I spent two days crying over a boy
who couldn’t even admit that I was ever something to him.

Two nights crying my tears into a river
in a city that didn’t give two ***** about me.

A boy that wouldn’t hold me and couldn’t let go of me.

I was a flower, wilting and dying under his touch
because he just couldn’t bear to ******* cut me off.

Danger be the man who bleeds the plights
of men of myth.
Don't you know that even Troy fell?
I do not throw pebbles at
your window in the night.
My eyes: yellow, unclouded;
mead and flowers drip thick
from my words:
banal and intoxicating.
Poppies blooming wild on timeworn cheeks,
Wine-dark hair in disarray.
Perhaps I have read too much into
the man who has read it all.
And perhaps he is only sea-mist mirage
cursed to appear an Adonis.

I made the ocean so that you would cross it.
It is only in this forced distance that
I am allowed to transcend this plain world;
in which I am bound to book
and you are bound to her.
Because in a land of gods and monsters
it seems not so strange that I am the other woman.
Clever sorceress who loves and lets you leave,
and with whom you know you might have stayed
forever.

Sail far, far away from me.

We stood at that crossroads,

bathed in lamplight,

blind,

he never even knew this was the end of us.

He pulled me close, closer

than I had ever been held

and I knew

we could never see each other again.

Under the wash of night,

I had finally found a ship calling out to me.

Someone had heard my call for help.

Someone had seen me.

For so long it was I who left them:

where they stood;

where I could still love them.

But I pushed him ahead of me.

I stood there and made him leave me

before my heart could chase after him.

He tried to turn back to me

with one last

dream-defying grin and I

squeezed my eyes shut.

I saw him once more after that,

I missed him by just a second,

I did not call out to him.

Our time together was over.

He told me to sail to him,

and the magic words to say;

I vowed for her sake to never utter them.

This world keeps disappointing me
and I realize now how
lucky I was to have met you,
such a fateful night ago.
Of all the ships and stars
and silly obligations,
we were two fools walking
barefoot down the streets
of a lantern-lit overripe spring night.
God, the night never ended,
and you
never answered my questions.
You were perfect that way,
always let me think
you were infinite and
I, the cleverest thing you'd ever met.
You loved me so easily and
it scared me to no end
that I knew you'd left.

Both he and I know that I am living in that camera of his.  Sweet girl, trapped, knowing nothing but laughter and million-watt smiles.

I don't know if he will ever develop the film.

Those were some of my brightest days, no matter how flimsy the flame was. Late nights filled with friends and stars and empty baseball fields.

I refuse to forget her. Sweet girl who tried her hardest, supplicated herself to his every mood, broke her bones to make him laugh. Because those photos are the proof that I meant something to him once. That he was just as much a part of the memories as I was.

Even though we're strangers now, maybe you even loved me once, when I was sepia.

So, cut me out if you will.
Cut me out of your film, I do not much mind.

, I thought the pain wasn't so bad,
if it came wrapped and entangled
with an unfeasible longing and
remnants of sweet memories
which prolonged my desire
to be with him.
Memories
which were a curse in all their nature
and served to hurt me more
in the long run
but which I clung to
with every fiber of my being
because he was a god to me
and I had captivated him
if just for a moment.

We were but two ships passing in the night sky. While I spent too much time staring at him and wondering
why I had never noticed him,
he never saw me because I was not what he was looking for.

We were two sailors setting different courses,
sailing different seas.
I would go the ends of the earth for what I sought and
the ends of the earth would always come up to greet his shining face.

But I could not change him, I could not change any of them.
He will never see how I see and
that is how I must leave him.
He will be beautiful, yes, but he will never be like me,
and it becomes so hard because
in those moments, when we meet
and the dim light of the moon spills out on us like a meeting too clandestine for two people
who barely know each other,
I forget all reason and rationale and I want to break down into everything that he has ever sought after,
whatever that may be.