When you feel storms brewing inside you
you breathe.
When your heart turns to stone inside your chest
you breathe.
When unknowing souls cut you open
you breathe.
When they look away from the love you bleed out
you breathe.
When you find yourself choking on daydreams
you breathe.
When your insides burn from their absence
you breathe.
When they tear you apart just for fun
you breathe.
When you feel poems sprout inside your veins from the teardrops you cry
you breathe.
When it all goes silent and you're lost in your own company
you breathe.

You breathe,

you breathe,

and you breathe.

You breathe till your heart lightens
You breathe till your bruises fade
You breathe till you're awake from the reverie
You breathe till the hurricane is tame
You breathe till you find a friend in yourself
You breathe till the aches are all washed away
You breathe for the night to be gentle
You breathe till the golden dawn breaks.

You breathe inside of me like flowers blooming,
like sleeping embers in the furnace of my heart
heaving restless sparks in startling fever dreams.
My bleeding feet have walked miles into myself
and away from your entrapping embrace
My soul has broken your spell
averting my eyes from your gaze
My silver armour is crumbling
against blood soaked reveries
I feel your presence beyond the horizon
the distance swallowing memories
My voice choking within your thoughts
my presence a withering mist
You gently urging me out the door
streams of strange faces being let in
To soften the shade of the aching bruise
seal secretly grieving tombs
I move on where the blue stars fall,
burying blood clots in the moon
The silence here is deafening, dear
but my heart rings on its beat
I carry these shreds of skin you shed
they once were made of me.

They’re like a smoke that rises from a corner of your mind
Filling your entire head in such an unhurried flow
And you inhale the scent in gulps, in gulps
dazed and intoxicated, you drown in it.
You’d look into a pair of fawn eyes
that belong to a grown man—
the throne bearer of your kingdom of red.  
Fawn eyes, for they really are wide, innocent and bright
pouring out a flood of sunlight, an eternity of thriving life
The man, himself is real
a renaissance sculpture come to life,
the undoubting incarnation of the youthful Adonis.
You’d look into those gleaming eyes and for a moment
you feel their presence, you see love
You’re subtly tricked into feeling real emotions
in the face of the imaginary
They play with your thoughts, your flesh
until you part your lids and find
that the dream is here, the man is not.
So you wipe all the unrequited foolishness from your eyes
and unwillingly face the weight of reality.
Until the ghost reappears
and breathes that poison smoke back into your mind

And oh, how skillful he is! Oh, how cunning!
OH, HOW RADIANT THE SUN, IN THE WORLD OF DREAMS!

[Lub-dub,
lub-dub,
lub-dub,
lub-dub…]

[Breathe in… breathe out...
breathe in… breathe out…]

What awaits outside the eyelid dulls to dust in comparison—
The echo of silence for a friend,
the blemishes in the blood aching again
At the contact of the emptiness, the life
the fugitive escapes back into her dreamland.
Where she once lived in a foreign land
a thriving adolescence she lived within the walls of her mind
far away from the voids that mangled her childhood.
She once loved a man from that land
who ghosted inside her mind for years
In bleeding crumbs of reality
he sometimes appeared
but always, always to carelessly disappear
back into the million mile reverie.

Dreamland, O dreamland!
That grew up with me
inside my mind, inside my heart, so solitary
Now, a grown woman,
I still feed on your company
And I wait, I wait, I wait
for a true world as homely as my dream...

When the night is dark,
when the room is dark,
when the soul is dark,
when the mind is dark,

when the heart is dark

I wish to look into your eyes
through a million miles
through a million lives
through a million bygone worlds

I wish to look into your eyes
and dare you to survive,
dare you to breathe
dare you to burn the light inside your eyes
dare you to gaze back into mine

When the world is blind
when the world is fading
when the world is looking away
and it’s letting go of its embrace

I wish to look into your eyes
to make you feel
make you feel my presence
make you feel my warmth
make you feel my will to bear your weight

When everything is dark
I wish to look into your eyes
and urge you to carry on,
hold on to the soft darkness
soothe your weary soul
until it all gently goes away.

The world exists outside
Pavements dozing under a thousand footsteps
City lights blooming bright
flashing their sequin shine
in a hurry to blur the human eye
concealing starlight
Roads swallowing streams of noise
The city is alive
under the canopy of midnight velvet
the dreams of a sleepless sky
A soul would warm itself in the night
another would heave cold sighs
The darkness would die as the dawn arrives
as the world exists outside

The moon will set
it's milky white breath
would fade in the morning light
Seeds would open
sprouting leaves in motion
Nature would rise into life
Souls would wake
ripples caressing the lake
the ocean would glide with its tide
Bees sing in their hives
a worthy life to live by
in the world that exists outside

Here I lie
in my silent space
with my lone and unmet gaze
Nursing my wounds
scrubbing my purple bruise
smothering my youthful days
Stitches to seal
Bandaids to heal
Catching the wildest of sun rays
The world outside
is a reverie in the mind
Life slowly drifting away

The infinity lies
with its thousand skies
trapped inside the walls of my head
A beating heart
a cage to tear the wings apart
give me the blood and the rust instead
The sun to rise
My torn soul to fly outside
The fire to burn bright red
The pulse on my skin
life, a patient flow within
my hope still lives undead.

Hate is passionate.
When love turns to hate
you still possess their heart like a flame
they grudgingly surrender to your inseparable grip
they burn all night and day.
Indifference is colder.
When love freezes in the vein
they carelessly turn away
you die a death inside their forgetful minds
when the love drains out of their gaze
The warmth you once drew from them,
gasps for breath as the frost invades.
But the worst is yet to come, my dear
it's when your loved one fears when they have you near
When they recoil at the mention of your name
when they shrivel beneath your love and it's weight
when they wear your presence like a crippling chain
when they run away just to remain sane
The worst is when you're poison in their lips
never to loathe, but a woe to be eclipsed
The worst is when you're the suffocator of their breast
in whom your loved one can never find rest.

I feel like a disabled lamb that just burst out of its mother's womb.