Inside me
While you grew and grew
I never knew
Your heart was broken
And that there was one
Where there should’ve been two.

After you were born
The doctor explained
Your lungs wouldn’t last
You were breathing too fast
And growing too slow
Your blood flow was mixed
And you had to be fixed.

So right from the start
Your heart wasn’t whole
But your soul
Was a universe
And your eyes
Were comprised
Of millions of galaxies.
Your body was strong
And your cry was a song.

I named you beloved
And through you, I discovered
For the very first time
I was whole.

Please always remember
You are far more beautiful
Than broken
You are my ultimate inspiration
And I’ll always consider you
My most perfect creation.

Transfixed, I watch the worlds
In your eyes transform
From blue to brown to green
From sea to ground to tree.

Framed in wisps of orange flame
Your face alights, your cheeks glow bright

I sing a song about your name:
“Aim far, aim high
Aim star, aim sky
Aim you, aim me
I’m you. You’re me.
Aimee…”

My darling daughter
You are my Sun
And around you, I’ll revolve
Eternally turning –
A maternal merry-go-round
On your playground
Of seas and trees and ground.

If I could recreate reality
I'd soften the finality
Of your forced farewell.

I'd make it so
That I can peel
Your every kiss-shaped memory
From my skin
And keep them in a tin.
So that when I miss
Your goey lips
Against my cheek or chin
I'd simply take them out
And let them kiss themselves
Onto my skin again.

If I could recreate reality
I'd lessen the enormity
Of my endless emptiness.

I'd sew a song
Into the you-shaped hole
Of longing your life left
Imprinted on my soul.
A never-ending
Heart-mending singsong
To fill me and
Fulfill me.

But wait...

If I could recreate reality
I'd have no use for tinned kisses
Or pointless paltry poetry
Or stitches in my soul.

Because you'd be here.
And I'd be whole.

I am waiting for the stars to lead me
Away from this late night double-feature
But I just can't get these scars to leave me

Our time was too short
For me to realise
That a five-star last resort
Was all I was to you

I should have been the wiser
I should have seen the womaniser
In time to stop myself from
Building you inside me

I fell in love with the beauty in the bridges
And the richness of the ridges
Connecting you to me

Can't you see
How this poetry
Is defined by everything I've ever laid my heart on
Every race I've ever had a head start on
Every game I've ever played a part in
And every end of a new beginning of mine starting?

How can I wake up
Into a new day
When all I have left of you still belongs to this one?

How can I be redone
When I can't even say
The sounds that make up the music of my name?

How am I supposed to move on
When everything still looks the same?

I've bid farewell to the vows we'll never take
And I've said goodbye to the children we'll never make

Yet I will wait for you indefinitely
And like a dream that's blown apart
I will wait for you
At the bottom of my heart

That night in the streets of my city
When I was alone
He appeared to me in a whispered memory
And, like fireflies, my exposed suppression was revealed
Time had bound me in the threads of misery again
While the aching in my chest for forgotten company
Lured me into madness
It recreated my sadness
And he hadn't even said my name

Storms will come and go
Sometimes they will heal the earth
Sometimes they'll destroy

I wrote a poem for you
The day before I met you

When I didn’t yet know a soul can be shipwrecked
Or that the sun can have secrets
When I hadn’t yet learned to look for symptoms
Or dreamed you could become my weakness

You entered me like a sickness
From your first ‘hello’
You whispered my world red
And smiled it yellow

You came to me; a sonnet
A decorated soldier
Dressed in sentences and statements
With which to catch a schoolgirl
In succulent surprise

Your eyes kissed me
Long before your lips did
And under the spectrum of your splendor
My heart bloomed a blushing orchid

I was a slave to my sweet-tooth
You, a dulcit daydream
That knew just how to turn me
From still life into story
And in so doing, you cast me -
A shapeless statue -
Into your private purgatory

You created a planet
With just us living on it
And a snakepit, a sinkhole
With which to swallow me whole

I wrote this poem for you
The day after I met you
I thought it worth to mention
Why I started to regret you

So please pay close attention
(As I’m trying to forget you):

My innocence
Though far from inner sense
Was no less common
Than the unoriginality
Of your sugarcoated sin

With a tracing of my dreams
I’ll draw for you
In the shapes of streams
And the sounds of seas
A lucid doodle
The colour of waterdrops
To show you where my world stops
And my bones begin.

