When sad is an understatement,
Everything falls
numbly into the wrong place
and you say all the wrong things
and even balloons remind you
that you're just drifting
away from everything
you'd wanted.

You thought you were holding on
tightly to the string,
but you realize:
It's been slipping
for months now.

Later,
all you're left with
is a picture,
seared into your memory,
of that joy-
full balloon
disappearing.

Trying to think
in phrases as beautiful as lace;
words that roll off the tongue
like thunder
bringing rain to break
the heat

that marked the end
of an era.

Trying to go back
to that open field
where I was vulnerable,
where the pressures of reality
were as far and as fleeting
as the star we watched fall
across the sky,

where grass between bare toes
and fingers intertwined,
and the future was ours to chase.

Hair flying,
hearts pounding,
not knowing

once we reached the edge
of the field, and found
the road, and found
the paths,

and realized
that ours went
in different directions.

I put pen to paper, aiming
to create
nothing
in specific

but

every time
my pen traces the contours
of your

blue eyes, full lips,
the soft, invisible fuzz of a barely-there beard,
strong arms that don't protect me
from the stabbing knife
of your non-words.
Indifference I can't escape

because

it's too convincing for me to believe.

If only I could write something that wasn't about
                             You.

Hey, baby
sing me a tongue lullaby
I’ll dance for you if you would like that.
Twirling along the lilt of your sounds
as you utter them syllable by syllable.

I find you in the darkness created
by the infinity of
whatever it is we feel and you sweep me
off my feet—literally—and fly with me
away inside the music you created.

By then it’s only you and me,
although it has been all along
and it’s your body
and it’s nobody; my body
Entwined in the kasbahs of eternity.

An Adaptation of a (Love?) Poem by Nicola Em is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Most people don’t know
That two halves don’t necessarily make a whole
Half a shoe plus half a butter knife makes something
infinitely more useless than either halves alone.
Or it makes something much more interesting
But still, whatever it is—it is not whole.

Most people want more
Than only half of things
I wonder: is it greed or just a desire for completion
And if something is complete, is it also whole?
And if someone were to search for long enough,
would they find the missing half to everything?

Unstructured Musings by Nicola Em is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.