It's funny how
when we are young
we believe we can do anything.

Our youth has lied to us,
making us think
that we will last forever.

One day we wake up
and realize
that the bed we lie in
has become our new grave.

We thought we had
so many days,
so much time to waste,
and then one day we find
that time has drifted away
like the air between our fingers.

There's a certain sense of knowing
in the way you look at me,
a sense of trust, of understanding,
unlike any seen before.
You threw all of your doubts and fears
into the ocean,
watching them drift away,
further and further out,
never to be seen again.
I grabbed your hand and stepped forward
into the unknown,
you were like a radiating sunbeam
that refused to dim.
Yet at the same time,
you burned a hole right through my chest cavity,
exposing all the darkest places which were hidden away,
the rooms that I had locked
and swallowed the keys to.
I let your fingers work as you
mended the broken pieces and
tossed away all the clutter of the past,
gathering dust in the corner,
yet taking up so much space.
After you were finished
you looked at me again
with a gaze that had not changed from before
and I knew that you were to be mine
forever.

I'm never enough in my own head,
could you please tell me that I matter instead?

There is a certain state of desperation You have kept me in,
it draws me back to You every time I misplace my footing.
You whisper to me to lift my weary head
out of the chasm
and stare into Your light.
I inhale a breath and contemplate the voice that beckons me,
it is so different from the others,
the ones that tear at the seams of my mending heart
and force the wound open again,
crimson with the bleeding, festering.
I cry out to You as the light begins to fade once more,
pleading for the gauze that will numb the pain I have willingly brought myself back into again.
You are my surgeon,
stitch me back together.

The cool air
ushers in
the first instances
of the approaching
season.
And yet
I only shudder
at the thought
of you.

As I walk
amongst
the leaves
a gust of wind,
intuition,
brings the stain
of your memory
to my mind.

Perhaps
it was just
your ghost
I felt
move through me
like electricity
only to exit
as quickly
as you first
appeared.

And yet
it still
remained
a painful
reminder
of the way
in which
you broke
me.

I have always felt lost in this life,
but I felt a little less lost with you.
I held your hand in mine like a compass,
you were my true north.

This black hole
swallows me,
ripping apart
the last fragments of light.
I wonder when
I will collapse
like a dying star
and fade away
into oblivion.

If you could see me now,
in this current state of being,
would your feelings for me change?
Would you welcome me back
into your arms
and be willing
to start again?

If a writer falls in love with you,
bear this in mind:
they will find libraries in your smile,
and endless pages within the color of your eyes.
They will spend sleepless nights
searching for better synonyms and metaphors
with which to describe you.
They will carefully choose their words,
turn you into beautiful art,
and write of how the heart
that beats inside your chest
synchronizes perfectly with their own.
Whether you know it or not,
you will be running marathons in their mind,
you will build a house inside their thoughts to live in,
and you will drive poetry out of them
with one minuscule glance.

When you broke my heart,
all of the pieces fell upon paper,
forming crooked lines and
I called it poetry.

I like the idea that
each cell in my skin eventually replaces itself,
and that in due time, every single touch that you left upon it
will have faded forever.
Because one day I'd like to have a body for somebody
in which there is no trace of you left.

"Describe yourself",
the blank space stares at me,
asking, begging, pleading to be filled with
a one-sentence answer,
something that will fit neatly into the line,
telling others in a minuscule amount of time
the scope of my entire existence.

How do I best express
that I am lost
and I
have never belonged anywhere?
How do I communicate
what cannot be said?

Go ahead, my dear,
twist that knife in deeper.
Create some sort of echo in the empty cavernous hole
that is now my chest.
By your unwelcome departure
you have made yourself an unwelcome ghost in my heart.
I tried again to send my request of love
out into the universe,
only to have a door slammed in my face
and twice bolted shut.
I still feel you,
I still breathe in the resemblance of your touch
every time I close my eyes.
I gave you the world,
but it still wasn’t enough.
I hope you find in him the pieces I failed to press
into the puzzle that was your broken heart.
I will come to forgive you,
but the truth is still set:
You’ll always live on as my regret.