I’ll take you to the place
Where my poems sing.

I am not depressed
I’m just deflated
Out of style and over-dressed
At second-best, I’m overrated

An old birthday balloon
(Out of breath, somewhat bated)
I hum my jingles out of tune
One-hit-wonders soon outdated

Like a song without sound
Mourning a muted meltdown
I’m at the point of no concern
For my inability to yearn

I am -
Whatever comes after
The past, the future
The cries, and the laughter

I remain –
Whatever came before
The purple rain, the midnight train
The ****** and the *****

I am a pixelated painting
Understood by few
Inexplicably containing
Little drops of you

You’re my middle C
A sepia photograph
Of my mundane eulogy
And my previous epitaph

You are my bitter half
The gall in my bladder
My nervous laugh
My endless chatter

You’re my history rewritten
My once shy, twice-bitten
My state-of-the-art
You’re the bottom of my heart

The top of my lungs
You’re my talking in tongues
The motivational quote
In my suicide note

And although I’ll never be free
From this heart on my sleeve
I’ll always wish you to be
The Adam to my Eve.

I wanted you to sit
On a park bench
In the middle of the city

And watch me sail away in the sky
Like a kite of many colours
Wondering what happened to your band of brothers

I first saw you in a cloud shaped like a man
And in the wingspan of an eagle

Feeling the grass moving between my toes
I flowered and froze
To become the shape you chose

I wanted you to grow me
Like a tiger lily
I wanted your hand to fit
In the small of my back

But instead my bones turned black
And I blossomed and burned
When your back was turned

I should’ve flown
Before your eyes caught me
And turned me into stone

In your shadow, I am never alone
In your echo, I’m a semi-tone

The history of our love
Like a mystery, like a dove
Is written in graffiti
Where our harboured street
And the moon’s reflection meet

And I’ll always wonder how
You manage to make me feel so tall
And at the same time
So incredibly small.

There is another woman living
In the friction
Between your hips and my thighs

Do you think I haven’t seen
The memory of her
Swimming in the moisture of your eyes?

Do you think I haven’t noticed
The sadness
In the lines around your smile?

Do you think I haven’t realised
You’re somewhere else all the while?

Do you think I haven’t measured
The distance between
What you say and what you mean?

You’re not the first to show up here
With a broken dream
Slung over your shoulder
Heavy with things you never told her

How you’re wishing you could hold her
As we’re lying on my bed
I can hear her broken promises
Resounding in your head

I’m tired of being a consolation prize
I’m tired of soothing away silent cries
I’m tired of picking up the pieces
And wasting all my kisses
Wondering why no one misses
….me.

Should I just accept the fact
That she’ll probably want you back
Once she remembers all the things
That are making me fall in love with you?

You were beautiful in Borneo
Like a song I’d been expecting
To start playing on the stereo

I was fragile when you found me
A lifetime’s worth of sorrow
And disappointment built around me

But you gave me a standing ovation
A merry-go-round of applause
And cut through my curt conversation
With your musical mixed metaphors

You asked me why I was waiting
For something already long gone
And suddenly all of that aching
Disappeared in the song of a swan

You and me
We should be poetry
We should be prose
The way our breathing slows
And our hearts beat
Like wings on Bourbon Street.

You and I
We should be together
Birds of a feather
Flying like time.
We always had rhythm, you know
We just never had rhyme.
We committed a crime together
And should've served time
Been brought to justice...
But it was just us
Perfect in our alibi.

We may not've had rhyme
But at least we had reason
We committed treason together
And should've been tried
We should've been been true
Me and you
On the corner of Bourbon Street
And Fifth Avenue.

I pull the land on which you live
Closer to where I stand.

In one smooth motion
I narrow the ocean
Uniting our shores
Until yours is mine
And mine is yours.

There are no more miles
Between our smiles
And just a sliver of the sea
Like a scar in the sands
Keeps you and me
From holding hands.

You said that I could find you
In the space that lies between
The reality that binds you
And the traces of your dream.

You asked me, "Can you dance
To a poem by Baudelaire?"
"La danse," said I. "C'est la poésie
Avec des bras et des jambes."

Your hands made a ballroom of my body
Your fingers tap-danced on my skin
Oh, and how I moved under your melody
Like a waltzing gypsy violin.