Our love could make mountains crumble into sand, once upon a time. You’d lay your weary head in the center of my hardened chest and sing me songs about all the pretty things we wish we had but never did. You were always so excellent at crafting the most intricate, heartbreaking stories behind my closed eye lids as the demons clawed at the walls, trying to rip apart what you had worked so hard to rebuild. If there were anyone as beautiful as smoke catching sunlight in this world, I’d always say it was you who won that prize, my beautiful darling. You told me once that one can’t just wake up in the morning and stop loving another but it seems your fickle, ill-tempered heart proved this wrong. You rung me dry the day you took flight into the darkness of the moon and with you, you took all the pure love that I had harbored in my body. They all said you were nothing but a hungry ghost, traveling with wild eyes and calloused hands; that you could not be broken; that you would slip through my bleeding finger tips like air but I believed no one, only you. It seems this is a common mistake, one I tend to make far more often than one should.

I see in you a fire that cannot be doused out, a light that burns so bright that standing too close will burn my flesh clean from my bones. Even when the wicked winds of the present, past and future come hurtling full force towards you, you find it in your weak bones to climb higher than before and how beautiful is this? How rare. You are like no one, nothing that’s ever existed for my eyes and shallow heart before and I’ve yet to find one that I can adore and love as fully as I’ve loved and adored you. Even when my heart was torn and I wept from your loss, my adoration burned like a never ending candle. If only I could pull from behind my eyes the ways in which I see you when I look into your eyes, if only you could look into that broken, twisted mirror and see things with these tired eyes of mine.

I can’t sit still. All you left me with were broken pieces to an unfinished story about a girl who loved too hard, too much for her own damn good and all I gave up for you, to you seems worthless now. And I just can’t sit still. I’m bouncing off the walls. Falling over tables and clutching my fist so tight that my hands start to bleed and I can’t remember a single thing you have ever spoken to me, aside from all the words that have caused all the pain. And your eyes dig into my flesh, creating new wounds that my hands can’t fix alone.

I have loved you for so long. Watched as you grew tall, as your heart changed from beating flesh to a harden stone and still I loved you carelessly. Still I let you dig your grave inside of me, let you rest your weary head and then you ripped me into pieces that can never be fixed. You dug your claws into me and pulled from me what was ripped from your so long ago and now I’m just walking flesh.

I have loved you for so long. It seems as though my whole life started with you and now it ends with you too. I have tried for years to breathe you out, to cut you free but still you always find your way back into my blood, poisoning me and the cycle starts again. I’ve tried my hand at being cold as you but it never works out for me because you see I have a heart made of the softest substance on this Earth. It beat uneven, it is tattered and cracked but it pumps blood and love and passion and I fall in love with each person I meet.

And my god, I have loved you. I have loved them all for so long. I am exhausted now and I need somewhere to rest my weary head, my tired eyes, my trembling hands but there is no one there and I realize there has never been, not even you, my troubled friend. I’m not sorry for what I’ve done, what I’ve said, who I’ve been but I am sorry I loved you so violently when I could have been saving it for someone more worthy.

I have loved you for so long.

butterfly kisses
bittersweet goodbyes
heart palpitations
sweaty palms
heaving bodies
roaming hands
“i love you” “i love you”
“i hate you” “i hate you”
make up/break up
angry tears
hateful phrases
hello/goodbye
“i never loved you”
lies lies lies
the tide comes in
sweeps me off my feet
i’m running again, drowning, floating again
falling again
dreaming again
dying again
again
again
and again

She was the strength I often needed to find when I grew weak with despair, the pieces of me that had died off had somehow found their way to her and landed into her soul and the pieces of her that had died, landed into me. It didn’t take long before she was swimming through my blood stream and I was screaming out in agony of the torment it brought me to love another so violently once more; so I ran, like I do and I tried not to look back but there’s a tether that drags me back to her feet no matter where I go or how long it had been. She was always the one with the eyes that could break your heart in half, with the words in her head that left her fingertips like magic that could make you feel as though you were in the story yourself; as if she were writing about your life and it didn’t take long before I’d written at least 5 poems about her, a few she to this day doesn’t even know are for her. I write of her because I want to keep her alive, even if she departs from this Earth, she’ll live on within my soul and within my broken words. She was the sea; calm and beautiful but deep and mysterious; terrifyingly so. Oh, if only there were others like her, then maybe I wouldn’t feel the need to try so desperately to keep her close. Wouldn’t need to lock away my memories of her inside my ribcage so no one could touch them, could find them; it’s my obligation to heal what is broken in her as she has healed parts of me that were broken for far too long. She brought me back to life after I had been dead for far too many years to keep count, she taught me what it meant to love another so much it made you want to give up your heart so they could breathe easy, she taught me what it meant to die and live all in the same breathe. This is the true definition of a guardian angel, the true definition of a soul mate.

