a tub of chocolate ice cream sitting lonely on the countertop is the only witness of despair
       there were two spoons embedded in the tub,
i put one spoon away and left with only one spoon
                         and a sadness
           you loved how it felt on your tongue, delicate and cold and sweet
and we're supposed to finish it after dinner while watching a serial killer            on television

   there's always a price we pay for every time we indulge in our own obscure paradise
          a kiss equals to our mother's tears
    time spent in each others' arms equals digging our own graves
   and ice cream equals sweetness equals sickness
you'll regret this, you'll regret this,
and we never wanted to talk about it

let’s just devour it, we said
i finished off a tub of chocolate ice cream on kitchen floor all alone
 i could never finish it off alone, i told you earlier
now i want to take my words back, please         i want to feel something else besides sadness
  i want to take you back, please

i want to imagine this cold soft cream is you traveling inside me
     the sweetness swelled in my mouth, my stomach, let me feel something else besides sadness
and some days in our lives we’re condemned to be happy on our own, with nobody’s cheering
       and when the day comes, don’t hesitate to look back once more when you’re walking away
           look back once more longer, look out for me in the balmy days when we finally reunite

it was a summertime dream
where you could be whoever you wished
where you could ask for whatever you wanted
warm white sun graced our dark world, shining
swimming pool was bright blue, glistening yellow and gold

cooling myself off from the amusing heatwave, i had the most fun
when was the last time i truly laughed and was joyous?
my heart sang and i was afraid for a moment–oh the weight to be happy!
i let go of the fear, and i hummed the tune to every boy i half-loved
in hope i could open up to life–a girl can’t be this wistful

and simon was hilarious, he was the bigger man,
he was the life i needed myself to open up to, his sunburnt arms around my waist,
and there’s a feeling of great loss in me i needed to bury deep
besides simon, the hollowness in me stayed–how do we bury a hollowness?
with diamonds and an innocent boy, and more diamonds, simon said

the pale blue dome was washed with gold crimson rays now
and summertime had to end eventually, with me stayed these memories to get by
when i was blue and cold and aching in my father’s misty, lush grave
simon too was vanished, his promises lingered on my fingertips sealed with his kisses
he loved me that summer and that summer only

in the cleanest dream i had of moon
we dived into the deepest end of pool
he never left my side,
his brief was blue

underwater glimmer held me accountable
for things i longed the most, for things i wished for the most
such as fingers of my moon,
the many hearts of my moon in mine

you see, i wanted more than i could swallow
because i longed to be annihilated by those i loved
but underwater still, we held hands

i wanted to ask – why are you here?
we're seven feet below the surface of the water,
and decided not to ask – having you there was enough

as florentia, in another time we abandoned, he wrote me:
this need for affection kills
when you just can't afford love

the last day of january
has always been so odd to me, darling
you left me there many days ago with a kiss,
and i've been figuring things out alone ever since
killing parts of myself, when i needed you the most

but look how i seized the days, look how i overcame it
i was merely sad and mopping around the city,
weeping over the trails you left on the streets we've walked on
and there were your eyes over the blue skies
asking everyone, was it ever my fault that we didn't work?

and this year, on the last day of january,
i got my new diamonds and rose gold
i merely checked on my work and to-do list
for the weekdays, i planned my february
you called me last saturday, you're drunk

i said i hope you're okay- and you thought i'd never reply
but i'm always weak for you, and it's january
so i check my phone, i hope you call me again to say hi
but i haven't heard from you in a day
i thought you were just drunk and lonely on saturday mornings
and you happened to remember that i've loved you ever since

and so i prowl back on my work, i am a busy young woman
my schedule: talking to teresa tomorrow,
talking to chris after the new year,
and talking to you no longer feels like talking to a person i love
you're more of a total stranger than the coco i know, than teresa, than chris
you just proved me again that you are never right for me, darling

i miss what i thought i had, i miss you the most of all
and it's very lonely to know
that i have been hurting myself than you ever did,
i hope you know this, but you're not capable of it,
my tiger knows no hurting

and i said wake up and get ready, it's the last day of january, darling
the professor is waiting for you at the door.
and i hope you're okay,
and i hope you're doing well in life

