Seasons passed us by
I grew, and so did you
In chorus we made the universe spark
At crossroads you kissed my insecurities away
And somewhere along the way
You gave me your heart
I told you I wasn’t good at reciprocating
But you just smiled and said it’s okay
I loved you so much then, for choosing me

kiss me
until i can no longer
feel the pull of gravity
until i am among the stars
then i would pick the stars for you
lay them out in the shape of you
hold me
until i feel your warmth
more than the burn of the sun
i would collect sunshine for you
then you could always stand in the light
i would take your hand from here
and we could walk down a flowery path

i'd rather get drunk
to the sound of your voice
but here i am
listening to music
on the midnight train home
all the good nights
and sleep tights
can't mask the ending
that began when we met

you were so very pretty
the first time i saw you
it was spring
and you were a dream
soft and longing
every smile
blossomed with fragile hope

then the chill in the air gave way to
warm summer breezes in june
and you became more real  
no longer shifting in and out of existence
more solid
more beautiful
i wanted to plant flowers
along the paths you took
so you could only walk on
a lovely road from now on

when june turns to july
and july melts into august
when the leaves fall in september
i'll still want to clear a way for you
you won't be a dream anymore
you won't be a hazy existence
with every step you take
you'll leave your footsteps
singing in the autumn leaves
it will be less painful, then

\ \

i think about you
and i wonder
how long this can last

i'd like for you to take my hand
whenever i need you
like you did the last time
i'd like to take your hand
and walk down this road  

i don't like to think about us
apart

for you
at 11:11 i'll make a wish
that we'll be together
our fingers laced
even at the very end

the 3pm sun is streaming through
the window with
glued-on paper flakes
illuminating the furniture
casting dark shadows
against light wood
and i'm tasting snow
on my tongue
and thinking that this
feels like freedom

He was the Weekender Boy
with lips that tasted like salty sea caramel
on lovely Saturday mornings
and caresses that felt like soft warm sunbeams
on lazy Sunday afternoons

Mondays she sat behind him in lecture halls
watching the back of his black-haired head
as he flirted in the front row seats

Tuesdays were him walking past her bench
pinning her in place with those glacier blue eyes
that always turned away to porcelain redheaded dates

Wednesdays it was his calls that came at 3:05AM without fail
and she'd listen patiently to his drunken rants and giggles
that sometimes ended in tears and incoherent apologies

Thursdays he exhaled alcohol breaths one-two-three-four
while laying her down across his green vintage car hood
gentle as she moved lithe and languorous beneath him

Fridays they broke dorm rules and shared a room at night
they stayed up over beer and banana milk
and at sunrise she'd wake up in his arms to his smiling eyes

He was the Weekender Boy,
and she was the only girl who ever owned him on weekends.

it used to be daisies
under shining droplets of sun
transparent sadness
trapped in spiderwebs
now he's left on the
bleak balcony
with only his snapdragons
shaped like flower skulls
living for a tomorrow
no one believes in

your voice flows like
warm honey, smoothing
all the pain away
other times it has
lemon undertones,
an elusive something on
the tip of your tongue

The one thing I want the most
is to un-love you
yet the one thing I'm terrified of
is that gingerly, in degrees
then all of a sudden

all of a sudden

everything will evanesce
like the slanting rain
the hearts i draw
on fogged-up glass
faint pencil lines
on whitewashed stairs
crushed paper stars
i used to fold, alone,
with you

and i will be left
with the frightful emptiness
and i will be left
to fight my dependency on you
and i will be left

(we're locking eyes today and I have something to tell you)

*Don't Leave Me

You always talked about
how it wasn't fair
I burst into your life
and made you fall for me
without a safety suspension

The way I crashed your defences
simply with my mocha eyes
and disarming smile when you
never let anyone else in
wasn't very fair too

And the unfairest of them all
was when I lodged myself
in your heart without meaning to
and gave myself the power to
right your world, or destroy you

