Like the faint speckles of light
piercing through fabrics of black silk
upon the fore of flickering flames
from an ensemble of a thousand tealights

The obscure vast extends beyond our perspective
opening our minds, birthing visual imagery
brought upon by this vivid intimacy
between the light and of the dark

Like ornate embroidery, leisurely sewn
as clouds transform while traversing the temporal expanse
revealing our past through portraits
of familiarities once anew

The romantic serenity politely interrupted
by wisps of wind that softly whisper
feeling their breath; as a caress of silk
delicately brushing against our skin

As the warmth of earth upon which our bodies rest
holds us closely as our souls explore
the everlasting and exclusive wonders
under the night sky

I think I've been a little lost lately.
Maybe more than a little.
This dull ache takes shape of your voice.
It lulls and tugs repeating familiar soothings

Past words of comfort now are readily sharpened
As I close my eyes and attempt to drift
Yet, I am tethered to the waking hours
How I weep for neutral slumber


Denial burns a fire deep into the hours
As I evade past recollections of your touch
Floating in bitter melancholy
This eternal blending of the not easily forgotten

Slowly I begin to peel off the layers
My protective armor, now as brittle as parchment
Easily sloughed off leaving the inevitable truth
vulnerability seeps to the bone

Then words that acted as knives
Become my salve as I (defeated) apply
Wrapping myself in the old familiarities
Gently cursing you (me) for feeling so raw.

With querulous turpitude, I stood
Disdainful denied reassurance;
Selfless. My crying heart
The echo of the wind rebuking
All that is remaining of
what I used to be.
Grotesque deformities my reflection
The pain of pure love etched
In dreams of aeons passed.
Hideous beauty a frightening peace
A sweetness I founded corrupt;
Hell my heaven
My paradise.
Honesty a musical once
writhing in my breast
A seraph convoking legions,
Now wings out-stretched
I break my own treacherous heart
A fiend of Heaven a demon of Hell
The first fallen
Unto likeness absolved
The pennated breadth of twilight
Breeding familiarities contempt-
I have wearied myself, O God,
And I am consumed,
Resolute of inequity.
He that is down need not fear plucking,
Experience is the teacher of fools
And a gentle lie turneth away inquiry:
If the mountain will not go to Mahomet,
Mahomet must go to the mountain;
The nakedly wan mantic
Velleity to tear Christ's body
Malapert, before the ruddy shoal;
Society covers a multitude of sins
Within the penitent sanctity of
Heaven's holocaust, in which
No man can serve two masters-
Oh that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest
Eternal and absolute,
An angelic image of my shadowed self!.

ELEETE J MUIR

The familiarities that were once comforting
Have now become tear stained nightmares.
The anticipation of a new master piece-
One that brought the promise of change
And through magic became strokes
Of color-changing beauty, has now
Become dread and guilt.
The mirror cannot reflect the memories
Etched into crystalized eyes.
It cannot show the inner bruising,
From self-mutilation. It cannot show
The web work of past words that
Constrict the heart, barely holding
Together what was already broken.
The instability in a voice is ignored,
While time still continues all around.
One single moment can be sent into
Devastation while the earth doesn’t
Blink so much as an acknowledgment.
The smell of a crimson blade, should
Not be easily understood. The accusations
Should never have been, should never
Have become reality. If love is present,
Then these familiarities should be absent.

in the passenger seat of your
tightly packed subaru
i felt as good as royalty
you as king, me as queen,
always wondering what lay in store
for me and you.

little did i know it would
come stammering to a halt
not that it should've
but i always found it strange
how you added salt
to your macaroni and cheese
not that it phased me,
no, i loved you all the same
your salt and all.

because i was taken advantage of
and you were salty as ever
and i was high off the ground
in a lifeguard chair as i told you the news
and i heard clattering on the other end of the line
you were done, you were no longer mine

and suddenly it was as if
the ocean had its own gravitational pull
begging me to come in, come and drown
i would go fleetingly, with nary a sound

but i grabbed familiarities instead
took the knife to my skin again
and it bled and it bled and it bled
i never wanted it to stop

i was surrounded by
people who knew what unconditional meant
and they wrapped me up, kissed my
wounds with their closing fingers
too many times
i should have died.

there is no requiem for a dream
there was no requiem for me

There is nothing worse than choosing to break your own heart. Because you knew that if you chose to stay, your world would shrink until it crushes you apart. There are things you simply outgrow, like shirts and dresses that start exposing parts of you you’d rather keep to yourself. Memories that have fallen flat, you become two dimensional reruns of the past. Wells you have run dry, you need to leave and start digging for new founts. But don’t get me wrong, you can always stay.  But if you stay too long, you may become someone who has simply stayed behind.