i mourn because i haven't completely savored this agony when it's hot
this pain of losing you, and being all alone in a fear you never had, most of all
it's outdated, but i remember it's january and you left me when the year was still fresh with hope
i knew nothing, and i am not over it, i am not over my youth, i am not over my rage
i have nice things now, they're made of gold and diamonds, pride and money
i have better things to say and write, and i am moving forward in life

i took a knife out from my pocket when you gave this agony
i cut it thinly, i put it in my mouth every day.
while losing you never was in my plan, i learn to say goodbye to things that ****
i digest this slowly, you in my mind, hoping you'll be back telling me you're sorry
i live with this bitterness that stays, i figure i will never run out of this
it says: i would never really lose you, that's never in my plan

i am moving forward in life, and I have you still
like the way I see you in my dreams now, you're more like myself than you've ever been
someday i'll forgive you for stealing from me,
i'll forgive you for deceiving me,
i'll forgive you for breaking my heart
but now, i'd rather take it all up, feel it,
and let it consume me like it's supposed to, long ago

china white suits you best
on some strange day, you’re stranded in a desert
and i’m proud, you're brave and tall, you in that shirt

neither of us is a believer,
but i put my faith in you

we both know:
god is in the branch of trees, god is in your flimsy blue veins
a tiny silver speck in the blue yonder, and there i'll be
i'll have my eye on you

you’re fighting aliens again, sweetheart,
like in starcraft, they're somber and green and gray,
isn’t it strange that we might share the same dream,
despite being miles away?
you’re stout-hearted, but i think

you don’t have to be there
right back there christopher ray
you don't have to be there

china white suits you best
while you're in the desert, stranded
you're brave and tall, you're in that shirt

neither of us is a believer,
but god is in the trees, god is in the heart
behind the blue dome, i pin my eye on you
you're fighting aliens, like in star craft

was it a strange dream that we share?
they're green and gray,
and it scares you but you are the hero

you don't have to be there
you don't have to be there

sinking low, layers of consciousness drifting away softly
you slip in between, fragments of this half-forgotten face
aren't you tired of flying around me, my strange?
when i gradually grow defenseless, lampshade turns sunset crimson
darkness thickens with yearnings outside, on the lane

my senses are heightened but i am senseless,
and dull are the days since i lost you again, i have been grieving for nothing,
(you became me, and i wished not to be left by myself)
and no matter how far i go you are remembered
in hours when i grow defenseless

my cheekbones are defined, i look more of a strong-willed woman
than a mad girl in love who parted ways with me once and all
but still we said this to the thin air: make me happy again
i wished you could hear this and i felt vapid,
i only have myself and it will be enough, and not enough

take me back into the holy room, where you and i had each other
and you were enough for me but i wasn't for you, we're lovers still
if we must part then i wished it was of my will
but a creak of a toad brings me back to life here
kicked out of heavens in clouds, there's a hole in heart, and will always be

tossing and turning, i touch my face with my unarmed hands
(these were once yours too)
i thought you might forget and never knew missing yourself
(i hoped you'd be back, i hoped you'd look back)

sing or read, we play to **** time
you want to go through the day
when you have time to miss me
sing or read, and the game is just silly

take this rule:
we don’t even need to tell nobody when it begins
just like a gist of feeling, you just know it,
also when it ends, you know it ends
(and i quietly hope you won’t go when it does)

how come you read my mind, or so i imagine it,
blue is the color of the shirt of the man i love
sing i said, i laughed and won,
long live our love and reign

do you think you will remember these days?
you have to look it up on google and it’s nowhere
sometimes i look at you and wish you’d listen and understand more, like i hope you’d be - a man in mind

i said it’s a read, i thought you lost the game
(you lose the game and i’m the one who feels defeated)
and you say, it’s just a game
and i think you’d forget these days

in that dream you were miguel and i was mariah
we're riding down the town over ninety-nine,
enveloped in the dark, black was the night,
you faced the winding road without fright

starlight, oh starlight,
beyond these temporal distortions and glaring windows
have we plainly met? supposing past lives were true,
were we made out of the same timeline?
maybe we’re old and married, maybe you’re a friend of a friend