So now I suppose you'd say it's fair
because you trapped me the same way
and cut off my exit routes but
left yourself with one
which you took, eventually.

he used to be king of a kingdom
but now he is a wreck
ocean waves will stop his strides
then break his bones;
even so he is a colossal wreck
the kind that looms in the
inky-black depths
majestic
haunting
to tear away from him
is unthinkable
(he used to be unsinkable, too)

jack-frost blue on snow white
circles of grey around midnight black
against the velvet night sky
the silent constellations
i fell
and fell
and fell

i bathed in your irises
but my feet couldn't reach the bottom
and when i tried to surface
the air was frigid
slicing my consciousness into ribbons
i took a breath
the chill seeped in
first it was my toes
then my legs
my stomach
my fingers
my arms
my chest

then you blinked
the ice fractured
and i
i shattered from the inside
out

He dips his paint roller
into dark blue sadness
and splashes it across
the violet sunset
filling out the stars
that fall fall fall
onto great black umbrellas
the ones used on rainy days
except now the sky
is showering stars
so he tilts the cover up;
it's a world of white
unfilled diaries and
unspoken thoughts
slowly coloured by
translucent dream sequences
which disintegrate into
petals of deep burgundy
that used to be
pieces of him

If you let go for a moment
The magic is lost
But we held on all the way
Maybe the point of together
became useless when we lost sight
of important things that were not us
So now we’re gripping too hard
We’re holding too loose
We’ve forgotten how it feels
to be in the middle
If you close your eyes for a moment
The equilibrium is lost

i keep running but
the storm is closing in
the wind blows me around
like the fallen red flowers
that chase my footsteps
i'm burning from the inside out
but save me from the rain
i don't want these bloodstains
drying out in my death

you turned
and smiled
so pure
like first snow
on a trail of autumn
crystallized breaths
woolen mittens

so devastating
like white lightning
streaking across the darkness
lone trees on empty fields
splintered branches

you squinted through
and took a picture
that yellow summer
we sat under green trees
blew bubbles
that popped on the brown bark
the ground was littered with the fallen
a graveyard of white flowers
the wind turned them into dancers
broken butterfly wings
pretty like the boy
with the beautiful dreams
there was wetness on your cheeks
i took your hand
and snapped a picture

12am* and imagining
a play on the dark ceiling
1.30am and relieved
for the 5 hours before light
but slumber is a deceptive guy
who lingers just out of frame
3am and wondering
when the sun will rise
end this torture
of lying awake
wanting to sleep
but being disturbed by
slices of daytime memories
haunted by the
ghost of tomorrow
6am and fatigued
wary of sleep that
comes in loose scraps
the sunshine peeks through
and it's time to live out
last night's tomorrow
which will metamorphose
into tonight's insomnia

the sky is pink in its glory
the foam is deep-blue in the sea
it depends on what you're riding
insane with an addict high
or a dream in your motorbike
take a risk
will it be the sunrise or the sunset
anyway, they're all fall-fall and falling
like the bricks blocks in tetris
where victories line up to disappear
and failures just keep on piling

do not let those thoughts escape
because one day
someday
you'll be riding those
above the clouds and
under the waves
over unconceivable hurdles
on the skyline that is purple

tufts of light hair
fell into your eyes
swept over your years

now you're reaching up
feeling the short strands,
the bashful pride

I have your (our) CD on my walkman
It's playing
all our fears and regrets
all our promises and dreams
It's playing the past
before people left
before we left
before everything
started to change.

somehow, slowly
I fell out of it
maybe it was when
I opened my eyes to
prettier things, like
bicycles parked under
trees bearing red leaves,
like the way the willow branches
fell next to the lake, like
looking out of the window
at 6am and seeing the sky
light up, like
feeling the sun after the rain
the sweet humidity
maybe it was during all of those
moments, or maybe it was none
but I accidentally fell out of it
with you

He brushes lips of chapped silver
against her eager waiting ears
words dipped in warm honey gold
weave through the still morning air into
pretty distractions and buttercup dreams

