There are some things you will not understand. I think you need to know that. That there are some things only those who are involved in the situation itself will understand. That no matter how much you try to explain to another they will never really get it. That somehow all the words that fall out of your mouth in prose or poem or story will always feel inadequate, like it was never enough. And maybe it is true, because in so many ways these words, these memories and all the time you spent together were and will always never be enough.

You can't measure memory in the present, only the past. And whoever you're telling only exists in the present. The person you loved exists in your past - a secret place now only you can reach, and in many ways that is enough for you, despite everything now.

Because people don't change in your memories.

They only change now.

(A.H.Z)

I spent three days in a daze two years ago, and three days lost again this year. I woke up and forgot what it was like to have a heart; all around was silence and silence and silence. The type of silence that shoots straight into the very core of all you know, as if you are noise and the silence is life.

In those moments I wasn't a soul, but an ocean.

This is what happens when a human body transitions into the sea, you see. It is drowning and suffocation, and no amount of screaming produces sound. There are no cries, only the murky crash of waves and the gurgling of sea foam. It is breathless crying, sorrow and endless emptiness, as if the entirety of the universe condensed itself into the tiny space between your rib-cage, and the stars burnt out. It is as if all the stars burnt out and their deaths caused the same death in you. The same sorrow, the same pain, the same loss - only magnified.

The coral reefs are stained black, and the sand is ash. The spaces where your lungs once were are now monuments to things you have lost. There are relics in places where there should be blood, and there is death in places where life once was. And as you feel this, you know it is inescapable. You cannot swim, only sink. Your heart is tar, an anchor sinking into the depths, until you become the sea floor.

-

"Is he really worth loving with all this pain?"

"Always."

(A.H.Z)

blizzard, winter falls and I
am summer; roots for feet
and a garden in my heart

this is how it starts
ash and scars, but the
ice is welcome here
if it only appeared at all

slumber -
you dream, spring child
the humming of bees and
clapping of dragonfly wings
echoing your laughter

the rain does not charm
yet only stays to love you
as everyone is prone to
all of lightning, thunder
grass and fire

autumn kisses the last breaths away
and I, summer field and dimming light
watch the sky darken as the moon rises
but you are eternal sun

summer falls into spring
see -
we were meant to transcend

it's always, always
been you.

(A.H.Z)

you are the anchor,
the lighthouse,
the storm and the sea
how waves roll and crash,
yet you glide through its grasp

we were a tempest waiting to happen,
a hurricane of emotions;
dock and shore, but we
were too far gone -

i fell into you
gravity withstanding
hold, let go,
stay,
stay,
stay.

(A.H.Z)

I. You were thunder and I was lightning. For some reason a part of me always knew this, but never voiced it out. Your arm was around my shoulders and you were warm, radiating heat like the sun. And in some ways, you were my sun. It seemed that somehow I always managed to trip and stumble my way into your orbit, losing count of the number of times I fell into your warmth, into you. When you asked if I was frightened after you huddled close to me I lied and said yes, only to keep you by my side for just a bit longer, just a bit closer. That night we looked into each other's eyes and laughed through our tears, and in that moment I knew as long as I was with you, it was more than enough.

II. My fingers interlocked with yours. It was pitch black and I was terrified, the wind in my face and the moonlight dimly streaming through the trees. We had danced among the leaves and whispered secrets, but you had gone off first; darted in blind excitement towards the crowd in the main square. I screamed for you, an anxious, desperate and impulsive thing, goaded on by the looming shadows and still silence that echoed around the area. If I had blinked I would have missed it, your sudden appearance at my side with my hand in yours. You smiled, and somehow the night didn't seem so dark anymore.

III. It had been a year since, and none of us mentioned that day, the day that left us in ruins. You had smashed my heart against my rib cage the way poets slam poetry, and the tidal waves had washed us over with tears that the ocean couldn't hold. But you came for me, and in that moment I had forgotten; your face a vague image in my memory. Still, you came for me, relentless like the typhoons in august and the storms in december. You pushed and pulled and wormed your way back into my heart, your song a lullaby to my ears and your gaze, a blanket to my fears. I let you in again, I pushed you out again. You tried, You stopped, You tried again. We were quiet about it, but what we left unsaid spoke volumes.

