I remember when I heard a song
and thought of the future.
Dreamt about a day, when maybe I could identify with the words I heard, and the emotion behind them.

I remember a day
When I put a song to a face.
Memories and eras of my life filed neatly away in perfected playlists.

On occasion I reminisce with the old tunes I used to cry and laugh to
and bring upon myself a sense of longing and nostalgia.
Alas the notes I fill my mind with now all bring me to think of you.

I was never one for a sappy love song, I wanted anger and revenge all tied together with angst.
broken hearts and tattered dreams, that’s what I wrote about, that’s what I wanted to hear.

Someone came along however, and changed my tune, so to speak.
Suddenly, those love stories I dreaded came to life,
I could relate to the pop song about a boy and a girl, and I liked it.


You tore down the walls I had so meticulously built and stole my heart with a tear stained smile and a wink.

And I still hold those moments dear, and replay them in my mind like my favourite song.


The smile.
That night you told me you had to go and find a place that felt more like heaven, because living felt like hell and you hated it here.
You smiled through your tears.
I continue to be enticed by the way the happiest expression known could hold so much sadness…

And while it broke my heart, it also made it beat a little faster.


The wink.
I begged you to come and see me
and when you finally came to my side
you made no communication, and all my longing to hear your voice remained unfulfilled.
I was frustrated and you knew it, so you caught my eye.
And you winked.
I turned my head and rolled my eyes to hide the smile and blush spreading across my face.


God, you’ve made it hard to love you.

But it's true to say since those moments I’ve been yours and all yours and there is not many a thing that could ever change that.

As long as you let me, I will continue to repair the pieces of your broken heart,
As you have done for me.
Maybe one day, we'll both be flawless as we were in the beginning.
Before reality and the worst of people tore us apart from the inside out.


You changed my heart, and my tune, and my life.

You are in every way what I have been searching for, and I will never forget the way your name makes me feel.

You’re a sinner if I ever met one,
but then again,
so I am.
You measure life in cigarettes,
while I measure mine in
broken promises.

You & I stand on one area of common ground
for we both measure it in the time
we can’t get back.


But what makes a sinner
a sinner?
The deeds he’s done?
The hearts he’s broken
carelessly?
Or the way he isn’t
sorry
for any of it,
not one bit.


We’re all ******* sinners,
who do we think
we’re kidding?

Not one of you can stand tall
and say that we’ve done no wrong.
and if you could,
we all know
you wouldn’t be any fun.


It’s a sin,
it’s a crying shame
that love these days isn’t built
to last.

It’s a sin,
that love can exist
between two beings, and that neither of them
can muster the courage
to make it known.

It’s a sin,
and a ******* waste at that.

How dare you throw away
the thing we’re all
searching for?


It’s a sin that the world we live in
forces us to prepare for a day that our hearts
will be ripped out,
   only to be mended,
     and ripped out
all over again.

It’s a sin that we must conform
to society’s expectations
of love,
that we are expected to love
in the way made popular by your television ideals.

It’s a sin that everyone
is looking for a kind of love
that doesn’t ******* exist, and why
can’t we understand,
that this isn’t
the movies?


And you better
  *******
      believe it,
it's a sin to believe
your ending
gets to be happy,
when there are millions who have seen their dreams
torn from top
to bottom


and no,
they can’t mend them,
they don’t have
the energy.

Would you?

Plain and simple,
could you say if
everything you’ve worked to make yourself believe
came crashing down,
that you could push away the rubble
and start anew?


It’s a sin that
anyone is expected to be able okay
after a heartbreak.

Sure,
you love and you learn,
but who wants to learn
a tale that ends
in lies
  and disdain
     more often than not?

It’s a ******* sin that the thing
that is most coveted
in life
is the thing
that will break you down
the most.


It will build you up
only to shatter your hopes,
  over
     and over,
don’t try and fight it,
don’t try and
convince me
that it’s worth it,
because I already
know.

I already know
that it’s so good
it's worth
the pain,
and I know
it's a sin.


But we’re all ******* sinners,
  we lie,
    and we cheat,
and we put ourselves
a mile
before the ones
we’re supposed
to care about.

