in our bed, in the spaces of our home,
we bring in our demons to share silver sheets,
touches and kisses — soft
and soon to be shaken,
i warn him, i’ve been hurt before so i might have scars,
and he pulls me closer,
you’ve been hurt before, i say, and he says he has,
tell me where, i ask, i want to help them heal,
he stutters and sputters, and the hurt pours out
a monsoon, flooding the bed built on dreams and a promise of a better world,
a dam not built up, a reservoir to come, but alone,
he pulls away. 

I trace the patterns we have known so well, and I find similarities in each and every one. The days pass, and we are silent and broken once more. Yet even so, I find myself less constrained than all the months that I was caught in the lines between us and not us. I try to see your reasoning, but in the end, my logic never extended so far into the unreal. I count my mistakes on our endless cycles. Were they enough to ruin us? I can never make myself believe they were. I look through open meadows and sky lit lakes to try to find you, but you run and hide in the clouds. I could never fly so high. You’re gone in your runaways. You escapist, why can’t you understand what this means? You prefer to live in your disillusion that it simply cannot work. I want to beg. Can we still try? I have heard the truth in your words so long ago. We have built up so many layers that we never pulled away. I am suffering in your lies as I reach for you. We should rip ourselves free. I stand here, and I know I am worth every single drop of effort that this requires. I have been so utterly devoted to you; I am valuable beyond belief. I don’t know how to make you less fearful, less unwilling to meet this mixed taste of failure and nostalgia. I know this could be great. I know this could be everything you need. I am holding myself in place until the day you come down to earth. Until then, I don’t know what to do. I have always been the turtle in the shell, cautious and easily frightened, except for this — for this I will fight to the death. You mean the most out of everything. Don’t expect me to surrender to your fears or to accept your half-mistaken dash to your imaginary world. I will meet the escapist, with all my letters and all my love and the truth of everything he is. Until then, I stand more in control in the bellows of the hurricane you set off and abandoned. Even so, I miss you; I miss you so much, you have been my reality for so long and now I have nothing to escape to. I will spend my years reaching for the clouds. We have tainted our memories for so long, and we have been bittersweet for so long.

Somehow we called truce; somehow we sent the message without saying anything at all. Somehow we are retreating, letting our wounds heal while we brace for the next assault. Somehow we haven’t forfeited, somehow we’re still fighting. Somehow I was born a star, full of hot fire, and now I’m cooling. I’m losing the passion, but I am getting stronger. I am exploding; I am a star gone supernova. I am a black hole, dark as the abyss and stronger than ever. Light will never reach me, but my sounds keep escaping. Gravity keeps me from being heard, but I keep hoping that you would hear. I keep hoping you would visit me. You — the whirlpool — will meet me —the black hole — what a fantastical destruction. Energy and lack thereof, and even in our old age, we are fighting still. We are combining and ripping apart. Twisting and turning, black holes and whirlpools just make disaster. You — with the churning of waves as you ravage anything that circles and circles and circles. We circle. I — with my haunting desolation, the magnet that pulls you in only to have you disappear. We forgo our past alliances and allegiances, and we swear to our deaths that this would be great. If only we would meet. If only a black hole and a whirlpool could exist simultaneously and together, but they are too far in the same universe. Are we even in the same universe? Could we ever be? Could we ever meet? Are we exploding? Will we ever be age old winners of the war we keep waging, or will we just forfeit? Would you ever let me forfeit? Are you forfeiting? I don’t think I can go supernova if you aren’t there. I don’t think you will ever accumulate enough of anything if I’m not there. I don’t think we will ever set space on fire if we never meet. I don’t think we will ever meet; I don’t think we can even meet. I don’t think we can exist simultaneously and together. 

