Our love was a lost cause, a discarded satchel filled with loveletters and tears. I always knew, deep in my heart, that you would come back gunning for me. Gunning for another chance, hoping to hold me and breathe me back into your life. I wanted to break you down and force you to give me one more chance and you pushed me farther away than I could ever imagine. I gave up and let go.

And sometimes I feel so sick when you kiss me because my heart gets slower and faster at the same time so that my soul becomes confused and does not know how to react. The nerves in my belly go wild. And I hope I love you the way I do right now for a very long time.

not mine but might as well be

"We are just friends. Several times now, I have fallen asleep intertwined with you. Cheek to cheek, even lip to lip--just feeling your breath on my skin. We go no further. Today we went for a walk after a summer pour, and I could feel the warm steam rising from the streets. Now tonight, I sleep alone. It's probably healthy because when I'm tangled up with you I can hardly sleep at all. I spend the whole night on fire, quietly smoldering most of the time. Except when you pull me closer and rub your soft scruffle up and down my neck and chest. Or when you grab me by the hip bone and sink your thumbs into my flesh, sending electric chills up and down my body.Or when you pull me into you, sliding your fingers down my spine until they press the small of my back (chills, again). Or when your lips find the back of my neck and you mumble about how good I smell. Those are the times that the smoldering gives way to a blazing flare and all I can do is hope for a nap the next day.

But not tonight. You're there and I'm here. I could never tell you this, but every night your body isn't pressed against mine, I have to pack pillows around myself just to fall asleep. But we are just friends, and I'm sure you sleep fine without me."

credit: le love

We used to write names on small pieces of torn manila paper. We would write the names with our souls. Dotting our little i's with small globs of passion, curving each O with angst and fear and hope, spelling each letter of the first and the middle and the last with sadness, grief and tattered glory. When there were no names left to write, we would think really very hard about the names we had just written. Then, we would light the matches. The matches would strike, the flame would glow, and one name at a time we would say all the right reasons these names deserved to burn. And one at a time, all the pain and suffering would disappear. The embers of the paper would glow as the names disappeared, and our hearts would fire up and once we could feel the heat reaching our fingertips we would let go, and the names that once consumed us would disappear into ashes, blowing into the wind far far away. And once the lingering smell of the smoke was gone, we would forget about these names and their burdens forever.

But when I got to your name, I held the torn paper in my palm. I tried to think of all the right reasons to burn it away. But I couldn't. So I folded it up, and put it in my pocket.

the only reason i keep on coming home

That's the thing about us. We were all so full of passion. From the moment we arrived, each of us had sold a little part of our hearts to something, to anything that made us feel like we could rule the world. When we weren't doing whatever it was that made us most whole, we were thinking about it or dreaming about it or looking for more of it, breathing it in and out like obsessed fools. We were thinkers, dreamers, and searchers who had nearly found the golden ticket, clinging to it before it was lost to someone else.

We were passionate, and we were passionate together. We put ourselves out on the table, and subjected ourselves to the most critical of critiques. But we held each other up, giving each other both the confidence to succeed and the fear of failure; we held each other by the wrists as each of us dangled off the ledge of risk.

And when we left, we still held on to those passions that we embraced so fondly. From the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of passions to the dramatized and exploited wonders of passions, we kept them in our hearts and in our minds. We never let go. We made our passions even more passionate, and are developing kingdoms on our passionate foundations of curiosity.

And this is how we still hold on to each other. Through the possession of these passions, we will always remember how passionate we were together, as a large-scale family striving to leap as far as we could without holding each other back.

If anything, tell him that I loved him. Tell him that he meant the world to me, no matter how horribly any tainted light was cast upon him because in my eyes, he would always be the shiniest and most beautiful of all. Tell him that I never forgot those eyes that burned my soul the way the end of a careless cigarette pricks an unsuspecting hand. Alarming. Anger-infusing. Whimsical enough to be let off the hook. Tell him that I shone my best when I was his, trying to be his, hoping to be his. Hoping that I could become enough for him. Hoping he'd burn enough cigarette-holes into my soul that I'd fit the mold he'd fashioned with his own hands. Tell him that I remember the day when I didn't want to leave him but I had to, and we both went our separate ways but I walked all the way down Palm Drive alone while he did what was best for him and found his future. He held me for a long time and told me I was so cool and fun before I left, but his eyes gave away much much more than that. Tell him that I remember the last day I saw him, when my heart was so content and full of his loving emotions that I forgot I wouldn't see him for a long long long while and he got on the morning train and I rode alone in the backseat of Haley's car. We held hands before we parted ways, and it was the first time my small hand fit nicely in a larger one and I liked that. Tell him that somehow, that morning and only that morning because I forgot what it felt like after that day, I knew knew knew KNEW that no matter how many holes he burned into my soul, he would never sculpt me in the fashion of his mold. He couldn't. I was the mold. Tell him that.

new year, new stories. love ya, bitches.

I had to convince myself that you wouldn't come back. I didn't want to be set up for a let down.

