You are a guitar
and its woodsy scent
when it has never been played.

You are the forest
as background to a storm,
car windows down
and no sound but the glass
cutting the wind in half
and the pounding in our chests.

You are summer at 3am
when sleep is unnecessary
and the stars are most vulnerable.

You are the scent
of
cedar
and rain
and home.

At first her mind may seem to be a clutter of astronomical objects
with planets sprawling all over,
nebulae birthing everywhere,
stars tossed in random directions.

But in truth, it is not.
Staring into her eyes is like drowning in the vast galaxies,
suffocating due to the lack of air,
but doing so voluntarily.
Her mind is a beautiful collection of constellations falling into place,
with perfect planetary alignments,
completed with the most beautiful nebula that God handcrafted himself.

You see, she is just that fascinating,
you just need to look a bit closer.

i hate that i’m lying in bed
with a cup of tea
and can see myself in the future
in our bed
with a cup of tea
and you lying next to me

and i hate that i can see myself turning out the light
and laying my head to rest
on your chest

i hate that i can see us sitting at a little round kitchen table
next to the window
you in your black rimmed glasses
scrolling through your phone
me with my hair ******* and one knee draw up to my chest,
eating a bowl of oatmeal as the sun creeps its way
into the middle of the sky

i hate that i can see us side by side
brushing our teeth in a cramped bathroom
in front of a foggy mirror,
listening to music as we get ready for the day

i hate that i can see us walking out the front door,
i hate that i can see us kissing goodbye

because i’m lying in bed
with a cup of tea
thinking about all of this,
thinking about you

yet i’ve already kissed you
goodbye.

Nothing in my life ever lasts
but I need you to
because I didn't even know
what home felt like
until you fell asleep in my arms.
I can see entire galaxies
inside of your eyes
and they're swallowing me whole
but I won't fight it
because you make me feel
like an astronaut.
I want to get lost
in the constellations
that you are made up of.

I feel like a black hole
when I sit at the bar.
Like there is no amount of liquor
that could fill this bottomless well
and people keep falling in.

I can hear them cry sometimes
finger nails clawing at stone
until the tips are rubbed raw.
Ghosts wailing in the dark
a throbbing in my chest,
Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.

I spoke to one once
at a queer hour in the morn
she said "It's beautiful down here"
even as her body was being torn
into billions of subatomic particles.

"It's beautiful" she cried
"I've seen the end of time
I've seen galaxies form
I've seen star's collapse
and again be reborn
I've seen life emerge
and I've seen it destroyed
I've seen it all with my eyes
and all the bad you've done,
all the guilt you carry
it isn't helping anyone
it's ok- it's ok-- it's ok---
to let yourself be happy"

I so badly desired
to have faith in her words
but I've never been one
to believe in ghosts.

Spiralling downwards,
Bitter taste of coke slipping in between the bumps on your tongue
And months from now when I try to think about you
I will remember the way you looked at me
And how time stood still
So it felt just like you were standing across from me
Throwing your unsaid medals at my throat
I let them slide down to my chest
It burns
Like the acid streams of coke surfacing my lungs
And I cannot breathe
All I can think about is why do I cross paths with people I am not supposed to fall in love with
Coke sliding down your throat
Swallow your golden apologies you never were brave enough to say
Crackling fizzling drink
I have been in love with you since May
And every look out has been a habit, I still try to find you in a crowd
I still try to swallow the bitter fizzy only slightly sweet taste of coke down my throat
The same way I choke
On every apology I never said to you and how I almost but never did tell you how much your cheekbones remind me of the sunset.
Timeless
This drink will never age and neither will your eyes
Visceral bubbling youthful
I have been waiting on nothing
I feel the acid burn in my throat in my chest and it erupts as I ***** every scent I’ve had of you, every gaze we have exchanged while she looks at you and smiles
Electric
Like the fizz that touches the insides of my stomach
I want to look at you and smile
And all you do is watch me
Sipping through your straw
I am drinking coke
And your eyes say it has been a while and look at me, look at what I do I want to show you what I do because it has been far too long
Child
I am not a child I am a hazy incense drifting through hollow walls, corridors and people infested places
Everywhere I turn I cannot breathe
I need something to quench this thirst of longing
I have collected from every instance I never get to see you, every moment you look at me and she is with you
I want to keep these aluminium tabs
I want to push the bubbles down your throat, tell you this is how I feel every time I look at you and you look at me and we say nothing
I want to tell you I have been doing just fine
And that you are wearing the same shade of red I’ve been feeling and this coke can shares the red we are crying
I want to say I am sorry I looked back and I wished so very hard
Sohrab
You are between these lines the coke can holds, every droplet that condenses on this metal surface, cool
I have something to hold and I don’t know what to feel
Only the acid taste of coke

habits
like how i lock the bathroom door
when i'm the only one home
habits
like how i run my tongue over
cuts at the roof of my mouth
like how i drop my front hand
when i'm boxing
like how i fold down pages
of a book
like how i turn off plug sockets
when nothing's plugged in
like how i bite my nails
how i slouch
how i run my fingers over old scars
habits
like how i reach out for you
even though you're gone

There is no whiskey in his room tonight...

Instead,
There is a half-empty glass of-
Rock shandy, Pepsi-cola, Dr.Pepper,
Or something black.
Something minuscule,
even though he has not sipped from it.
He has not looked at it- his tongue
Was only dry for two minutes before he
Locked the door.
For the only presence that made it hard for him to swallow
Was in the form of something that he was still trying to release...
at 2AM.
Release at 2AM.
There is a typewriter in front of him and he is feeling as permeable as
The glass that is sitting next to it.
'as permeable if it had a closed lid made up out of carbon' he thinks.
'Closed lid', 'Carbon',
'Closed lid'
He does not know what to type.
As distance diminished it's existence throughout the years,
He began to realize that Letters were starting to transform themselves
Into Diary-Entries and vice-versa.
The art of belittling seclusion through the method of fictionalizing himself
Was turning more into a hobby than an art and
he did not know what to do except to accept it as a tragedy
That nobody else needed to know about.
"Tragedy:" he types.
"I don't know how to forget about you."
'And etcetera,' he thinks.
In his minds eye he sees a girl in a school far away.
She's holding a camera and a textbook and a picture of a boy
That isn't him.
She's walking into her new life and one day she will go a week without
Thinking about how it feels to know interest and feel it shared
from someone who thought it never existed.
One day she will go a week without thinking about the boy who stared at empty pages
And wrote letters about bitter meals that his tongue thought could never be tasted.
One day she will go a week with just the thought of how glamorous a life spent alone is...
Before she meets someone there...
Who will make her taste something that is less bitter than him himself.
'I hope that's where my story ends.' He thinks.
And then imagines himself embedded into
Dark bitter things.
(Tobacco, caffeine, dark chocolate.)
He sighs and stares at the words he has already typed.
He can imagine these bitter things spilling into his glass and changing its taste with each
little drop.
"You were dead to me before you even walked out of the door..." He decides,
And puts it onto the paper.
He lifts the glass and takes a sip and then puts it back down again.
'One day she will go a week without thinking about me..."  He thinks.
Release at 2AM.

I spell “I love you” on the lines of your collarbone

and I always try to go from one end to another,
brushing calligraphy strokes with my tongue
and blotting your skin as a page with my lips.

I never really have finished saying it,
and I guess I never will

my motions are lost among your curves
and my lips almost always end up
meeting yours somewhere in the middle.