It's in the quiet.
Surrounded by buildings,
or in the midst of high rising trees.
The absolute silence.
I think of you.

Do you think of me?

My thoughts are haunting me.
No amount of time can take it away.
It's when I'm alone.
And I think of all that happened.
All that went wrong.

It's been a while.
But I can still feel the tears coming in hot.
Before I stop them.
It's in the quiet.

I think of you.

Lemonade & sugar.
Tar & nicotine.

To be held & be known.
To be kissed & be seen.

There's a lot you don't know about life.
There's a lot you don't know about me.

There's a lot you don't know,
about loving me.

She was leaning against the white stucco wall with a cigarette between her teeth.
Her long black skirt kissed the concrete as she fidgeted.
No one would ever call her innocent.
No one called her sweet.
She blew a thin cloud of smoke into the air.
It swayed in the wind and curled around her hair.
She closed her eyes and waited.
16 long years had gone by since her beginning.
If she wished hard enough, maybe another 16 would go by in a blink.

The photograph of her sits on the rickety table in her very first apartment.
A freshly burned cigarette stews in the ash tray on the table.
She smiles, looking at herself. Knowing what she thought then.
Knowing what she knows now.
She closes her eyes and waits. For another 16 years to pass her by.

I still hear pencils tapping,
as if I was sitting in the second row,
at my own small desk.

I can feel the blood rush to my head,
sitting upside down on the sofa,
with my legs over the head rest.
Talking on the cordless phone.

I see the sand pebbles,
collecting in my converse,
from afternoon bike rides at the beach.

The coolest breeze crosses my face,
and I wake from my daze.
I see the sky outside my front door.
I feel the tile under my feet.
And I hear no one.

I once sat on the other side of this hill.
All I could see was the dream,
the thick clouds, the burning colors.
Now I'm here. Now I made it.
And the calm is harder to bear than the storm.

This kind of feeling can drive you mad.
Slowly brushing your hand,
Trying not to let you see me blush.
Knowing what's happening can't happen.

But I still need to know what you're thinking,
I still want to know what you feel,
I still want to be so close.

And I can't say a word.
I can't ask the questions I want to.
I don't want to ruin it.
I am pretending to like not knowing.

Some refer to love as pure magic.
This invisible hold on your heart,
that mends and burns and quenches.
Some refer to it mindlessly -
others with deep and meticulous thought.

May I dare to say, that it does not exist?
This harmonious bond between two people.
In so many forms, and so many ways,
our idea of love will fall apart.

It is nothing but a symbol, nothing but a great hope,
nothing but a promise, nothing but a commitment,
nothing but a feeling, nothing but a word.

And without it, where would you be?
Without it, who would you have?

You.

So if this thing called love did exist,
who decides what it means?

An individual, or the collective?

Or you?

So the definition of two people,
bonded by the soul, by the heart, by the body, by the mind -

is defined by one.

And we wonder why it doesn't last.