But if that’s
love,
if that’s what we’re all looking
so hard for,

Who’s the real sinner,
  the player
      or the game?

a boy with stars in his eyes for a place he has yet to encounter
so obsessed with the possibilities that exist in a book he has yet to read
he's diving head first into the waves waving to the palm trees from 1,000 miles away
he's hungry for the windows down on city streets full of desperation and lust
a city built on rock and roll and lies and climbs to the top stories you aren't proud to tell
he's dreaming of the smog in Los Angeles the sun beaming him to a happier place
ash up to his knees and a blunt burning a hole in his pocket praying that a kid with a dream just might make it
he has been kicking around dirt in a town so covered in rust that even the youth seems old and tired and broken down
he wants an escape he wants his California sunset he wants his thirst to be quenched by the feeling of anything, just a pulse or the warmth in someone else's eyes a metaphor for something that was lost, now found
it's his stairway to heaven and he's been climbing for years and never seems to reach the top but he will never cease to try
with nothing but a penny and a story to his name he would drive for days just for prove there is still something to live for, that the dream is reality
just for that sense of belonging he's been craving all his life
he's a lost boy, and of the lot I've seen plenty but never one so wounded he knows better than to get his hopes up but in hopes that there's more to it than what they tell you their higher than the skyscrapers he's longing for
he's got a mind as expansive as the ocean and the only thing that calms it is watching the tides turn day in and day out
he's a native to a land he's trusting with his life
he doesn't need to see to believe
he knows its there he knows there's something
he's hitting the pavement like what are you waiting for he's done letting life just pass him by
his head is bound on the next train to the west coast and his body aches to follow
he's still here but he's counting the days and hey I might just go with him hey he might have the right idea hey look there's the Hollywood sign and **** all your troubles disappear
good riddance to the goodbyes he never said
no I hope to see you soon exchanged
he's been dying for a taste of something too abstract to mention and he's calling it by name
he's a whisper across time and space and he's telling me to come
follow me for a life worth living
follow me into the sun

the burning in my throat is a metaphor for existence
a metaphor for all the turning tides a metaphor for
you
You are the sweetest thing you are my compass when i can't find north you are a sense of belonging and the feeling of the earth under your bare feet
there is a surrounding sound ten thousand voices cheering your name each one of them belongs to me at different parts in my life telling you I love you
there is something in the way you smile that causes the earth to shake and my head to feel every fiber of my being in slow motion as to elongate your touch.
I could love you forever if you told me that's what you wanted I could see us on the tops of buildings dancing away the nights and getting lost behind a façade everyone else just keeps up for appearances
you are a soft sound in a world so hard and your comfort is something I seek as more than a remedy, a pillow on which I lay my head to rest on each night before I dream of you
you are an orchestra of perfected notes each cutting through you in a more direct way than the first blending and carrying on and filling the air and turning sound into life
you are a metaphor for all in the world that is better than bad, that spark in the darkness and the light at the end of a long tunnel
I think in you all hours of the day you haunt my mind like memories that are yet to play out and songs stuck in my brain on a repeated loop a chorus blended in such harmony not even the angels with their harps could compete.
you are the sensation of a sunset and the first of October and the crispness in an autumn evening you are my favorite star
you are mine to love and I with you will stay until you escape from me

midnights are for highways
for empty roads and fast cars
and no destination to think of but away.
chatter and backwards looks will only get you so far in the race you're running slow down take it all in and remember if you're still alive there's still something to live for.
midnights are for running away from your troubles with the aid of drugs or sleep
midnights are for encountering places in your mind so dark you'll wish you'd never met yourself
running with the devil through wet grass littered with shards of glass from broken promises and people
from squeezing so hard that everything cracked into one thousand pieces that shine like diamonds even in the dark
midnights are for hollow eyes staring back at you someone just as dazzled by all the black and burning as you are and getting lost in their tired gaze like they weren't just a stranger, they were an old friend
midnights are for hunting ghosts that try and take your sanity away skeletons in your closet whose bones won't settle down an empty casket waiting for the last of your head to fall into oblivion and get caught swirling in the wind.
cool to the touch and hot to the taste a boy and a girl a lullaby of saints and the symphonies of sinners all evaporate into the stars and become as divided as conflicting desires.
tension growing across a crowed room two pairs of eyes locked on two doors topped with exit signs she telling he let's get out of here with nothing more than blinks and stares a morse code designated for the fraile of heart only.
midnights are for chasing what you want while no one is looking, for writing poetry about your lips and songs about the way your tongue dances so effervescently stories about a kind of romance they all think is dead.
midnights are minutes and hours and seconds and more than just the time from twelve to one they come and go as often as you wish they wouldn't or would
they will eat you alive and spit you out and then brush your hair with the most delicate strokes of moonlight
they are the reason people keep staying up past their bedtime and why they are tired in their corporate hours because even in a perfect world nothing is right when a midnight goes wrong.

