Before I begin, allow me to explain,
I too loved.. once,
so think of me not as some cynic-
nor as a master in the ways of love-
but rather as a keen observer-
now, that may mean I have nothing to offer you-
no insider knowledge-
no secrets of love-

But I do  know how to tell a true love story -

Interested?
Fantastic-
So let’s begin,

True love, if there is such a thing at all,
is like the thread that makes the cloth
you can’t tease it out-
you can’t extract meaning-
without ending up deeper in the web-
and it always remains-
hidden under layers -

In the end, that’s all you can really say about any
True love story-
They don’t generalize-
They don’t analyze-
They arent found-
They just… happen.

and that’s what makes them “true.”

But what is this coveted “love” -
the emotion?-
the act?-
the mentality?-

Love, is a constant state of illusionment-

A collective agreement amongst humans-
that it, whatever it may be,  can be treated as an excuse
for recklessness, irrationality, and misplaced strife-  

A quid pro quo  between two individuals-
to agree that they are doing something-
anything-
other than mindlessly drudging through life-

Now that is not to say that what love creates is pointless-
I said before, I have felt the embrace of love
Love festers between individuals for so long
it has no option-
but to mould the physical to itself-
and alter our personalities-

Characterized by spontaneity-
by indulgence-
by risk-
to love is the most dangerous experience in existence-
the act of being fully vulnerable with another-
while promising not to hurt them the same-

Love is characterized by vulnerability-
and the constant fear of being hurt-

So you want to know how to write a true love story?
be honest-
dwell not on the “romantic” blindfolds that keep us irrationally seeking our partners-
dwell not on the on the memories of a love that blossomed-
reveal the core of love -

A true love story comes from gut instinct-
A true love story, comes from experience.
A true love story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe

So I said I loved once,
allow me to elaborate-

I too have felt the “butterfly stomach”
- where the insides of the lovestruck turn on their host and manifests the emotional significance of meeting “the one”

I too have spent the day daydreaming...
-Lost in the thought of “the one”, seeking brief breaks from reality in my mind between moments of  utter normalcy

I too have melted into a puddle of emotion….
-lying next to “the one” as we slowly spill more and more of the secrets that bound us as individuals, joining a spirit much larger than ourselves-

I too have felt... invincible-
-to know that I’ve found something more significant than myself. Something that replaces the fear of the future.. and makes it something to look forward to.

Yes, I too have fallen in love.
and I did just that-
I fell.





..And that is my true love story-

I like the way you destroy yourself. The way your corpse-like face, with its sunken in cheeks and hollowed out eyes, smiles a crooked yellow smile at the thought of being buried in the ground, rotting away. I thought it was beautiful the way you'd force your fingers down your throat with spindly fingers, "look a rainbow," you'd say, "it's so beautiful," you'd whisper, clutching a slow burning cigarette between the two yellow fingers of your other hand. You'd flush the toilet with such grace. The whole process would've been that of a maestro conducting Beethoven’s 7th symphony, and for all you knew, it was.

I loved that time we were lying in that figurative gutter of morality and you handed me a sharpie, "wanna play connect the dots?" you rolled up your sleeve.

I still remember that day you stole that wedding dress from the Salvation Army. it was out of style and it's still up for debate whether that stain was red wine or blood, but you waltzed right in there, a needle still sticking out of your ******* neck, took that dress in your own two, scab littered arms, and walked right out the front door like you owned the place. I could've kissed you.

In that dress you looked like a princess, with your stringy hair and frame so malnourished that it hung off of you like you were wearing a pair of drapes, you looked like a something out of a bonafide Disney movie.

With my hand in your right hand, and a bag of speed in your left, you pulled me around the corner into the seclusion of the alley.

"I look like a princess"

You looked beautiful

"And that makes you my prince"

A homeless man stirred from behind a dumpster, peeking over the top, his eyes - though showing clear signs of many years deep in any bottle he could find - showed realization. His hand disappeared in the downward direction, his eyes were wide.

“And you know what princes and princesses always get?"

