you, my love, are the light of my life, and you - are ruining my writing. lately, when i sit down and try to write, all i can seem to come up with are grossly overused analogies and tired metaphors that have been recycled a thousand different times. all that flows from the end of my pen are flowers and stars and the creases that form in your forehead when you smile and how much i'd like to lose myself in the galaxies of your irises - and it's disgusting. this twilight-esque prose, this juvenile symbolism and puppy-love poetry that pours from me - is not me. i'm no Poe, no Plath, no Kerouac, but i like to think that i'm okay. however, recently the caliber of my writing has been reduced to nothing more than rainy-day romance and child's play. and god, everything rhymes. i feel like i'm sixteen again in the best way. it's because you've stayed, that you are changing everything i thought i knew about love. i catch myself absentmindedly drifting to visions of a shoebox apartment in a city somewhere and furniture shopping and even the B word (babies). that's so unlike me, that is so - amazing because nobody has ever been so serious about me and i think that maybe, baby,  someday i'd like to be 80 with you - oh god. you - you are too many poems that all sound the same, but each time i read through them i somehow manage to find something i haven't read before. you are open doors and patient arms with a voice like a lullaby that resonates in the darkest corners of my mind. you are saving grace without condition and a love so deep i could go for a swim in it - and maybe that's why i'm drowning, because all i ever really learned how to do is doggy-paddle. but you are so patient. anyone else would have quit on me by now. the idea of forever has always terrified me, but the promises you make sound so real that i'm beginning to think maybe they are. baby, you, are eyes like soil and words made of rain drops, and every day we grow a little more. i adore you. i am so sorry that my meager words can't do you justice. my ineptitude is criminal, but i'm trying. and i think that i would rather be vomiting these clichés than return to the world of gray i lived in before i met you. i love you. i love you. i love you to the moon and back and every planet in between. you are the sweet to my tea and the leaves to my tree. and every song i've yet to hear but somehow i manage to follow along with. i wanna scream it from the top of a mountain or the middle of a grocery store, about this love that leaves me with butterflies in my belly and fireworks in my heart. baby, i've never been so happy to embrace mediocrity. my prose may be suffering, but my heart is soaring. writer's block has never been more welcome than when it bears your name. so wipe your feet at the door, take off your coat, and please, make yourself at home.

- m.f.

I still remember how the distance tricked us,
and lead us helpless by the wrist into a pit to be devoured.
I still remember how we held so strong to this,
though we had never really settled on a way out.
I still remember the silence, and how we'd always find a way
to turn and run to our mistakes.
I still remember how it all came back together just to fall apart again.
My dear, I hear your voice in mine.
I've been alone here, I've been afraid, my dear.
I've been at home here. You've been away for years. I've been alone.
I breathed your name into the air; I etched your name into me.
I felt my anger swelling; I swam into its sea.
I held your name inside my heart, but it got buried in my fear.
It tore the wiring of my brain; I did my best to keep it clear.
So, dear, no matter how we part, I hold you sweetly in my head.
And if I do not miss a part of you, a part of me is dead.
If I can't love you as a lover, I will love you as a friend.
And I will lay a bed before you; keep you safe until the end.

Thought I'd crawl into bed
with my bottle of whiskey,
but it just doesn't keep me
as warm as you did.

Wishing I could
set off in flight
into the sky.
Become a streak of light,
travel so far,
and marry the stars.
Leave all the troubles I find
on this earth behind.

I'm lost where no one goes;
a place that no one knows;
the black hole of my mind,
and you will never find
me.