The first time he saw her she was sitting at a table by herself, with a steaming cup of coffee sitting beside her, an open notebook and a pen dangling from her hand. She looked puzzled, lost in her head and he wanted so badly to walk over to her and take the empty seat that was across from her but he was intimidated. She seemed so strong yet so broken all at once, so much different than any other girl he’d ever laid eyes on and it seemed so cliché to say that he had loved her from the moment he met her but he could feel it in his heart. Shed looked up from her notebook for a brief moment, having felt his eyes on her and she gave him a tiny smile before going back to her writing. Jotting down sentences feverishly; he swallowed the lump in his throat and got up the courage to walk over to her. The sunlight from the window she was sitting in danced through her beautiful red hair, she looked up at him and her green eyes held more stories in them then he thought he could ever even imagine on his own and he craved to know every single one of them. She had freckles littering her face but that just made him find her all the more beautiful. She was wearing a patterned scarf and a long, flowing bohemian era dress; she had a tattoo placed on her chest near her shoulder and what it said made him smile, made him realize how much softer she was within than she probably let on.

                “Hi.” She whispered with a smile. Her voice was soft, elegant yet confident all at once.

                “Hello.” He smiled back, “What are you writing, if you don’t mind me asking?”

                “Oh, just a story I’ve been trying to finish.” She said as she closed the notebook and put her pen down. “I was actually just about to go out for a cigarette; do you want to join me?”

                “Oh, um, of course.” He followed her out the small café door. He watched silently as she sparked a cigarette and took the first puff, her eyes closed; as if the exhalation of the smoke were the exhalation of every bad thing that had ever been done or said to her and he was mesmerized.

                “My name is Jay, by the way. What’s yours?”

                “Oliver. Bland, I know.” He smirked as he ran his fingers through his consistently messy hair. She smirked back.

                “There’s nothing wrong with Oliver, you seem anything but bland.” Then she was silent, her eyes closed again and all he could think was how uninterested she seemed to be in him but how comfortable with his presence she was as well.

                “Well, it was nice meeting you Jay but I should be heading off. I have a meeting to attend.” She smiled at him softly and that smile just made him realize how ordinary he sounded and how unordinary she probably was.

1 year later

                “Jay!” Silence.

                “Jay!?” More silence. A sudden feeling of anticipation and slight dread filled him to the brim; he waited a moment before running up the wooden steps to her writing room. Her sanctuary that he had made for her; a place where she could lock the rest of the world (including him) out and find the pieces of herself that she often times felt were dying off. Her hair was no longer the vibrant red it had been when they first met, it was now black and she was just as unordinary as he had imagined. He’d often find himself watching her as she smoked her cigarettes, wrote, read books, as she did anything. Everything about her fascinated him but there were parts of her, darker parts that he had discovered over the past year that frightened him. Parts that made him run up wooden stairs at full speed when she didn’t answer his calls even though more often than not, she didn’t answer because she had her headphones on or she just wasn’t home. Once he had found her broken and bleeding and he had cleaned her, wrapped her up, let her cry on him and kissed her; he didn’t let her out of his sight again for months after. He wished he could find what haunted her and rip it to pieces, demolish it and make her dark pieces disappear but she tells him that without them, she isn’t who she was meant to be. He opens the door to her writing room and she’s there. Only she isn’t wearing headphones and this time she had chosen not to answer his calls, she was sitting on the floor with her knees under her; bent over a canvas with paints and painting ferociously. Her hair pulled back in a messy pony tail her eyes transfixed.

                “Jay?” She didn’t answer; didn’t even look up at him. He took a step forward; glancing around the room and her mind was laid out for him to see everywhere. Painting and writings strewn about everywhere. “Bird?”

                “Olli.” She whispered it, when she turned to look at him her eyes were distant. This happened sometimes, when she trapped herself inside of her own mind. She blocked out reality, other people, and other feelings. They never talked about it; she never wanted to, she didn’t want to drag him down with her into the darkness but he was already there. Wherever she went, he went too; by default.

                “Been busy today, huh?” He smiled down at her, she smiled back but it wasn’t the kind of smile he was used to. The kind he wanted. It was different this time, he could tell, could feel it boiling. She said nothing, she stared at him; searching his face as if she was looking for the answers to questions she had never asked out loud. He hoped she could find what she wanted there, inside of him. He hoped she could find some light, some love, and some happiness with him. She turned back to her painting; he got down on the floor with her turning her face towards his.

                “Hey, come back to me. I miss you.”

                “I know it’s hard.” She whimpered, “Being with me. I know it probably gets confusing but I’m always here, Olli. I’m always here. Don’t waste time missing something, someone you can already see.”

