I’m in bed, half-asleep with the morning rays seeping through the blue curtains, and I'm holding you in my arms, you who I truly love. We feel warm and touch skins, our legs intertwined, eyes locked to infinity,

And I’ll be thinking to myself. Thinking how I finally made it. How I built myself, my own masterpiece, from the ground-up. How I grew, through the rough weather and poor soil, grew higher than anyone ever imagined – my leaves and petals reaching up to the sky, embracing the sweet, cool rain falling and baptizing me into a new life. And I'd feel truly, fully alive.

And I’d wonder just how lucky I am to have met someone like you who understands me and who I want to understand: I’d be the last actor to leave the stage, and I’d go down to meet you, my audience of one, and we’d remove our masks and see our true selves and we'd talk and fall in love until all the stars die and the cold takes us. And even in the dark, we'd know the other was there. And we’d be the only ones who knew each of our little secrets, and we’d hide them in our secret places: hidden between the wrinkles of our brains, behind our ears, sealed in the spaces between our fingers, and woven into the seams of our palms and knees.

And when our time has finally come, I’d let my ashes mix with yours, so not even death could separate my heart from yours. And we’d fly into a capsule rocket to the moon, and we’d circle the earth and see the stars until everything else has turned to ash.

And I'd slowly get up and make us breakfast – some eggs and coffee, just the way you like it – and I’d hear a precious murmur behind me, whispering, unexpectedly, with a smile:

*I love you.

this silence is evil. my demons don’t scratch, ****, or tempt. they place a sickly old finger to my lips with one hand and clutch my throat with the other, draining my face blue.

i suffocate in silence.

my voice, once big, is shrinking to a whimper. barely anyone hears me – barely anyone knows i'm here. i'm just someone to sit with, someone with a history, someone to feel sorry for for a few seconds, someone who'll shut up and listen to them talk about themselves all day, someone you brush off in a few words, someone not worth your breath.

and the worst part is, you don’t know me. no one does. and all my candles slowly die, one by one. darkness consuming the light, wretched invisible eyes smiling at me from the abyss.

and nobody cares. nobody listens. nobody asks why.

i'm terrified to the bone. i'm turning into someone i don’t want to. this cancer is eating me up, and it will eat until there is nothing left but empty thoughts and crushing regret. this pent-up anger, this introverted angst, not to others but to myself – i just wanna break something. rip it to pieces, burn it and throw it in a lake. punch it until my fist draws blood – until my fist becomes my ****** heart and my ****** heart becomes my ****** fist.

i am holden caulfield, but i don’t want to be.

if i'm rambling because nowadays i find myself thinking the same thoughts over and over – like clockwork that strikes at the midnights of my loneliness – but then they, my thoughts, never really materialize or transcend the barriers of my mind amidst the almost infinite space of opportunity before me, this unnerving vast reservoir of potential that surrounds me like an ocean does an island, like an ocean does a drifting plastic bag – though it may be important to add that salt water cannot be drunk, unless i find madness and thirst to be my choice of sweet self-destruction; but i, as a creature of this world, despite lacking fins or gills, know that salt water can be crossed, perhaps by a ship of my own design: wooden oars and planks, compass and sextant, my eyes on the guiding stars, my hope on the rising dawn.

i don't understand it
but i know, i feel
it's beautiful
like a foreign language
where the words dance in your ears
and jive to the music
then at night sneak off to bed
and make love
like how the sun
makes love to the moon
at every eclipse
which never fail to remind me
of the eclipses in your eyes,
twin spheres that brighten under their lids
on those rare, glorious perchance
when you see something
you don't understand
but know
but feel that
it's beautiful

you find yourself alone
slumped in the corner
your knees to your chest
curtains drawn so not even the dawn can ask you how you're doing

all these years, you've swallowed the tears
as if they were bitter pills that would banish your fears
one more beer, one more hour
three hundred minutes thinking in the shower
your heart racing at the thought that this will all be over

you find yourself in bed
not asleep but drifting in the middle
every word you know becomes a riddle
every motion feels like a chore
drowning in an ocean without a shore

you lie there to your side
nothing to keep
but everything to hide

the silence
is deafening
and you never do get used to it
and you find yourself
talking with the dog
because the dog won't leave your side

and you don't dare look in the mirror
because the mirror would only look back
your only solace is but the cold and black
of sleep
you don't want any dreams
you don't want to weep
you just want the darkness
all day
and only the darkness
you keep