You told me you'd come find me as soon as you could, but I had every right to doubt you. And then you disappeared again as quick as you had appeared, like nothing had ever happened, and everything went quite topsy-turvy all over the place in my brain. And the faces became relatively clear again and I remembered where I was. Everyone was floating around like a ghost, all giddy-merry and life-high, but I couldn't think of a good enough reason why I should stand up, so I collapsed and could barely breathe. Part of me thought that if I took another breath, everything would go back to normal- that if I could hold on to that one same breath, I could hold on to the one moment that fucked me up forever.

I'm nearly sure that this was the scariest I've ever scared myself. I was so happy so sad all at once, I was woozy and lovesick too... I'm not really sure what I was to be honest, I just wanted you to explain it to me again so I would know exactly how you felt and if you were lying to me. I can never tell if you're lying, I couldn't tell then and I can't tell now. Sometimes, I convince myself that you are, just so I won't be let down, but someone that's not me deep deep deep in my heart trusts you even when my head doesn't. And I get let down anyway later on. You know, I've gotten good at that because that's the way we work. I pretend you're something you're not and then REALLY believe it and you prove me wrong and I get hurt because you make me smile and tell me you've loved me all along and I go against everything I've ever believed and fall for it. And then you don't follow through.

You know, I never thought you'd come back. And you did, but just that once. I think that was the last time you ever came back to me.

I can still feel your whispers. On the small of my back, tiptoeing to the curve of my neck, tickling my earlobes and hotly making each and every hair on my body stand tall but fragile, making me feel so weak and so vulnerable but so loved all along.

Those whispers once told me the silliest of things. The meanest and the loveliest and the most impossible things all came together in them, and those were things I believed. Things I still believe. I didn't mean to but I gave my heart away to all your little whispers, which ransacked my soul and took me captive.

The day you whispered those things to me, I found myself then fell apart two seconds after you left me for good. I realized that the same whispers that made everything I’d ever wanted come true were the whispers of my downfall

I still wonder where I’d be if I’d never had to hear them. I wonder where I’d be if I’d never wanted to hear them in the first place. I would love to forget them for good without forgetting you and the way you felt that night. But it’s nearly impossible now. I am in too deep. Your pretty, scary whispers have already tainted me.

And so now, when I start to feel them creeping along my spine and wrapping their way around my broken heart, I secretly hold on to the way they feel as they felt when they first took me by surprise. The way they felt when we danced barefoot on the street and you pulled me in close and whispered the most beautiful things I had ever heard, and I nearly died in your arms to a lovely, lovely dream of your whispers.

Babaganoush

At times, she would convince herself that this is not what she wanted. Not what she wanted at all! This was nothing like the old warmth that used to hold her so still and so restless for so many hours through those long, scary nights, wrapping itself around her so securely that she had never wanted to let go. The hands that she would hold now were only placeholders and no matter how carefully and safely they'd hold her, they would never feel the way they were meant to.

But sometimes, she'd forget for the shortest of seconds. She would forget enough that she could no longer compare the two different worlds that held her distinctively, and she would feel the smallest inkling of that old warmth she'd learned to feel before. And then, in that smallest of an instance, she realized that she did not have to let go to forget and that no matter how hard she tried to remember, it would never be the way it was.

She's a keeper.

Emmeline was a keeper. She kept the notes she'd passed to Layne and Sandra in first grade, and the birthday invitations she'd been sent in third. The colorful bills of foreign cash were set aside next to the shiny coins and the detached buttons that once bedecked her frilly dresses, and the love letters she'd received were scattered and wedged within the piles and piles of photos and negative strips. Her favorite homework assignments sprawling with doodles had their own special drawer, and beneath her bed were mounds of books she'd probably never read again beside the hole-strewn two-toned shoes that once led her on her curious adventures. 

She could not let these things go. 

They were a part of her and only her. If she were to leave these things to the wild nature of the world, she would never see them again. She would lose all memory of these certain times, certain instances with certain memorability. They would vanish, as would her sense of who she was at that specific instance in time. 

She was not like Lola, who could fall out of love with an object just as easily as she fell into love with it in the first place. 

She was not like Clara, who saved her love for one and only one thing.

On the late and antsy nights, when she could not force her eyes to stay shut, she would peruse her things. Old and new, she would remember the good and the bad memories. She would sit and sift through the endless papers and pictures and moneys, ticket stubs and receipts, buttons and negatives and ribbons. She would think and think and really try to remember, which at some point she had forgotten how to do. 

And she simply could not bring herself to get rid of any of these things.

