I want to ride with the van doors open.
I want you and you, and you, and you and you and you and you and you in there.
I want the wind to storm its way through the doors, and make it hard for us to breathe.
I want us to sing and laugh so loud, we can't seem to hear each other.
I want the ***** soles of your shoes against my shin, my hair in your open mouth and your shoulder molding painfully into my arm.
I want to see your shirt ride up your belly; I want to see the scars there before I eat you alive.
I want your neck on my tongue and my heart in your hands;
I want to pool in between your fingers so you'd have to skin yourself alive just to scrape me off.

I want to fall out of a moving car and be on the news.
I want my flesh to grate the asphalt so hard, you could look for me in between the cracks.
I want to slip off in a blur and taste the colors in the air;
I want you to know what my blood is like on your teeth and what my eyes look like on the pavement.
I want you to have my soul in your hands and to own me like I can't be robbed of my grave.
I want to be tattooed into the back of your eyes and see me in the darkness there.
I want to own what's been yours for so long.

I want you to wear my shirt when you go to sleep.
I want people to mourn then ask you what it was like to know me.
I want you to tell them I haunt you. That you love me. Despise me.
That they locked the casket cause they never found me.
That the truth is, I'm inside of you, every moment, awake and alive, breathing and not.
Buried where I'd never be found—that if they'd have to pay respects, they'd go to you instead.

I want to be rotting next to you so you're never alone.
Keeping you awake if you dare try to leave the thought of me.
Be the weight that pulls you back to bed; the curse that forces you into mourning.

I want you to ride up and down the road at night, so we can both be alone.
Lie down where you could find me, outlined and marked up from:

Marker 1, marker 2, and marker 3: past the corner, down the blind turn, scattered across a corn field.

You'd remember what shoes I had on.

You'd be wearing the necklace I always kept.

You'd know I smiled too much. Way too often.

You'd look at the ground in contempt before lying there, hoping I'd die. Just one more time. Praying that you could hate me.

Leave me there.

But you'd be laying in a field where our friend's van no longer returns.

You'd get up, dusting your jeans, sour-mouthed and empty. Shirt ***** from the muck, the asphalt glittering with me inside of it.

I want you to walk down the middle of the road where they placed lights to guide you. There can never be another me down that road again.  They hope not.

And you hope not too.

I want you to think of your soul left behind with me, where I lay scattered on the field.

I want you to know, even in pieces, we're happy.

That the world is willing to forget, and move on.

And you're trying. Always trying.

And I want that.

I want you to join me, because it wasn't  really me who died.

Where there is thunder that reigns
down the emptiness of your flesh,
in a war hidden and filled with apathy,
to sink behind darkness , once named shame.

There it is, the torn kingdom,
that you've claimed as your body.
The temple which you've loved,
but never cared for in those aeons of silence.

Where you pretended that doing nothing
would solve everything.

And so you weep, for the unfairness of it all,
as you claw at your already mangled flesh,
and press for the warmth of your heart.
Pretend that the rush of blood is a rolling blanket.

You swallow those shards of glass, and emulate the heavens,
and pretend your body with jagged scars
is the place for honourable heroes; pretend your triumph
in this barren, damp land of storms
is the place where thunder always reigns.

A place for heroes who never won, but died in their place.

I open the door.

It creaks open,
and my fingers tremble at the ****.
Beyond the small window,
and the pounding of my heart.

We are close enough,
and my words are lodged up somewhere-
everywhere-all at once!

I want to say hello, for you to smile my way.
The yearning in my heart grows stronger,
but aren't we just friends? Can't I just say it?

So why, why, why,
is my body frozen to the door?
To the side?
As you pass by?

I need to move somehow,
just a little bit, *please.

But you open another door.

And it closes.

The tips of her lashes
were silver like rainfall,
and her hair was the sea at night,
her flesh was the clouds
obscuring the warmth of the sun,
and her teeth were the glinting knives.

No obsidian dark
could outshine her eyes,
and her words were a painful storm.
The more she breathed,
a new star awoke,
and in the darkness, I grew forlorn.

The emptiness rests within me, flowing through my veins and my bones, solidifying the feeling of one-ness that resides within me alone. How do I stop this feeling? How do I stop this un-feeling?

