he met her at a very strange time in his life. no, scratch that. that was basically a quote from fight club.

i.
but frankly, he did meet her at his lowest lows
when he wanted the vortex to **** him in so he could vanish and rest and maybe find peace-
for his girl was gone and left him to fend for himself in this chaotic world, scattering the past, present and future they’ve dreamt of in a hurricane before she did, one that ****** the life out of him
his girl, the girl of his dreams, the girl he dreamt with, the girl he dreamt for, the girl who shattered his dreams gone

ii.
he slowly opens up to her
and she slowly gets to know him
well mostly, his love story left to die with its tragic ending, another tale of an unrequited- now one sided- love
she doesn’t really mind for she’s known pain and misery,
known them enough to last almost half of her lifetime
she knows how having them as company turns living into the art of merely breathing
and so she refuses to take flight from this almost stranger who, because of the way circumstances have rolled she’s stuck with
misery loves company doesn’t it?

iii.
he has turned her into his shoulder to cry on
changes taking toll with time’s passing,
yet their connection remains constant,
their unexpected friendship unfazed
two people with the same wavelength, gliding with the same frequency,
relatively similar to soulmates
and they could end up together in the snap of a finger, voila
as easy as how random they picked up
but nothing easy is ever worth having

and try as they, she might,
it seems like it can’t be


iv.
she’s always there for him
she’s seen him cry, beat himself up enough times
she’s aware that he could be quite a handful
perhaps ignoring his constant “i need you’s”
and “please don’t give up on me’s”
and evaporating one day into the air and blocking his number would be the best option;
letting go could be her salvation
before she chooses drowning over keeping her head up for one particular boy-
she’s the one consistently found on his side
she’s the one with the 2am jokes when the world decides to act as his shadow
and the one with the random spur of the moment topics that never fail to amuse him

v.
sometimes he’s left wanting to lose the remaining sliver of hope he has for humans
so he makes her out to be just like everybody else
on those occasions when he wants nothing more than bottles of ice cold whiskey and packs of cigarettes from dawn to the late night hours, to cease existence
he expects her to appear and announce her leaving
and he’s left with this internal satisfaction all the time when she lets down his morbid expectation that she’s given up on him
she remains on her place in his life

vi.
but maybe she’ll never be the girl

even if she’s always with him,
always nagging him to get out of bed
and live this ******* up thing disguised as life
even when she becomes this bright light trying so hardly to outshine her darkness and his darkness
even when she manages to see the good in him
even after she lets out her “i’m here for you’s”
and “i won’t leave you’s”
and “i got you’s”

she’s still not the girl
there’ll always be this wall,
barricading the distance
no matter how little between them
all the while the lines get blurrier

vii.
she confuses him enough for him to get a grip
and even feel in the state of denial he’s locked in,
really looking through her remains his failure
even after it all, majority of her is still invisible
somehow she’s still a stranger,
just strangers who because of their own messed up loneliness,
bared their souls out to each other
and their needs and attachment
get in the way too soon blinding them,
thinking it could be something more,
something it’s not

viii.
strangers.
maybe that’s all they’re meant for

I never felt ok
I never felt not ok
I found a way

I swam backwards, against the grain and granted my pain the grace to keep me sane while feeling so outside my brain that novocaine and Kurt Cobaine could barely find the vein of comfortably numb I need to stay inside my lane

Like Bane I was born in the dark and somehow I found a spark, the light at the end of the tunnel if the tunnel was more like a pit
It’s amazing how much perspective matters when you’re inside of it
The gravity overwhelms me when I’m at the helm, but sometimes I can get my feet in the air and my head on the ground and vertical seems a little more horizontal this time around
Perhaps that’s the trick
A trick of the light
A way to finally fight
A way to come undone from holding so **** tight

