The muscle squeezes and contracts
So you can only take shallow breaths
Tired and sore
Like strained muscles after a run
You know why?
That's the heart working doubly hard
To keep you alive
When your spirit wants to die

You were the only flower
Budding in this long forgotten bed
So I watered you
And watered you
Only to **** you instead

Between the now and the next
is a steady snailing train
carrying a heartbeat
anxiously tapping its feet
checking its watch
pacing a few steps up
and down
while the time train drags forward
to the next time
when our eyes can meet.

The fair buildings that have seen the yester-years
bask in twilight.
Generations of footsteps and handprints
have worn and wrinkled them.
The wisen walls have overheard conversations
both whispered in confidence and declared in boldness,
and the floors have long absorbed
the tears, blood and sweat of characters
in their own private dramas
played out within these walls.

You and I will never see what the buildings have watched,
hear what they’ve listened to
all those years –
the stories each brick and mortar holds in secret.

And twilights and days will pass
till the impending moment comes, when,
along with concrete pounded into dusts,
gone will be these flickers of images,
the memories of these fleeting lives,
buried,
like tapes and film rolls burned
by the progress of time.

We live in parallel worlds,
you on your journey and I on mine.
We wander in our own routes
in separate paths.

So why do your words elate me?
Your messages are like threads
connecting points in my journey to yours.

We are pinging signals across boundaries.
Making sure we are travelling along the same orbit?
Side by side, and you’re still with me?
Does that assure you or me?
Because though parallels walk side by side
they’ll never meet.

My mind is filled with too much of you.
Sometimes loudly at the forefront,
re-enacting happy times.
Sometimes muted at the back
waving once in a while
mischievously distracting.
Other times you hung over my dark thoughts
making me wish I have the physical you
to grab hold of, to find comfort in.
At times you are the dark thoughts,
bluntly disproving all my assumptions of us,
questioning my worthiness
mocking my confidence.
You are the overwhelming preoccupation
I want to and don’t want to let go of.
You fill up too much of my mind.

You’ve always pushed Sleep away
and now he has left you.
So now, you sit around and mope
awaiting his return.

Sipping on your coffee ain’t gonna bring him back
(He hates it when you drink)
But what can you do
Except to sip your loneliness away
While waiting for his return.

Each delete is a jabbing pain,

A dull baton pressing, suffocating, smothering the heart to silence it.

Jab-

At the life that could never be

Jab-

At the throbbing ache within

Jab-

At memories now turning sour

Jab-

To muffle the affection of each picture

Jab-

Out of sight out of mind

Jab-

Trashing evidence and burning bridges

Jab-

The leaves on the tree have now a different shade.

They were green and orange and red.

Now they are green, orange, red and ache.

Not dark, deep ache.

Ache with a tinge of nostalgia.

Light.

Something between missing and longing.

Not so light that it stands plain against all other shades

Because that new one,

that ache,

though light,

stands starker than the rest.

The leaves on the tree have now another shade.

Green, orange, red and ache.

Light, conspicuous ache.

I measure my worth

by the texts you’ve sent

and the texts you replied.

Every one I’ve sent

that weren’t replied

is a demerit,

a subtraction,

of the tiny hopes

the merit points have built.

Like hitting a snake on the game

(there are no ladders though)

and every lack of words from you

is that awful step that slips

down.

And though I hope to climb up again

slowly

I think I wish more than that

for this game to end.

(Or maybe not.)

My dear,

Let’s dance.

This fleeting  closeness and keeping a distance.

This pretence of looking and not looking.

This accidental and unaccidental touch of your hand, your elbow, your thigh,

And you’ve never shrunk back.

This constant stream of what-ifs and what-if-nots.

This guessing and ensuring.

This mysterious dance around both our hearts.

Staring at white slabs

On white columns

That’s better than

Staring at you.

Just in case,

In between jokes, tales,

And enthusiastic laughter,

You’ll see in my eyes

The overwhelming desire

To invite you into my life.

I sleep, in sleep perchance to dream a dream

to see, to live, that which I cannot live.

Sometimes of ghosts and thrilling mysteries,

to wake in racing, violent thumping beats.

Sometimes of buildings, large, uncanny, real,

to wake with wonder, bewildered and confused.

Sometimes of faces, strange and odd and queer,

to wake, and, disoriented, shake my head.

Sometimes of you and I in love and then

I wake, to smile, to sigh and then to cry.

I sleep, in sleep perchance to dream a dream

to see, to live a love that cannot be.