Only friendship.
You made yourself clear - clear as glass - that it could never be more.
But as I too am glass, a small shard of me broke off and shattered.
And why did it ignite my spirit to be in your presence, to be enfolded in your warmth
Why, why did it set my heart aflame, burn me with such flammable, incendiary envy
To see you lust after another, to want far beyond friendship with them
Why did that melt me
I was already committed to another, no matter if it was a dry, barren whisper of once-existing love or a forest of endless rain
It was commitment
Yet in spite of this, I continued to melt
Melting, right down to my core
Where I am just sand
Vulnerable, exposed, walked-on sand that could, at any second, be picked up by the wind and taken to another pit of uncertainty
But you
You dropped the empty attempts
And you began giving me your time
You showed me the naïveté that I am, and you took my hand and led me through a dark room
It was cold, and I was afraid
And you could not tell me that "everything would be okay"
Because this was real, unfiltered life you were motioning to before me
And though it was not a fully comfortable realisation,
The cold slowly thawed, from the outsides into my core, my sand
And as I thawed, as you too made yourself more vulnerable,
I at last began to take shape
Perhaps I have a calling
Beyond this fragile shell I consistently run back to for shelter, return to when it yearns back for my unearthed body to be protected again
But I knew better,
That when you molt from your armour,
Its purpose has been used up, and it is now just an empty shell, and it is time for that shell to be discarded.
And now, in my infantile flesh,
I trust that you can be my protector until my new shell can learn to harden
I am still unsure today if it has solidified,
Because I am focused elsewhere
Focused on you
My heart's every beat feels light at the remembrance of you
My mind's every thought a whirlwind
From the dissonance of reaching for you and being tempted to go back under the comfort of my old shell, from the knowledge that these two cannot coexist
But my soul, my soul is nearing soundness at last
Because with you here, I feel that my honest identity is at last coming to life
With you here,
Your breezes blow, but I do not fear that I will be carried away
Your shore arrives, but I do not fear that I am going to wash away
Though it was you who dared grind me down to my initial state of innocent sand,
You have sculpted me, even with the uselessness that I've felt I am
Shown me my potential
And made me a flourishing seashore.

You’re kind of extraordinary.
Each time we've reunited, it’s like there was never a gap.
Never a separation.
Maybe there wasn't.
A figment of my imagination?
Perhaps.
But I can’t pretend like I don’t think about you.
I can’t tame the goosebumps I get when we talk;
I can’t extinguish the fire in my heart.
I can’t disregard the vision I have of us,
sitting together,
beaming,
saying nothing yet speaking everything.
For crying out loud, I can’t even forget your phone number,
let alone the warmth of your laugh,
the way your smile touches your eyes,
the glow that surrounds you
as if signalling for my attention,
my attention specifically.
Is that something I can let go?
Because I don’t know how,
nor why I would ever want to.

Sugar, salt -
Decadent crystals are the mistresses to the tongue,
Seducing the mouth,
all the while trapped in the slave house of the body.
They take forms of warm and soft, frozen and slick
and in their sanguinity, they partner to become fuel,
insulating, warming the body.
Creating perspiration, spawning inevitable regret.
Drawing the body, the looking glass calls,
singing its poisonous Siren song
Luring it to the whirlpool that is the surely awaiting distended figure
There stands a sickening creature,
one the tides would not accept as bait
unless it can return to the sickly prey it was moments before.
And so this prey must slink away,
Bow down before its Goddess, its Queen
who declares it a “Disgusting fool”,
commands it to “rid yourself of this delicacy you live in,
this fantasy world
And relinquish your happiness.”
Because in order to be perfect,
bliss is not deserved,
not handed out,
not accepted.

She is away - not just because I was told that she left,
but because I cannot sense her presence, her warmth.
She is the sun who has migrated into my  universe.
Without the sun, one grows cold, frigid, frostbitten, frozen.
Hands are violet, for she is the one heating my blood to keep circulating,
my heart to keep pumping
to the beat of her alluring Siren song.
On the contrary of the norm, I am unafraid,
not fearing my own death
but relishing in her beauty, her voice the maker of a euphoric nirvana that swallows me whole.
Takes me captive.
Take me, my Siren,
should you be my boon or my bane;
envelop me, and keep me;
expose your soul to me,
for each minuscule flaw your self-loathing eye sees,
I see perfect imperfections that only draw me nearer to you,
as I find all of you so enticing.
It is each harsh scar carved upon its fleshy canvas,
a masterpiece slashed by a dissatisfied artist,
that I wish to heal
as if I could kiss away the pain that you have allowed in, the pain that consumed you and manipulated you and lied to you and said it would always be there for you.
It told you it was okay not to feel, so you soaked in apathy.
It told you you were deserving of its services, so you left your mark, a ****** trail in the sand.
But it is all wrong, my lovely Siren; an ache I wish you'd disregard,
the shell of suppressed emotions I wish you'd shed.
Beneath, in your new, vulnerable skin, be washed in the love from the ocean,
the ocean over which you have sang for so long.
So long! time spent near the sea,
yet you never allowed the shore to even splash you.
Go, go beyond ankle-deep, my goddess,
go drench yourself in these pure waters.
It is these waters where we meet, mutually basking in a new realm of tranquility.
Take me away, but where there shall be joy,
where your melancholy tune finally strikes a chord of solace.

Perhaps Grief’s stiff grip around my neck,
the one that robbed my throat of air and asphyxiated me,
is still coercing Mother Nature to make my walk a constant downpour.
This is always a possibility.
But what if said hold is one by one loosening its fingers, the blood gradually circulating back into its whitened knuckles?
I, too, feel recirculated, renewed, revolved,
like the sun’s final leg on her ellipsoidal path.
The colour has returned to flush my cheeks,
the radiance to frolic in my eyes
instead of being veiled by dark shadows,
because my heart has found a new light.
And it is that light, that candle’s bitty flame, that will not be extinguished
by the winds of confusion,
of muddled and undefined feelings,
of heartache.
No; this lantern follows closely behind me,
lighting the forest trail and inviting the sun to pierce through the treetops,
to illuminate the world with it.
It will not yield in guarding me,
overseeing my journey from rear attacks
and keeping my spirit warm.
Furthermore, I feel as though this light should maneuver alongside me rather than behind,
for we are equal,
we are one.
It is this light I find myself slowly clinging to
instead of the falsely beautiful mask Grief teased my heart with.
Yes; it is this new glow that I prepare to capture in a jar,
much like a firefly whose glow never fizzles out;
like a light-bulb with no expiration,
as I let it guide every direction I follow,
every footstep, one after the other.
Every breath I inhale.
Every breath I exhale,
without blowing out the flame.

I'm not sure whether it’s the swarm of parasitic tasks we busy ourselves with
that wedge between the two of us,
as if work supersedes love.
Or is it the stress that is curling its fingers around our throats,
digging its nails into the flesh and thickening the air
until we choke on tension.
Tension that could be replaced by passion
but instead takes the form of a dying flame that desperately cries to be tendered to.
Perhaps it is the distance that is more than just geographical, but the gap that truly lies between our close chambers of slumber so that every night gets colder, lonelier.
What I do know is the fear that resides in my heart, the panic that becomes depression that whittles me down to a measly core,
one that cannot so much as hold itself up against the wind, and before it can recognise it,
blows away like a tumble-**** in my barren mind.
Barren, empty, soulless,
but I, I have my soul.
Yet with each passing day, half of it dwindles -
the half that is you -
for I have sacrificed that half for one who I was sure would have my heart forever,
but in both petrification and melancholy,
feeling definite in it is not surely so.