The meaning of leaves in
a refreshing cool wind
He chose to live
for friendship
Not for that
other thing

In all honesty I've never been good with words. I never knew what to respond after the doctor would ask me what hurt, or what to tell my mother after I saw her cry when my dad left. Poetry is placing words in all the wrong places in order to build something right. Poetry is taking apart the puzzle and forcing the pieces into spaces they don't fit. I tried to write you a letter to tell you that I miss you, the problem with poetry is that there's no metaphor that makes this emptiness inside my chest any more beautiful. There's no personification real enough to make my sheets feel like you're laying in them. There's no simile literal enough to make my heart feel as though its healing. I wish I could place these words on my tongue and roll them out for you to hear, but since I've last kissed you I can't even find the motivation to part my lips. I always find myself questioning why I keep writing; because the problem with my poems is that you're never the one reading them.

"...But truthfully I'd rather stare at your hands. I enjoy how they never shake the way mine do as though I've been carrying an object as heavy as my heart for too long; but they're always empty. I enjoy the way you wrap them around pencils, and coffee cups with a tight grip. I like the way you make it seem like you don't let go very easily. I used to rest in weak hands. I used to slip through the fingers of people who shook me off while I held on as though my life depended on them. I think the problem with the way I live is that I often never give myself the satisfaction of controlling whats mine. I'm not strong enough to make anyone stay. I'm not good enough for them to ever want to. I've lived with this reality making home in my mind but there's something about the way you looked at me this morning; kind of the way an artist looks at a finished canvas in total awe. Maybe that was the moment that I realized that I should probably stop staring at your hands and make love to your eyes. The way the light up as though you've been swallowing lightning bugs. The way you never hesitate to let them linger. The way their blue reminds me of the walls of my grandmas house that was built up with hands that look just like yours. I like the way you stare even when your blood isn't laced with alcohol. Almost as though I'm the painting that no matter how long you look at it; it still remains beautiful. The truth is, my walls are covered in love letters and poems written for someone I never knew... that was until I met you."

Suddenly, the world went numb. All the pain, the worry, the apathy, the carefulness; it all went away. There was no sound, no hum, no white noise. The light stopped flickering; the curtains stopped dancing with the breeze blowing through the window. All I felt were your hands.
Slowly and softly making their way down my shoulders, tracing my skin like fingers exploiting a map. Gently feeling the goose-bumps form along the surface of my arms, and gently intertwining your fingers with mine.
I could have closed my eyes. I could have convinced myself that your love for me ran deeper than this. The truth is, this was the foreplay before the passionate goodbye. This was you staining your pigment onto my skin.

“Stop. This can’t be your goodbye. You can’t leave me like this”

You stopped. You looked into my eyes; the same eyes I looked into so many times before. As though you had it all planned out, you brushed my shoulders with your lips and whispered in a way that still forms goose bumps along my thighs;

“I have been looking for ways to show you I love you.
Now all I can do is leave”

I

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp’d in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The mood arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.

II

    Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
    Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?