This story begins and ends
in a place that does not exist
darling, I didn't listen to this song enough
there's a graze under my ribs I should feel
but there is nothing,
only the aftermath of a sunset
you are one year older yet
you are seventeen forever
severe tranquility aged youth
heartbeats sweat,
something's ripped inside your chest
you are still alive

It’s not so bad to grasp anything
that doesn’t look like sunshine
you are moonlight, waxen frowns, muddied shoes
the tremors in my toes

where are you in the mountains?
come back, come home.

I think these bleach scrubbed walls
will hold the memory of how
I have always longed to look you in the eyes
and wished for something more
this place will always make my heart leap
it has been a year and all I can think about is
how much I have waited on a boy so beautiful
every time I look at him I feel something in my chest give way.

This is the tragedy of falling in love
a whirlpool of desolation
and an abysmal sadness
somewhere in the mountains
you think you hear someone calling out your name
It’s me, I’m here
and this story will end when you come home.

He smells of nothing
sometimes of trees, salt, rain, and everything pure
like moonlight
he is the colour grey under flesh, muscle and cloth
like rain; fresh, gentle yet violent
a silhouette
elusive but perhaps far more beautiful

The paths have fallen in love with your footsteps
there are cracks in the asphalt where flowers bloom
I swear they are trying to wrap themselves
around your ankles when you walk

I stopped counting
while the mountains stopped screaming
and Sohrab, you are beautiful and breathing

On mountaintops these echoes
are hollow and empty as they should be
exactly how I feel when I look at you
and how I feel when I don’t

It’s a battle of sorts
I need the reminder that there exists
the ability to feel so hard the cold will not win this war
but I know that in the end it will

I know that you are scared to breathe so deep
your ribs scrape the underside of your chest
tell me, who wants to be reminded of their ability to feel so hard?

It’s a tremor under your bones,
you’ve plunged your hand into your chest
to stop the heaving, the hurling, the surging
but everything is fading violently,
spiralling
in a decadent whirl of stubborn silence,
clenched teeth
and eyes that refuse to meet

Nothing, I am nothing

“Can you state your emergency?”
“There’s been a lung collision.”

He’s stealing your breath, darling I can’t feel your lungs
What an aberration, forced to bleed the river of an emotion
You were never taught to feel growing up
I think nobody told you how to feel a colour so hard
Crimson on your neck, on your chest
But I cannot find a wound
Your breath feels like knives
But it’s funny, you’re dying

You’re trying to tell me something
It sounds like the kind of thing you would say right at sunset
Slurring your sevens like you have mints on your tongue
But you are only gasping for air

Marble gazes
Your eyes are lolling back
They are the same eyes that have cut through me
The same eyes I’ve always thought were beautiful
When you were sad

You are weak and you are failing
Completely unlike the times
You would walk in like a sandstorm
No less powerful than a serpent
Beautiful

Now you are trying to speak
“Feels like a fishbone dislodged in my lungs”
And you laugh
You are laughing and you are dying
And this night still feels like day

I tried scraping out the difference
Between guilt and self-loathe
But the answer only lies on the blade of this knife
Maybe I could tell you I don’t know what I did with it
The reason we are not sure from which wound
This blood is seeping from

It wasn't just a lung collision
It was the explosion of a galaxy in your chest
When your ribs bent and cracked
Now they are broken, dust
You are breathing in rust
But it does not matter because you are dying

In the distance there is the sound of sirens
They are coming and they might be far too late.

Spiralling downwards,
Bitter taste of coke slipping in between the bumps on your tongue
And months from now when I try to think about you
I will remember the way you looked at me
And how time stood still
So it felt just like you were standing across from me
Throwing your unsaid medals at my throat
I let them slide down to my chest
It burns
Like the acid streams of coke surfacing my lungs
And I cannot breathe
All I can think about is why do I cross paths with people I am not supposed to fall in love with
Coke sliding down your throat
Swallow your golden apologies you never were brave enough to say
Crackling fizzling drink
I have been in love with you since May
And every look out has been a habit, I still try to find you in a crowd
I still try to swallow the bitter fizzy only slightly sweet taste of coke down my throat
The same way I choke
On every apology I never said to you and how I almost but never did tell you how much your cheekbones remind me of the sunset.
Timeless
This drink will never age and neither will your eyes
Visceral bubbling youthful
I have been waiting on nothing
I feel the acid burn in my throat in my chest and it erupts as I ***** every scent I’ve had of you, every gaze we have exchanged while she looks at you and smiles
Electric
Like the fizz that touches the insides of my stomach
I want to look at you and smile
And all you do is watch me
Sipping through your straw
I am drinking coke
And your eyes say it has been a while and look at me, look at what I do I want to show you what I do because it has been far too long
Child
I am not a child I am a hazy incense drifting through hollow walls, corridors and people infested places
Everywhere I turn I cannot breathe
I need something to quench this thirst of longing
I have collected from every instance I never get to see you, every moment you look at me and she is with you
I want to keep these aluminium tabs
I want to push the bubbles down your throat, tell you this is how I feel every time I look at you and you look at me and we say nothing
I want to tell you I have been doing just fine
And that you are wearing the same shade of red I’ve been feeling and this coke can shares the red we are crying
I want to say I am sorry I looked back and I wished so very hard
Sohrab
You are between these lines the coke can holds, every droplet that condenses on this metal surface, cool
I have something to hold and I don’t know what to feel
Only the acid taste of coke