She’s falling falling f a l l i n g
into those alluring violet eyes
they make for the perfect Solemn and
Earnest when he wants them to be
spinning seductive stardusted half-promises

The gossamer sunlight glints off
his aquamarine hair, and it’s like
like winter’s breath crystallized on the ends
of those beautiful blue strands;
they snare her in their breathtaking tangles

She’s almost asking to be bound
so he complies with those
clever ivory fingers on smooth piano keys
as rich chocolate swirls of his music enfold,
intoxicating-saccharine like whisky truffles

As he reaches out to draw her close,
the world soars in a myriad of colours.

deliberated on a long black
to fit in with your latte
but i guess i can't change
washed down my words
with steaming earl grey
and later at the quaint bookshop
i filled up my head
with other writers, pretended to
admire the whimsical words
but actually i was more interested
in the resident cat
it sat there, flicking its tail
disdainful of every new customer
that walked through the door

I write you in angsty lines
wild moments
untouched spaces
raucous instants

I try so hard to write you
out of that crack-ed box
out of perceived notions
out of you in real life
out of this universe

but the truth is

there was never any box
and you were the universe yourself
there were so many more edges to you
sides and shades and depths
that I could never grasp

you are insane and beautiful
and genius and narcissistic and
everything I could want to be
nothing I could hope to be

You once said no one on earth
was sane, and there were people
who weren't fully crazy,
but none that were not
and I saved your words
on my desktop, thinking you had
the world figured out

But as I read your social media
at midnight and on tired afternoons
I realize you are only just
learning life like the rest of us

and we all stumbled through
with scraped knees and tear stains
the only difference was
when the waves receded,
you emerged like a king

sunny afternoons in the mall
strawberry ice-cream dripping
onto the manicured lawn
we'll laze in the shade of the big oak tree
you fall asleep while I try to speak

we make angels in the snow
your lines are sharp and defined
in the light mine falls in shadows
I store away the laughter
you leave around so carelessly

under the warm whites
steam is still rising
from your coffee mug
you left untouched
the wind chimes by the door
sound like your smile
sound like the ending of a day

i miss you all the time
in between meal times
in the day
in the night
in my dreams
if we were not meant
to walk together to the end
i would rather we never met
because the pain is acute
and the loneliness is addictive

when I stand in
the late-morning sun
I wonder if you're also
soaking up the sunshine
where you are

she's standing on a platform
as the train chugs on a pebbled railroad
away to April harvests
and scattered hay bales
where the sun dips low
over rolling hills
and the wind whistles
to scarecrows in the golden wheat fields

he sits by a window framing
the dancing scenery
the evening is orange
and it falls in studious rectangles
across the compartment floor
he sleeps,
and the city steals away from him

by the time he gets off that train
he will have replaced his baseball hat
with a straw one
and her pack of pink bubblegum
will have fallen onto the tracks
when he stumbles on the platform

                                                       ­                      they will grow apart
                                                           ­                  she'll write to him
                                                             ­                he won't write back
                                                                ­             and they'll let it be

in that moment
we were glacier
you loved languidly
like we had all the time in the world
i sighed and
my breath fanned out
enough to cover the cracks

a fever breaks over another night
and you're wrapped in the heat of dawn
the orange sun is overpowering
in its iridescent sheen
12am slowly slips away
like when you
hide from the daylight
and slink into the 2AMs
how do i tell you
your eyes are electric
only in the morning
and the gold in your gaze
is singing to me

lights in our northern souls
we chew peanut butter sandwiches
and contemplate our existences
the future is sticky
and the past is honey-brown
that glues our teeth together
we swallow our words
and drown in the light

when you walk away
i'm still head over heels for you
still feel my heart skip a beat
still feel my stomach dropping out
like that time we went on the roller coaster
and i saw the skyscrapers upside down with you
i still feel the butterflies
still think about the what-ifs
still wonder what i did wrong
still think about you
but you're walking away
and i don't know how to go after you