IV. We are here now. It was beginning to fade before this, to become a passing memory. But I should have known better, and as always you knew before me. You had nothing more than a tired smile, but I saw myself in your eyes again, saw us again. The thunder and the lightning, the grass under our feet, the rain in our hair and our laughter that mingled and became one sound. Your warmth and my heart. In that moment I knew you could not and had not forgotten; it was a loud relic and an even louder memory. It was you. It was me. It was us, screaming from the bottom of our lungs into the air and fields like we did years ago, except now it was in our hearts and in our eyes; I love you. I love you. I love you.

(A.H.Z)

The first thing that hits me is the fear.

I wake up screaming in my heart, plastered to the sheets of my bed that weigh me down like an anchor. There are tears streaming down my face and I know if I could see my own face at that very moment, there would be terror; panic etched in every corner. It should comfort me, the morning rays of sunlight dancing in the room, but it doesn't. Only when I take the first inhale and exhale of the day does my pulse start to slow down, my mind reminding me that I am awake. That this is reality now, and everything that I just saw - no matter how real it seemed - was only just a dream.

I turn to my side and whisper in frantic breaths for you to still be safe, to always be safe, to be alive. It is a mindless thing, acted upon impulsion, desperation and intuition. There are things in this world that cannot be explained until a person finds themselves in that particular position, and this is one of them. This is the second time, a voice reminds me in the back of my thoughts, that I have been terrified that you have possibly passed on. Scared to the very core of my heart, even, and it frightens me to even consider the possibility of you not there.

People don’t understand. I didn't either, not for a very long time, how one can love another wholeheartedly and completely. To be connected to someone in your heart - and to just know that connection is, and has always been there. That somehow all the moments in life and everything that happened was building up to that one grand moment where it all began. That even though you try to convince yourself otherwise, you know you would do anything for them. That despite everything that has happened, you still hope for everything in the future to happen, a future with them still in it, because they’re a part of all you have.

Sleep takes me under her wing soon after my murmuring ends, but you are still at the tip of my tongue, base of my thoughts and whole of my heart.

Please, I love you. Be safe, be safe, be safe.

(A.H.Z)

I am running.

It is an hour past midnight into the new year, and there are people streaming out of buildings and cars speeding by on the street, but I am running. I am in a dress and flats that are threatening to fly off my soles, hair tangling in the wind breeze but all this doesn't compare to the smile breaking onto my face, eventually turning into a laugh. A real laugh, one with arms high and heart abandoned to the moment. To now. To being glad that I have survived another year and lived to tell the tale, because despite the pain and the empty, these moments make the suffering worth it.

The moments where everything in the world seems to have righted itself and I realise that this planet is beautiful. That my own fragile life and state of mind is beautiful. That the shadows and the darkness are nothing in comparison to the light. That despite what life can throw at me now and then, nothing will ever compare to this. It is the unlocking of the heart and the accompanying audible 'click' that makes me live. Actually live, and not just survive day by day. And to be grateful, for having this moment. For having the now, in my life, and not slip back into the past.

I am aware that the past never really leaves a person, and if you're not careful, it can become a person. And maybe sometimes, I have been in that dark and scary place. But it is a new year, with hopes and dreams and wishes and chances to make things right. To make things better. To learn new things and make new mistakes and fall down and get up and do it all over again, because we're human. And that's beautiful in it's own right; persistence and resilience. The hope that tomorrow will be better, starting from now. And this is my now.

I never run. But right now I am, and it's not away from something but into something. A new hope. A new life. A new beginning. The past is not behind me, but with me. I have made that mistake once, and never again. It will accompany me because it helped form my heart, and sometimes we need to look back to appreciate where we are today. And I do. I am grateful for my life and the falls and the triumphs. The heartbreak and the anguish. The joy, the laughter, Every feeling I have and can possibly feel. Everything.

I am running.

It is brilliant.

(A.H.Z)