is to open something and find nothing in it,
because that’s me and I’m so sorry.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess, because I’ve had to be creative
with my front to conceal the dreary words of my pages.

(And maybe – most definitely – I’m reading too much into this anyway,
but I’m boring and nothing much happens in my boring life (because
I don’t let it and I’m sorry.))

-

But thank for trying (and I’m sorry, so sorry).

-

I just wish you wrote poetry because at least then I could attempt to compliment that.

(and maybe you do write poetry, but I guess I’ll never know, will I?)

(I’m sorry.)

No one cared
that there was an unattended bag on the train.
Staring at their phones, not looking around
what's going on,
raising heads only to see if it's their stop,
busy with Facebook notifications,
Instagram posts and youtube sensations,
commuting to work
from A to B,
half-******, half-asleep.
At 7am it's hard to be happy,
when you are going to work,
it's hard
to be something more
than a dumb, silent slave of the modern times.

No one cares about the unattended bag.
It's hard to give a ****,
when no one gives a ****.
You wanna talk to the driver? Good luck.

Someone noticed the bag, got a bit suspicious,
he looked around, and it was hard
to produce a word, to open his mouth,
to make all heads turn to him, all their eyes
have them fixed on you, when you are trying to explain
what's your concern.

There's no members of staff on the train anyway,
you don't wanna be late for work,
because of the stupid bag.

It's much easier to carry on
with staring at your phone,
not thinking of anything,
not getting paranoid about stuff.
It will spare you troubles in life.

Running away from the barbaric land,  
where an eye for an eye is the only law.  
Escaping the blind hatred of its people.

My own home has been besieged.  

Fleeing from wars and heartless bombs,  
hollow eyes and kidnapped souls.  

Running away from leaders and preachers,  
from life after life and death before death.