there is something to be said
for those of us who communicate
with braile fingers
brushing against skin
in the dark.
there is something to be said for the lost causes,
the chain smokers,
the boy with alibis up and down his throat and
so thick with longing
for the girl he used
to **** for laughs
but now he knows those
laughs were memories he'd
never get back.
there's a hole in the ceiling
where you fell after a drunken night where you tried to find yourself
but instead found rock bottom
when your body hit the floor.
there's a shallow
whisper in the woods
outside my house when
the wind blows through
the trees
and it sings the same chorus
over and over,
and the words are
"you ****** up but it's too late to turn back now"
there's nothing
in the cavity that I used
to call my chest and
that's because you claimed
I was broken and
you spent so much time trying to rearrange my mind
you lost a few pieces
and they're nowhere
to be found.
there's something
in the blue of the moon in
October that simply
outshines the sun
and I think that's a good metaphor
for you
because not everyone
stays out long enough to appreciate that the things that happen
in the night
make the day look like
child's play.
you were all but a lost boy
and I lost myself
trying to find you
and now there's a whole
where we both used to live
and the only thing there
is a music box that
plays the songs
you used to sing to me.
there's nothing left
but symphonies that
scream forgiveness
but there is still
a quiet in the chaos
and it makes me second guess myself
for second guessing.
I'm more tossed up
than the boat
that crashed on the waves you made when you first said my name.
there's a million
broken stoplights
where a
"*******"
  turned red
   green
   and I woke up
   and realized that
   the fantasies we lived in are
   ghost towns now.

gone,
gone without anything to prove she had ever been there
gone without even the slightest trace,
without a letter or a goodbye or a see you on the flipside,
no.
nothing.
nothing but the dead air that used to be filled
with rants and ideologies
no one really listened to
anyways.
she was just gone,
not a soul to say if she went east or south or if she took a
train or car or plane or
no,
nothing.
a dead town full of dead breathing people lugging around
suitcases stuffed with papers
covered in meaningless numbers,
meaningless, unless of course,
those numbers fed you.
a vicious cycle of eating and retreating from the dreams you had when you were young, but not her
no,
she's gone.
ran like hell to escape the lions in their cages and the edges in the faces of people living only to survive,
only to carry on their ******* last time,
or to make a dime
just so they could drink to all they've accomplished in a more expensive bar
than their old friends
who are starving on the streets
because their boss made some cuts.
cutting ties
cutting strings
cutting corners
cutting out the only parts of life that make it worth the 80 years of pushing pushing pushing but no.
you won't catch her on the street corners wiping away her mascara and
running late to work and
no you won't see her
desperately clawing for a life
that doesn't exist in the age that we live in.
she walked or ran or swam or bit the bullet, who's to really say but in any case she's
long gone
and no one tried to find her.
running away killed the same cat that didn't die from curiosity
cause what they leave out in that saying is cats have
nine lives
and so did she.
did. does. to reiterate, who's to say.
someone said no, someone took
a stand and said
******* to society
******* to a home that felt more like a jail cell and
******* to a town where things go in circles rather than forward.
no handshakes exchanged or tears shed to mark her
leaving,
no,
nothing.
she disappeared and became the same kind of ghost you read about in
poetry because
you will never stop trying to live
when you realize everyone else
is already dead.

