I tried to shield
my heart
to keep it whole

but all it did
was turn to stone.

I learned
that our heart breaking
in half
is not the worst
thing that can happen

What is loneliness, I wonder
Is it feeling like you are trapped in an impenetrable bubble
surrounded by the people you love the most
Is it a constant disconnection, frustration, incoherency from yourself, from the centre of your spirit to the tip of your nose
Oh tell me, tell me, tell me
how I can shed it like pieces of dead skin

i’m a quarter lifespan
half human
and too delicate to be
broken.

can you find
the paradox in that
statement?

and in the times
you measured my
force against oceans

I carved soft footprints
in the sand

and watched the
lavenders
grow in them.

as i rushed to build a new community of my own, filled with sticks, stones and my own bones, i forgot to mourn what i had left behind. you tell me nothing lasts forever; yet, i will find a way to salvage what i had poured my heart and soul into building, because i refuse to --i cannot-- believe that it is over, that i am no longer a community but my own person, that i am now inherently and deeply alone.

i couldn't wait for my community to fall apart, so i could rebuild a new one. i convinced myself there were too many cracks in the foundation, that it was imperfect, that i truly didn't belong... but love is love, and even black sheep like me can find it in the oddest places. People are not jigsaw puzzles, i realise now, and neither is love; we never fit, there are always roughed edges, sawdust-- We manage to love anyway.

How I dream for your fingers, long like violin strings, to curl around mine. Lead me away from my nightmare. My mind is an incessant nest of wasps and you are my pesticide.
But somewhere in our blissful silence, you will realise I never surrender fully. And you should know this about me; you cannot completely save me from myself. So leave that saviour complex at the door, because I am born to break.
-
Because I hold onto the fear of abandonment like that second bottle of liquor, when first hasn't numbed the layer of failure clinging to my skin. The same way my weeping mother clutched onto my father's midnight silhouette for the final time, before he tore into the starlit street. And the full moon illuminated the entire sky, because 'the world hasn't stopped rotating--
I drew my curtains, built my walls, and locked my doors.
Mine had.
-
Just in case your fingers never reach for mine, and I am left behind with a collapsing mind--
I do not let myself hope.
You remind me I'm too old to dream, and never too young to disappoint. I have fallen so many times, but I measure every centimeter, and you are a snowy mountain, higher than any I've seen, that is on the verge of crumbling--
-
Prove me wrong.

in between laughter,
easy smiles and pokes,
I found myself losing--
my mind, my heart,
and
something that was
never mine.

over,
over, and over,
over, over, over
again

I find my
heart broken
over again.