Words have been thrown like vases of flowers,
and the surface has been cracked,
and there are pieces of glass scattered on the floor, I know.
But there are also flowers among them.
The vase was only temporary,
I was hoping to get a new one anyway,
I just didn't want it to have to break in order to get a new one.

I pick off each flower petal and scream in the air
I should've done this, I should've said this
why did I expect you to be the stem,
hold all my unspoken words,
and still be strong and beautiful?
I'm so sorry.

I'll find a new vase,
and I'll water the flowers everyday;
I promise. I promise.
We can turn add new colours,
and place it in the sunlight
-we can plant seeds,
and let it grow in the yard
and never, ever, experience a glass breaking again.

Don't wilt on me now.

(NJ2014) (All Rights Reserved.)

your smoke lingers on my clothes longer than you linger in my life,
and I cannot rinse, wash, and repeat the cleaning process
to rid the stain of you from my mind as I can the stench of your cigarettes.

the first time I met you I mixed the harsh colour of you
with my white dedicates -and now I wear a cloudy grey.
my eyes have been washed out so many times
they're a new shade of brown I've never seen before.

I can't tumble dry the stained marble of my eyes
and I can't fold my sanity as neatly as I can my shirt;
and I can't put you at the back of my closest until I forget you exist.

(NJ2014) (All Rights Reserved)

I want to believe you,
but I don't.
I want to hold you,
but I can't.
I want to kiss you,
but I won't.
I want to let you go,
but I've tried.

I'm a second chance that never comes,
but maybe, just for you, I'll stick around for the third.

(NJ2014) (All Rights Reserved)

She saw him on the streets and suddenly understood
that blood is blue rather than red while in the veins.

(NJ2014) (All Rights Reserved)

I want to say I'm an unopened novel on your bookshelf,
but that would mean I'm the Harry Potter series
(if I remember correctly)
and I might be, I wouldn't know -I've never read them,
but I've been in your hands enough to be a bit worn,
and there could've been so many chapters of us
if you had just opened the first book.

I'm an encyclopedia of a subject
you never got interested enough to read;
so much information, so much to learn
but my cover is plain, and my words are complicated
and there's magazines on your brother's dresser
of beautiful girls and little words,
so why would you ever waste time on me?

But I'm a wine-box full of scripted letters never sent,
and you're downing liquor as if to forget something,
and I hope you never try to forget me.

I wish you downed me like you did of that bottle,
but like old-wine, my cork was tight
and you didn't have the patience to open me.
Old wine has more flavour,
at the surface I'm sober;
at the core, I'm drunk.

We could've fallen in love
if we had taken the time to learn each-other;
but we started as strangers, and ended as strangers,
except now I'm left collecting dust on my own shelf.

I've been writing letters to a stranger
I swear I could have loved.

(NJ2014) (© All Rights Reserved)

I remember sitting on the swings at the park,
you rammed into me and carried me away,
and we fell to the grass.

Your hand found it's way to my throat,
and toyed around with the charm around my neck;
it was switching from purple to red without your touch,
and two different shades of blue within your grasp.

Still on the ground we learned the meaning:
purple means romantic, red means nervous;
dark blue meant lovable, light blue meant relaxed
- is it true, he asked? are you feeling romantic, he teased.

if there was a colour for 'yes, but I'm embarrassed to feel'
it would've changed right there.

I never wore that necklace around him again,
not for any reason, I just never thought anything of it
- strange how a moment is beautiful after it passes.

I wish there was a colour for 'I don't feel a thing for you anymore'
and I wish I had let him hold it each time we were together;
I wish I could see the dark blue fade.

-now I'm left with this solid hue,
this purple charm, and he's no longer around.

(NJ2014) (All Rights Reserved)

I discovered that the sunrise is almost more beautiful than the sunset;
the colours are so vivid, so expressive in comparison to the black night;
the sunset changes the colour of the sky, the sunrise invents colours.

More often than usual I catch the sunsetting rather than rising;
the early hours of the rising sun are the setting time of my eyelids,
- but by god, when I am awake to see it, I'm lost for a moment.

I have a history of comparing past lovers to sunsets;
each one I described as beautiful, breath-taking,
and unfortunately, each has been buried behind mountains as well.

I wait for a love that'll have me singing with the birds at six in the morning, that'll have me peacefully resting before the clock strikes twelve - I wait for the boy that I compare to sunsets, the boy that will no longer just be a metaphor for the setting sun, but the true sun.

The boy that will be the sun, both setting and rising.

(NJ2014) (All Rights Reserved)