I miss you. I miss you like how the sun misses the moon. I miss you like how the shore misses the tide. I miss you like how inhales miss exhales. I miss you like how I miss myself. I try to calm down. I try to find balance. I try to take a deep breath, but I can’t breathe. You took all the air and turned it into something else. You are the magician who plays with fire and dances in water. You are the alchemist with your alchemy of air. You, you are the accident; you are the mistake. I gasp, but nothing enters but the tainted poison you gave me. What have you done? The venom is seeping through, and I still can’t breathe. I am losing; I am lost, but you didn’t win. You are losing too; you’re lost too. I am inhaling nothing that could help me. I am intoxicated off the fumes that murder me. I am dying, and you’re too lost to notice. You’re too lost to care. I want to jump off to the dredges of what-used-to-be. I promised myself that I would never succumb, that I would throw myself into the sea of blackness before I would ever accept this. Somehow, I haven’t moved. I am standing on the edge, and I am completely still. I am battling wisdom and foolishness, and I am losing on both sides. Why am I not moving? I should be getting away from the toxins that are blending and mixing. I should be escaping the chemical reactions we keep setting off, but instead, I am an alcoholic that keeps drinking, keeps drinking. I am drunk. I am the tide reaching for the shore, and I am the sun chasing the moon, and I am the last exhale waiting for the first inhale. As I am collapsing to the ground, inhale-less and exhale-less, I am still holding out for the alchemist and trying to form the words, trying to ask if I ever took your breath away.

For a moment, it seems like we have escaped the violence and our horrors and arrived into a mirage — an oasis. Like the eye of the storm, we are surrounded by disaster. We are spinning under all the points we keep tallying, all the faults we keep measuring, and all the cuts we keep bleeding. I could be in this world forever, if only it was real; if only this wasn’t an illusion. Is it an illusion? I don’t even bother waiting for your response. I don’t even bother asking, that would surely be the end of everything. How many years did we put into spreading us thin enough so that we could not break? I am linking all these threads together, hoping they can create something that could keep me warm in the whirlwinds that are speeding up, threatening to tear us apart. I am smiling at your recent mood, but I am secretly anxious. I am secretly waiting for it all to spoil. I am making deadlines for this peace, knowing it is a standstill that does not stand still for very long. Rather, it is an hourglass that is cracking, and all the sands of time are jumping overboard. I am contemplating running headfirst into the storm. I told you, I know what is real and not real. At least there, the chaos makes sense, and I know where I stand. This oasis is only a dream. This oasis is only a trap disguised as a blessing, but I don’t dare jumping back into the chaos, not while you’re still here. Maybe this is a dream, but still, I can be still here, with you. I wish holes would explode everywhere, that everything would explode everywhere, that I wouldn’t have to choose, and that we’d both risk everything and throw ourselves into the savage battles we paused in the disillusion that we were better off hiding in the words we never said.

I am notorious in my dedication; I am notorious in my infamy. I have taken the bits of me during the best of me and kept them hidden from you. I tried to keep myself from slipping; I think I have slipped twelve times. I tried to catch you from falling; I think I tried fifteen times. I tried to keep us from breaking; I think we broke twenty-three times. The compromises we made became nonexistent as if they never existed. We dance on the edges, but we remained there. The fire burns on paper but runs away in its hesitation. I am made out of two parts, too many parts. More than I imagine us being one, I keep believing that I am not one without you. Before you, I was nothing, and since you, I am something. I am foretelling all of the dangers we will come to repeat. I don’t think I am a seer, rather just playing on the folly of déjà vu. I try to balance the odds of surviving our prophecies, but I think I slipped twelve times too much. I am warning you to be careful; I am warning you of your fate. You ask me for my thoughts, but you’re lost in your own. You’re running out the door, headfirst into the ides of March, marching out into the bits of us that we thought we destroyed. The weather turns malevolent now, we’re in a tornado now, and we’re shackled between lightning and thunder now. I am screaming, I am pleading — return, return before you make a fool out of yourself. Be careful, I say; remember me, I beg; you won’t make it without me, I promise. I tried catching you fifteen times, but you wouldn’t let me the sixteenth. Don’t you know you won’t make it without me? Don’t you know that you need me? Don’t you know that I am always, always right? I tried to keep us from breaking the twenty-fourth time, but by then we were irreparably broken, I was irreparably broken. I shouted, I sobbed as the mist took you away, and I am repeating my déjà vu because that’s all I have left to hold. You’re disappearing, and my future holds nothing anymore because all I know is that I won’t make it without you.