Day 1
The door was left open I didn’t need the key to find my way in. I saw the desperation in the darkness, whimpering that I see the lines and edges obscured by shadows left by the one who lived there before me. I swipe my hand across the walls, patting recklessly for a switch that has to be there somewhere, only to find my hands covered in the filth that have settled there for too long, it claims all the walls as its own. But I was right to assume that all houses have lights to be turned on, the brightness of which at first will be unknown. So, I reach, and I flick the switch, and I see it half-glow- tired and overused yet eager to bid hello.

Day 4
The boxes come one by one and I am careful as to where they are laid. No, not there, in the puddle of murky water. Not there near the hole on the floor. Not there next to the pile of used…I don’t know what those are. Too *****, too filthy, too unpolished. Place it on those three spots that have been wiped down and cleaned, adorned by roses and fences, maintained by the past resident to gleam.

Day 11
I can’t sleep. This house is too foreign my body refuses to let the air sink into its pores.

Day 29
I wake up today refusing to believe that the rest of this house will be any better. I am carefully planning how to reach those three clean spots without my toes touching any of the grime. I tiptoe, like a hungry teenager during midnight, only to smack into the door frame. And I see lines. No, I didn’t have a concussion, there were really lines drawn on the side of the door frame: 1982, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2014. And for some reason, I lay back on the slender piece of wood and I draw a line right above my head as well, 2015: 158 cm.

Day 56
I stepped outside today to catch my breath, trying to find the same air that filled my lungs 7,463 km away.
I try looking for the same sun. The dimmed lights inside is starting to engulf my soul that I refuse to believe that my feet would not plunge into the darkened floors, I would not move anymore. I look across the street and I see my neighbors trimming their garden. I realize that not all things are simply given, not all things simply sprout, the filth will not blow itself out, nor will the light bulbs brighten itself. It stays as is because I simply let it be. In this life, you don’t always get to choose how everything starts, but you get to decide how it ends.


Day 180
Tonight, I’m sleeping over at a friend’s. The house is bigger and has more…food. It smells of cinnamon and peppermint or something foreign. But that just it, it’s…foreign. My body can’t seem to settle its bones on the proportions these chairs were carved out to have. I start missing new familiarities: that crack near my counter that I turned into a mail holder, that small stool that always trips me up on my way out but I never really moved, or that strong scent of aged wood which constantly reminds me where I’m at. It’s not exactly the best. But it has a warmth that tells me I will be missed if I ever decide to go anywhere else.

Day 240
I haven’t done the dishes for almost a week now nor have I done any form of “cleaning” that my mom would probably start questioning life when she sees the state of this house. I’m amazed by how it still holds itself together instead of choking me with the loam I made myself. Thank God houses aren’t people who hurt when they’ve been hurt because no one really likes crying alone. But sometimes alone is what we should be to remind ourselves that our two feet can still hold us up.

Day 320
They ask me what house I liked better. My heart was still left in the other.

Day 350
They asked me what house I like better. I’m not so sure.

Day 428
They asked what house I liked better, I still like the other. But it isn’t home anymore.

You see, home isn’t always where you’d like to invite people to stay, a place built by love and dreams, or where your heart is. Sometimes home is made by your screams of pain, it has become a dwelling place for your broken heart. Sometimes home is where you only stay for a while because it cannot contain your wandering heart. Sometimes home is there simply to tolerate and remind you that you can feel, that you may have left a piece of you with someone else but all pieces can be replaced. Sometimes home is where time is the fastest and no work is done, a place that takes you places just by sitting around.
Sometimes home is where you don’t want to be in because you want to know what else you can be out there.

Darling, in this world, there will always be better houses but better is not always what we need.