                “I can’t see you, Jay. You don’t let me. Just talk to me. Let me in.”

                “You’re already in. Under my skin. You crawl through me, day and night. In my blood stream, fucking poisoning me and it makes my bones ache and my heart writhes because I don’t have love left for anyone else, including myself because it’s all for you. You see me.” He didn’t have words, all he could do was tell her loved her because unlike her he wasn’t articulate enough to say something so heartbreakingly beautiful like she had just done. He sat with her, watched her create beauty. Watched her watch him and he grew more in love with her but still he wonders when the day will come that she will abandon him because it all became too much.

I could grind your bones into dust and watch you blow away into the sunset, I could scream so loud my lungs explode and all the ugly darkness that has been hidden within comes flying out and consumes you and we both melt down into nothing but small pieces of insignificant dirt; but it would be too easy to hurt you. Too easy to say the words ‘I hate you’ and give you a cold glance as if my heart did not once know every crevice of your body. As if my fingertips had never traced the childhood scars and broken parts of your delicate body, as if I had never stayed awake in the night watching your face so soft in the moonlight and wondering how it is I got so damn lucky to have someone so beautiful laying next to me every night. It would be too easy to say I never loved you, to say that you mean nothing but the hard part is meaning it all. The hard part is falling asleep each night peacefully without your dancing behind my eye lids until the morning sun hits my face, the hard part is reaching out for a hand to hold and guide me back to the beautiful place I once soared when I was whole and finding that there is nothing but negative space before me and I could sit here for hours talking about all the ways in which you have broken me but it wouldn’t change a thing. You’d still be living your life and turning into a cold stone that is so untouchable it makes even my head ache and I’d still have a heart too big for my body that loves everyone and everything more than they and it deserves. It was too easy for me to fall in love with you, the way your eyes shifted colors in the sunlight, the way your hair fell in your face, the way you smoked your cigarettes, the way you moved your fingers, the things that fell from your mouth that I believed to be nothing but truths. It was too easy and the hard part for me has always been learning how to let go. So I could curse you to the high heavens and I could cry until my eyes dry out, I could scream until my throat grew sore, I could punch and kick until I was bruised beyond reason but it wouldn’t change a thing and even though this all would be so easy to do; I’d rather do it the hard and try again to learn what it means to let go.

I tried stuffing crushed flowers down my throat to fill myself with pretty things so pretty things will float from me and taint the air with unforgettable beauty. Instead, they turn black the moment I place my fingertips on them because it seems you can’t force beauty into yourself, it must come naturally. So, I’m stuck waiting for the day the sun shines on my skin and it doesn’t make me ache to breathe in the morning air. I wait for the day when my heart flutters like the wings of a hummingbird at the sight of the smallest touch of something beautiful like it once did when I was complete and unbroken. Now I’m filled with shattered fragments of all the past lives I’ve lived and all the lives I’ve stolen to heal those who needed healing. Now I’m searching for what’s missing and filling myself in and though it may take more time than I wish it would, I’ll get there and be beautiful again and flowers won’t be darkened at my touch.

Some days it feels as though I’ve died a hundred times, loved a hundred people, hated them too; it feels as though I was born into another life where everything is hazy. Brand new and nothing touches my skin in quite the same way but I know it isn’t true but my heart says otherwise. Some days I wake up with a burning fire in my chest, that eats at me and tries to claw it’s way out of my heart like it’s ready to set the whole world aflame but I snuff it out. I bury it. I dose the flames with lies and pretty stories of someone else who isn’t me and it calms but still it sits. It wades in my bottom of my stomach, only to reactivate itself in the morning and I go through it all again. Feeling new, born again and snuffing them out. One day I won’t be strong enough to stop them from consuming me because each day I snuff it out, it grows larger, hotter, brighter and one day it’ll burn me alive. It’ll burn everything I own and when I come back, I’ll be nothing but bones.

I see the lingering hints of darkness sitting in your lovely eyes and every fiber of my body aches to reach within your tormented heart and remove what makes your bones feel beaten down. I could have loved you my whole life if you’d given me the proper chance but now we’ll never know, so now I’ve got to watch you grow without me like trees who’ve been chopped and processed and have now lived and died in separate places but I’ve never stopped thinking of your and your eyes. You put on a smile and tel the world that everything’s fine but I can see you in ways no other has even even glimpsed at you before, you’ve never known but I hold you in my heart like a mother holds her newborn child and I’ve no intentions of ever letting you go. So, you can grow and I’ll ache to save you everyday but know this child, I still love you all the same as I did when we first met. When we first laughed and talked and played together, I loved you then; I love you now and I will love you always.