My hand was around your fragile throat, your neck read like Braille, you smile, such a beautiful smile.

"They always get, a happy ending"

And from there, I can't be sure, but I think all three of us finished at the same time.

But of all the days we had together, of every self-destructive tendency you had, I will always remember the day, all of your endless hard work finally materialized into everything you wanted it to become.

“I am the **** of the ******* earth”

This was the day you destroyed yourself. You told me why.

“I turned to self destruction for solace, solace from everything I was expected to become being shoved down my throat, I wiped my *** with morality and dogmas, and I became the antithesis of what I was supposed to be, I ******* won.”

And with that you dropped to your knees in front of the coffee table, the transparency of its clear glass surface obstructed by five pristine white lines. Like perfect little white picket fences, surrounding perfect little yards that perfect little children would play their perfect little games while their perfect parents would do not so perfect things behind the doors of their perfect little houses.

And this is when I understood.

Your *****, messy, clumped-up hair offered a half veil for your face. A $1 bill hovered above the first line; your practiced anticipation was beautiful. God, I loved this part, because you loved this part. Just before that first hit, just before the euphoria expanded, washing over you, blanketing your lanky figure and troubled mind in bliss. Your last seconds on earth.

And this is when I understood.

Before long, all five lines were absent from the table, and making their way through your system, you were glowing. You raised yourself up and teetered on your 6-inch heels, your stick thin legs threatening to snap in half and cut you down. You wrapped your arms around me, you didn't say it, neither did I. Your eyelids fluttered and you batted your eyelashes. I don’t know if it was on purpose, but it was ****.

You walked to the balcony, I knew you wouldn't jump. You just stood there, impossibly high, in your impossibly high heels, at the impossibly great distance to the ground. Your tiny frame, illuminated perfectly by the glow of the electric bug zapper, it was the perfect analogy. Your spotlight was a killer, and your beauty was destruction.

The sun fell behind the horizon lines, and the crescent moon rose high in the sky.

“I’m going to lounge on that”

The stars were faintly visible though the light pollution.

“I’m going to find the flattest stars and skip them through galaxies.”

You had a bottle of ****** in one hand, a bottle of ***** in the other.

“I’m going to visit every planet; I’m going to live in their gutters.”

The bottles were both open, you set the ***** down, shaking out pill after pill into your open palm, you smiled.

“I’m going to meet an alien; I’m going to dance with him.”

A mouth full of ****** and a bottle of ***** to wash it down.

“I’m going to meet God, if there is such a thing.”

Hours passing, felt like seconds. You’re starting to slip, you’re starting to float up, up to all those promises you made to the moon, and the stars, and the aliens.

For the longest time, I couldn't tell if your lifelessness was figurative – conjured up by my perspective of what you are – or literal. I may have sat there for a long time, admiring the beauty of everything you worked so hard for. You looked the same, and I think that was beautiful. It was beautiful the way you epitomized ruination. How you massacred every conventional idea of what it meant to be alive and well. How you taught me that a sense of loss is only relative. I think it was beautiful the way you destroyed yourself.

it's dark where you are
it's cold and the ghosts are unwelcoming and every part of you is tense and screaming and reaching out
but it's hard to reach out when you lose everything beyond your visceral reactions
and i'm sorry and i'm sorry and i'm sorry
the distinction between everything you believe to be true blurs with the allegories your mind creates
and you're swallowed by an all-encompassing darkness that picks and pokes at you until your scabbed and bruised without even the energy to swat it away
you lose the hope that somewhere, something is calling out to you
but to your ears, it's all distorted and the foundation is cracking and the floor boards are creaking and the windows are letting all the cold air in but you still can't breathe
the slight pressure of a hand in yours is nothing compared to the pressure that lies just behind your eyes
eyes that used to blaze with passion are dwindling and dying
the cold draft that whispers through your mind has blown out the candles and you didn't even get to make a wish
you'd wish for the flickering streetlights to taunt you into the path of oncoming headlights, or maybe just the energy to grab a bottle of something to drown out this feeling you just don't understand
and you're slipping and you're falling and you're stuck in a well and there's no way out and the rain is pouring down and the water's rising and rising and rising and i'm sorry and i'm sorry and the water, oh god, it's rising and it's cold and you're shivering and it's crippling and it hurts and it's suffocating and this is your life and these are your thoughts and There's No Way Out

