You can't take a piece of me
a part of me
under your detriment and your touch

You shouldn't touch me when
I am in self-destruct

But I can't blame you
for stealing what was part

of  shattered pieces
of an unglued heart.

We are all jigsaw puzzles,
wanting to fit and to belong,
so if I rearrange the pieces
of my still broken heart,
please be patient with me.
If I have to coerce my heart
into the right place in mind,
please be patient with me.
If I have to rearrange
a real, proper smile for you,
please be patient with me.
(And if I have to turn my head
to properly kiss you,
please be patient with me).

It's so silent, and there is fear.

Is fear an external presence?

Internal?

I am so scared, and that's what I only know.

And the more I listen, the more I am scared of what's there. Of either who I am, or of either what's not there.

I am scared.

Sometimes, I wish I've never known you;
where you've come from, where you've been.
I wish you were just a void,
with no knowledge to love,
and with no knowledge to hate.

But because of you,
I have a name to adore,
and a person to despise.
Because of you, there are places to which I want to return to,
and there are places to which I am reluctant to arrive.

Your words have always been writhing thorns,
on a beautiful wreath of roses, and I love them -
for what they are, for what they mean;
for how they make me look and feel,
but the knowledge of them hurts me.
The knowledge of them breaks me.

By the gods, I love you, but I hate you on me.

And when I look at you, I wish to kiss you from a distance.
When I look at you, I am torn - disembodied between
my love and the fractured memories.
When I look at you - you give me a name to
agonize over, when the days are empty,
and my heart seems full.

When I look at you, there are reasons why I hate to love you.

And god, do I miss you. When the words blend
into the grains of the wall,
and your face becomes the back of my eyelids,
I can't help but let my heart bleed dry.

God knows how I hate loving you.

Softly breathing by midday,
she turns to me with a soft smile.
She brushes her hands across my arm,
asking me to stay for awhile.

My eyes move as my heart beats,
struggling to even make a sound,
as the sweetness captures my heart and eats,
leaving my soul truly bound.

And so, as she eats away at my fruitless love,
toys away with my aching heart,
I'll let her have my sadness she seeks for,
to rot with the feelings that I impart.

you've filled every thought in my head
that you follow me back from home into bed.
I worry about who I'll be when I'm dead,
when all that I am is just of you instead.

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.

I know there’s a
storm inside of you,
a rainstorm over the sea.
Every time you cry out,
a flood drowns you in,
and you can’t seem to see me.

—when all you want is for
me to save you.

Somehow, words bleed into the night,
and your voice is on the other end of my ear.

I know, my form lacks beauty, and the way I confess lacks grace or dignity that comes with the frail women you like. I know my antics are somewhat crude, and I still am a mystery to myself.

But fulfillment is having your chest stuffed with the sky and a bed of flowers. It is having 2am filled with your laughter, and their laughter. It is forgetting all beauty, all grace, all that binds misconceptions in the world, and leaving only your heart, theirs, and the love that you give.

Funny stories fill the room, hearts quiver with the truth. And the next day that we meet, we play with our friends, you cover my eyes and laugh, and I try to pull your hand away. You tap your forehead against my shoulder, and miss the way my heart beats.

Your smile is beautiful, I think.

And though a small part of me still wants their love, they're still here. We don't say my affections out loud after that night, but they respect me, and I respect them.

And isn't the person I love so wonderful?

Words were only promises worn onto our souls. A desperation when life is tainted with things unknown. Of course, the moon didn't fall for the sun in the horizon, when their gazes met in a minute of a terrible departure.

The sun knew what sacrifices were made when love fell, mimicking the way his lips met the sea and burnt it red like trails of ash on a used bed sheet.

Clouds parted, showing clear skies, and words were met with an expectant goodbye, like the clashing blue and red of the sun and the moon, all over again.

The promise of a better tomorrow was darkened by the night,  lit ablaze by the day, and still, the words were sewn into their souls; bleeding, tearing, and frayed.

Humans cried, animals wept, and nature mourned as days became hours of shifting pain between torn souls, who stared at each other across the sky, weeping, "It's always goodbye."

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."

It's not as if we've never been here before.
We always fell to rock bottom, and we've always hurt now and then.
But I guess, with each new experience, I've come to learn a lot of things. That, yes, maybe it hurt to be here down with you.

That maybe falling down was always the price to pay.

But who said falling in love never even hurt?

Blood boils over the chalice
in an insurmountable quantity,
pouring straight through the cracks,
spilling on the concrete and it stays,
dried like the Sahara, waiting for it to be scraped
off into non-existence

But it's torment to stare,
to remember the flitting thoughts
that refrain the calm to get back

Adamant to get over our Achilles heel,
striking the bruised flesh over and over
on a wall in detriment of our anger
Persistent to stand still on its feet,
to knock us over and over again

A breathing torso, has a defended chest
Guards are held up around the beast
Confined in a cage that turns brittle to
the eternities that pass by, and it crumbles

We crumble.
It's torment to think about it and not
to let it in.

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.

It is at times like this, below the haunting sky full of tears and sorrow, and the umbrella that once held your shadow, that I remember the stars were not gone in the sky, but in your eyes twinkling like the puddles beneath our feet; full of regret that I had not brought the umbrella today.

Shards scatter the kitchen floor;
Joel Adams plays through the radio.
Hearts chained down, wrists throbbing.
Phantoms appear, knocking the lungs empty.
He?--She?--Them; they appear on the table,
where guests are supposed to sit. The counter,
the couch, the bedroom (where guests are not supposed to be).

