This screen, bright with frustration, draws-
with careful precision-
the shape of your face.
It must grow tired, as I do,
of creating this image.
How can I know that you are real
when I have never touched your face?
Bitterness for a system long corrupt grows within me.
I am full to bursting with love and fury.

These complications breed more dissatisfaction.
Afraid of travel, afraid of people.
Stuck in a seemingly unending loop of legality
for crimes forgiven long ago.
How many moons more must I wait
to hold your hand in mine?
Eight years.

Long, empty time laughs cruelly at our labors
as we struggle to hold together a friendship
(now a bloomed and wilting relationship)
that we once held above all else.
My love for you is unending, a thing of faerie tale,
but I find my patience lacking.
I have waited and I have yearned for you.
I have tried, to no avail, to leave you behind me-
instead, I was greeted with the haunting realization that
nothing compares to you.
No man, no woman, no circle of peers,
can provide for me the things you offer.
I know you feel the same,
though a mix of dread and delusion prevent you from showing me
in the way I need so desperately to be shown.
I know that you, too, feel this pain.

Seamless, ceaseless pixels bring me your countenance,
now weathered with sadness and age.
Once upon a time, I thanked them.
Now, I throw curse upon curse;
hurling all my animosity at those things that carry you to me
in the only form I've ever known.
"I've been living so long with my pictures of you that
I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel."

If I cannot feel your hand, cold in mine-
If I can't smell your hair
or feel your chest drenched with those happy tears of
At Last!,
do you really exist at all?
Mercilessly, cruelly, are we brought before our judge,
The Test of Time.
Eight years; is it wasted?

Pain disfigures into numbness in the silence that screams at me
like so many crazed thoughts.
A heated state cools into quiet resentment.
Regardless of how I feel, how you do,
this night has changed us irreparably.
How can you say these things are equal?
Where do you get off?
Your half-sung apologies fall heavy on deaf ears.

Can you feel me ignoring you?

You think I let you down?
I needed to do something with my hands.
You
have shown to me
the inconsistency of love.

Nothing is unconditional.
If it were, I wouldn't even be here fighting with you.

Those words, also labile,
were the truth in the moment,
regardless of tomorrow.

I may love you,
but I hated you then.

Will life, angry, feel lost?
Rain love.
Stand(ing on the) earth,
sadness eyes.
Beautiful pain-man,
(for you, I) air deep wonder.
(Lost in a) broken time ride.
Storm (on)... Cry, dead heart.
Innocence?
Worth?
Sleep, summer dreams.
(I remain.)

A portal to another world,
glass so thick that I'm unsure I'll ever pass through.
There you dwell, constant and incredible,
so close to me,
so far from you.
This window, often changing,
goes with me on my journeys.
In size and shape it varies-
but you remain
steadfast,
insane,
beautiful.
Still, what I wouldn't give to pass through
that teasing threshold
and into your warm and waiting arms.

You, above all else
are a lesson in fate.
What more evidence do I need than my life with you?
We both took a gamble:
a name,
a notification.
A chat left to chance.
Who could have known you'd be so vital?
You are the air that I breathe,
the quiet whispers in the night time
when everything sleeps but us.
How lucky I am
that the universe brought me you.

Lungs emptied,
I try to cry out but only cry.
My heart beats fitfully,
like a toddler deprived of their favourite toy.
Dread overcomes me,
wholly and completely,
as I realize you aren't coming back.
Heaving sobs will be replaced by
quiet tears,
isolation-
a silent suffering that comes only with time.

I know you have your reasons-
ones I couldn't hope to understand-
but your apparent apathy creates between us a

distance

far greater than any ocean.
It's infuriating.
Whether it's the situation or me not getting my way
I can feel myself slipping
farther
from you and from myself.