two candles but they're only your eyes.
twisting and contorting, and they can articulate your desires better than your mouth ever could.
candle wax only exists on the crests of your cheekbones when your eyes have been blazing for days.
they drip down in patterns that God himself could only hope to decipher.
your eyes as they burn are subjective only to the sound of her voice, or the curvature of her body as it writhes beneath you.
your visceral reactions have nothing on the hidden semantics that litter her skin.
ubiquitous presences gazing down at you, gazing down at her, windows fogging and cracking.
now, This is Poetry
          This is Catharsis
this is raining hell down on her until she's every saturated colour she could never define.
like forcing her to write every pro and con of sleeping on the floor while you held a gun to her head.
and she knows better than to scream with the lights turned on.
give me guided meditation as a self defence mechanism.
give me self reflection as a form of shock therapy.
give me militant offensive tactics.
give me blood, give me a martyr.
whisper her name into the sheets and send them into space.
and let them drift along forever.
and send her into space after them.
and admire the way it can rob her of her last breath the way you never could.
maybe now you can look yourself in the eye in the mirror.
maybe you can stop burning all those ******* candles.
maybe now you can stop trying to burn yourself down.

Draw like you want to beat the **** out of God for limiting the colour spectrum to something finite.

Write like the ******* paper is on fire and your pen is kerosene and it’s burning and you’re screaming but it feels so ******* good.

Realize you’re a ******* *****.

Realize everyone’s a ***** and the sun is only going to explode and the world is only going to burn and we’re all going to die in fire, but it’s only going to hurt for an instant.

But you love the pain, that’s why you beg him to paint you black and blue and make you bleed so you can see how disgusting you really are.

Remember that god has abandoned us all and Jesus died for your masochistic tendencies.

So, crucify me on your parent’s bed and **** me like repenting can save us.

**** me like you want to save us.

But what’s salvation to bruised knees and praying to the tune of incoherent screams and begging and pleading and Yes Sir and Thank You Sir and an ****** so hard your body joins your head in the clouds.

Learn languages and **** his **** in all of them.

Turn *** into art the way he turns you into his masterpiece.

Live like your biggest debate is whether or not to drink a pint of beer, or a pint of blood – and choose the blood every time.

**** yourself every second of every ******* day and remember that you’re alive and you’re not so well and never look your grave in the eyes until he tells you to.

Scrapbook every bullet hole you've kissed, keep mason jars for the dirt he rubbed your face in, plant a cigarette **** for good luck, always ask permission, remember you’re disgusting, remember you’re dying, remember you’re alive, remember love, remember passion, remember anger, remember this.

everyone's dying and all I can do is scream at the top of my lungs and wait for the bathroom light to burn out so we can use up all the extras we bought for the apocalypse that's never going to happen

and we smoke too many cigarettes in the house and everything is kind of yellow and you can't see yourself in the mirror proper but the stains on the couch and the carpet and the bed sheets seem to do the trick just as well

and we stay up too late and see more of the moon than the sun but we talk about our dreams like it hasn't been six months since we last saw a sunrise

and the floor is made of dust and ash but we never fall through when the blinds are closed and you carve the notches in the bedpost too deep and the bed collapses beneath us again

and the traffic never stops and the snow never melts cause it's always cold here but we burn the newspapers and our old science textbooks to keep warm and I couldn't even tell you what month it is now

but this morning I opened my eyes and read what the walls have been writing for months and we climbed up on ladders and smashed the ceiling.