Let loose but still in boundaries, that’s what I always had to do because true freedom confounds me
I don’t know what to do when I feel so blue that even pure O2 couldn’t bring back a normal hue
Suffocating and ice skating cold as ice maybe that’s why 11 minutes won’t suffice, I’m the ice man with my ice plan maybe a cold bath will clean the blood from my hands
I can’t stand a headstand ‘cause the feeling of being free has always escaped me, locked in the trunk like Stan, and surrender sounds so sweet until I feel the pain that hides behind the sweet release
How much pain have I endured and how many people have I cured without ever helping myself
Too many to be sure
Healer heal thyself but I’m the biggest hypocrite on the shelf
Mental health or mental wealth I never know I just show myself the way of zen and keep on diving in
Sometimes it’s healing that sends me reeling, sometimes it’s joy that transcends feeling
Keeling over from either I choose neither, I want to be numb but something inside me tells me that’s dumb, don’t succumb, don’t just *** but be the sum of all the pain and like the rain fall back to earth find rebirth and recycle through the trees and the clouds no longer shrouds but part of being pure bright seeing without fleeing perfect being without me-ing am I leaping to conclusions or transcending my delusions I don’t know I’m just here spitting typing fire words for myself in thirds

Me myself and I
I always wonder why
Myself and Me can’t get on the same team but who is the wonderer when my attention wanders
One under the other I discover it’s a self collapsing doll, turtles all the way down after all
Stop and stall when I will but I still find a thrill from the jagged little pill of self-knowledge that I hate to acknowledge
I get to the ledge and say no way, not today, I can’t take the leap I’m too afraid
That’s why I stayed, alone in the dark for so long
Trapped in the pit of my despair
No one there
Maybe they were but I didn’t let them in
I didn’t let them see my sin I sent them away and prayed that someone without judgment might one day help me see the gray
I don’t know how else to convey that this black and white mentality is insanity and calamity and the only thing that ever made sense to me
I want to change, I want to be the man that I sometimes can see
But sometimes he is blurry for the tears
Blurrier still for all my fears
Blurrier yet again for all the years
So many that I let slip by and now I finally find the strength to try

To be the light at the end of the tunnel, the top of the pit
To be the hole and the funnel, gas finally lit
An explosion that propels me onward and upward
I am not throwing away my shot
I will not run away and hide
Finding a reason for these tears I’ve cried
Pit or tunnel, I’m no longer inside
One final thought for me to confide:
Aiming toward the sky is the best thing that I’ve ever tried

Sweet naivety balanced like dew drops
on the rims on pint glasses filled with the black stuff,
my hair is bleached blonde and I was going through
***** like water, you know those types of nights,
the ones where we tiptoe around each other
not knowing quite how to act, like lovers
or friends. Not knowing quite what we are,
everyone else seems to know so much better than we do.
Like when you were trying to explain to your neighbour
what I was to you but couldn't find the words
and we just nodded to each other repeatedly
saying our names and then laughing and getting
drunk and the night getting blurrier and blurrier
but I remember your hand in mine. It was good.

When I was young,  school was my place. As an awkward oddity I found solace in words and reading.

Wasn't long 'til I was being called brilliant. Those days were some of the few times in my childhood life I felt strong and confident and worth something.

I was sent to an advanced school. I ate books like candy. I had a passion for knowledge and wisdom.

So what happened?

As my head got cloudier, I fell more and more behind. Well, behind for me. I was still an AP kid, so nerdy and there. But I was also quiet and, for AP, pretty average.

I stopped excelling in sciences and math as much as I used to. Everything got so much blurrier around then. As my head got more and more uncontrollable, the less brilliant I became. And the more I hated myself for it.

I could barely take time to feel everything but the raging inferno of emotions that was slowly taking over my life. I had learned to lie too well about it, so well that it was nearly my entire being by the time I finally got to stopping it.

For years I had to accept going from brilliant to average, and I accepted it as just my place. That I excelled in youth but dropped off and being good at writing would be my last, final brilliancy.