But now,
I see the truth of who you are:
your voice dripped with honey,
but was laced with poison,
your fingers worked their way along my spine,
promising to be a healing balm for my soul,
but cut into me like knives.
You have become a shadow,
a demon that haunts my thoughts in the night,
none of which matters now.
Because, in the end,
you chose the arms of another.

I was almost holding your hand,
I was almost looking into your eyes,
as you caught a glimpse of mine,
and timidly looked away,
the wind dancing in your hair,
the ocean waves carrying with them sweet melodies,
their choruses echoing in my eardrums.
In that moment
I almost pressed my lips against your own.
I could almost feel my heart beating again,
with a reverberating thump
I could almost feel like there was life
once again flowing through my veins.
I almost mustered up the courage
to tell you everything that was welling up inside of me,
brimming under the surface like an active volcano,
or an earthquake,
ready to release itself upon the earth in a violent frenzy.
I almost told you
that you embodied everything I was looking for
but could never find the words to express.

I almost told you that I loved you,
but almost was never quite enough.

I want to hold you,
as a miner holds a diamond,
after years of chipping away at stone,
and left with nothing but
harrowing dreams
of futility.
I want them all to know,
that my efforts were not in vain.
Long passages of suffering,
years of agony,
none of it was wasted.
Because you hid there,
underneath all my ineffectual exertions.
You waited,
patiently,
denying all others,
longing to see if someone, anyone,
would work through sleepless nights
just to reach you.
Then, only then,
would your beauty be on display
for all to see.

But maybe all of this
is wishful thinking.
Maybe you would turn me away
like all the others.
At least you would be free to shine.

This is not writing,
this is not art,
this is simply another attempt to quiet the voices
that live in between the cracks in the walls,
and underneath the floors,
slowly slithering their way towards me and
taking up residence comfortably
in an already vacant heart.
But they are not welcome here.

They are the river that cuts through the canyon
of an empty soul,
slowly eroding away day by day.
Let me have another quick fix,
some sort of wicked sustenance
just to make it through.
Despondency rears its ugly head
and opens its gaping maw,
ready to devour another victim.

This heart has been an empty house for years.
I kept the doors and windows wide open
in case any soul would like to come and share the space within.
But despair merely sat in the shadows,
crouching like a predator,
waiting to pounce on its next wounded prey,
and devour it ravenously.

You and I were oceans;
we fell into each other,
except neither of us remembered
to come up for air.

The greatest note of triumph ever sounded
in a cosmic broken symphony—
"it is finished"—
resounds across the cosmos,
silencing every utterance of penance
still needed to be paid in blood;
a deafening cacophony shuts out
every last blotch of darkness,
cloaked in light by the shape of a cross.
And all at once, your work of striving is silenced.
Your hands shake and streams flow from your eyes,
unable to move, unable to breathe,
every cell within you pulsates with the sound
of terror and of a newfound joy.

I fell in love with you
the way the sea fell in love
with the shoreline:
relentlessly trying to reach it
but
always being pulled back
by the tide.

Father,
please hold her heart,
before i ever get the chance
to hold her hand

please fix her broken pieces,
for i am insufficient at doing so
on my own

please shower her
in the rain of Your love,
for i cannot do the same

please let her be content
with You alone,
for You know i will never be enough

please dry her every tear,
before i get the chance
to do so myself

please show her Your perfection,
for i will never, ever
measure up

please catch her,
so that she knows
how to fall for me.

The moment I saw you,
a thousand unwritten poems
danced their way into my mind;
I compiled everything I wrote down
into a library, but it was not enough
to contain the sufficient words.
And so I burnt all the books
that were gathering dust on the shelves;
long-forgotten, expired tomes,
ghostly reminiscences of lovers past.
I watched the flames that licked them up
dance in my eyes,
like the way you danced into the empty
crevices of my worn out heart,
asking me to take your hand,
and follow you into the unknown.