if, while on the other side of the world,
you buy me a book
and post it to me
along with the words
'i read this and i thought of you
and i knew you had to read it too'
then what else is left for me to do
except
         to
           fall
               in
                 love
                       with
                              you.

i tried to write a poem
i've been trying for a while
to write the ways in which you always
seem to make me smile

i've tried to tell our stories
through the medium of rhyme
but every time i start to type
the words fall out of time

it's always been so simple
i can write when i feel wrong
but it all seems so unnatural
now i feel like i belong

i don't think i can do it
'cause i don't know where to start
so if i see you in my poems
it will mean you broke my heart.

the words used to flow like silk through my fingertips
i used to know exactly how to weave them
make them fall into tapestries, hang them from walls
emblazoned with unadulterated innocence.

it wasn't until you asked to look at my creations
that i realised sunlight could be so damaging
my words felt frivolous under your scathing gaze
and they stuttered, crumbled. my tapestries fell.

now they're dust and i'm on my knees, crawling
grasping fistfuls that seep through my hands
you can't write about something you can't feel
and now i can't feel anything.

this is the last poem i'll write about you.

a momentary lapse of thought:
staccato thuds sounded by a hollow heart
upon the realisation that the clarity of 'best friends'
becomes muddled
and confused with the passing of time.

hearts become restless:
heads are filled with shinier thoughts
as the people once loved are replaced. we recreate ourselves
worlds away
from the ones to whom we once gave our soul.

the silence of an evening punctuated
by memories of our faded selves
they watch us as we blindly dance
to the symphony of their sighs.

he loves me
and i see it in his eyes
i see it when he pushes my hair back to kiss my neck
and it terrifies me

he knows me
and i hear it in his voice
when he laughs and calls me ridiculous when i collapse
in ticklish mirth beneath his touch

he adores me
and wouldn't hurt me for the world
i know it when he tells me i could never let him down
and i tremble under the weight of his words