With you, nothing is the same.
Kissing you is painting a sunset, and loving you is living in my favourite book.
There is nothing mediocre about you,
and you, darling, are the loveliest piece of art I have ever laid my ever curious eyes on.
You are a contradictory painting of complementary colors, with the perfect blend of light and dark hues.
You are the sun, the moon, and all the stars, you are grass and earth and everything that makes me feel alive.
You are a cozy sense of belonging and safety like hot chocolate by a fire
and a mysterious abyss of thoughts and wonders as deep as all seven seas.
You are a morning stroll through a city on a crisp autumn morning
and a high speed chase down a San Fransisco highway.
You are a slowly burning candle whose flickering flame is lulling me to sleep
and a drug I can not cope without.
You are a collage of my favourite things and my favourite places and a playlist of only the most wonderful songs.
You are a staircase to paradise and a new way of thinking that tingles my senses in the best of ways.
You are the feeling of love and you take me to the most amazing of heights everytime I get lost in the perfect storms in your eyes.
You are what I'm reaching for in the dark, and holding onto until the morning.
You are everything in life that makes me smile, you my dear, are all of the little things.

yes, I am a princess, and yes I want a fairy tale.
No, not a dashing prince to come claim me as a prize after some monster held me captive.
No, not a man with too good of posture on a horse to come rescue me from my secretly evil parent's ploys.
No. Not like that.
A mysterious young man with a knack for guitars and a drug problem.
Now, this is where you're probably thinking, what kind of fairy tale is that?
But let me go on.
The drugs, the guitar, the things between his teeth...(and between his legs...) were the things I like to address as a call for help.
Astonishingly, everyone around him was to ignorant to see the pain behind his smile.
They were focused on his teeth, but I got caught up in his eyes.
Hazel brown, very easy to read, and having the ability to make me want to look a little nicer when I thought they'd catch a glance of me.
My cry for help was more of a silent kind, one that said save me from this thing inside of me that's telling me I'm too cruel to love, and too worthless to be loved.
And on the odd occasion one or the other occurred, well, it was never at the same time.
He heard my cry as loud as I heard his, because we had this connection that only happens in the movies.
But this is a fairy tale after all, so what did you expect, right?
He told me he loved me, and then things started to change.
He told me he had a new kind of drug problem, and this time, it had a heartbeat.
We stripped away each other's flaws, and brought out the best kind of smile in each other's eyes.
You know, the kind where you smile with your eyes, and not just your teeth.
It doesn't matter that my fairy tale didn't take place in a castle, or that my prince isn't the son of some king.
What matters is that I found the kind of happiness that makes someone else's dream your dream, just so you get to be there with them.
The kind of happiness where you stop dreaming because reality is finally just as perfect.
And that my friend, is a fairy tale.
Stop looking for someone perfect.
Start looking for someone who isn't perfect, but you wouldn't want then any other way.

I met a boy who kept his heart next to him in a fragile glass jar
In his heart he kept his thoughts, views, and emotions safe from judgement and hurt
I asked if I could see the jar, just have a look
he told me no, I didn't want the burden that came with knowing too much, but I persisteted
He took out his heart and showed me it.
The bumps and ridges, the bruises and the scars
I handled this information with care, and I kept his heart in my mind and then it was as if he started to read mine.
But my curiosity was not satisfied, it never truly was.
This time, I asked if I could hold his heart in my hands, feel it beating, memorize it's rythms
No, he said.
I promised I'd be careful
"That's what she said"
It then struck me that those blemishes on his heart were fingerprints.
I swore I'd never hurt him and he refused to believe me.
So I stayed up late at night and dreamed about his heart in my hands and I knew I could repair the scratches she left.
So I stole it.
I stole his heart.
He tried to take it back but I needed it and I held on for dear life.
My eyes burned with passion infused tears and he realised just how much his heart meant to me.
"Keep it."
"I never had any other intentions."

I've been in my head all day
racking my brains for some answers
all I could find up there was your voice.
Just like it's burned into my inner monologue
almost as indefinitely as the sound of my own.

It is not so much words I hear but sounds that rumble and shoot right through me
just like when you say good morning.

It is burned into the back of brain
along with the sound of our lips parting and your steady breaths when you sleep next to me.

My mind has you on it
even when I am not consciously dreaming you into my morning routine,  and drinking you up like my cup of tea,
for you're hot to the touch but you go down so easy.
You too, make my throat burn a little less.