look how i thought that over, like a sundial
where are we going? i inquired while i was holding you from behind
it’s the sound of raging winds against us for a reply
you were speeding and seeming to forget i was there
or i was there all along, only alone

miguel miguel, don’t make me look back
i closed my eyes and i pretended you too thought this way
i let myself own our time while it lasted, you and i,
although you didn’t know me, i didn’t know you,
out of question was the future, but always wanting it to be true

and so i held on tight to the roads covered in gloom,
the stars would go out before i forget you

i have been living with loss
i have been living with loose ends
once i thought i was deserving warm, thoughtful closures,
unfortunately, i am blessed with a tough mind and frail soul,
and i have learned to be quiet and live without closures down the road
if anything, they don't do much to me

and i thought i have been missing some people in life,
why do i always long for people who hurt me the most?
and why do their imaginary gazes are fixed on me in a long stare?
these people come, and go, leaving trails, engraving holes,
leaving me a porous sack of bones, thin and fragile-
i was a daisy-fresh girl, and they
chose to close their eyes and left

these people left, and unfortunately, i'm grown
i've been living with any joy i could find along the way
now i stand above myself, the former daisy-fresh girl,
looking down and i know better, that i don't want them
i was angry, in fact, enraged, and that displaced girl
had no means to protect herself but wept years in silence

she was angry and hurt, and i am now,
but i am reclaiming my place,
the place that they robbed, the voice they have silenced
she didn't want them nor ever need them,
it's their imaginary eyes that watch over her all these years
that she, i, hard to let them go
because it's the way that we're so used to live with
but i am trying, we're trying

i wish we could try more coffee shops in town together as the night falls

i wish we could see more sunsets together through the blinds of your windowpane

i wish you could stay longer with me to see me grow and bloom- i'll make you proud, i promise

i wish we could talk more and muse about dave grohl or john mayer or poems or art

i wish you could stay longer, long enough to see me getting into nirvana, and you'd laugh at me for crying at kurt cobain's home recordings

i wish we could wake up to each other every saturday noon

i wish i could taste beer and cigarettes from your lips again

i wish you could stay longer to see how beautiful i dress on saturday nights

i wish i could see you getting better for yourself, no longer hold onto thin strings that haunted you all your life

i wish you could come back and make me feel safe and secure, like finding friends we've lost along the way

i wish you could run and chase me on that sidewalk, preventing me from falling out of love

i wish you could be kinder to me

i wish you could love me

i wish i never met you on a hot day at the railway station in the south of the city

i wish we could see more of a world together

i wish we could be right for each other

i wish i could understand you better

i wish we could stay together so i don't have to write elegies

i wish we could be together someday

i wish we could be in love again

i wish we had more time

midnight diamonds, winds in the south, sun traveled southbound,
    you see, you lingered in some subtle guises when you’re mine, yet you’re gone.

   the stars stud my heavens, hot and flickering, the wind embraces me - these spark some painful thoughts i never told anybody. these remind me that somewhere out there i too reappear in your mind for a while, and this is when i beg the most:

for you never to forget my gentle feelings, and my timid cold fingers.
    i know at best i could be only your afterthought, my dear, and i am learning to live with this, i am learning to live with this fact that you’re letting me slip away.

         you’re with me ‘till this ends, ‘till i have transcended the agony of naive wonderfulness. and i can live with your ghost, these ruins of relics. you’re with me, my sweetheart, ‘till i’m mended and be brave enough to open up to a new soul.

some days the sunset is permanent, it's foreseeable.
it's all soiled with a deep amber, the skies, the pink walls,
the long shadows on the ground.
city smells in the air, soft bergamot scent from his black hair,
november rain.

in those days you are bereft, it's foreseeable.
love is remembered and withered, out of the scene, and tears are no more.
his trembling sigh a lament,
your hot tears a passion so fervent,
your doleful detriment.

they said life is beautiful,
but you have tasted heaven once, and they haven't,
and you believed it was something inside of him,
has awakened something carnal and ancient,
yet you knew he wasn't of heavens,

only one of the transience fragilities of earth,
but this was paradise to you.