Two weeks in the sweltering heat of El Salvador
Sweating out the familiarities of home
A windswept airport parking lot
Speckled with miniature palm trees.

Open your eyes,
Dust off your ears,
And let those worries evaporate
Into the atmosphere.

Embarking down a little dirt path,
Where years of civil war
Unleashed their wrath.
Subtly, a foundation shifts
From the Miquon woods
Towards a smaller rural community
In the altitudes.

A laid-back game of soccer
In the oppressive 115-degree weather.
Against the firmness of dried brown dirt
Frantic feet are light like feathers
A history is present here
A common ground
We both hold dear
It’s clear,
The passion is sincere
Above all
A Spalding ball
Replacing Plymouth Meeting Mall
I, them, we, thaw
Once feeling cold
Now living raw.

A flash of colors
Mirrors a Macaw
The blend of people
A game will draw
With warm legs kicking
One draws upon
More natural law
A hand exchanged
For faster paw
Metamorphosis leaves
Humans in awe.
Who’s watching us?
The Eye of Ra

I feel awake
I think I’ve heard the bugle call.

1220

Of Nature I shall have enough
When I have entered these
Entitled to a Bumble bee’s
Familiarities.

He used to hide things for me
In the microwave
Or under a pile of serviette
In a metal room
Where I hid to eat
I ran away from all the heat
To talk about familiarities

He used to give things to me
On long working days
Chocolate ice cream,
Mixed with kindness
Served with dreams
Talks past midnights
Evening shifts

And when you were gone
My Mom told me,
That some things fade
And life moves on
Feelings shift
New plans will form
And loosing someone will keep you silent

But the things you gave me will always be kept.

~G

What is beauty?
The order in Chaos as some old philosophers once thought?   A shy definition.  Order doesn't draw a thunderstorm in my chest like beauty can.

We are afraid of Infinity.  

Afraid of what infinity means for us,
That we don't really know everything or could ever even hope to know everything.  A realization that what we thought we knew is so unrelentingly more complex and storied than our brains can handle.

In fact, we don't know anything.  Nothing is familiar to us except the wholly misguided notion that such a banal concept can be used to describe what we often hold most dear.  Few can stand to admit that our familiarities are but grains of sand slipping through our fingers while we look out over the ocean of time.  
Hold tighter and they fall faster, cup them in your hand and the wind blows them out.  Only when they have all fallen do you notice how strange your hand looks in the blaze of a midday sun.

Afraid of what we mean to Infinity,
That is to say,  nothing at all.
Of the nothing that we are becoming all of the time.
We cannot stop, and cannot progress.

That we are tucked into our lives and wake up not knowing whether we've just started or whether we've been here ten thousand times before or whether we are even awake.

Some are comforted by the thought that life is just one big circle, that there are high points and low points but then high points again.  But no one really knows what happens when we come all the way around.

And most people are afraid that when we get back to the top, we will fall right through the loop into nothingness. We will become the last grain of sand that slips through our grasp.

We look down the foggy beach and see no end in sight, we look out over the ocean of time and see only horizon.

So Beauty then?
I am not a grain of sand, though someday I will be.  
But right now I am here with you, sitting on our favorite beach in Pleasant weather.
The sun overhead, the sand between our toes, the smell of the ocean.  
Scanning the horizon in hopes of seeing a whale or a dolphin or something remarkable,
But content to be here now all the same.

Our reconciliation with infinity.

Dear Anne,

I am crying now. Not because of sadness, not because of anger or frustration... But because I am overwhelmed. Not a bad kind of overwhelmed, but one that is full of awe and joy.

I am overwhelmed that after all the pain both of us have gone through, after all the hurting, anger, and fears... I wake up one morning and find myself in love with you all over again. But not the same kind of love I felt when I first had you, or during our most wonderful times together - believe it or not, it was so much more. It's the kind of love that transcends through distance, through time... My heart never settles. You know that. It is never still, it always wants and you know that the way it wants something, it does its best to get it right away. But now, it is different. It has learned to be still. It has learned to endure waiting, to endure uncertainties; to endure the fear that it does not know how you feel - or if you will be willing to accept it back or not. But amidst this indefiniteness, it fights... With a smile. It fights the good fight. It wakes up every morning beating hard and loud with purpose: that is to make you happy again. To show you how much you mean to this heart... that every heart beat, every drop of blood flowing through its veins are all with beautiful intent.