Then, nearly a decade after things began to go nuclear,  my head began to cool.

I sometimes fear how clear everything feels, how the touch of my fingertips on my keyboard still feel beautiful but in a less insatiable way. How the sky is blue and everything makes sense and how my mind craves to know more and more.

I am excelling. I am standing in front of classes that I am clearly not as qualified for and doing well. And, by god, the whole beauty of it is that doing well does not correlate to this buzzing going on in the back of my head as if its about to explode. I just feel it. This energy coursing through me that loves to know and remember and learn and do everything in my power to make everything I do wonderful. Its like magic but I know its not, its me. I didn't know "me" could be brilliant anymore. I was nearly certain "me" couldn't. I was a writer, and I was content.

But now there's this thing inside me I haven't felt in years, that has two wide eyes and wants to feel the world. Its curious and strong. I didn't think I was that strong either. I thought I just knew emotions and pretty words.

I sit here, though, and I am brilliant. It feels so arrogant and cocky to say, but I'm me again. I'm the little girl who got lost in the fire, but I thought she burned and died.

Yet as my head finally cools and the ashes fall, she reemerges and she's like some unbelievable phoenix inside my soul.

I thought I had to accept I could never be anything like the brilliant little girl that got swallowed by a monster inside of her. That I had to accept losses like I accepted losing everything I loved in my life for 18 years.

But I don't have to lose everything. I don't have to assume all that is lost is gone.

I am reading, and I am learning, and I am growing. There is this new growth in the old, weathered forests of my consciousness. It didn't have to resign to its ways, it can be anything. I can be anything.

Because finally, after years of forgetting, I am brilliant.

The time ticks by tediously.
It's as if this night is never-ending.

While I lie here waiting, my mind wanders idly.
As usual, my thoughts eventually settle on you.
(A sad nightly ritual, if you will)

Your face swims into focus, but I fear it's blurrier than before.
I can still picture the bright blue of your eyes perfectly,
But the contours of your face are getting fuzzy.
Is this really you I'm remembering,
Or are you slipping away?
I can't even recall the sweet melody of your voice.

This terrifying realization hits me hard.
I'm losing you.
Again.

These memories are all I have.
Please don't take them from me.
I want to scream out, but all I can do is gasp for air.

Once upon a time, you were my everything.
We were supposed to live happily ever after.
But you were stolen from me that stormy night.
I can still hear their words echo through the empty house.
He never felt any pain. He died instantaneously.

Well *******. You left me with so much pain.
I suffer through it every night.
As I fight with all my might,
To keep your memory alive.
Because I will always love you.

The time ticks by tediously.
I'm just waiting until mine runs out.
Maybe then, we can be together again.

Tiptoe with me through roads of mottled rainbows
We’ll build a city of coffee cream clouds and crystallized light
Our sticky shadows can stumble jump rope with fizzling stars
And our light will tang in the air with peace

Every streecorner will have an off-key symphony
Played with tongues broken from laughter
Raise your arms to catch the words that’ve ballooned into the stratosphere
I’ll tangle my fingers in your palm to lift you higher

You’ll collect liquid moon in a sandcastle bucket
Drips of silver catching in your spidersilk hair
I’ll pour it down all outside the doily mold
It’ll twist down to earth in fractured motion

Trust me, I never knew how to fly
Only to fall, and to fall with broken hands
Jump with me and skate down a sunset
Dorothy ain’t got nothin’ on this kind of color

I’m blinder than an arsonist with night vision goggles
But only ‘cause I see with my heart instead of reflections of light
Life is opaque when your soul is an old one
Though I’m still getting drunk on the learning wine

Take a rose and ***** a finger on a petal
The softest feelings always have the sharpest bite
The devil’s left the details to hammer her way up to heaven
She’ll shatter kaleidoscope bullets into mosaics of sin

Love is the game that all the best dreamers play
I think up slow nonsense that fills my lungs with longing
Bright towns are always blurrier than the grey
And my brush is shaky from absent disuse

So bring me home (my home is you)
Build love from the broken rubble souls
Sing for our voices reaching higher than the sun
As my hair links with yours in the summer breeze

Frozen bubbles can chime on every door
Our bare feet will press into wet desert clay
Smiles will be painted pure and golden
And all the colors will fill our footprints as we walk away in joy.