You are sitting in a corner of my headspace,
quietly listening to your favorite songs on repeat
watching my brain waves rise and fall like seawater.

My mind is like an ocean,
and you are the only one brave enough to swim it.
Tell me how tall the waves were,
and how strong you had to stay to keep from drowning.

I never meant to toss you around in my turbulence
but there is no stopping that which can not be calmed.
One day you said "I love you" & my waters were still.
You realized that all along you could touch the ground if you stood up straight.

I think that is when you realized, you had no reason to fear me.
I think that is when you realized, the only person who could drown you, is yourself.

And when you said that out loud, your voice got into my head, and I can't get it out.

always left in the corner of your mind as soon as you get what you want from me
and I'm asking if it's such a crime to want to be front and center once again
you once said you got over things with substance abuse yet I'm here and you seem to forget.
there will always be something more important than me.
you lied when you said all escape routes closed because of me, cause I swear if they did it wouldn't be like this.
am I asking for too much?
just to feel as loved as you claim I am?
I am only human and I'm sorry that I require more attention than you feel I deserve but I can't change that no matter how many times you say you love me something in the presence of options makes me feel something is wrong.
an explanation is all I ask but it's always been too much for you so I will leave it at this
don't ask more than you give

I look at you and I see infinity.
Mirages and dreams and possibility
that you don't see when you look
at yourself
in the mirror.
What I see,
it's in focus,
things are so much clearer.
you look at yourself and you see irrelevance.
You see
what you've told your reflection you are
and after all this time.
you've started to believe there's no reason left to dream,
but
dream with me, of city roof tops and subway tunnels.
dream of me sleeping your sheets and kissing you good morning.
drowning in your love, as you drown in mine.
dream how I dream, with pictures of
us
from year to year
hung on the walls
of a little apartment on the south side of town.
And maybe that day you'll believe that I plan to stick around.
Tomorrow in a hallway,
or 5 years in a crowed room, or a bustling city street,
filled up with skyscrapers
or palm trees,
think of me, and how my eyes are always searching for yours.

Enter protagonist.
Nothing special or out of the ordinary about her that the average eye could see.
Nothing enticing about the way she simply existed, wishing to accomplish something without knowing what.
Nothing out of the ordinary, at least not on the surface.

Every morning was the same, a routine of sorts, that consisted of waking up generally excited for the hours ahead and being disappointed when she realized they had nothing to offer her but tired people putting on fake smiles,
Just getting by with nothing but apathy and narrow hallways to lead the way.

More than anything she wanted to do something with herself, to explore what the world had to offer her.
She wanted to experience everything and anything,
But the confines of small town living and oppressive thoughts seemed to stop her from finding her purpose.

Life for her was not measured in time, but in the richness of her existence, and in those prolonging moments,
Life had seemed to slow.
She was alive, but never really living.
The things she expected to thrill her left her with an emotion of emptiness that washed over her like a billowing wave on a night with no moon.
A night that lacked the guidance of light.

She could pretend something was nothing but she no longer wanted to.
She desired to expand her horizons and more than anything she wanted to feel something.
Anything in the world other than the lonely abyss of nothingness that clouded her mind.
She needed to make something extraordinary happen, and she hadn't had the slightest idea how.

She read books.
Lots of them.
She imagined she was in them,
laughing and dancing and kissing alongside the characters.
They felt bliss, they felt hatred, they felt raw energy serge between each other at impossible speeds.
She longer for this kind of passionate relation with someone.
She wanted to be with the kind of people that make you forget everything else for a while.

She dreamed of open fields full of beautiful souls,
Enjoying every moment in pulse with the music that drove their very entities.
She often closed her eyes and dreamed of these places in the middle of nowhere-
Full of lost kids with no intention but a good time.

She wished for summertime adventures
& sunglasses
& reckless abandon in its purest form.
She longed to love and be loved.
She longed for a companion, someone who could bring the feeling back to her frail and aching fingertips, which grew more and more numb by the day.

Days for her passed by in a haze,
She had trouble determining one from another.
She kept telling herself that good times were ahead if only she kept looking.
But she did not have even the slightest of clues as to where to begin, and so she stayed lost,
Waiting for the soul that could bring hers back to life.