I do not know the answer.  It is unattainable, far beyond the scope of my state of mind. I understand not what makes me starve through the night; what makes my lips ache and crack; what makes me sleep through the day; what makes me lie awake when all I want is to die.

If I am a tapestry, a threaded piece, then all I want to do is to tear my nerve-endings apart, perhaps slowly--or quickly, whichever it may be. I want to pluck every thread and slowly pull myself into mere shreds of who I am until nothing is left. And I want to permeate, like water evaporating through the atmosphere.

Unseen by the naked eye.

Maybe then, when I join the very air I breathe, I will know what it feels like to become something.

To simply belong.

The beast rolls around the corner,
its head rearing, taunting and playing
the piano keys like Beethoven on his last hurrah,
proudly smothering my chest with an ache,
an emptiness.

"Only between us," you say, a glance my way,
a reassurance, with a cloying smile. My heart tightens,
"No," I was about to answer, but my thoughts move,
the dictionary in my head turning "no" into a, "Yes, of course".
Turning my truth into a lie,
my heart the severing line.

Giving my frown the definition of a smile.

Beethoven still plays the piano in my mind,
playing his wonderful concertos and sonatas,
this deaf man.
And you can call me friend, your comrade,
your companion, in that less of a jumbled dictionary of yours,
filled with dog-eared pages and highlighted words.

"You matter to me," I say with every ounce of conviction.

You can hear me, but unlike Beethoven you never make a sound.

And I am the broken recorder, testing my conviction.

But as Beethoven is deaf,
in this mental dictionary of mine,
filled with contradiction,
you are the only word
whose definition is friend and foe,
both one and the same.
Too near to the line to be different.

And the strange thing perhaps,
is that it has never changed.

If I fall down a rabbit hole,
once or twice,
is it deliberate, or a mistake?
Am I being too nice?

I peer over the edge,
and throw my feelings down asunder;
hope it floods the rabbit hole,
as clouds rumble with thunder.

But it floats to the top,
and now, I have my own wishing well,
with bunny carcasses, snakes, egg shells,
oh well.

Empty it, bucket by bucket;
burry each skeleton in a bed of flowers,
until there is no evidence
of the feelings that I cower.

And rumble, comes the next thunder,
before I even wake.
I've stumbled down the rabbit hole
again, it floods the gate.

I remember your smile,
how it caught mine so eagerly.
Having your fingers latch my heart,
just to make me look silly.

But we were so young back then,
I've yet to learn healing now.
But the imprint of your love burnt me,
and I still have yet to know how.

But I still can't seem to hate you,
nor forget who you really are.
Because you've made me feel like burning matches,
and I still have yet to light the dark.

We're just paintings
on a plaster wall,
where chips fall
to the linoleum floor,

where we sweep aside
the love and the loss,
our prayers that we cuss
when we have nothing more.

Our exhibit is open
to the ****** and the wicked
and all the good and the naked;
those who blindly trust.

Our love chips off
but we are fine with that
for we never look back
pretending to say, "we must."

In years, maybe
when we're fading and old;
ripped off the frame,fold,
when we're hastily stashed away —

If we were humans,
who could move, love, kneel
kiss and frame, and steal,
please ask me: "would you stay?"

And, yes.
Yes, I would, anyway.

Buried in the snow,
red like an apple in harvest
losing her warmth to the cold
beauty in her eyes that reflect kind

And oh, what an arrogant man
selfish man
condescending man
clueless man
naive man
ignorant man
who is amused by her beauty

Amused by her kind
amused by her ignorance
amused by her naivety
amused by her carelessness
amused by her, he's amused

And her heart was devoted
but swayed by this man
The man she had loved, was forgotten in a blind moment
And this arrogant man
whose hands have been stained by many others,
laid on her

And she's in the snow, red like an apple,
losing her warmth to the cold of the white blankets
In Moscow's piling ice
that glows on her skin

Her lips grow cold, her lashes collect ice
the warmth is gone, and a beautiful pearl now
lays buried beneath the ground

You write tragedies as if your world was built on them.
You describe it like shattered glass pieces, each jagged and broken,
yet each crystallised  like ice, shining beautifully on their own. All a part of a whole.

