you are like:



                    a mirrored lake, everything below the surface.

           handwritten love letters and bright smiles.

     a quaint cottage surrounded by wilderness.

          the glimmering sand and burning sunsets.



               the whole night sky and everything beyond it.

          the force in the tide, the chill in the breeze.

     lingering glances and long drives.

lightning and thunder -

                                                -and everything-

                                                                                                      -in between.

I hope you don't mind,
This only almost rhymes –
These things I meant to say –
It's more fitting this way.
We were never in sync,
On two different wavelengths.

But I held back so much,
Briefly felt and left untouched:
Like how you made me feel
Like lowering my shield
And laying my heart bare
To entrust in your care.

But they rapidly passed;
Those warm feelings fled fast,
For you chased them away –
It would have just delayed
The inevitable pain,
Ignited more destructive flames.

Still, I got burned away
Despite what I didn't say.

I don't know how long I can pretend that I'm not rotting from the inside out.

I use a giant silver spoon to carve it out, pretend its ice cream, pretend its happiness, pretend its temporary. Every time I scoop, I'm closer to the bottom of the pint; but what's there at the bottom?

I look fine in your periphery, so what's there to worry?

I'm not bad at pretending, I'm just bad at being un-ugly.

I search for: your smile across the room, the furrow in your brows when you concentrate, your reassuring words of wisdom.
Is it wrong that I want to tell you all my deepest darkest secrets?

I long for: you touch below the table, your hands on mine in secret, your head on my shoulder.
Is it wrong that I want it to be something more?

I dream of: your eyes looking into mine, the way you run your hands through your hair, your chuckle in between jokes.
Is it wrong that all I want to do is feel your lips on mine?

I love: the way you drink your tea, how you are so incredibly kind to everyone, and you, you, you.
Is it wrong that I love you?

I've been told so many times that life's going to get better so I'm at a point that I'm not willing to accept that it won't. Life needs to stop treating me like ****. I don't care what it throws at me, I'm going to try to love every pebble, rock, and boulder. I'm going to be better and I'm going to do better even if I die trying. I'm going to ******* make it. I am going to be kind and giving and loving to everyone I see, even if they're awful to me. It's going to be a giant ******* to life. I'm going to fight for happiness.

Come whisper your method of writing to me, how you unleash beauty from plain words. I know much about silence but nothing to your extent. Come tell me how you made yourself small – how you perfected the art of being a literal void to avoid those who wrong you. Disappearing.
                    – You've never fully disappeared from my sight though.

When I was raised to sew my mouth shut, to apologize for saying too much, I let the elders cut my tongue. After a while, I told myself 'no, no more'. I took back what they took. And that's when I met you.
                    – You did nothing but encourage and let me be who I thought I was supposed to be.

Come whisper why you feel so small, to me, you took up more space than my own sanity. Silence to me is not unfamiliar, I write ugliness whilst being surrounded by it. I am unsilent about many things, like how exploding art into a dull life can save it from fading.
                    – Why do I get the feeling that when you let too much art seep into your life, you vanish a bit more than you intend to?

I hope you never fully dissipate because you spew art into my dreary life, and as selfish as that may sound, it gives me a chance to maybe stop you from fully ceasing to exist. I hope you continue to release your anger and sadness and happiness through your artistry, even if it pushes you back into the abyss. Because you taught me to not care, you told me to just write.
                   – I will fill pages with only semi-colons.

You taught me that we should make poetry, make paintings, make music; make art.
Where emptiness lies, I've learned to use art to fill it up.

There isn't a manual for this.

The world came together the moment we kissed. We stopped and unwound time through the whorls of our fingertips. I still remember the way I stole glimpses of your eyes between moments of flashing lights. Not actually listening to whatever song was playing but instead, cherishing the feeling of the deep bass in the hollow of my chest and the caress of your hands on the back of my neck. I wonder if you tuned out the moment the way I did. It makes me wonder where the wind goes when it gets knocked out of a person; does it go find its way to another and replace the feeling of emptiness in them? That'd be nice.

I knew in between the movements of our lips that I'd never fully get over you because no matter how much I convince myself that there is something or someone new waiting for me where I am right now, there are people we never get off of us no matter how much we try to scrub the memory of them off our broken skin.