you wanted to believe life is beautiful,
but his moan was a mourn to all the lighter things
you have lost in life,
and for that, your happiness is not easy.
you lost something in this life and it's found until it's no more.

you knew this, despite a paradise was transient, and colored of flame,
it's a paradise, still.

life is beautiful but it grows blue, grey, crimson, pink.
and some days it's a permanent sunset,
in those days there are shadows of heaven on earth, you see,
his shadows lengthening on the ground
bleeding into the lights, everywhere.

when i wanted to write about you
    it seemed as if i couldn't find any coherent
  words to delineate what it was to love and be loved,
and all the delicate and light feelings that came with it.

and i wasn't sure whether words would
   ever do the justice to what you gave me, what i had then,
and i was thinking of something fragile, and beautiful and tormenting,
              such as how you had me loved you always, and you loved me sometimes.

crush, crush, crushed,
   it creaked, faltered, and died.

this is how i see you when i don't dream,
    you were inside of me, and you were, and i can sense how you're now just a shadow
      of someone that you used to be.
   and i loved you, and probably still, it doesn't matter.
sometimes love is just as beautiful as abandonment and self-loathing.

do you believe in fate, my moonchild?
   this is a third fate, a third my sadness,
       a third your wilderness.
and you were in my way, and i was just starting to play with hearts and aces,
  in the crammed bus downtown, you made a plea, you knew how to lull a maiden like me, you said
    and i said i wouldn't fall for those secret rendezvous,
and this is how low i could go for you.

         ah, and you decided to turn your back from the wrong,
i was in the wrong, you put me in the wrong, but you wanted to be right,
   and this time, you gently wiped it off of my *******,
i shook, and i wept, that was far from what i deserve, but i never had something as gentle as those hands,
    and you said it was your fault, and you wanted nothing to do with me,
  you said:
                   you are my dark future, and for that, i have paid dearly in life.

you prayed for me to be strong, but i have always been,
     then you prayed for me to find someone who could love me the way you only could, you knew i'd need it,
   but that was no longer something that i long for
because i get hollow, and it doesn't matter, and i am no longer searching for it,
  and i had you anyway.

      you shouldn't worry about me, i am not getting somebody
  in your place anytime soon, i never said
i want it, i don't want it
   i need you, and i don't need you
and i just think of you a lot, my beloved moon,
and i think of all the ways i could be braver instead,
            like i told you the last time.
      
  affection is one thing, and love is another,
but passion is in the core,
     and the core is hollowed out, passion has been burnt out as i lost you
        and this is what i've been left with, my florencita
   and this is how i see you.

and i find your dreams are troubled again, our mother,
      our saviour, ave regina
  but you put on a composed smile, little darling,
bright and clear,
like skies in june, goddess of athena

oh - i know, i know, you shed tears too, you found your hair is falling out!
your limbs are limping, and you don't have any tickets to escape the town,
                  to the motherland, or the seven seas, where you belong
           and look, now, we are fighting the same war
this massive isolation, deafening silence,
                       repugnant confusion
  see, where's your god now?
                            you sighed to the heavens although you know it's wrong

we are in the same isolation,
       i am with my quilt and quill
               and you are with the moon, your man of dreams,
    comfort of homes
          and the world is frail, darling, it's on fire
and this is what i see:
            things diminishing,                   disheartening

and despite the tiffs, despite the madness,
            i'll tell you this: you have all that i want.
   take it all, i said, risk it all
and he did risk it all, and for you, it was never an afterthought,
                         and that is something that i foresaw but i was never prepared for

you have sadness as big as the world, sitting on your shoulders,
     and i have mine fits perfectly in my grasp,
        but i want yours
          i don't know everyone's battle zone, in my whole life i only know mine
                 but what you have is something that was a part of mine, whose body and soul was pervading my body, who owns this poetry, fire of my frigid, frail soul
and i want your sadness so big that it destroys me,
     and so we can always forget what we have in hands

            and i wish you well,
     i never wished you to know the feelings that need to be felt in order to write this

senorita, his lover, my glass shards
it was one of the shortest nights when
he brought the bright girl-child
in slacks to the backyard

in a waning day, salty skin, mid-july
by the waters of lethe, he found his annabel Lee
he shivered when retracing the gleaming july
when i was forgotten and he was loving annabel lee

he knew anything would last forever in summer
but forever was wasted and short-lived
and so he walked her out and drove her home
and made me listen to their parting songs

oh, the radio hurts! change the station, please?
(no, said my man) and he kept on driving away from annabel lee
and so the song played through seven red lights
and i collected the shards and dust of his crushed heart