I have no problems with reality,
Not a one.
For my reality has been kind to me.

She is not the hard unchangeable reality whom others face,
But an easily molded reality.
A reality I can all too simply alter.

My reality is maleable.

The paper goes down,
Disintegrating under the tongue,
And enlightenment goes up,
All these new realities i'd missed before.
The colours all increase,
Each sensation felt as though via magnifying glass.
A vivid, deep reality arrives.

The bottle tips up,
And boredom- bred of a mundane life,
And sadness- for no particular reason,
Flow out.
A blurrier and faster paced reality sets in.
Much better.
Much better.

And one might forget everything -
in my reality that is.
So many nights never truly occurred.
I had nothing to do with that long-haired boy,
The accepting of his alcohol,
The ripping of his shirt,
The kissing of his neck.

In your harsh reality truths are unavoidable.
Not so in mine!

Yes,
My reality is kind to me.
It looks after me well.
It will do what is for the best,
Erasing and blurring.
Good reality, good pet.

I feed my little reality her meds,
And we stay happily together;
happy in our preferredly hazy state.

when the lights are off the music
is louder the blanket
is smaller the voices
are lower my hair
is softer the world
is bigger your face
is blurrier my mind
is opener my heart
beats stronger

My tongue has never known the taste of being straightforward, finding safety and comfort in jaded sarcasm and clever remarks.
But sometimes the truth cannot be held back
and it rises like the tides, spilling onto the page from my fingertips instead.

You joked about me finding someone else today
and I just laughed and hugged you tighter.
But the farther I walked away from you, the blurrier everything became
so by the time you were out of sight, I couldn't remember if there had been the suggestion of uncertainty in your voice.

(Overthinking has always been my preferred brand of poison.)

Perhaps it is my fault for needing attention too desperately
for asking too many people to complete the gap in my heart that only I should be able to fill
for needing everyone to paint me into a masterpiece because I can't stand how my own reflection looks like a crumpled-up sketch, tossed aside with the rest of the universe's failures.
I'm sorry for all of it. It's just hard when the mirrors in my house look like nothing but magnifying glasses of my imperfections.

I* just hope you know that even though Northern California is known for its misty fog, your eyes shine through like the morning light.
Forget the sun; you are the brightest star in my sky.*

And with each passing day, I am beginning to wonder if maybe everyone has it wrong when they say love is blind
Because I'd swear to every god I don't believe in
that you are the one thing I can see clearly in this shapeless world.

We are cut from the same apple
But I don’t even like apples
And you prefer pears

Regardless of fruit,
I believe that we go well together
You’re the apple of my eye

I see myself in you
When you’re fumbling your words,
Or tripping over air
Honestly though, I don’t care
I’ve embraced the flaws of the human race

I remember how nervous you were,
And how nervous I always am
That night we dove into each others arms
We didn’t look back as we woke up in the ocean

You moved the hair from my eyes
And I saw clearly
Perhaps, blurrier than before
What I knew all along
Didn’t matter anymore

In the midst of my depression, I have noticed omens of my past lives.
the moments left behind in old houses, My habits layed out and discarded on my bed. I've grown estranged to their music and the lyrics that parch my tongue like bread.