(But you reminisce, they're not guests anymore.)

The shelves are cold--freezing even, like a snow storm
has passed by. Not only that, but the pillows, notebooks,
that spot on the floor, the jacket, their mug.
Every single thing they've touched, it freezes every time,
and it stays.

Yearning for warmth no longer there.
Fire no longer burns, heat but a necessity.
But there is eternal warmth in the body;
the blood. The kitchen is scattered with shards of
mug, and where warmth is found in blood, fingers
squeeze onto pieces of glass.

Once again, it is warm, it is relief.

You feel warm again.
But where blood and body meet, there is no end nor beginning.
Where there was, there is.

(It's always been like this.)

You know, it rains in September.
It also rains in October.
On November.
During December.

It always rains, and rains,
and the sky is crying, because I may
be naming months, but it feels like years to me,
sitting here without you.

My fascination for the morbid,
and the unthinkable is grotesque
in all manner, though it is something
that I do quite relish
for in the concept of it all,
I am quite taken by the blunt
cruelty of the world,
though I am not such a person.
There is loneliness that drifts
amongst those who breathe
simply to survive;
and then there is struggle
and ache,
and misery,
to those who understand far more
than what I can.

My interest is grotesque indeed,
to simply watch scenes unfold
like the wings of a raven, unfolding
like plastic fans with cheap rings at the end
slowly coming undone
as time wears down the bones;
no longer breathes simply
to survive.
Her lips become unsealed,
as she spills her urge to
confront her lover.
He hesitates in the face
of an oppressing threat.
They cry under great pressure.

I am fascinated, by the flamboyance
of the suffering; their strong strides
that hold no actual magnitude.
Their faux smiles that sing of
fresh blood mixed with their saliva
hiding behind trembling teeth;
strong hands that hold far tighter
than usual, when I comfort them,
and their suffering bleeds out of their wounds
like the lungs do oxygen,
and mind you, it surrounds me like a fog.

I have a morbid interest,
of watching it all unfold,
but that is what I simply am.
I am a bystander; a silent witness.

I simply wonder why these people
have the urge to come undone
before me. Why am I such a good
ear to their loud silence.

But ah, I understand now.
I am the same like them;
as you are me now.

we loved,
and kisses were butterflies,
hugs were butter on toast,
and sunshine was food to the soul
as we loved and was loved the most.
we lived,
and years were but mere moments,
lives were just as opaque as mist,
as seconds lasted morbidly slow eternities,
passing the bits of memories we missed.
we left,
too early for man to heal,
footsteps so light, without simple sound,
lived years of love and pain away,
making me think, "were you even around?"

Remember those small ***** that wash up at shore,
in the event of a low-tide?

I am those *****, and you are the tides.
I lay buried beneath a surface of fine grains,
salvageable in your grasp. I wait, live with you,
call to you like a tenant to their home.
I descend into your hold, unknowing, or rather,
forgetting that you change.

You always do.

You are the tides, always shifting and moving;
slow to recede, fast to return. You hold me close,
take what is dear to me. You press, and you pull,
and you push, push, push, bringing everything
with you. Always leaving nothing for me.

I lay open, bare, confused by my lack of home,
discarded like a stone, left to search for you
into deeper waters.

When you come back, you are new;
perhaps warmer, or perhaps colder,
depends on where you've been. Where
your currents always travel.  It always
depends on where you've been, but your
current had brought with it my filter of grains,
the white stark sand. The place I rested,
and where I deemed my home.

And you left it somewhere far beyond my reach,
apathetic to my struggle.

With your new presence, you leave me to burrow once more,
either shallower or deeper than before, in grainy arms
and lulling currents, making me anticipate when you would
leave again. Because I always have to find a new way to fix and
build my home, when the only thing you've ever done is make
me wait for you to come back.

And I am always surprised of the fact that I always stay.

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.

He told me he liked things special.
Liked things different.
To be on the edge.

So I set myself on fire,
painted myself with the colours of flames,
lit myself with gasoline and gave him a blazing fire.

And when he got too close to the flames,
he told me I tore him apart.
That I was the reason he strayed away.
Why he had a reason to be safe
from the danger he made me into,
and fell into the arms
of a girl who he hadn't asked to change instead.

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.

Small ticks whisper from the ***** of my fingers
Words echo into my head
My chest feels as heavy as a padlock
Now, black circles have replaced red

There's an emptiness in between
not from where I pass you by in our frames
It is somewhere that lies in your eyes
where there are other faces I cannot name

I am confused, afraid
I'm scared of your touch
Your voice is a noise so far
But without it is even too much

So I didn't want to hurt myself
I didn't want to push you away
But I'm afraid we're too much lost
In where we all wanted to stay

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.

Why is it, that when I am with you, I feel like nothing?
Why is it that I feel bare to the flame that you resonate?
Like tongues of fire that  lapped at my flesh and burnt me red and painted me black, like ashes of firewood and embers of dying flames, illuminating the dark.

Why do you hurt me so?
Tell me, for I am not complaining.
I'm letting your hurt me, because if there is a reason, I'll gladly accept it. If you have a reason for lighting a flame on chest, free me and we can both fly away like windeswept flowers wilting in the fall; snow raining down on naked branches and frozen shrubberies.

Burn me, for I have been the one to light you.

With you, I feel like I have a meaning.

Burn me, so you can grow brighter.