It’s so beautiful, when you describe the heartbreak. It’s beautiful, the way you cry. It’s beautiful when you say the world is an illusion. You’re beautiful when you say you destroy yourself. You’re a beautiful
sad mess each time.

And I can only wonder how terrible it is in your mind;
the way you destroy yourself. Because you’re beautiful
enough and I don’t know how the world can treat you this way;
how you can do so yourself.

“You say so little, to nothing. Why are you so quiet?” He asks.

Before she can even answer, he presses his lips against her’s, stopping her from speaking.

We are all so weak.
Soft. Tender. Transparent.
So easily scarred.

We take things. Break things.
Hurt people. Hurt those we love.

We swallow the shards of
fragmented words. We all hurt ourselves
when given the chance.

But it all wasn't for the attention.
It is the spiral to our breaking point.

But we are so weak.
Soft. Tender. Transparent.
So easily scarred.

We never seem to get enough.

There are words that can't reach me from here
If you simply pluck them from there.

I need to know a person like you exists,
not about what other people say,
not about what you do in order to be like them,
not like losing the one thing you can't have back
in order to become higher than me, not about
breaking yourself for others because you simply
can't fix them.

Once in awhile, someone needs you to be you,
and sometimes, I have to be me to be me.

Let someone know you can be yourself, and it will all be fine. And being fine, is simply alright.

Their eyes meet, and out from their lips comes the sounds of stuttered words, fingers unsure, eyes searching, hearts feeling visions that race through their minds. It’s as if this moment was paramount, even though faded memories only led to the time of now. They do no think. They only feel. Their cracked, papery lips never felt drier than before, but as if prompted by a spirit that harboured the edges of their souls, words tumbled out into a thin, fine stream—as if practised through aeons, and memorised by their immortal spirits, eternal in finite bodies, and ingrained within their tired minds, they say, “I’ve seen this before.”

And only their spirits know if it is true.

Here, I face towards the indiscriminate darkness, and before I say I am nothing, I say, "I am one".

I breathe stale air again,
painful in particular,
burning me inside.

I remember this feeling—
this foolish fall down the steps of my heart—
the shaking of my fingers when I met your eyes,
the trembling of my voice whenever I talked.

I know this feeling.
I know it.

And I’m breathing stale air again,
painful in particular,
burning me inside,
because the one thing I know
is that this feeling hurts,
every time.

We fill them with love, and love, and love—

then they are filled with love to share with someone else.

After you, I've had the urge
to finally cut my hair
that ended beneath my waist
and looked good with
shoulders bare.

The length of it stretched on
and it reminded me of you.
The same endless cycle,
you'd always split off
into two.

Colours have faded now,
leaving the carcass of a strand.
A fraud of what it truly was,
growing under your demands.

But I face the mirror now,
as scissors went where you've dwelt.
My mother hacked away my hair
until I looked more like myself.

Even if her soul was as dark as an explosion of ash, or the darkest shine of an obsidian from the embers of liquid flames. There is still a universe I am searching within her, and she's slowly burning me, and I am fine with that.

Or maybe, the only star I find within her was the sun, and I am one of the planets she's going to slowly destroy.  I would've been fine if I had not known what love was. Content with the distance between us, which was a sea of galaxies only shooting stars seemed to cross.

I was given wings of wax to cross that pain, and to stick her back to the sky once more, to see that sun one more time. Even if I had been falling once--or more than a million times--just for the sake of one person. My wings would've been nothing more, if I had not met her to see her back in the sky. Even if it was to say our last goodbye.

And I told him, Ivan, don’t shout.
And he did, and he couldn’t hear me;
he was too busy, leaning over the edge,
teetering on the point of immortality—
on the edge, on the edge, on the edge.
He’s still there.

Then, is it okay to cry enough?
Isn’t it okay to keep helping him?
Or am I too stupid to believe—
“Ivan, please stay. Please don’t go”—
that he would stay, even after I’m gone?

Because, I still cried, even when I left him first.
Because I didn’t want to stay to see him leave me,
and is love okay this way?
Is this what love for me supposed to be?
Am I really that naive to have believed its lies?

I left. But I can’t help but feel that I’m the one who lied.

