It's funny what you do to me, and I know funny.
I go up on stage and tell ****** jokes for a living,
           and look super bad *** while doing it.
But now you've got my *** terrified. Paranoid to breathe because I'm afraid it will be my last
          and you won't be there to see it.
Yes, it's cliche. But you do have me listening to love songs, you do have me putting on make up,
          you do have me running up mountains so I can have a body you can enjoy while we make-
          out in your car to Beyonce songs.
You once told me that I "was the more beautiful person to grace this Earth" but Lover, I see your
          grace in everything on this Earth.
And snow makes me smile because you like to ski and I'm from Canada so my face hurts
         frequently.
Trench mapped hands, a sign of how many battles you've fought and won, how many battles
         you've fought and lost, how many times you've picked yourself up off the dirt, smiled at me
         and said "I'm fine, are you okay?"
Honestly, I have no idea how the most flawed person in the world, a girl who leaves her wet
          towels everywhere, a girl who puts her keys in the same place but manages to forget where
          they are, a girl who plays Assassin's Creed for 3 hours without blinking and wears that like a
          proud Metal Of Honor, how can that girl make the most perfect person in the work happy?
Answer? I have no clue, but you don't have to cheat on any test, because I'll stay. As long as you
          want me to, I'll stay.
Here for you when you get weepy, or angry, or curious to see what we can do behind closed doors.
I won't say "I love you". Not because it's not true. Nothing could be more true. But if I say it, I'll cry,
           You'll kiss me, and I can't guarantee what will happen to our clothes after that.
So instead, I'll keep making the "that's what she said" jokes, until you're reminded of snow, or
            maps, or breathing.
And I have fallen so hard for you that stone boarders between countries couldn't stop your
           gravitational pull.
And like willow tree roots growing into shorelines, I get wetter every time you hold me.
So, I'll send you Steven King length facebook messages everyday.
I'll ring up my phone bill to $500.
Light candles for 3 hour skype dinners.
Because, long distance relationships are hard, but not being able to call you "mine" is excruciating.
Because, it's funny what you do to me.
Because, I love funny.

"listen
beloved i dreamed
i thought you would have deceived
me and became a star in the kingdom
of heaven" - ee cummings


listen
love, I am
looking for things to promise you.
(i promise) I have noticed the lines next to your eyes
I promise I am a foreign country
i'm not trying to be
I promise sometimes I look in the mirror and I see a child
and I am right.
Build me a castle
made of cigarette butts and litchi fruit
and (i will) wear my crown of white hot ash
and i will burn my Hebrew name into your palms like
some catholic wednesday
like some stolen bicycle
like your sidelit kindness in the cold.
(go home)
and i will write you a song
sweet enough to
wash the taste
out of your mouth.

Damaged people are dangerous because they know how to survive,
And if you've never been damaged you don't know how it feels to be alive,
See struggle is the sauce that gives success its flavour,
when life kicked you down it was doing you a favour.

Cos it's in your darkest hour, not in prosperity
that you will realise your true ability.
Life dunks you in deep waters not to drown you but to cleanse you.
And that's just the beginning of what it will put you through.
But it's chiselling you down, you won't deflate.
It's not wearing you thin, it's getting you to your fighting weight.
Prosperity makes monsters, adversity makes men.
I believe when you reach the top life will yank you back down again.

You didn't break down, you just had a flat tyre
so get back up and relight that fire.
keep it burning and churning at the pit of your heart
and keep on learning and yearning and never fall apart.

Stare life in the eyes
and say "no matter how many times
my spirit won't break if my drive never dies"
So throw me a burden I won't lose my composure,
It's for this very reason that life gave me shoulders.

Get better not bitter
This weather will wither
I'll turn wounds into wisdom
sadness into spirit
tears to tenacity
I will never quit it

Take a deep breath and concentrate your stare
because a road with no obstacles never took you anywhere.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.


translated by W.S. Merwin

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I've never regretted anything in my whole life
not one thing.

Not because I'm glad I mess up, glad people hurt me, glad the tragedies happened...
I'm afraid I'm unable to experience that feeling.
Regret.

So I wonder...
Am I doing this because it's what I want?
Or is it because I'm simply...
    
      looking for something to regret?

Thanks for letting me borrow your sweater.
It's really ugly, by the way.

Thanks for letting me borrow your socks.
You know I believe all body heat leaves through the feet.

Thanks for letting me borrow your rubber band.
It was probably important to you, huh.

Thanks for letting me borrow half of your couch.
It's pretty comfy, especially when you're using the other half.

Thanks for letting me borrow your book of stories.
Very little has given me more delight than to hear your third grade mind.

Thanks for letting me borrow your time.
My time fits perfectly with it.

Thanks for letting me borrow your heart.
I hope you don't want it back too soon. Cuz it's my favorite.

you don't understand at all do you
not truly
you think
I'm a liar
that I still hold the knife
that
stabbed you in the back
[and in the heart]

kinda speechless
that you feel that way
think that way
believe it
untrustworthy? misleading?
false emotions?
can you not read?
here let me try again
maybe I can make it like braille
feel the words

it's like when the clouds stormy eyes
welled up and let fall the
tears of weekend rain
soggy, we laughed along with the thunder
and under our waterfall we let the windows
fog
tell me I lied then

or picture if you will
standing by the tree I
always parked by
it was a starry night, but we didn't see it
we were too focused on our faces
except
why is it I was the only one
drowning in the sadness that overtook my eyes
shaking with each strained, choppy breath
clutching that gray shirt like a life jacket
do you think that was all
for show?

haven't you looked at
my collection of black and white
silly letters scribbled down as fast as possible
trying as hard as I can
to leave it all
on the paper
but it's as if each word I write
is a tattoo
slowly invading every part of my skin
it's sinking in, it's staining everything
do you think this agony I speak of
is fake?

if so
if I am that liar with the knife who
led you astray and "******* you over"
let you down, kicked you around
if you can't seem to
open your eyes
and notice
just how much I love you
just how much I always have

then you don't deserve it

ill run miles for you when I know I only
have the strength for one
but don't you
dare
watch me run
if you don't even grasp
that I stabbed myself in the back
led myself astray

you have a right to
hate the wound
but if you can't see
what I feel
one day
I will learn
that I have to let go
and I will

then all these silly letters
all for you

well. go ahead and throw them away
on that day
they will carry no life
anymore

I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know:
her dress upon my arm:
but
they will not
give her back to me.