The cold stings me with memories of a time past that I so desperately wish I could forget. A time when everything was shining gold and my skin was soft as my heart, a time when love filled me to the brim and only happiness leaked from me. A time when kisses and cuddling in bed were a normal part of my day, a time when I could watch the smoke circle heads of beautiful boys and not feel pain because my beautiful smoke ringed boy sat lovingly at home awaiting the next time we’d meet. Now, these are only memories. Now all I have is what is left within my brain from those times past, I sit and I ponder how things could have turned out differently; how I’d given up anything if it meant you’d stay with me and even now as I think of you and I think of your warm skin on mine; I wish I could do anything to get you back here. Bring you into my arms and promise to love you for eternity, soothe your broken pieces so nothing ugly ever touches you again. I beg for a time I’ll never get back because life can’t be rewind and even if it could, how do you know that it wasn’t fate who took the reigns? So I sit in this breezy, cold weather with the changing leaves and the rushing cars, I sit with my cigarette in hand and I think of you. I miss you, I love you and I ache for you even though I try so desperately not to.

You never had the heart to spill your words like violent rain, instead you choose to lock yourself away from what causes your heart to ache and sew shut your lips so no ugliness may spread. I could sit and talk for hours about the ways in which I wish I could heal you, change you but if someone wishes to change you then it isn’t really love is it? No. You’ve got answers to unasked questions hiding behind your retinas and I wish I could dive into them, feel them and let them consume me so that I could see all that you see when you travel through this broken world. Do you see the gray areas? The darkness that looms here and there? Or do you only see the bright light, the blooming flowers and sweet oranges? Do you only see the happy birds who chirp just outside your bedroom window in the early hours of the morning? No, you never had the heart to speak harsh words but you always had the heart to forgive and to love much too much for anyone else’s own good; this is what I admire in you. To change you would be tragic, there are none left like you. Not really, not truly. Stay this way, please just stay.

I’ve got holes inside my chest where past loves once rested their too heavy heads and my lungs don’t breathe air but instead toxic waste. I can’t find it possible to stay in one place long enough to give away what I think you deserve from me and I know I’ll never know what love taste like on my tongue, on my skin again for I gave it all up to them. The monsters that still somehow live underneath my skin, you won’t find what you want inside my empty eyes but I can try my best. Put you in my web. Let you nest. But it seems, I’ve got the blood of innocents staining my violent hands and I can feel their hearts pump, pump, pumping inside my stomach. So I blur my eyes, kill my brain and black my lungs; smoking too many cigarettes, smoking too much of the green shit, snorting too many of those little white pills because it takes the pain away and makes me feel less ill. My Mother looks down on me and tells me I am the splitting incarnation of my Father, I’m just another thing she can jot down on her long list of disappointments. And there’s a gaping hole where my heart once resided and vultures are always circling me trying to live inside it but I tell them ‘No, there are already too many demons taking up residence there.’ and OH MY GOD! God? A Foreign word to my mind because you see it seems I abandoned God the moment I learned to strangle beautiful things and he abandoned me when I tried to rip myself from the body that he made. So you can open up your chest for me and bet I’ll crawl inside it because your love is like a drug for me and I just can’t do without it but the moment I’ve got my fill I’ll run away and you won’t see me rising like the morning sun but instead I’ll be hiding. I can’t give you what you need to walk through this life with a rainbow over your head and a smile tied tight to your lips. I will tear you down limb from limb until there’s nothing left but the ashes of something so beautiful that it made my heart ache so violently in my chest that I couldn’t move for days. See, that’s what I do. I am in the business of breaking hearts, of taking everything sweet and delicate that comes into my territory and tearing it down because I need to have what’s inside of you; I seem to be lacking. So I’m chained by this life of regrets and mistakes, leaving me nothing but a hollow shell; a lonely ghost; a bag of broken bones who tries her best to be something wonderful but fails when she sees what wonderful really looks like, taste like, feels like and I’ll never be able to make you happy the way you can make me happy but I promise you I can try my best because I’d love to be the reverse of everything I just said.

Your angry mouth throws tantrums in silence, as your heart beats outside of your chest cavity. You’ve got blood on your hands from all the lives you’ve lived time and time again, always falling in reverse to the sound of that invisible drum no one else has ever heard. I can see these swelling seas of sorrow sitting in your eyes, as if no amount of honest apology could take from you this aching that you’ve always held so close to your body. I see your bones are breaking, snapping in halves and fragments; falling away from you faster than your feet can run to catch them and all I’ve ever wanted was to love you but your skin is like stone; cold to the touch and hard to break through. So you swim in me so delicately with your ever changing emotions and twisted up dreams while I try to dig into your flesh the way you’ve dug your grave inside of me.