4th of august,
the darkest day
of your life,
and i am here to sympathize

you came to your man to speak,
what a dashing man he was once,
but his heart was cold now
and it was no longer yours,

you wanted to save
yourself from the misery,
your friends were there
but you're alone in this, dream girl,
and heart broke

you came home with the last pennies
in the pocket, and nobody's home, and you're weary,
and under the pillow, again,
you found her name

you're thinking of the escalators humming,
the bars, the beds, the red dress,
and sadness an abyss
and where you went wrong and who anna was,

and i got your heart shattered,
and i wished i was happy
unfortunately, i wasn't

and you're many hundreds of miles away,
and it's 2 am,
no more work, it's dark, and she couldn't avoid the talk,
you called from the payphone nearby hotel,
the clock ticking loudly as a complement to sad silences,
and she's the missing link from your life,
and you're making it clear that she was,
but you just wanted to know
what you have missed,
and once you learned it, you both knew it was over,
and we learned to say goodbye,
and she's, however still missing
and you wouldn't be waiting on the other side

but no darling,
motels get me down and i don't want to shed tears
behind the walls on clean sheets slept on by many,
you don't want to hear my heart creaking,
and you certainly don't want to understand it

c h  ristop   her     r a  y,
c.r.          c.r.          christopher ray,
     were there any ways to think of the absurd    in a lucid and logical way        such as to explain the way i hurt myself   and i was the one who savors the bruises and the pain     and killing you but i was the one      who had been left dying  to the man who bore the name of       christopher
                    ray
christopher ray, christopher ray,
is there any way for me to keep the thoughts of you away     person comes and goes in my life and i was convinced that it's enough to keep you away        yet it's getting cold inside day by day i pour vouvray     how the sweetness pains me and your shadow stays forever and a day

my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man my moon my moon my man my moon my man my moon my man

i had a sleepover with a friend
we talked all night about my lover
who wanted me sometimes
i talked and mused about him all night
as if i didn't know that we were never meant to be
in the morning i put on my shoes again
i left for work but i left my soul in bed—talking
about him made him alive and had me died
so i sat in my desk caught in a daydream and cried all-day
i skipped work the next day just to feel
the sorrow into the bones

dusk: golden, slow
musk: fading with the rain
—i was in the summer of my life

we ambled along the railway
all the way to the west
my heart so heady and blurry
and we were still walking

yet i felt i belong to a foreign place
i had yet to know,
but i know that's where i should be

... that comes when i gaze
at the glimmering colors of dusk
that looming over me---i'm happy
with my own lengthening shadow on the ground
and the remnants of you
in the waning of the sun rays

ten days into january
but my soul already
ache for the
softness and warmth of
december; to be cradled
again in his arms

but your way of
v a n i s h i n g
has the power to question
my own existence.
was it real? or was it just an awfully
l
o
   n
     g
       dream?

- анна о. к.

in those distant days, i said i never wanted to puff a single cigarette; i never wanted to put any dangerous substances in my system that would compel me to ask for it over and over again. you might be getting high off them, but the thought of they’d harm me—consume me little by little, gradually, until there’s nothing left with me but addiction and dependency is dreadful to me.

it all changed after you decided to break my heart.

now, i don’t care if i harm myself with cigarettes or any dangerous substances. i’m not afraid. because i survived you. you and your love are more harmful. the apocalyptic moment when we pressed our lips together, you also ****** the soul out of my body, leaving me a little to none of myself; you crept inside of me, savoring my vulnerability—they're even more harmful and addictive and euphoric than cigarettes or any dangerous substances could do to our bodies. yet i still survive, although i'm trembling every now and then with some pieces of you and me left in my grasp.