Cover up the moon and the stars
A hurtful veil over my widening sky
A vengeful malicious intent
A never reason

It should be raining

Listen to the murmur in the crowd
The way the thunder grows louder
And the skies grow dimmer
As we await the storm

Cover up the sun
The clouds grow gray in anger
And the atmosphere becomes thick
And the land becomes dark

It should be raining

A ****** shroud
All that dream are disavowed
The thunder claps grow loud
The clouds are angry

Because they never could be the sun

It should be raining........

I watched my father scrunch his eyebrows together
whenever my mother said something he didn't like,
his impatience seeping through his dark skin,
apparent in the way he turned his body away
as if he wanted to run from all this
but he's trapped now, trapped forever.
I listened as my mother told me she did not want to stay
and my brother and I are the only things anchoring her unto this godforsaken house
of peeling white paint and crumbling walls and endless shouts and burning words.
I watched them hold each other when things got tough
and I knew it wasn't because of love—
it was because they were the nearest things to each other.
At a very young age I knew love was something that dissolves,
a flower you water everyday,
a story you never stop writing,
And some people, they don't know,
that they have stopped watering,
and they're running out of ink, only on page 3.
Little girl me knew.
Big girl me continues to watch it unfold,
dead petals in their hair
and dark ink between their fingers—
dry

I lie awake with thoughts of you occupying my mind

And I know that dialing those ten familiar numbers would get you here in a matter of minutes because it’s only 2:04am and you rarely ever sleep before 3.

But I will forbid myself to pick up the phone

Because although I would love to feel safe and secure I know it will just make it harder in the end.

How can I be at home yet feeling so incredibly homesick?


I try again to remember blissful moments

Moments before things got complicated and stressful

Like when you traveled thousands of miles to meet my little brother.

Or when we danced at a country bar in a small town to music we didn’t even know and enjoyed the company of people twice our age.

Or memorizing each other’s orders at every café, breakfast bar and ice-cream shop we went to.


I try to remember occasions before the shadows of your past made constant appearance in your character,

And those very shadows caused the very arguments that broke the one thing I was sure couldn’t be broken.


Now it’s 2:12am and nothing’s changed,

Just another night spent obsessing over what used to be.


R.M.

There is a fair bit of you in every garden of my life.
Truly, that is nothing extraordinary, you should know it as objectively as I do.

Nevertheless, there is something I’d like to clarify:

When I say "in every garden”,
it is not only in relation to this of now,
this of waiting for you, of hoorah! i found you!, and ******! i lost you!,
and found again, and hopefully stops there.

Nor in regard of you suddenly telling me "I’m going to cry”,
then with a discrete lump in my throat "well go ahead”.
And then a graceful invisible rainfall arrives to assist us,
perhaps the reason the sun rises unhesitatingly right after.

I’m not just referring either
at the day-to-day fluctuation of the stock in our little decisive complicities,
or that I could or believe I can turn my deficiencies to victories,
or of you to bestow upon me the tenderest gift of your most recent despair.

No.
The situation is more serious.
When I state “in every garden” I mean to say that in addition to that sweet cataclysm,
you are also rewriting my childhood,
that age when one utters "grown up” and solemn phrases,
and the solemn grown ups celebrates them,
and conversely, you think of it irrelevant.

What I mean to say is,
you are reassembling my adolescence,
that time when I was an old man full of insecurities,
and contrarily, you know how to extract from there,
my germ of joy and consciously spread it.

What I mean to say is,
you are stirring my youth,
that vain vessel no one took hold of, that proud shade no one got close to,
and you on the other hand knows very well how to shake it
until the autumn leaves start falling
till there is nothing but the flesh of my triumphless truth.

What I mean to say is,
you are grasping my maturity,
that mixture of stupor and experience,
this unknown horizon of fear and certainty,
this relentless faith on my questionable strength.

As you can see, it is serious,
extremely more serious.
Because with these or different words,
I mean to say you are not only,
the dearest girl you are,
but also the splendid and cautious* women that I love and have loved.

Because thanks to you E, I have understood,
(you’d say it was about time, and with reason),
that love, is a beautiful and generous bay, that lightens and darkens as life goes by,
a bay where ships arrive and break away,
they arrive with blossoms and presages,
and they part with krakens and storm clouds.
A beautiful and generous bay where ships set down and then leave,

But E, you, please don’t leave.

He said "I'm sorry," for the third time that night.

I said through broken sobs, hands rested on a tear soaked pillow, "There is no need to apologize friend, you did nothing wrong, we're fine."

He had been typing for a while before he said, "I just kinda owe it to her, ya know?" I decided to not make a tally of all the promises he has made me, and instead I said, "Yeah, totally. You've gotten better at taking responsibility."

I decided not to focus on the night before, when we held hands crying out pained words, emotionally charged from the whole concert, but the focus was still on our sweaty hands gripping each other tighter with every word that reminded us of each other. I decided to not remember him wrapping his arms around me, pulling me tighter, tighter, because we just could not seem to get close enough to one another. I chose to ignore how I could still feel his hands gripping my shoulders. I decided to neglect all the memories that were always too good to be.

Next thing I know, we're on the phone, I needed to hear your voice, I needed to remember I wasn't all alone. He said, "I hate this, I thought making a decision would make things easier, but it didn't, it just hurt you, that's literally all it did." Suddenly I switched gears, I turned off the tears, and reassured him that this was pain I could handle, dear. Just try to relax, it'll all be in the past soon, just go outside and look at the full moon, remember we will survive this too. He said, "I still have feelings for you ya know. I just made this decision because I owe it to her, that's the only reason. And we might be together one day, who knows."

"Yeah, I know," I said trying not to cry, but that hurt worst of it all. Holding onto hope I should've already let go of. Holding onto rope wrapped around my neck, waiting for that day. I felt comforted but pained. I felt sad, and just plain tired of feeling. I fell asleep that night holding a phone to my face, listening to his breathing.