I think of the way he landed me on the map,

the way the first time he sat on my bed across from me and tried to explain to me how he felt, I could feel it.

I could feel how the world seemed to shift into this small microcosm of a fragment in time.

I could relate to him in a way I could never relate to anyone.

I could see his mind flash through the same tickling sensations as it did for me.



Somehow in the minutes, I turned.


I pushed the mirror up to my own lense, saw how weak my knees had become, saw how little I had inhabited my own mind.

I sat with him while he burst through the rapid fire responses of his brain grasping for dopamine,


I closed my eyes and allowed deep breaths to overpower me while I pictured tall evergreen trees surrounded by fog.


I pictured us standing in the eerie forest holding hands, inhaling misty, deep cold breaths while our bodies regulated to the surroundings.

I envisioned the way he kissed, how his lips feverishly grasped for mine, how I could forget the way the world spun for hours, days, weeks.

I could be placed into moments and feel them over power me, how roses smelt, the sun slowly setting, the cars speeding past.


I took in the time I had with him, the calamity it provided my five senses while I stuck my head out of his passenger window and watched as the stars chased us across state lines.

I didn’t excuse my behavior, I didn’t hide it. I allowed him to see the four am hospital beds, how sometimes the only time I could breathe was if I rolled to my side and bit down.

I impulsively let him into my life, I opened the door wide open and allowed him to see the sides of myself I didn’t recognize, I’d never personally met, I let him love me for all of it.

I let him hate me for all of it.

I met myself through his perception of me, through the way he held me, pushed me, pulled me.

I opened my arms wide to the potential he provided, the small details he could pick out that no one had bothered to do.

I fell hard and deeply, impulsively and erratically.

But I didn’t blame mania,
I didn’t blame myself.

I just held it close and ingested the time I had,
the only way I knew how to with him,


by simply being unapologetically myself.

I used to beg for him to just

Stand in the doorway

I would kneel on the edge of our bed

Saying his name repeatedly as he slipped through the front door.

I found this comfort in my mania

In my starvation

He left me emaciated,

Never fully satisfied I would stumble through our apartment

Picking up inanimate objects and throwing them at the wall

Watching as they plummeted to the ground

I could feel the sigh of relief

Immeasurable to what he used to do to me

He provided the healthy appetite of rage

With each door click

Each time he slowly said my name

Licking vowels clean

The frustration his fingertips

Sprouted

His plane landing on the other side of the world

He was closest to me when he couldn’t see

The outlines of my freckles

But instead the visions  

He’d manifested in his own head

The first time he told me he loved me

I felt the bed shake as the words fell out

You could see the regret

Instantaneous, he’d forgotten that loving

Meant more than being attached to the heartbeat

meant loving my mania

Meant loving my forgiveness

Meant loving open doors

It meant feeding me until I was full,  

I believed him only when he was disappointed,

when he was too drunk to remember

The moments when he finally let his eyes wander

When he closed his lips to kiss me

Screaming through the phone

The final seconds

When his words were always

“I have to go, I have to go.”

.
Three meet upon the moor.
Clouds boil, the thunder roars.
Magick crackles about the tor,
voices raise to chant the call.

Fires at midnight burn with power.
Time stands still in the witching hour.
The moot works in the night to devour,
to catch the moon and starry showers.

Mystical nets float way up high.
Glowing globes with which to scrye.
The howling wind screams its cry,
as ancient powers steal the sky.


© Pagan Paul (2017)

Human existence is a detritus of emotion and we seek to immortalise that. I see the beauty in scratching your name into a ruined castle. So something of you remains. Scars remain but kisses don't. I would write my name on big bens face to be the man who did.

Live each day knowing you may die. Drink, eat, spend. Enjoy life with the sole goal of pleasure. Go out like a firework. Whether you illuminate the world for others or catch them in the blaze it doesn't matter.