I fear that one day, in between your mouth and God's ears, you'll question if I'm all you hoped I would be.

I'll pace the floor, avoiding cracks that resemble your stares and try to patch up wounds, exposed since birth... I'll hope that you notice, maybe even ask why, but I know otherwise.

I fear, that on the days when the closest I come to smiling is that little twitch one gets from choking back tears, you won't accept the fact that happiness, is not a coat I wear on cold days.

They told me once, of the power of self. I tossed those words around my head till a conclusion surfaced, shipwrecked, strewn across my seas.

When I asked you, aching in my speech, was it over, remember what you said? You cried, "I can't be what you need!" And in that very second I realized the only fleeting soul between us, was yours.

They told me that moment would come to pass and alas after my rose-colored lenses cracked, snapping me back into my being, there it was before me with the roar of their collective voices thundering in my mind shouting, "save yourself first!"

I felt like a black rose, trampled beneath the gravel of the world, oxygen cut off, vines suffocating. Fear in my heart of the last step, and then I felt nothing.

Last time I saw you,
I looked away as though
I didn't notice.

You kept walking,
Hiding your emotions,
Counting your steps.

We pretended,
the love we once shared,
never left our lips.

Today I told myself that I'd write down all the things I could never tell you.

Put them in an envelope on the top shelf of the wardrobe, next to the window that entertained my self loathing.

Till a sudden iron taste of blood coated my taste buds, as I bit down on my lips forcing myself to keep those words from escaping their prison.

I could tell you, on lonely nights I lay awake. Trying to remember the way your hair felt against my arm, as you slept on my chest.

But I'd rather pretend the reason I'm laying alone, is because someone who won't break their promise is laying awake, waiting for the same thing.

I could tell you, that I miss the way you had to stand on your tiptoes to plant a kiss on my crown.

But I'd rather pretend that every one of those kisses, wasn't a prelude to the wounds you left.

I cannot wish for rose petals to be any more beautiful, nor can I recite in detail the speech given at graduation.

I can however, remember
March 1, 2008
and the look on your face.

I cannot plead with the wind to turn its kiss away as you chase down your sails.

But I can be the lighthouse,
to bring you safely,
to shore.

I want to imagine that love feels like less of a pressure on the heart threatening to burst, than embers floating on woven baskets set out in high tide. I want to experience the feeling of waking up next to love on a fog painted fall morning in October. Yet, I am afraid I'll be too busy to face the pain threshold that has been thoroughly peeked, in the absence of armor to protect this fragile heart. I want to imagine love as my best friend from the second grade who wore a purple sweat suit and sang 'London's bridge is falling' while telling me she saved a cookie for me. I want to have a conversation with love and ask which of its faces is the one to be trusted and before the answer I want to yell "because I've seen the joy and the sorrow!" And still... I want to imagine love as sitting on a park bench next to someone who I'd spend every heartbeat with.

It was never supposed to be so simple. You know, the conclusion crashing your illusion like the simile of waves to shores, because  we never dreamt that far. See, we were just kids with chips on our shoulders, no real reason to believe the world would get to know us. Frail, angry and pigeonholed. Where we're from, your intelligence is reflected through pigment and attempts to prove otherwise are met with ignorance. But I'm getting ahead of myself... it was never supposed to be so simple. The truth cracking the silence like symbols and we were just kids, wanting to be held by a world that didn't want us. A world that teaches us to be afraid of our thoughts, to fear independence, to stay kids... but it was never supposed to be so simple.

Fall has been my favorite season since seeing the sight of multi colored leaves, laying amongst each other in silent beauty. I guess thats why I loved your hair so much. Auburn with flashes of blonde like capturing dark moments in sepia.

I want so badly to believe I'd decline the opportunity to bathe my beaten skin in your serenity, one last time. But alas, my seas run deep with fleeting hope of you, and me, unbreakable like skyline pines fighting off northern winds, akin to the ebb of leaves painting the fall ground, captured in sepia. 

Fall has been my favorite season since the allure of its equinox, balanced out my day and night. Like your touch balanced my strength, hushed my troubles, and gave life to my harmony, equal to capturing dark moments in sepia.  

If only for the sake of peace, bask in my elixir at the end, before the sun burns out, and fall turns to endless cold. Before its equinox is lost among the shuffle, the skyline pines give in to the wind and the leaves turn to cinders. Let it be birth into fruition, before the seas run dry, before there is no longer you or I. And let this dark moment be captured, in sepia.