hours, days, years and
this must be a game to you
chase, catch, go and
reel me back in

lost wooden limbs;
the heat of your hands
but i am charcoal by now

burnt ash, tar black soul
i lost my heart in the space
where yours once lay

(A.H.Z)

There are so many feelings I cannot pen into words, but if there is anything I can say that you might understand, it would be that I love you. I love you and miss you and hate you and detest you all at once, with the intensity of a hurricane and thunderstorm, the sun's rays and it's burning flames.

You find me again, in the darkest hours of the morning devoid of light but I can only grasp at empty air, fingers clutching uselessly into the wisps of memory and smoke. The past is a fog that blurs out anything else and you are the cigarette that stays alight; a drug, a numbing sensation that consumes everything I am.

As real as it seems, you're only in my dreams.

(A.H.Z)

I have been eating flowers recently and hoping that one day I will be able to restart the garden in my heart that you tore apart. The light will shine again and roses will bloom to the steady staccato beat of my pulse, daisies and sunflowers rising up from the ground to create their own sunrise. Pale pink buds of tulips and bright blue violets will paint my veins with vivid life, the world beautiful again, the air fresher, my heart better.

The more I consume, the less there is of you and more of nature; earth taking over to heal the hurt in my soul. I tell myself this will work, it will succeed eventually; but inside the core of everything there is the pin ***** of reality that leads me back to the truth.

-

For despite everything, I still love you.

First, last, always.

(A.H.Z)

for you smell like warmth
and laugh like sunshine
but your eyes are the ocean floor;
dark, unseen and inherently lonely

(A.H.Z)

he sits in a corner with a cigarette in his mouth and i can barely make out the features of his face behind the wispy smoke. i am wide awake and blinking wearily, my trademark playlist for the 'sad and lonely' beating away quietly in the background. our meetings have become frequent rituals where misery and metaphorical silence fills the air, gazing at each other until one gives in.

as always, he speaks first.

"and here we are, we meet again."

i stare blankly at him, watching the way his eyes glow under the dim light of my room. he is twenty to my seventeen and the three years mean nothing, not when he is here within arms' reach. it has never mattered, i think back in retrospect; i have loved him just as long.

"you insist on appearing when i least want you to return, why is that?" my heart clenches on itself harder, the beating of my pulse no different than angry smashes to my rib cage. i have come to hate our meetings, but i am powerless to stop them.

he grins and it is a stupid little thing, the cigarette rolling freely in between his thin fingers. the pause in his reply is long enough for him to take another drag, smoke billowing out in thin, circular shapes as he purses his lips together.

"you know perfectly why, it's because you miss me."

what a self absorbed, conceited *******, i find myself thinking. i lean forward to tear the cigarette out of his hand and crush it in mine, the heat a welcome sensation to the icy tension between the two of us.

"you're a terrible liar, you don't even actually smoke."

he stares at me properly now, eyes twinkling and fever bright.

"i can be anything you imagine me up to be - and today you wanted cigarette smoke and me to fill up the lonely."

the smell of nicotine slowly fades to that of a familiar faint vanilla and honeysuckle of my room, the image of the boy in my vision similarly humming silently in a preparation to disappear.

"i'll see you the next time you want me to. same time, same place?"

i have never been able to watch him leave, so i close my eyes and nod silently. there are only so many times you can watch a person leave you over and over again.

"of course," he whispers, and the smile in his voice is evident. "only for you."

-

by the time i open my eyes, he is gone.

(A.H.Z)

loving you* is being on the highest drop of the tallest roller coaster in the world over and over again, despite being afraid of heights.

missing you is drowning in the depths of the ocean, and never having learnt how to swim.

meeting you was beginning an endless journey that started and ended at its destination; for no matter how far i go, somehow i always find my way back to you.

(A.H.Z)

if you are the sea
i am the shore
eroded by your waves
yet missing you when
the tide recedes

(A.H.Z)