you think you’re in love and this is the one and this is it. you may be right, but before you move heaven and earth and split the sea down the middle to make it work, take their hand in yours, turn the lights off, turn your computers and phones and the tv off. shut yourself off from the world. is this someone you can sit with in the darkness? is this someone you can sit with in silence? is this someone you can spend hours doing nothing else but counting the distance between lightning and thunder? because life is more than a forever of picture perfect moments - it’s darkness, and silence and interludes in which you hold your breath. forever should not feel like forever, it should feel like no time at all; it should feel like a blink of an eye; an interlude between the lightning strike and a thunder.
-marina v.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

i remember the nights i prayed for things i have now.
each time my eyes open in the morning to see the sunlight kissing the blinds, i know its a step closer to whatever is held in the ink stained pages of my story.
i tell myself i would rather focus on falling in love with my life than falling in love with a person,
that love was a word so overused for one another,
that i was not searching for my other half because i'm not a half.
but i know one part of me yearned to be cherished,
and knew falling in love with the journey included falling for people that made you feel risen.
people that make it known that my presence and absence means something to them,
individuals that make me forget yesterday and dream about tomorrow,
a person who will forget about checking the time when i'm around,
grace and mercy reflected off god,
because i belong to a patient god.
not to a hurry up and fix yourself god,
but a be still and let me heal you god.
not a why do you keep doing this god,
but a god who gives me the keys to break the cycle.
god is patient, and he is pleased to take his time with me.

someone who will be so soft and gentle toward my loud heart,
i'll be glad i kept it open,
and they'll even make me wonder why i ever thought of quieting it down.
a person who will see me, not who they wish me to be,
not the version of myself that makes them the most comfortable, not the one that is the most convenient to them,
but the genuine book without bindings, without edits, without covers.

somebody who could think about seven billion people experiencing this day differently, but would never want to trade places with anyone else after living a day by my side,
someone who i can turn to and truthfully tell them "out of all the things my hands have held the best by far is you"
a person that will tell me everything, not just talk about the weather,
someone who will make me their muse, pages smeared with words directed toward me
someone who i can write to at the end of a lifetime and mark the paper up saying
"i fell in love with the way you touched me without using your hands",
and i know that there are all kinds of love in the world but there is never the same love twice,
and i will be sure that ours is my favorite kind.

i could lay awake trying to solve expressions, equations, puzzles and mazes
as to why things never worked out between us,
between a whole list of people i had become temporarily mesmerized with,
a short infatuation in which my mind convinces itself that these people have no fault, that their actions are pure, that they mean what they say, that they yearned for consistency.  
the incandescence of the person they portrayed in my head dies out, and soon enough they turn into a silhouette i brush by, a figure i used to know, someone who knows the bits of me i could give away, a little bit of my light fading away with them.

my mind soothes the trembling thoughts,
and reminds itself that these people were not for me,
we did not speak the same language,
we did not sing the same song,
their fingers did not trace over keyboards lovingly,
the sides of their hands were not smeared with ink,
their bedside tables did not hold journals that housed pages lined with emotion,
they did not yearn to caress they keys of a typewriter to create a sonnet to soothe the soul
their thoughts simply superficial,
sentences with no structure,
a pathway toward something strictly physical,
not enough to feed my hunger for words.

love held a different definition in the tongue of each individual,
how did we fully understand when the word came out of a persons lips, often being spewed and overused,
a verb, a noun, and common phrase held commonplace to their language.
to love an object, to love a place, to love something that cannot be seen, to love a breathing being.
a rite of passage, a word used for manipulation, to make way onto physical touch, an Eros type of love, as shallow as the feelings that come along with the word,
my mind created puzzles and algebraic expressions, trying to decipher the meaning of each individuals use of the word "love", if it was fools gold or simply overused, if it created a set of expectations that came along with duties, to become a possession instead of a partner, to be completed, rather than just complimented. actions never seemed to match the weight of love.
in a world where love held a different connotation in every culture,
i wanted to love freely, i wanted love to be a word that was part of a language we saved for each other, where i could see who you are today, and could not wait to see who you are tomorrow.

i told myself i would never take the time to write about one person in particular again.
i told myself that i would never write about one being again because it allowed them to become significant.
i wanted to be as cold and distant towards these people so i did not rely on anyone.
i wanted to convince myself that i didn't need specific people to make me feel confidence and joy,
that one person didn't matter more than the other,
because i knew people walked in and out, like passengers on elevator rides, some engaging in small talk, others exchanging gazes not knowing one day they'll be lovers, and others just side by side, staring at their feet, in hopes they won't have to interact and just arrive to the floor they pushed the button for.
i spoke these words to myself because i saw what i didn't want to become, i saw a wreck of emotions, a wild hurricane with a drink in her hand, a ***** tonic one night and a stella the next.
the way she lived was convincing herself she was put together, living for herself, and nobody else, but in reality she clung onto people, hoping they would go along her windy journey,
and when the people with potential left, rain came out of her eyes, storms so heavy, tropical depressions at the steering wheel, car seat covered in tears, a cloud over her head for days, and drinks became medicine.
i was a spectator, sitting on sidelines, listening through walls, hearing storms at midnight, witnessing side effects from her self medication, and i clung onto these thoughts, telling myself i'd never be like her, remembering everything was an elevator ride, and no one was here to stay, and it's nothing personal when someone gets off at a different floor.

i had tried to turn to ash every trace of you,
every trace of anyone that made me feel less,
any person that made me feel like a crumb out of the bites they had taken from life,

i ended with a pile of ashes and dead flowers,
purple marks, slices they had taken from my being,
an empty call log and bible verse text messages from my mother,
someone else's t-shirt in my drawer,
and a hoodie and jersey in a packing envelope under my bed.