 

I have been defending you relentlessly. I have fought for you over and over again. I have been your entire army. I am the cavalry that wins all your battles, and just like the war ends, I end. I am the martyr that keeps your streak from being tarnished and tainted by failure. I keep you from losing, but in the end, I lose myself. You would think I would have stopped fighting by now, but I am still in the fray, bleeding from my heart and screaming from my skin. The arrows are piercing me. You would think you would have noticed your only soldier by now, but then again, you don’t notice anything. Don’t you know there’s a war going on? Don’t you know that you’re in between every conflict? Don’t you know I am dying for you? I am the armor and the warriors and the spears and the knives and the shields and the horses and the generals and the footmen. I am everything you could ever want, but I am completely and utterly exposed on the front line. Your enemies are rushing down the mountain of us, cascading down the cliff of everything for which I am trying to fight. I have no chance of surviving, but I am surviving anyways. I guess my strength always came from you. In the end, I am the last one standing, the last one fighting for you. Now there is just the carnage of all the mistakes we kept letting seep in, and even though I made it, I am black and blue from fighting for you. You would think a parade in my honor would have been announced by now. You would think I would be taken down grand halls with marble walls, through your castle and into the throne room. You would think you would be standing there, waiting to thank me, waiting to hand me a medal for all I have done, waiting to hug me, to knight me. You would think you would acknowledge me, at least for a second, for my duty to your name, for all my bravery and all my foolishness, for all my loyalty and all my love. For how even with my last breath, my last dying breath, I fought for you. Even as the millions charged, running me over, breaking through all my defenses and overcoming all assails, I fought for you. Even as all the doubts and all the broken promises left me nothing but a chance to surrender, I fought for you. At times, I wonder what would happen if I ever let my white flag run red. Will you notice me when they bring me wrapped in a shroud made of red roses, red roses? Will you ever notice me? I wish you would notice me now, standing and waiting for all our opponents to erode me away. You would think you had the courage to fight for everything you said you believed in. Maybe if you were there with me, we could have held our ground, we could have been the winners against the plague. We could have saved everything, we could have saved us.

The spaces between our pages never felt so empty; the gaps between our words never seemed so disjointed. I wrap bandages around my legs and my arms and my head to try and keep myself together. The air whistles through anyway, pointing out that I never secured them well enough. I wish I could amputate my heart — the source of all my disease and all my pain. I would be able to hold it in my hands, and maybe I will be able to figure out why you are the one owning it. I could send you letters explaining everything, but you would understand nothing, so I tear them to shreds instead. I am giving you peace and giving myself torture. Without a story to tell, we’re just drifting. My timeline consists of laughs and tears, and I wouldn’t take anything back, but sometimes I wonder which one of my mistakes caused all this radiation to seep into me. I am mutated; I am transformed. I don’t want to repeat our failures, but you’re not giving me much of a choice. I miss you so much, but you don’t want all the complications. I understand completely, so I say nothing at all when I am dying to spill everything. I wish you knew what you were getting into when you said you didn’t mind. Maybe if you thought it through, maybe if you didn’t even bother to care, I would be free. In my supposed freedom, I am the trapped bird without wings. If I was happy before, why can’t I be happy now? Nothing is as real as you are to me, but there has to more. I could write for ever like this, and I am scared that I might. I could end everything right now, and I think I bent enough that I am almost about to break, and I think I might end everything right now.