These road signs point to where you’d be
if you weren’t kneeled over in constant apology
you tell me sometimes you can hear
Aidan’s laughter at night,
as if someone’s strung them around
street lamps like fairy lights
your lungs collapse at the mention of his name
and your chest heaves with trembling shame
but you never told anyone else about the way
guilt straddles your shoulders every morning
as it leans towards his mother’s ears screaming
ears now turned deaf with grief

You tell me about the nights so dark
you can’t tell it apart from the hollow in your chest
most days you find it too hard to breathe
because the guilt hugs you so tight
it forces itself in your lungs
where these organs can’t contain
your feeling of sin
so you keel over and ***** by the road
where you last held Aidan

There are footprints in the mud
where he was last standing
but the imprints have hardened and Aidan has grown since
there was a much colder instance
when his sister flung a picture frame at you
so it shattered and you picked up a shard
to scratch out unforgivings in the mud by the road
where you watched your best friend die

I've been seeing you in my dreams
pink sky and a cape
your smile is bigger than the moon
and wider than the ocean
you are breathing in flakes

I dreamed someone didn't let you say sorry
and you punched him over
and over
so that he'd know how it feels
to have an apology stuck in your throat

There was a night I told myself
your smile was just a mirage
and feeling every bump on the road
was just like making sense
of your breathing pattern

Then the time when I heard
the gap in your laughter
and realized it had lost its soul
when you forgot whose to mould it against
oh, the irony.

One dream had you walking barefoot
across a wooden bridge
you’d kicked your shoes into the sea

Suddenly you’re on a huge green field
making flowers die as you walk

I kept seeing you as lampposts,
a soft gentle presence in the dark
but always flickering
threatening to leave in a moment

There were the bruised hips
from the torrent of unspoken words
I decided I didn't want to keep

There was a postcard you sent me
with a return address that didn't exist
so I could write to nothing like I always have

The pillows with the tear stained blotches
hold reminders of every night
I tell myself I can make do
without seeing your eyes

And all these dreams I've had
darling
are from my veins
pulsing with visions of unrest

There's a pinprick on each of your knuckles on one hand and I think I can hear you say they're for weekdays of guilt.

You're saying you'll scratch out "sorry" on your palm and press it on everything you own so the blood stains leave their mark.

You think the world is much easier to live in if you don't have to apologize with your lips.

“Don’t take too many pictures of the same thing,” you snapped once but it was only because you wanted them to see the sky turn from pink to orange for themselves and not on glossy paper. It was almost like you were saying sorry to the sky.

You watched something funny once and I remember you kneeling over with your face in the carpet. I thought you were laughing until you refused to get up hours later and I saw tears seeping through the fabric and realized you were begging on your knees.

You stand by the glass window, your eyelashes catching the light with your eyes downcast. You do that every time you think you cannot tell the difference between being ruthless and pretending you don’t care.

I remember the day you stood across and finally looked right at me with your black eyes and your gritted teeth, your breath steadied in patterned gulps, your hands hanging down the sides of your hips.

Your biggest apology was this stone cold silence.