we made a skylight and watched the sun rise

in your beauty lies every whisper that has slipped through painted lips, painted lips that have left stains on wine glasses, and cigarette filters, and vulnerable hearts. there's something more than just a flash or a sparkle dancing behind your eyes, something more than fireworks before the dawn or a star gone supernova. within your eyes there's always been something that set you apart, that spoke volumes between every subtle blink. the very blood that flows within you, dances and smiles, demands to be kissed in unsuspecting places. your bones, ivory and laced in pearls, wish to be wrapped around the bedpost and tangled in the sheets and hung out to dry on a clothesline in the summer breeze. your voice is melodic, hypnotizing, it wishes to grab and entice and desires only to watch its bidding be done; but despite, knows all the right things to say when the lights are dimmed and the door is locked and there's a candle or two burning to the core. and your core, your very essence is screaming. it's screaming all the time, haunting and chilling with elements of begging, let me be heard, let me be seen, let me be felt in the throat of your lover.
your beauty is something ineffable and all i'm left with is some metaphor that has manifested itself at the foot of my bed

"what are you holding on to?"

the question wasn't rhetorical but the earth stood still. the clocks stopped ticking and the distant hum of car engines was silenced. even the street lights with their comforting buzz, stopped abruptly to take a pause. the stars nearly fell out of the sky, and nothing twinkled and danced in your dilated pupils. the air was dead and the strands of hair the wind had taken hostage were offered respite as they fell like pins down my back. the world faded - not into black - into nothing, into complete and absolute emptiness. your cigarette smoke hung in the air and the filter never came nearer and nearer. my heart, by some miraculous count, stopped racing long enough to reduce the sound in my ears to complete and utter silence.

i tried to answer, but all that came out was "I think we should paint the apartment soon."

you stared, "we should paint the apartment?"

"yes, I think so, it's so awfully bland. it makes me feel cold."

"why does it make you feel cold?"

"because of the absence of colour."

"what do you make of the absence of warmth?" your eyes were saying less than your mouth, and my words kept getting stuck in my throat.

"I think it's somewhere, maybe beneath the floorboards. we should change the floor, put in carpet. carpet is comforting."

"is that what you think? we can repaint and re-floor and we will be warm."

"I should think so. maybe a new bedspread, what do you think? we could go shopping maybe. tomorrow? or the day after?" my voice trailed off when your gaze shifted from my face to the ground.

"you're not holding on to renovation prospects and you're not answering my question."

in this state of universal paralysis, i became the focal point of the entire universe, to everything but you. i took a breath, and held it in, i thought and thought and though carbon copied hallmark responses danced around my brain, i had no words. i had only this moment, of complete and utter stasis, of company among solitude, of enlightenment as my senses betrayed me and my emotions were given room to embrace this artificial reality.

"the colour of light"

i know this surprised you, and i know you don't know why, even to this day. so i continued.

"i'm holding on to the sound of silence, and the taste of reassurance despite. the cathartic feeling of abandoning the conscious mind and licking mercury from your eyelids. the putrefaction of tactile and the vicious assimilation of awareness. the relentless burning of the merriem-webster definition of what it means to feel, to be. i'm holding on to everything you've cultivated within my mind, every stream of consciousness you diverted and corrupted, every single thought you've planted and watered and allowed to spiral out of control. i'm holding on to the challenge. i'm holding on to knowing - and what i know, is nothing."

you blinked, one hundred and twenty three times exactly - before you spoke, "you're holding on to what you know."

it was less of a question than a statement but I answered nonetheless, my voice was meek, "yes"

"well then," you flicked your cigarette and exhaled a breath, "we should pick out paint colours tomorrow. what were you thinking? red?"

"red is alive."

"grey it is then."

"but grey is oh so dull," I said, devoid of emotion.

you looked up for the first time in a while, "yes, I know, i'm holding on to what I know."

i heard a car horn or two. the colours returned and the sky had in fact remained full of stardust. we walked, quite a distance, until our senses once again became the paragon of normalcy. we both knew the ambiguity of my answer, we both knew that it ran deeper than we wanted to face, and we both knew that despite the inundation of motion in the perceivable world, the earth had not yet, begun to spin again.