You’re like category 3 pyrotechnics,
must be viewed from 25 meters away…
for safety reasons, of course.
Yet here you are, just inches before me,
in all your nakedness,
serving up a firework display in my mind,
my body erupting lava.
The heat so intense, it burned.
And then it scarred.
You left a mark so profound,
no amount of denial could conceal it.
Your eyes are the verses of the poem I will never write —
straight lines and I Love Yous with nowhere to go.
Your caresses have long been forgotten,
but tattooed on my skin are the maps to where your hands have been.
You are the book that I will never finish reading —
pages with dog ears and chapters ripped out.
You are the story I will leave unfinished to collect dust in the corners of my mind —
hanging, ominous.
You left me yearning, hungry.
I am melancholy in a bottle,
and there are no answers at the bottom.
As you struggle to part with your sheets,
you look up at the ceiling
and danced with your thoughts.
Found so many things to do
so young.
You push yourself up,
stagger across the room
dizzy with the peaks and valleys
of your moods.
Your dreams are but light-years away.
As you pour yourself
a cup of stale coffee,
you wonder if you’ll ever get there.
Ten years, you tell yourself.
Ten years and they’ll see.
Reaching for the stars,
your heart grows weary
from all the NOs and MAYBEs;
from all the lives you’re not living.
Silent, starving
while the room keeps spinning.
You’re too high in the clouds
and you yearn to come down,
lest you crash and burn
from coming too close to the sun.
The day just started
and the light shines through the curtains
you bought at too cheap a price.
Your dreams come too at too steep a price.
Your lonesome self
assuaged by empty kisses
each night.
The void filled with far too many
handsome strangers who
wouldn’t give you a second thought —
not after they’ve had their fill
of carnal bliss.
Nightmares keep you up,
leave you gasping, aching
for air.
Tears fall
as you wash off the night before
from your hair.
You have me
at the soles of your feet.
I am the doormat
you wipe your dirty shoes on
as you make some place
your home.
Every time you close the door
behind you,
I am left soiled
and bruised.
Yet I greet you
everyday
with a brand of welcome
that only I can give.
So you look at me
with such familiarity
and warmth
as you enter an abode of rest.
But you never once
looked back
each time you leave.
Honey, I am home —
lay your tired bones
on me
when you get locked out.
You may think
I’m replaceable,
but I will still wipe
your dirty toes clean.
Honey, you may not think about me
all the time,
but under me
is where you will find
the key.
How does one truly forget?
How does one make amends?
In the dying light of day,
I caress the parts of my skin that knew you;
the parts of my skin you once touched,
kissed, ravaged.
It still remembers the hunger
that manifested from the longing
in your soul.
We were lonely.
We were bruised.
With our bloody noses
we soiled your sheets
like it was what we
were born to do.
I struggled with your silence,
while you fought to keep me out.
Tumbling and wrestling with
what-could-have-beens and
unrealized potential,
we lie blinded,
weakened by empty promises
and regrets.
It was apparent that the victims
far outnumbered the dead,
and that I was the main casualty.
You are incapable of change.
You are incapable of love.
So how does this go?
How does one
become truly free from you
when all I have been doing is cry
behind this smile?
How do we unlearn the truths
that we have come to know
like the backs of our hands?
Darling, we were never meant to soar.
With a weary heart,
I have come to realize that
you can never really fix a person.
but you can love the fuck out of them, or
fuck the love out of them.
And so this is the nature
of all great romantic tragedies —
that the Romeos and Juliets die,
but their stories
and their pain
live on.
Forever.
Like shards of broken bottles,
you pierced through
the soles of my feet
as I walked through the dark alleys
of my soul
towards the light.
You were a beautiful idea.
But words of promise
offered through prison bars
lose their charm.
Our destinies
have been entwined,
but never joined.
Love looks even
more lovely
under a veil of melancholy.
Heartbreak,
my muse.
Wine,
its enabler.
Like shards of broken bottles,
you pierced through
the soles of my feet
as I walked through the dark alleys
of my soul
towards the light.
You were a beautiful idea.
But words of promise
offered through prison bars
lose their charm.
Our destinies
have been entwined,
but never joined.
Love looks even
more lovely
under a veil of melancholy.
Heartbreak,
my muse.
Wine,
its enabler.
