I am empty
I am nothing
I am no more than the millions of stories I have told myself

My outside is lovely
My insides are bare
There is no one home
My body is full of books and music and pretty things

My soul is a house
With walls papered
With stolen words
The plagiarism of geniuses

My life is a play
I am the star
Play-acting through scene after scene
Pretending

Pretending to be happy
Pretending to be clever
Pretending to be beautiful
Pretending to like boys

I execute the scene without flaw
There is no applause
No curtain calls
No bouquets of roses blushing too deeply

The scenes continue
The play is infinite

These words are for you
They are the words you'll never know

Between these pages,
Whispers
The fated words I breathed
When I was certain you couldn't hear

Spattered ink
Preserved forever
To be devoured by one who wishes the words were theirs

You will read the pages
And think they are for another
You will never dream that
You could be the source
Of such wonder

You are my sea
Your voice and caresses
As tranquil as the waves
Soothing my weary soul

I crave you.
Desperately.
I long to explore
Where none have been.
To know you.

Oh, how treasured you are,
My pearl

May you never cease to thrill at the ordinary.
May the charms of spring never cease to awaken your soul.
May you never grow accustomed to your lover's smell,
that you do not inhale it so often
that it becomes merely oxygen.
Stay young forever.

How can I possibly
capture your likeness?
I cannot put on paper
the radiance of your eyes
the gentleness of your heart
the tenderness of your soul

We are stars, she and I
So intoxicated and bewildered am I
by her radiance
How distant she seems
How passionately she burns
with a fire dismissed by those from afar
So lucky am I to have known her dearly

Perhaps I am at last free from her net which so rapturously ensnares.