He’s always been afraid.
She was always petrified.
They both always craved control,
They were similar in that way,
We all are.

You know,
Something I‘ve been meaning to tell you is that
The devil isn’t red and he doesn't have horns.
He’s got brown eyes and a charming smile.
He won’t lead you to do evil things,
And he won’t make your life hell.
No,
He will make you do that yourself.
His role?
He’s there to comfort you,
Bring you in,
Hold you close,
He will tell you that he can save you,
Only him.
“Without him, you’re nothing.”
You’re worthless, he’s made you believe it.
“You’re lucky to have him.”
He’s a parasite.
He will say anything to make you stay.
He’s afraid.

And another thing,
She isn’t all scars and sad poems.
There are stars hidden in her lungs
That she whispers into sweet poetry
Hoping that one line, just one, will be enough.
She won’t write you into stanzas,
She won’t be your muse.
No,
You’ve been poetry this whole time.
Her role?
She’s there to make art,
To feel every emotion
Deeper than the bottles she drinks to make them go away.
She will write,
She will turn him into midnight poems
And cries to be set free
From all of this.
“Darling, the moon doesn't shine for you.”
She understands this and he won't accept it.
“You’re the only poem I know how to write.”
She’s a poet.
She will do anything to make him stay.
She’s petrified.

He tore her down and bruised her soul,
And she turned him into art.

The world might not remember how she felt,
But they will read her poems and know,
The devil isn’t red and he doesn't have horns.
He’s got brown eyes and a charming smile.
And
She isn’t all scars and sad poems.
There were stars hidden in her lungs
That she whispered into sweet poetry.

He was afraid,
And she was petrified,
We all are.

If you ever fall in love with a writer,
Your days will be musical
The nights will have their own song
Not anymore will you look at things as regular-
The trees will seem to give you more than just shade,
The sunlight will trickle down on your skin
Bouncing off the window pane
The wind will do a waltz through your hair
Your eyes will carry the universe in them
All the things will not be the same again.

If you ever fall in love with a writer
I don’t promise that it will be easy
For, writers can be insane sometimes
What good is love if you don’t jump off sanity?
They are forgettful. Terribly so.
They will not remember anniversaries
Or to buy tickets for your favourite show
But, they will never forget how you smell after a bath,
The colour of your eyes,
Thoughts of you will never escape their mind.

Writers can be clumsy,
They will trip over their own shabby scattered notes,
Spill the ink onto a fresh piece of poem
But, the way their fingers will trace stories on your bare skin,
And how they will carefully settle
The baby hair on your forehead before kissing,
Will seem to you as their finest work.

If you ever fall in love with a writer,
They will never tell you how much
They love you back until,
Your absence makes it hard for them to breathe,
Makes you more of necessity.
They will, then, hold your hand,
Close their eyes
And cry like they have already lost you;
The tears will spread over their face
Like delicate words on paper,
With each one rolling down their cheek
Their clutch of you will grow tighter.
It is when they open their eyes,
Look at you as a miracle in disguise,
That each part of their soul will sing
To you their love
And the million “I love yous” you wrote to them
Will not be enough.

If you ever fall in love with a writer,
Kiss them in the stormy rain,
Drive them to a distant place
They have never been to,
And watch carefully their expressions change,
Build them sand castles
And let the tides wash it away,
Don’t buy them flowers
On Valentine’s day.

For every blown out candle,
every Mazel Tov,
every turn of the tassel,
you gift-wrap what a writer dreads most: blank pages.
It’s never a notebook we need.
If we have a story to tell,
an idea carbonating past the brim of us,
we will write it on our arms, thighs, any bare meadow of skin.
In the absence of pens,
we will repeat our lines deliriously like the telephone number
of a parting stranger
until we become the craziest one on the subway.

If you really love a writer,
find a gravestone of someone who shares their name and take them to it.
When her door is plastered with an eviction notice, do not offer your home.
Say I Love You, then call her the wrong name.
If you really love a writer,
bury them in all your awful and watch as they scrawl their way out.

If you sincerely love a writer,
They will carry you inside them
Till you are all they remain,
Hold you like the glint in their eyes
If a writer falls in love with you,
You can never die.

Words do not a writer make
Nor poems nouns or prose
But the heart that breaks for breaking sake
Beyond calling Rose a rose

It's not the nouns or adjectives
Or strings of sappy lines
It's seeing love where nothing lives
And seeing darkness shine

A writer sees beyond the words
But sees the great divide
Between what heart says and what is heard
Never satisfied

A writer does not fill the page
With words that others need
But the page the page is the stage
Where their emotion bleeds

Of the things I think a writer holds
You may disagree
But if your heart is moved to words so bold
A writer you may be

don't love a writer
unless you can handle the truth
of the way they see your very existence
in the eyes of a poet,
a novelist,
a songwriter.
unless you, yourself, are willing to hear
the pencil moving to your name,
exposing secrets that only you two shared,
revealing hurt and laughter in rhythm and rhyme.
unless you know about the love letters
written to you but never sent
to express their yearning to hold your hand,
to kiss those lips,
to fall asleep next to you throughout the chilling night.
unless you know that your name isn't bob or joan,
or eric or melissa,
but that's how they wrote you in their novels,
marking the day you both met.

don't love a writer
unless you can handle the ache they feel
when they see you with someone else.
when they hear you laugh from afar,
but never with them.
when they allow themselves to be broken by you,
and you will never read their diaries written on napkins.
when they know you love another,
and yet still they want to hold you in their arms,
to kiss you,
to love you,
to write volumes about you.
when they promise themselves to stop writing
because the love poems have shadows of pain
and their novels go on, never ending.
when they break their hearts for you,
and let it bleed over paper and stitch it with words
to handle another day without you.

don't love a writer
until you've read their heart.

I write and I write
Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days
I write for fun, I write for therapy
I write because It's all I might ever be.

My writings are my thoughts.
Some lovely, some scarring.
With a pencil in my hand and paper in front of me,
writing away the monsters is the only way I can be saved,
at least for a little while, saved from reality.

I write and I write
Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days
I write when I'm happy, I write when I'm sad.
Like that, I will keep on writing, non-stop,
till I'm dead.

I think I loved you most the winter your heating was broken
And we’d stay inside all morning
Pretending to complain that we couldn’t get out of bed
Our clothes becoming little islands on the floor,
Ones that we could not quite find the courage to visit

Your hand stayed glued to my hip,
Your breath warming my shoulder
Like a long drag of whiskey
That kind that had a home so far away,
In a glass bottle on top of your refrigerator.
The one that would not be opened
Until that fateful day in February,
When everything went wrong

And on that unbearable night
When you joked that you’d freeze to death if I left you
There was a long silence
Like it might be true.

Now it’s warm enough
That I show too much skin when sitting in bars
And you avoid me like the plague,
Whispering in any girl’s ear that’s near to you
Every time you see me watching out of the corner of your eye

We should have stayed inside when the ice began to melt
Because I think
When those doors opened and we finally ventured outside
The world had changed,
And so had you and I.