This heart is beating, this heart is in joy. It skips a beat when it senses you, it speeds up when it remembers you.

The only prayer I have now is that you will listen to its every beat. :) That you will hear what it has been trying to shout, what it has been fighting for. :)

You are loved, Anne. Remember that somewhere, someone wakes up every day inspired, motivated - to be a better person for herself. With high hopes that when you get to meet her again, all the familiarities will rush and you remember this stranger who loved you with all her joyful heart.

Yours and yours alone,

Mims

where goest thou deep
in concrete streets
of a wicked jungle
the rumble of
unsettling events; intense
concentrating
on escaping
these decrepit patterns
of useless existence
resistance to causualties
turning into familiarities
rear back to attack
fatal norms and society
pressing beliefs into skin violently
picking through dirt like worms
makes you squirm
and crunch the skin on your face
disgrace
to humanity
with their one ounce of sanity
equally dispersed among the public
disruptive you say?
that I've ruined the peace of this virtuous day?
do you sleep at night ?
with the right kind of dreams?
he beams at a perfect system
that thrives in secret tyranny
the irony!
enough to make you sick
and **** on the shiny shoes of the opresser
the ladder to heaven has collapsed and burned
so LEARN how to deal with death life and birth
ON EARTH!
this wont pay off after
no factor of mortality
plays into "divine reward"
like a ***** you're bored of misery and law
so thaw the boundries of
adventure and ambition
petition for ignition
to the revolutionary fire
the dire need for more wood to burn
take turns
melting away

I only want to let you down
And not get up and go to work
not answer my phone anymore

I don't want to respond to you're stupid questions
Just stare blankly
because I don't know what you're talking about

I only want to live here
And not be obligated to acknowledge you
With awkward smiles and furrowed brows

I want you here though
In a lesser capacity
maybe stop by for coffee

I just don't know who you are
Or what you want from me

But on and on and on this goes.

I hang on to life dreaming,
Waiting for it to let me free,
Holding my breath in darkness.

Lost in my unconsciousness,
Impressions from the truth,
I wallow at the invisible.

Philosophies are dumbfounded.
Ideals vanished with perverse storms
Of spontaneity and malice.

Emotions become exhilarating.
Familiarities random,
With eternities of parallel expectations.

I still see you,
Skewed by memories of love and passion,
Standing there, looking back at me.

A Nightmare*

In my dreams I am the melting man.
Through tinted glass I am without senses.
With eyes that feel the sting of sight and fever of hearing,
I am allowed into the killing ground.

I followed my friendliest faces through some foggy
thick soup that does tickle my eyes
and vex them to lower.

Up again to this lonely temple
Where so many familiarities touch the ground and
my vessel with fatal hands.

First kiss and polystyrene men;
synthetic and terrifying.

Where have I seen you before?-

December 11th
Close your eyes.-

Here we are again.
there are sweats all over
i have been here so many times before and i sweat and cry

the killing grounds
dear mother, take me home, i sweat and cry for i have come here again
take me away? where have you gone?
the killing grounds

the pile of death
hopeless death that is violent and
my poor fragile eyes sweat and cry and
drip away

see those empty faces
of first kiss and polystyrene man
i reach for mothers hand
but i must linger in the mess of filth

December 11
please let me leave

i am losing
skin falls in drips
like cream or paint
and i must join the filth

no crying may save me.

It is a strange feeling, wanting to die but not being selfish enough to **** yourself. It is not a good feeling and it is not a bad feeling. Just strange. Like wanting to step out of a moving vehicle but the door is locked, and you're the one who locked it.

It's liberating, in a sense. To sever those stringy limbs that are clutching on to life and all its irrelevant attachments. Unbinded by society. The friendly release of death, all the familiarities of living still in tact. Immortality stolen directly from the suicide note. Shot through the heart, but still very much full of life.

Some pathetic hermaphrodite of irony and despair.