I wait at the train station for the shadow-eyed man in the mysterious tuxedo. I gnaw at the wind with my solemn fingers, trying to make words with gestures. I wait for the bronze train that we’ll take, but I cannot figure out where it will take us. I sit on rusted wood, looking out into the fog for you. Even as the conductor bellows, and the steam screams, I am unable to get up. Rather, I only shift in my impatience. The days pass, and you have yet to appear. I am still at the train station, gawked at by tantalizing portrayals. I hold honey as glue for you, the well-dressed man with our tickets. I wonder when you’ll come, I wonder where we’ll go, and I wonder if it’s my decision to make. We’ve dismembered the fragile state of us once again, and like countless times before, we are unsure and lost. I wonder what I will do when you arrive. Do I welcome you as if nothing happened, or do I refuse your audience? The fog turns to static now as the last train leaves the station. The date has expired on the tickets, and the paper has become rubble. There’s nowhere to go and no one to go nowhere with. I feel like jumping on the tracks now. Maybe you’ll meet me in another world or in tempered dreams. Maybe it would be better to walk to somewhere new, somewhere unknown, but how can I go when the chance of the dark eyed man in a tuxedo walking through the static still exists? I can hear nothing but the whistling of the train, but my eyes are on the horizon. The ruined tickets float away as the fog turns to noise. Everyone has left while I remain, decayed. I am waiting, you aren’t coming. Are we static now?

i know how hostile the universe is,
yet, i have nothing
but wonder — this insanity
is what blinded van gogh
from happiness;
(oh galileo, forgive me).

love me; count all my sins, 
because i remember only my good deeds,
the motifs of memory is the only thing
i don’t forget to track. 
i think i’m better than i am;
(oh teresa, forgive me). 

you keep secrets like breaths —
and there is nothing else,
nothing else that plagues my thoughts,
i cannot fathom another universe,
but maybe this life has escaped me,
savor the inhale, and know
my lips won’t say a word,
are you a liar?
because i can’t find any truths;
(but maybe my memory forgave me). 

let’s make wishes on broken promises & ghosts
(there are so many, our wishes are sure to come true)

the length of a tornado
the speed of i miss yous
tomorrows
too much of me is placed in things with invisible measurements
hello, may i have 6’ of love and 2 miles of happiness?

young witches that began the floods and drowned in their witchcraft
they were so foolish and naïve
clever fools thinking their magic could save them from the torrent of consequences

will you count all our vices that slumber until our virtues are too weak and attack
will you forgive us for having so many?
i’m sorry so sorry
they are so strong

I knew a martyr that went by your name --
Too bad his name never sounded as sweet as yours.

You call me under emotional,
I call you over,
But how come then,
The roles seem so reversed,
When I’m on the floor,
Crying in front of you,
While you just walk away?

I keep finding shadows of you
Everywhere,
People here are amazing,
But no one can light me up
Or set me off,
Can’t you see I’m trying to burn away?

I miss you —
And no one can compare.

let me decipher your poem,
and count your stanzas,
envelope me in rhymes,
and treat me to an allusion.

If I had you in January,
I wouldn’t have to worry about New Year’s Resolutions,
Because I can be better without them,
If I had you in January.

If I had you in February,
The days would fly by even faster,
I wouldn’t even have time to pull out a calendar,
If I had you in February.

If I had you in March,
I would rush into bloom,
Given reason to by the sunlight in your eyes,
If I had you in March.

If I had you in April,
I would forget how to regret,
My mistakes would seem so small,
If I had you in April.

If I had you in May,
I would hate myself less,
For any explosion of guilt would evaporate,
If I had you in May.

If I had you in June,
I would rise faster than the sun,
If that would mean more time with you,
If I had you in June.

If I had you in July,
The long hours would press into paradise,
As I would know nothing but you,
If I had you in July.

If I had you in August,
My novel anxieties would transform into excitement,
As you turned every challenge to truth,
If I had you in August.

If I had you in September,
I wouldn’t reek of birthday wishes,
Because I would already have everything I needed,
If I had you in September.

If I had you in October,
My masks would be more silly than serious,
As I would be so used to being myself,
If I had you in October.

If I had you in November,
I would layer myself in preparation,
Knowing you would still be there,
If I had you in November.

If I had you in December,
I would begin to worry and chase in fear,
For I’m not the kind of person you would stay with,
And I would begin to lose you in December.

- Love;
In the Time of Cholera
i am waiting for you. i have descended from my high regard. the mountain is a place of the past. but still, my legs can't walk this far. come to me, and we will falsify salvation.