The star-crossed lovers prepared for a mountain hike.
"We're gonna climb and join the others," they said.
And up the hill they went.

There weren't many obstacles in the beginning;
just time for the two to blaze through the trees
and take a moment to revel in the woodsy scent.

It went on like this for a very brief period of time,
but then the tests began.
No water had been spotted since the first lake,
the one they thought they wouldn't need at the start.
One yelled at the other for failing to remember
to bring the all-important first aid kit.
Even then, they kept trekking on.

As they neared the mountain's peak,
each step got a little steeper,
more inclined towards an unrevealed truth.
They would stumble upon a bear or two
and have to pull each other along to survive.
Their feet and hands innately knew where to go
when giving the other strength to run away and live.

Being chased up the mountain began to feel less frightening,
and more like running towards the truth they unknowingly desired.
The final point was reached one day.

"We've reached it, universe. Now let us be among the stars."
Not one sound in response.
"We would like to become light as they have."

And at that moment, the universe spoke its truth.

"You believe that people climb all this way
only for me to turn them into something?
Heavens no, darlings! The answers lie within the journey.
That is where lovers become light.
Your bond is like electricity and together you burn brighter
after helping each other in the moments your lights turned off.
You radiate a glow so brilliant
that it reflects back upon my pitch-black canvas.
My nighttime skies house the stars that you have become.
I have created no such light;
the stars are birthed from you during the climb."

-mp

Daddy, I know that you can't handle the sun
when it shines so bright that it glares,
but can't you see?
Your demons cannot be drowned
by something that you can taste.
Alcohol is of this physical world
rather than the hell inside your head,
and nothing here is strong enough
to drag the demons away.
They are something that you must feel.

I know, daddy, you're tough
and emotions are for girls.
But I'm trying to tell you this:
allow yourself to do the battling
before you raise the bottle to your lips,
only to discover after all these years
that you've been fighting a losing war.

Daddy, how much longer do I have to plea
for you to put the bottle down?
I don't want to think of each swallow
as an invisible bullet through your head.
Sure, you're surviving right now,
but I want you to be like an undying soldier.
Shoot your destructive past and present in the face
and take the demons out for good
so you can come back home to me.

All I see you doing is finding a salty lake
to dip yourself into for a little while,
hoping that your internal ememies flood out.
Only they keep leaking back in through the cracks.
I've become a distant lifeguard,
too far on the other end
for you to hear my last chance calls:
it's either keep me or the bottle, dad.

You think the shouts are the demons',
so you drench your insides in alcohol once more.
I doubt that will be the last time,
because my absence will become one of them now.

Another hated voice is all your habit has reduced me to.

-mp

What if our togetherness opened
an entirely new galaxy known only to us
for a getaway all our own.

The planets would serve as our new home,
and instead of finding aliens on Mars,
the Rover would uncover dusty footprints
of two lovers' aimless tracks circling
around the bottom twelve times.
No longer will the days belong to Christmas
where partridges are in a pear tree,
or where lovers exchange golden rings.

Instead the days will belong to our universe
and the creatures working to the top will be us;
we will outshine the planet with the light of our love.
We will be bound together so tightly
that even the rings seem breakable.

Images of us will reach NASA one day
and all the mad scientists will be left to wonder
what creatures embedded the footprints on Mars.
They will notice the strange light,
but never figure out its source.
None of them will discover the reason
because they are all too desensitized to realize that
love has no science behind it,
there is no method to the madness--
love simply is.

-mp

There's a new kind of war.

My blind willingness to follow you
into the darkest and most desolate alleyways,
my undying devotion to your warmth,
the overwhelming desparity of my struggle
all have me cardiac-arrested.

You're the captor.

It happened on the eve of a new moon,
her face turned away to hide her shame
over her daughter's decision to be guided by light.
The night may have birthed me,
but I could not ignore the brilliance of your glow.
Tides must be the forces behind your eyes
because I've seen the ebb and flow of emotion behind them.

Did you know the moon controls tides?

The waves are what bring you and I together,
contrasting yet connecting darkness and light.
Ebb--the moon pulls you towards her with the gravity of her breath.
Flow--she releases you from her imprisonment and into freedom to follow your own light.

Constanty swaying between two opposing forces:
that's when the battle was born.

I may possess enough strength to pull you towards me,
but other forces push you away and into her arms instead.
It is on the corner of her Push and my Pull
that the battlefield called Love was formed.

-mp