I think it stems from this futile awareness of a futile existence. I could live with a futile existence, but by some divine cosmic punishment am forced to be aware of my place within society. My place being an insignificant cell in a cell. And no body cares about a single cell within it. If one cell dies, it won't even notice it's gone, but simply continue as it was. But I refuse to give it the power to ignore my death. To stay alive is rebellion. To love and to live, in spite of life, is pure anarchy.

Slowly
Revolutions
Loss of the momentary flickering
an inescapable fleeting of infeasibility
spun.
These beautiful colors
Become one beautiful web
Smashing into those hurt eyes
With every pulse, movement
Slow grey spin-spun twist-turn
familiarities modify
With every revolution.
Distortion in the most striking.
potential is no contest
confusion is adjustable when
the view falls
and sees all of those wonders
from the bottom up.
Haphazard,
Those blurs whisper that
The wind tells no lie
When it convinces a soul
To forgot what it feels like
To stand solid
Spun.

Here I stand,
naked as the moon.
Denude of childish tendencies to protect the ego's fragile skin.
Palms turned towards the continuum of space to expose the souls purity,
eradicate insecurities.
The sky steeps me in a soothing womb of chamomile and honey,
abloom of sweet, scattered opalescence as freckles upon her face
interlaced with familiarities.
Extending conceptualized singularity to experience eons of unified grace.
Anahata awaken, caress of winds breath
frolics across the topography of my being,
releasing the god-essence.
Activated through remembrance
that which is, was, and always will be.
Instilled in every cell, attune harmony.
Conduit, co-existing as student, teacher, observer, conductor,
cleanse.
Wash away layers of the veil to reveal.
Acknowledge, accept, expand, contract.
Embodiment of cyclic sacredness.
Wholeness.
She and I mirrored images,
reflected consciousness,
alchemical catalyst catapaulting immense distances inside an instant.
Elder, mother, kin, within.
Ammorea flame ablaze, raise sensory vibrations to these
potent mysteries.
Project positivity,
what is given is received, this is my prayer.
My offering.

When the shores
Are
More

Than one can bear
Each second
Each wink
Each bat of an eye lash

Is as short
A breath
As we realize as
Our last

The bed doesn't creak
Nor does the
Wind feel any different

A shattering
Glass would barely
Stir the covers
Of my body underneath

Of course around
Our mother's
Her ears attentive
To the children's cares
Upstairs

They obsessed with
Their own
Eyes open

Finger's crossed
The ball when tossed
Will surely be lost
And yonder' - across menacing momentum -
One can witness the
Crystal filled fountain and in
The distance the burning
Of a single candle flame on the mountain

I look for answers
I seek questions
I hear the secrets of the world
And feel them through
My finger tips as I share them

With you

Am I aware of my world?
Or am I only living alone within it?

Am I a seeker of life or
Am I merely the string attached
To a stranger's spool and kite?

Holding myself over
Until the next tide is taken
For the forsaken admit
No defeat

To do that
Would leave the ego beaten
Struck with an impenetrable sickness

Familiarities
Only a stone's throw away from
Falsely thought of companions
Whose stanza's felt as weak
Believe their streak
Is coming to an untimely end

Their bitterness
Is not sweet
For it makes the eye's water
With its acidity

Friends take steps in all directions
They are not routine like the seasons
To be a friend, one must learn
To not be stern and when ready
To let them drift into a new curve

The white picket fence
Has dirtied with the summer rain
Stains remind me of former lives
Whose prizes were never gave

Caves without a rhythm or life
Where every nook within
Has never had the chance to bear a light

Every darkness
Once did harness
The light of
A truthful day

And this place
The same, every face is
But incapable of recognizing
The familiarities of your own
Life.
Where your king
Is your enemy
As well your protector
And god is satan
As well being at fault for every wrong thing
In your realm
But wait
You're not religious
And you're the higher being
In your
Life.
So
Feel secure with
Insecurities
And feel assured
The bridge is strong
The only way to
Fall through
Is to jump
And I know
You're tired of
Standing
Still.

Memories of time past are
sauntering into view like sweet
fragrant breezes, bursting gently
against my cheek.

It is that old familiar feeling.
Drowsily my eyes close to drift
rapturouly into the extemporaneous
visits.

Gold crusted streets lined in cherry
blossoms filled with familiarities tickle
my whimsy as shiny pebbles wink at me
as if to say, welcome back.