No matter how large the piles grew over time, no matter how high her bed stood upon a cushion of books, no matter how useless and unimportant these little things seemed to others- she could not and would not become vulnerable to forgetting. 

photocred: the fashion spot

Oh My

And so, like a spell she followed his trail of lovely letter-memories of concentrated happiness. The blue envelopes sat so perfectly, one after another, on a shameless and beautiful road that left her delirious but degenerated. She could not decide if this was a good sort of pain, and in the end she decided to leave the trail behind for each memory took her back to a certain sense of happiness she had long forgotten after years of trying to forget. He had left her in so many different ways. And so she began to cry because she did not know how else to feel. 

photocred: the fashion spot

Bittersweet

The juxtaposition between the fantastic and the sublime creates a subtly erratic sting. The tingle and the rush of pleasure-blood to the head and release of seratonin in the brain, combined with the guilt and the gore of the grotesque underbelly of darkness is quite uncanny all at once. Forget the side-effects, the judgements, and the preconceptions; Just feel it. Isn't it satisfying to feel so good yet so bad at once? And to what extent is "bad" a "good" thing? So THIS is what is defined as "bittersweet"! The rarity and obscenity of it all is almost too distant to grasp, yet it's all too easy to consume the daunted fruit from the tree of sin. Perhaps life never did come short of what we expected.

Final Draft

She knew many things about him. She knew that if he stood in the cold for longer than five minutes, his nose would become cold. She could never kiss him when it was this way, and instead they would lay in his bed laughing about it for several minutes until it became warm again and the time passed. This is how she knew it would be a good day- when the snow would swirl serendipitously through the cold air outside his dorm room window, catching the glass on the lens of his camera, and the wind would crash violently against their faces when he’d walk her back.

The truth was, she went away for a year and came back. She no longer stood tall and sure as she used to, but somehow her confidence was evident in the way she moved and spoke. Yes, her hair was longer and her face had aged with some sort of experience, but she still had that innocent glow her friends would always tell her they looked for. Sometimes, people would even mistake her for younger than she actually was.

And that is how they met.

“So, how is your freshman year going?”
“I’m not a freshman.”
“Oh… I’m sorry. So you’re a new lower? I was a new lower too…last year.”
“Actually, I’m a senior. A four year senior. I was in Spain last year.”

Later, towards the end of their brief relation, he’d tell her he always knew she was older, and that he just wanted to make her laugh, or make her feel vulnerable for just one minute. He never thought she’d fall for him the way she did.

Of course, she did not know what she had gotten herself into.

They were both the same, but not when they were together. They spoke with the same antics, and held the same interests. Yet together, they were only interested in each other. They lost all sense of what was real and true to them, and they both fell into a trap so deep and so passionate that they were unable to escape. She didn’t know him before this, and he didn’t know her, but they both held a certain passionate curiosity for one another.

She fell in love with his movies.
He fell in love with her skin.
She fell in love with his cold nose.
He fell in love with her intensity.
She fell in love with his smell.
He fell in love with her compassion.

And so there they were, lying vehemently and naked on his bed. She curled up next to him and felt her cold, soft skin press up against his warm body. He would reach his arm around her, caressing her stomach until she’d fall asleep. She would place her hand, strategically on his heart, feeling it beat until she could no longer think. At times, they would both wake up and just lie, feeling the warmth and strength and softness of bodies, clashing in tranquility and unison.

But he was so distant at times. And she was so pushy, more often than none. She could never pry it out of him, and he could never make her stop. And somehow, they both knew something was terribly off. They could feel the silence clawing at the empty space between them, a lapse in time that drove them further and further apart.

“Please, tell me you’re alright”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. You’re just…different”
“I’ve just been overworked lately. Are you okay? You seem really worried.”
“Of course I’m worried! I haven’t seen you in weeks, and you’ve barely spoken to me since we’ve gotten back! How can I not worry?”

The look on his face would change after they had this conversation. He would no longer look at her with that same desirable affection he once had, and she would no longer recognize that same spark every time she looked at him.

And when it ended, she would watch for the snow. She would daydream in class and forget all the sadness. She would just look, and wonder if he saw it too. It would swirl again, serendipitously outside, and she imagined a fleck so miniscule hitting the lens of his same, fine camera, as the brusque wind beat against that cold, sad nose of his.

Clockwork

Monotonous. The same songs shuffle repeatedly on my iPod and the light seems to flicker every so often, reminding me to stop staring into open space. I can't focus correctly, and I can't tell if what I'm seeing is real. When the wind blows, it hits my skin in an odd fickle way. I can feel it, but is it real? All I can feel is a cold emptiness within my forehead that reminds me: I'm stuck in a haze, and I can't dig myself out of it. The conversations I have are a mix of dreams and reality, and I can't tell where I've been or who I've seen. What have I become? Dig me out, please.

conversations with a best friend

Denny's. 12:00 am:

Zach: "So, I talked to him yesterday. Guess which song we finally decided to retire?"

Me: "No idea. You tell me."

Zach: "Summer's Almost Here. He thought it seemed a little inappropriate to sing."

Me: "Wow, that's mad harsh. But it was such a good song!"

Zach: "Yeah, I know. All his lyrics suck now that he's whipped by that other chick. You guys should go at it again. "

Me: "Are you asking me to come back into his life and fuck it up?"

Zach: "That's exactly what I'm asking. Our band need you."