The same with people, Not a moment goes by and the image of her grows blurrier. Not a moment goes by and my image grows weaker. and all the while I seek no cure so I must be all the wiser

Living up to the name shouldn't be hard
That the melancholy that ails me is just fortunes card

I'm just merely a prolonged chord on deaths strings.
or maybe a bird caged who wants to spread his wings.
Truly though,
I must be a velveteen rabbit
Burnt among the playthings

Here i am again without you

   I feel my skin and bones begging for your touch,

   I feel my veins and blood aching for your heat,

   my soul screaming for you to stay.
          
  Within each second you become blurrier

And the madness and insanity of my mind take over me; craving your lips and the sound of your heart beat,

Craving what we used to be.
Craving every little piece of you.

It may be a tad blurrier than life
It may be a pinch closer than death
Ironically equality lies upon the cusp of an idea---
It, it, it---
Seems to be great reason for all things;---
A bubble supposedly invented as a means for survival
Be and let be
“It” does not matter

My steps got slower as words flew into my mind
My heartbeats got stronger as every sentence made sense
The calm became blurrier and was nowhere to find
The air became heavy and my feelings a bit dense

As my eyes travelled along the dark black ink
And each curve of each letter was a different confusion
I could only feel my brain incapable to think
And the relief I felt for finally knowing your conclusion

I thought of the warmth and the passion in your touch
I remembered the moments of ample satisfaction
When we understood each other without saying much
And we would both smile as a natural reaction

The words were so meaningful
Yet less than what you give me
I must say I'm ******* thankful
That now I know you won't leave me

Fleeting are my white lace dreams
Aisle of blood red roses guiding
Two lives into one grand eternity
Glimmering like a polished diamond
Clasped hand in hand not clammy
But passionate and exuberant

Candles floating in frosted vases
Two figures sitting atop a cake
Vows to keep each other afloat
Vows to keep each other great

Notebook plans for a grand evening
Surrounded by love and twinkle lights
Aspirations of his and his first dance
But since you nothing's ever felt right
My white lace dreams are fading
They get blurrier every night

Before

She used to be a few steps away;
only just down the stairway

She always picked when I dialed 'zero';
always very quick to be my hero

She was always by the phone;
and always there when it's time to go home

She was at arms length, always with her arms stretched;
bringing smiles to my face no matter how stressed

She was the face I looked forward to see every morning;
her laughter brought me to life from deep yawning

She made up like no one I've ever met;
with lips softer than the feel of velvet


Now**

She is far away from proximity, very far away;
her laughter dims in my head as the days pass away

Her scent has completely disappeared from my trail;
connecting with her comes with multiple fails

Her face becomes blurrier by the day;
the bright light that once shone is now at bay

It seems that once in a blue moon we would only see;
I miss her so much this piece doesn't describe the least for her how I feel

The three of them,
mixing together for months.

Now,
were drowning on
my tongue.
But the sweet taste
hadn't soured
yet.

Until tonight.
With blurrier vision,
I saw clearly
to the bottom of the bottle.
The faster it went down,
the harder they were to swallow.

The words pooled to the top.
Swirled around until
one
after
the
other
d r i p p e d out.

Life is fleeting.

That much we know, right?
We can't see the future
and the past is a filthy liar
that often makes things seem
so much better than they were.
Coated in some fog of nostalgia
that allows us to forget the pain
or disappointment
or even failure.
So where does that leave us?
Right here.
Right now.
But in the tick of my watch hand,
we're suddenly older than we've ever been before
and further away from the moments we shared.
Every second,
those moments get blurrier
until one day they're just there.
And they mean nothing
because they aren't real anymore.
They've been distorted and warped,
mangled by time and space,
anger and loss,
love and longing.
But our story...
Our story doesn't deserve to be watered down,
falsified by years
of wanting a better ending.
Our story deserves to be what it was.

So that's the story I'm going to tell.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder

but i think i’m going blind.

The longer i stand in front of my reflection

the blurrier my vision gets

Because if I can’t see myself as beautiful

Why would anyone else?

Knot in my stomach
Sweat on my palms
Throat closing up

It's been so long since I've heard your name, I've forgotten what this feels like.