Darling if you were a noise you'd be static sound

Today will not be the same as yesterday as much as you'd like it to be
I finally learnt to remember the image of deserts etched across your knee
Yearning is a cheat; it weaves into clocks and watches pretending to be time
And I know that when it comes to us coincidence might resign

You let the city in your lungs collapse under this emptiness that’s your earthquake
I hope you refuse to smile if it isn't for my sake
I wish for the days to be gone that are you and your concrete frowns
For now I only wish to see you safe and sound
I will caress your white shirt soaked in mud
If you promise to stop jumping off buildings, staining the parapet with your blood

And so we depend on borrowed feelings
Don’t you think that remorse is time worth ticking?
For me, it skims across lined pages
And for you, it settles back into rusted battle cages

Truly, it’s another one of those questions your tongue holds no answer
I am familiar with the way desperation forces you to bite into inked rubber
I've been scratching spirals into wooden floorings
In an effort to take the pain out of waiting

And if you look up, the shadows are holding out their hands
You turn to me, your face contorted in the strain of trying to understand
I cannot bring myself to smile because confusion lies in everyone
They’re whispering your name; they’re pulling us into oblivion

I'm sorry courage took a longer time for your hair to grow out past your shoulders

Maybe I regret the coveted gazes that took residence in the threads of your muscles now precinct, hardly noticed nor remembered

You're the seventh page of my diary, as well as the eighth, the ninth, the tenth and it goes on till the edge of this cliff you call home

There are things I don't know why I do

Like the time I gave myself bruises on my shins just because I liked the colour

Has anyone ever thought of how bruises are actually a metaphor of everything unsaid?

Capillaries bursting under the surface of your skin and not flowing, like the words that ride in submarines in your head but never brave enough to say them out loud

Things sound nicer when they come from your lips anyway.

I laugh too much

Is the passion carved on your skull as deep and carefully thought out as the things you say?

Warmth from you is as untrue and synthetic as your boxing gloves strapped tightly on

Punches with the soul of death, you pretend your stares are empty

I’ve watched sunsets more times than I have seen your smile

The darkness that swallows the harbor isn’t something we’d talk about over steaming cups of coffee

I don’t drink coffee anyway

I heard you make lovely icy rainbow popsicles and hand them out at barbecues

But nothing’s colder than your hard gaze, as hard as your cheekbones

I wish you’d grow your hair mid-back so you can finally braid it

I am not so sure what waiting is supposed to do except breed hope and a whole lot of misery

Silhouettes are me and you and everything intangible, just like me and you and black and white, just like me and you

I am in love with you but I do not love you.

How are things going? I desperately want to ask
But now I remember how I called you that night crying and desperate
“Sorry dear, I have bigger priorities,” you mumbled nonchalantly in a tone that cut
I guess what was important to you was your short silver dress which you had to keep tugging at
And your layers of mascara which smeared in the heat and the sweat
Maybe you didn't feel like being responsible or putting up a fight
Didn't feel like talking in the pulsating strobe lights
Where you drank and danced and smoked,
Your hands around the masculine men with whom you hooked
I wonder if you still would have hung up if you knew I was crying for you.

And one year later you still haven’t changed
You’re out of school and awfully deranged
Lying at the side of the road in a drunken stupor,
Stinking of smoke and giggling hoarse
Your dress riding up mid-thigh and your heels strewn across the street
Ordering McDonald’s, planting fries in your friend’s garden throwing fits
Sitting in trolleys in supermarkets at 3 am in the morning screaming at the top of your lungs and I
Miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you.
If I ever saw you again I’d bury my face in your long raven hair and whisper how much you meant to me, once.
I’d stroke your whiter than white skin, touched and kissed by fifty other men
Bruised by the very people you call your friends
And I’d cry in your chest and tell you to come back
If all you’d do is swig down a bottle of beer
And not look my way, but cackle cruelly wailing dear
I would die more than a little inside

You stopped caring about anything that was supposed to matter,
Like being better than everyone and writing beautiful badass essays about saving the sharks
(And understanding everything I never understood about myself and laughing at the things I used to say and pinning my name with stars on your charts)
You forgot your dreams of wanting to travel and petting kangaroos, carving out something of yourself so they’d remember you for your passion
and loneliness is the only place at which you’re stationed.

Now all you’re doing is living monotonously, “the *** life” you call it, your dreams all burnt up in the intoxication of the hookah you pretend to love and dissolved in the alcohol you swallow now pulsing through your veins.
Come back.

You realize your breath doesn't burst forth through your ribcage anymore
That the simmering heat comes from within, making your body walls sore
Because there is nothing left to boil on even though you're a tangled mess
And all the noises around you bounce off the bones in your chest
The echoes resonate along the hollow corridor of banality
So that's when you realize inside you're completely empty
The surroundings **** out all vitality that remains in the cavity of your lungs
You are empty inside.

When I gripped your rib cage tightly with my goodbyes
I was simply hoping to hoist myself up to get a better view of your eyes
I never realized it was so frail and brittle
Till I smashed through and accidentally squashed your heart in this one way battle
It collapsed under your great lungs
Pushing half- hearted apologies and cruel forgivings from our tongues
So pain beats with your every breath
Creeping up with marvellously vicious stealth
I never apologized for your broken bones
Nothing more than scattered blood void stones
I already knew how empty you were
I was simply pushing your desolation further
You were empty then, darling now you’re even emptier.