And so, how are we to move on from a love we desperately hold on to?

If only words could reach down
below the skin, I could be the one you hear.

But of course, you can't hear anything
when I'm covering your ears.

We were a country that lived near the equator;
I was the land and you were my infinite sky.
We have lived and witnessed our aeons together.
Each moment fleeting, and passing by.  

The wind whispers, and the creatures rumble
weeping for me the unfair weather I hold
Only the dry seasons and the rainy seasons come by
and the sky, he's always done what he's always told.

When he cries, he creates floods and storms
or peaceful drizzles and ditz so plain
and when's angered, he takes right up
the moistened land and then grants me pain.

At night, he's terribly beautiful and quiet
the stars twinkle like stickers on my attic
The silent love, and the prolonged memories
and what he holds, goes far beyond semantics.

I sung, "Precious sky, I am your earth
the land you watch with clouds and dew."
And he replied, "Pretty land, you are my purpose
and there's nothing to take me from you."

For days I followed
your looming shadow
stark and black
towards that shining hill,

Used me like a ladder,
climbing to that point,
as I stood below you,
silent and still.

I let you use
all of my limbs,
my body and mind,
torn and bruised

You tore away
my nerves and bits
always expendable
in your use.

You had a heart,
a cryptic mind,
my hero guiding
with his touch,

Who had a side,
of flint and still,
so dark and scary,
that I knew such.

But I never knew
what you were doing
if you asked or you stole
everything in between

As you looked past
that stormy hill
and left everything
that you've always been.

We're all new endings and beginnings,
raised as paramours to our rips and tears.
We swayed like Wordworth's Daffodils,
and we all cried out in the air.

We're faded pictures in an infinity
told to believe in the death of our lives.
But we were never taught how to live
in this world filled with beautiful lies.

So there was no foreground to build upon,
but we were given the chance to survive.
Even when we all can't dance to live,
we can make music to battle the anguished cries.

They came before dawn,
and took us from our cribs.
But we ran and ran from
our place full of woes,
riding until the next tomorrow.
Ghosts running to the horizon.

But we were transparent in the light,
even as we held hands.
I didn’t want to be a ghost on the run.
I don’t want to feel like the things I could hold
are far away and nothing but a mist.
I don’t want to feel like our love is nothing but air.
A ripple in time that fades away.

I want to meet your lips.
I want to hold your hands.
I want to hug you when I see you.
But I’m a ghost in the horizon,
drowning in the sea.

I see you, but you can’t see me.

We build our bridges of starlight
only burnt down by the blazing sun.
But we've just transgressed to night,
where owl wings have come undone.

The rat scuttles past the forest floor,
leaves crunching in their path like the fall,
as some people leave open doors,
when they have no one else to call.

The owl swoops in to take its meal
on four, short weak  legs.
The shadows across her window
shows the two dropping into her bed.

The owl took its meal and ate;
his stomach was now full.
The man had what he wanted to take.
He left a feeling so cold and cruel.

Burning bridges isn't fun
if they can only be seen at night.
They can only be burnt by the sun,
and these were bridges of starlight.

I guess we’re a bit distant now
And somehow, it weirds me out
We’re not so usually far apart
But now you’re filling me with doubt

I find the red string that binds us
slowly fades into a shade
Because we don’t seem to find a path
to make the both of us stay

And I guess I’m lonely now
maybe too hard to be found
I’m a plane flying to nowhere,
searching for solid ground
I’m a missing puzzle piece,
crying underneath the couch
I can see you piece others,
but you can’t seem to find me out.

I’m lonely underneath the sky,
wandering with no goal in mind
imagining laughter in the air
hoping I haven’t left you behind.

I hope of many things that I know
I didn’t want to happen or do
But I’m crying because I know now
I will never be this close to you.

And I guess I’m lonely now
maybe too hard to be found
I’m a plane flying to nowhere,
searching for solid ground
I’m a missing puzzle piece,
crying underneath the couch
I can see you piece others,
but you can’t seem to find me out.

I climb,
in the lip of monsters,
in the best of demons,
rock, fire, ash,
skin dark and flaking,
tongue to the roof,
feet scraping,
to the precipice,
of here and there,
to before, into beyond
"in love"--
"into death".