Room growing blurrier
Legs becoming weaker
Chest compressing faster

I scan the room for a way out. If i move at all, she will notice it, her eyes will be on me. You'll see me.

You'll see me.
You'll see me.
You'll
See
Me.

To hide,
Make opaque the details
Sympathetic outlines
Obscuring what I should be feeling

Imaginary traipses through
Verbal scenery
Clutch your denial between your legs
Drink it while I'm not watching
Mouth agape, skin pulled tight by your truth’s fingers,
Another hot gush of “denial” arches your back and forces shut your eyes
You aren't watching either

We're blurrier than we were.

No definition,
What we are exists in 240p
I'm straining my vision against the harsh grain of a flickering lcd
I'm watching the most important part of your story disappear into sporadic outcroppings of dead pixels
I'm grasping an empty metal frame and begging until I feel like screaming,
“I can't see you anymore”

Sometimes I think I shouldn't.

I find it quite interesting
How the entire world magnifies
Right before our eyes
When we are on the brink
The brink of crying
When the unshed tears
Have gathered and collected
At the bottom of our eyes

They struggle to fall
Yet for a brief moment in time
We see things closer
We see things blurrier
Than we have ever before
Right as they sit on the edge
Before they take the tumble
Before they take the fall

We had horses we rode, we played in the paddock, we swam at the beach, ate berries we picked - I had no idea she was an addict.

She called my dad a lunatic, a full blown hypocrite, all he does is spend his time shooting it.

He says she got him into it, a habit that took him bit by bit. A relationship full of conflict, built on *******. Two people who’s worlds were so far apart, brought together by something that tears lives apart.

The stories I hear, when she left me alone, I put her pill in my mouth like a dog with a bone. I walked down to my sisters school, she didn’t even notice untill she got a call. She fed me laxatives so when I went home to my grand parents I did nothing but had accidents.

She was always healthy though, a child never knows, I always loved to see her, I even wanted to be her. She was my mother, I knew nothing but to love her. I only learnt as I got older, about all the things that took hold of her.

She was always good to me, coming to all the school activities. I looked forward to every Thursday, it was just another school day, I waited for her to come up the hill only for the lady at the office to tell me she was ill. She didn’t make it that day, apparently she was to tired to play. The holidays went by but I didn’t get to see her this time. My grandparents sat me down when they got a call, I didn’t understand I thought she’d be just fine, it was just a cold, that’s all.

As each year passed, she kept deteriorating and fast. We couldn’t stay there anymore, her future was unsure. She could no longer move her legs, the signals from her brain to her body became dead. She lost her ability to speak, laying in her bed my mother was now so weak. No opportunity to get clean, being shuffled from dr to dr complaining of pain, being sent away because she was just another ****** to shame.

If she was never addicted, could there have been quicker treatment. Would she have noticed the signs earlier without the drugs making things blurrier. Tricking her brain into thinking everything’s fine, although addiction didn’t **** her it took away her time - I grew up without a mother, grieving her when she lost her life’s pleasures. It’s hard for a kid to talk and be heard, but not hear her back, not even one word.

She's standing on a platform
in the middle of
the middle of nowhere.
Watching trains crest the treeline,
the same way she stands in the shower
until just before the morning's heat runs out.

Human humility, gravelly
and low, suggests the balance
of power is blurrier
than established hierarchies.
So diffuse there's no longer distinction
between center and margin,
fore
ground and back
ground.
Sinuous instead of rigid,
****** instead of embalmed.
Skeletal tangles of our murky balladry
disintegrating to hellish echo
like birdsongs
wilting in the sunrise.

Heart is a risky fuel to burn,
but look how the flame holds tight
until the shadows chip away
just enough for her ungoverned
wilderness
to creep back quietly.

Finally seeing everything again,
like dark water through trees.
and falling in love with the idea of
never,
hardly even lasting forever.