The human condition that we are all probably familiar by now is that
We tend to fall back on loneliness and darkness.
It is as if we would allow ourselves to accept love, care and concern from the people around us
But eventually we will be consumed by our very own sadness.
We create a shell that filters the care we choose, but even then
We allow it to dissipate and we end up with nothing but despair.
We all struggle to escape from ourselves
Then we strive to escape from the people around us,
And the aftermath leaves us very much stranded and lost.

I wonder how we all know how sweet tastes like

I wonder what you’re thinking about
When we’re sitting on a park bench on our lazy days
I see you staring deeply into the distance
Like you’re slicing the air with your gaze

All I might get would be sighs in slivers,
If maybe I reached out to stroke your skin
Your wrist made up of tired fragile whispers
Forgive me if I steal one
I’d just like to remember how you look like
Your cheekbones catching the light from the sun

You’re swimming in your thoughts
I can see your eyes brimming over in clouds
Hey now you won’t be able to hear me if I called your name
But it’s okay, I know you-we’re both the same.

I could stay here a little longer and watch you for hours
You look so perfect; sad and tired but perfect
It’s just you and I, the time is ours.

I can't say a word, I'll break the spell

Is this what you’re looking for- some comprehensive clearance?
Darling, I've died a hundred times in my head
You run a knife through me, it wouldn't make a difference
I am already dead.
But maybe it’s your turn now
For it seems you’re too alive
Turn around, take that final bow
Give that last hi-five.

They've weeded you out
There’s nothing left in you to bloom
Does your life revolve around doubt?
It’s alright, you’ll be gone very soon.

Right, left, front and back again
Why are you dodging the bladed lunge?
Don’t be scared, courage is a thing you need to attain
Hold my hand honey, we’re going to take this plunge.

Mornings with you
Are sad mornings too
They’re the saddest hellos
And the bestest goodbyes
They’re the greyer mellows
And the forsaken sighs
All fill the air with hardened conversations;
With lines of monotonous emotions
And gasps of bored, strained laughter
So regret comes thereafter
This remorse is not for the hidden indifference
But for spewing lackluster exuberance
(fake, all is fake)
Such a waste
It goes on and on with distaste
Neither one willing to shed the mask
Making this a pretender’s task
This masquerade will carry on
Spiraling us into decadence
The chance of us seems forlorn
I might never ever get to say “Good riddance!”

The blood of the youths run
Luminous  through the night
Pulses with passion
Races with heartache
And desperate to fill the lonesome
Desire flows in the night air
And the moon,
The moon it stays white and pure
And it watches all of these things
The youths think they have to endure
Mindless fun for some
Sore pulled strings for some
So close yet so far?
Is this who we are?

Beyond the late night adrenaline
Are streams of pretending
The darkness enwraps us all
In a blanket of delusion

The devil’s acts scratched into your skin;
Scald yourself with your own sins.
**** his soul out through his chest;
Ink it out- **** his quest.
Her mind in torture, her lack of amour
Fills her with fear- a ruptured shiver
Here he clutches a deadly dagger
Stabs the prey with morbid hunger
Stalks the hundred blackened souls
Digs a hundred hardened holes
His huge wings sign menace
Kills their passion, screams, “There is no grace.”
In his head, he feels misled.
The way he sees the girl
“I’ve always wanted to tell you,” he shrieks
“You used to be so beautiful!”
The sockets in his face leaks
The conjured up image in his head is dreadful
He lets out a final bloodcurdling cry
A signal of his goodbye
Before he stomps across the sunken boat
Tilts her head and slits her throat.

She sits,
still and cold in her glass jar
hunched and molded against its rigid
shape.
She wants them far, out
while they try to break in.
Sealed herself in this vessel
shut tight
air stale
untouched.
There is a coldness that touches her skin,
a fragment of her heart, a silver sliver
she uses
to scratch the words of solace
on the surface
for herself
and everyone like her.
But they come and go
they leave her,
isolated in this empty shell
that even her own presence
seems to
cease to
exist.

You are this untouchable tower
of which I twirl my fine, unsaid words around you.
Coiled around your every curve
Fitting in all your lines,
(whispers so faint you don't know I am speaking)
Intertwined into clouds of invisible words

For you, I fell so hard
Uncountable crossing lines
In all the silver instances
Pretending you were mine.