my bones have learned how to store the sadness i harbour
in their marrow, in the soft sinews between molecules.

it sinks and settles, like sediment, like coins with their heavy edges
all jagged and used.

when each sentence that comes out is worse than the last
that's the sadness speaking in its foreign tongue.

but when the tension on the surface of my skin gets to be almost too much to bear, it threatens to split open into two equal halves;

one for me
and one for the sadness.

My chest hurts




And then it feels nothing.

The crying stops eventually
The sadness does not

When the night grabs ahold of my lapels and shakes me until my mind rattles, I submit and hang limply from its fingers until it drops me onto my pillow to rot until the morning.

And morning comes and reminds me that even with sunlight the sadness does not stop. It grabs my cheeks and stares me in the eyes until I remember to breathe and then it pushes me away into the abyss of late afternoon where the first tendrils of night begin to reach for my collar once more.

The endless cycle of being too alive for feeling so empty.

i. despising someone is a silent affair. you sit and brood, mull over all the hideous facets of this hate. there's guilt, maybe some shame, but your heart doesn't acknowledge this. why should it? after all, they say listen to your heart, and after he stamped his name on it, all it knows is him. and if that means retaining this small inkling of hate, then so be it.

ii. there's a suffering that accompanies hating someone you almost loved. you're all of the sudden torn completely by these two opposite feelings. somewhere the love you were harbouring is rotting and fermenting; that makes your chest suffer. and somewhere the hate you are creating is burning and eating and boiling; this makes your stomach suffer. all come with a small portion of suffering.

iii. i still long for you. most of the time, all of the time. should i be admitting that? definitely not. so why am i? is it because i feel obligated? because i put effort into you? is it because the last time i talked to you i wanted nothing more than to see your shining face? like a tape, i'll keep that feeling of longing until i'm rewound.

iv. i don't regret meeting you. i don't regret sitting on your bed eating ice cream and complaining about the rain. i don't regret kissing you. i don't regret laughing at your laugh or admiring your beautiful, perfect face. i do regret wishing you were always near. i do regret wanting to spend a while with your soul. i do regret hoping you felt all that i felt. that hope could have been used for something better.

v. i cried myself to exhaustion that night. not to sleep. i cried until my eyes were swollen and my lips cracked. i cried until my chest and my fingers and my legs went numb and then i laid there, so ******* tired, but so terribly agonized. and i hoped for sleep, but all my body wanted was you.

i will run. with desperation and a hint of absolute dread. you're bad for me. you always will be.

always.

but my heart is addicted to the rejection. it's like a drug that keeps it beating. not steadily and not with any real meaning.

but i digress.

you know the painful nights? the nights that whimper in your arms like a wounded animal? hold me like those nights, even if it's just to get me to the morning.

comfort me.

i don't know how else to murmur my love to the ones i want to hate than through morse code and slow blinks from across the room.

however.

on the days that seem a little rounder in the middle, robust even, i'll forget maybe, about how soft the air felt when you slept next to me. i'll forget that the night ahead is going to howl like a haunt watching her love die.

but i digress.

here's to forgetting
and here's to not

here's to remembering
and here's to choosing not to

Poetry is hard to write when you have no more words to describe whatever you call heartbreak. At some point, the feeling of your heart residing in your stomach is no longer an anomaly. It's nothing. It's the full feeling that makes you feel sick and it's the choking feeling that comes at night before you brush your teeth. The sadness washes your face for you and tucks you into bed so you can focus on how heavy your heart really is.

It becomes your caretaker, in a sense. Because when you notice that your eyes have more trouble staying open than usual, sadness swoops in and whispers "hello, I'm always ready to help you sleep. I've been waiting."

And so all of the sudden you sleep so soundly, so heavily, that not even your dreams visit you. Your alarm doesn't crack open your eyes, the birds don't make enough noise to shake you from your own nest.

And when you have no one to drag you from under the covers, each day seems a little more daunting than the last. The love that you've been holding like a breath starts to stain the mattress beneath you and spreads into the springs, leaving a stench that can be similar to sadness, but sweeter.

When he leaves (and he will) this stench will permeate your own skin. He'll leave on a bright and clear morning with a suitcase full of your sacrifices. He'll load in on the plane and then lose it at the baggage claim. People will ask how they can help and he will say "don't worry, it's nothing I can't replace." And you will feel the exact moment he erases you from his being.

It'll feel like ice, but also like a searing fire, right through the middle of your body. And all he'll feel is a sense of freedom and a slight worry that maybe he left something important behind.

Love is like that. So filling and encompassing when it doesn't need to be, and so vacant when it really counts.

And it really counts when you come back to the place you thought your love kept up residence. It counts when you walk into your room and don't smell the same sweetness you remember. It counts when you've been craving love for weeks and return to find nothing.

Seeking salvation in a person is the most foolish decision someone in love can make. It's the downfall of soft-hearted people who think their person-hood is confirmed by how much of themselves they've put in the gaps of those they adore. And they watch them walk away with that bit of themselves.

Sometimes they'll walk close enough to one of these people that their body tenses, wants to ****** the piece back, but it's been so long that the piece has grown into the person they once were growing with. And it's such a feeling of emptiness and tenderness that it's hard to discern whether it's regret they're swallowing or a longing for the past.

In any case, poetry comes easier to write to those who have enough sadness to last three lifetimes.