Splinters of once hopeful desires are
forming to provide driftwood enabling
me to float like whispers of an awakening
sunrise, warmly rising upwards out of the cold.

I'm enjoying a sweet escape from a
heart burdened by ineffable lonliness.
I'm coasting on a barren plain of sweet
amnesia like the young girl at seventeen.

http://youtu.be/f52dVN-5cWU?list=RDf52dVN-5cWU

A year ago today My world came crashing down
A year ago today all familiarities and comforts were stipped from me
In a downward cycle of pain and loss
A year ago today, you left me.
As I lay at the bottom looking in a desperate state for a way i could swim to the top before I ran out of breath
I evaluated and re-evaluated everything in my life,everything in your life
where we went wrong and how things got to the point of emptiness and misery.
I poured countless days, endless heartbreaks, and streams of tears into trying to save you.
All I ever wanted was to see you smile and mean it, All I ever wanted was to take your pain away.
But I couldn't and so a year ago today it ended.
You put your head down and pushed through life,waiting for your chance you rise above it all,
Well I pray that you are soaring now, higher than ever before, and will never fall.
The wind beneath your wings will never lay still and I will love you until
My time to join you comes.
Its been a year and I have
shed a lot of tears
overcome a lot of fears
made some new friends
******* some loose ends
loved and lost
felt used and been tossed
laughed and smiled
been silly, just like a child
felt hurt and afraid
felt cheated and played
grew closer to some that were apart
lost some i thought would never leave my heart
ive grown up and moved on
and danced the same dance, sung the same song
In the last year I have stood on the line seperating the end and the beginning,
the shadow between the darkness and light
Ive felt the weight of the decision to give up, or move forward in life
I have stood on the edge of the cliff peering down
and I turned around.
I started over and picked up pieces of the life that I knew
and rebuilt a new life, a life without you
And at the end of the day, all I can say,
is that I would give anything just to see you again.

I thought brining you back in would **** all of this
This never-ending sensation that the greatest years of my life are already

Gone.

But it’s all just the same
I’m absolutely blinded by the smiles on every other person’s face and the intense glow from their cheeks and eyes
The wind is knocked from my lungs everyday from the excitement and energy that surrounds me; drains me.
It ***** the life from my limbs and heart and there is nothing left to give to you

I left so many good things behind in hopes of having it all wrapped back up and delivered to me in new and mysterious packages

But all of my boxes and bags have been emptied of any familiarities
They fill with misery and bleak thoughts beneath my bed and my heart

Everyday I feel further and further from finding anything to remove the lump from my throat
And you drift deeper and deeper into a state of being which I feel I will never understand again

How long can we keep up this charade of “forever?”

There are moments where I
Blink
My mind shifts back
Locks back
into this place and time
And I realise I am here

I look at familiarities around me
Touch them
Check, so they are real
And they are
I suppose -
But my reality is still unclear

So I blink again
I can’t fathom
Anything
if this is a dream
Lucid
Apparently scary
I can’t find an answer
So I stop.

FOOLISH QUEST

I step over you
In my foolish quest
No time to stop
Hungers tug .. an impatient guest

Numb fingers
Know not what they touch
I stretch and reach
At nothing …. Much

You haven’t moved
You continue to stare
I can’t be bothered..
Still I’m seeing you… there.

Hands turn up… empty
Nothing left in this place
Familiarities teeth
Now wanting a taste

I step further..
A change of mind
Un-tied…. by old thoughts
From another.. Time.

Moving on in
The hunger withdraws
Not even sure
What I think… I saw.

I border you now
And comprehend it all
My foolish quest
Finds a higher.. Call.


Tf2/16

a gathering

at first glance
innocent enough

hardened smiles
seemed made of
plaster

not one of which
wants to know
the other

riding the ebb
of familiarities

nodding heads
of blank faces

not caring
       nor curious
but always
agreeable

a gathering

yes

of a room full of
complete strangers.

Dream big, dream always and never look back.
Within you lies the power and the emotion.
You can demolish all barriers.
The powers of the mortal are not containable.

