It was not love that struck me first.
Before anything else,
it was an arrogance that
overwhelmed my senses,
so I held my nose
to keep out the stench and
went on my way.
I ignored you and
let you exist in your
perfect little multilingual corner,
thinking it too put together and
not for me at all. It was
dull and silent and
no one could dance there.

Then, one morning,
while a foreign language
spoke in jazz in my head,
you expressed the complexity,
the utter chaos of
one molecule slipping into another
and weaving the majestic
world of science that
baffles and amazes
even the brightest of minds.
You opened your mouth
and love hit me harder
than ever before as I realized that
you,
just like me,
wanted to figure out
the math of the world and
solve the equation.
How could that not ensnare me
in an awful trap of trying
to not only calculate the world,
but to also dissect you and
determine what you are made of
and what fuels you?

After that,
you became a rush of Golden Years1,
a reminder that,
“dearly beloved, we are
gathered here today
to get through this thing
we call life”2,
an extraordinary personification
of old time rock ‘n roll3,
and an interpretation
of the love that stays
even when summer is over4.
The music danced through my veins
like never before because you
were all of those things
and more!
Anyone could ask me about you,
(Oh, dear, what is he really like?),
and I would just sing for them
and hope they understood.
How could they not?
If they really listened
to all of those lyrics and really
let the notes slip across their skin
and sink into their pores,
they could know you.

But melodies change.

Without warning,
I am held back
by your
darkness,
not because you
inflict it upon me,
but because
you shelter me from it.
You want to
save my light,
so you refuse to
let me see inside,
afraid to lose it,
afraid the demons
will take it away5.
That is the melancholy tune
that changed
your definition
in my dictionary.

You are the lesson of betrayal.
A bittersweet song
which reminds us all to realize
your savior can also be
your captor
and executioner6.
That is a lesson
you learned the hard way,
though you never really say how.
You hide it beneath
the rhyme and reason
that is senseless poetry.

Not to be repetitive,
but you are music
only I can hear.
The genre is always changing,
but you are always demanding
space in my ears, a clamor
of so much to dance to
with wild abandon.
The endless noise often hurts,
often makes me curl up in a ball,
begging for silence.
But, when it unifies...
when it slows down...
when it decides what to be,
even if only for a few seconds,
you are the
most beautiful thing
in the world to me.
Those are the moments
when you are one song
and I can see you
for just a second
before all the others
demand attention and
obscure the real music that
follows the beat of your heart.
This is when I am head over heels
and I have to beg you not
“to take my heart,
don’t break my heart,
don’t, don’t,
don’t throw it away.”7

How incredible
you really and truly are.
You are a soundtrack and
you come in different volumes.
I swear I want nothing else
from you than to just listen,
slip on my headphones
and submerge in the
raucous of sound and composition
that is you.
I can’t always see you,
but I can always hear you,
and I will listen
until the day you turn it off,
the day when silence ensues and
you are
nothing
but the shell a great ballad
will refer to
as a
cause
to
smile.8

1. “Golden Years” by David Bowie
2. “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince
3. “Old Time Rock ‘n Roll” by Bob Seger
4. “Boys of Summer” by Don Henley
5. “Demons” by Imagine Dragons
6. “Miss Missing You” by Fall Out Boy (Specifically, the line: “The person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger.”)
7. “Head Over Heels” by Tears for Fears
8. “American Pie” by Don McLean

She took my hand,
that lonely little child.
Her eyes asked me a question
for which I had no answer.
I could count her young fingers
without looking for
she gripped so tight.
What could I possibly say?

The taller she got,
the more frequently
she let go and
disregarded me.
I can't blame her
for those latent
hateful tendencies.
Still, she would come back,
and every time her hand
was just a little bigger,
just a little stronger.

It was inevitable and utterly
unavoidable,
but it still surprised me.
The sky fell apart
and showered her with
woeful cries and broken dreams.
The tragic beauty of
shattering reality
took my breath away.
She let go of me,
but this time,
she shoved me hard
into the black shadows
of her nightmares,
a permanent enemy
of her innocent undertakings.

I watched her from the
corners of her subconscious,
waiting for her to look at me.
She ran like the devil
was hot on her heels,
but she was never afraid.
She burned like fire,
a bright star scorching
the night and she was
beautiful.

The longer she burned,
the more I feared
she would sputter and
die.
I waited for her,
ready to share my tears
with only her.

Then she fell,
and she is still there,
there before me.

She is an unconscious huddle,
a pile of glowing flesh and bone.
I notice how she is more
like a woman
than any other woman
I've ever seen.

The ashes begin to fall,
gray snowflakes
drifting over her,
the drab attempt
to bring her back to earth.
And she has fallen --
quite literally --
for the dusty act.
She does not say anything.
I weep as the inevitable engulfs her,
that once child,
still lonely.

I wait for the darkness.
Soon, there will be
no light peeking through
her soft confinement.

But it's only getting
brighter.

I look carefully,
and I am overwhelmed --
overjoyed--
as she burns like stars
buried in the ash
of the universe's shortcomings.