Feel the power build from within your soul
The essence of your being begins to take control
The proficiency to overcome is an indication of strength
Inhibitions left behind and kept at arm’s length

Remember you are never alone.

No individual is alone within a team
Teams are those who can strengthen you
Those people who empower you to dream
and those who you can eternally turn to

Friendship can mould a team stronger than you can see
From idiosyncrasies arise familiarities
Perpetually an ear to listen or impart an idea
A form of protection or your very own panacea.

Friends can be the joy in your life
the comfort in your strife
never should you underestimate their potence
and never should you diminish their pertinence

Your life and theirs are intertwined
like a guide dog their for the blind.
Patience in each other is a virtue.
I’ve got these friends and you do too.

the things i don't understand yet about life
and what it is that makes us move
and makes us meet
and why it is that we love
and also why we fall apart...

these are the sweetest uncertainties
--to never truly know what will become of us
is magic.

it is what makes us come alive
day after day
when the rest of life's familiarities
prefer us dead.

his brain was a muted marble stuffed with cotton
his eye sockets were filled with angry bees
paper-thin eyelids folded over a buzzing lens

weary eyes opened once again- gaze flitting from wall to wall
manic resistance to this reality, he mumbled to himself
lullabies that soothed the soul

limbs were anchors that he dragged alongside him
all of them achy
whining to him- why must we move now

static consumed every moment washing away any familiarity
a monochrome blanket infected each picture
and each picture became a wedge between the familiarities and himself

a haze hugged him tight like an old friend and he sunk into his warm blue blankets
thought of the gray metal friend in his drawer and how nice it might be
to make clouds and stars of colored glass

You just sit there, together, share little nothings, and suddenly in the very next moment, a whole lot changes. You just sit still, absorbing everything they say, the honesty, the ferocity in their conviction, forces you to believe in every spoken word and sentence that draws you down the rabbit hole.

The thin line between knowing someone and thinking you know them enough just blurs away.

Have you ever felt a mystic human emotion? I surely have! There is always that diffidence that lurks somewhere deep within, it keeps you from looking straight into their eyes, the transparency- it surely kills. To be able to listen to them without holding any emotion, to hold nothing for them, no expectations, no reasons, no questions. It feels like an archive, where you can stow away all your thoughts and wonder about the uninhibited, free familiarities you share.

Crazy, I know, that is how everything sounds and just builds an atmospheres in that instance!

Everyone I have ever met has a story to share. But in the art of urban loneliness it never passes through you. You somehow just try and defend it by equating the situation and chaos of thoughts coursing through your nerves. There is an inexplicable rage and a need to turn things and construct the worst possible scenario in front of your eyes. Where and when these conversations occur they are too hard to take. I never feel the urge to listen to their side of the story, mostly. I just want to avoid any human contact and pretend that I am lost in my own dominion doing my own thing.
This may come from the fear of giving them admittance to my realm, or to come across like a bare human trying to deduce and find meaning in their stories, their hardships and struggles that make mine absolutely mundane and lacklustre.  But once in a while, you feel that feeling of the known. There strikes a conversation so hard not focus on, it’s different, where from once you actually listen. They play the good one, riding you in the palm of their hand and all you can do is see them.

There have been thousands of answers to why or how we feel what we do. May be it is an advanced form of attraction or infatuation, where your mind visualises things and you feel connected in terms of your expectations or experiences you share. Or maybe, your soul has connected to someone from another point in time, from another dimensions or say a parallel universe? (Queue some sci-fi music here!)

Another reason, your views and theirs match, your likings match, or maybe you unknowingly just share similar personalities. It gives meaning, it makes you feel like ‘you exist’. We always seek for more connections, more validations whilst looking to complete ourselves, and wait agonisingly for when our thoughts will be transformed to words that someone understands, comprehends and most importantly relates with.

Insecure and unappreciated, everything seems so overrated while you are ensconced in your cocoon till you find that connection and the minute they speak to you it all disappears. This is how I feel in the moment, trying to re-collect all the words, before I forget them in this fast-moving world. And If I ever want to talk about it, laugh on it or even cry about it, I hope I can still reach them, smile and look at the unchanged sheen in the eyes and feel content and hang on to the stories that they have gathered over time.

Till then, good bye, adios to the stories of the time when we were just strangers!