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Hard days and even harder nights.

Sometimes, they marvel, half in admiration, half in disbelief that I would do something like this. Sometimes, they try to understand. But there are some things you couldn't begin to understand. No. Not unless you've been through it.
Sometimes, they think I'm stupid. I know they think I'm stupid.


But everyone's stupid about some things, and if there's anything I don't mind so much being stupid about, it's for being in love. 
Not that unrequited stuff, nor the silly, ungrounded infatuations of the youth. Things like that don't last the storm, and this is a tempest. 


My god, is it a tempest.


But the thing about tempests is that once you've beaten past it, hands blistered from fighting the current with your oars, face wind-chapped, body drained from swimming for days, and you're crawling back onto shore crushed to a pulp but not defeated,

nothing else will ever seem quite so difficult anymore.

Clarity.

I don't know why I'm saying this now. I don't think there's much of a point to it, really. We used to understand each other so well without words, but now, now we no longer do. It has been a long while since we've understood each other, even with words. Whenever I do talk to you now, our conversation is wan, sullen, abrupt. We no longer reside on the same plane, but then again, we never did.


There's hardly a week that goes by that you don't appear in my thoughts somehow, somewhere. Sometimes it's the wonderful things I remember, sometimes it's how much you hurt me. You hurt me like nobody has ever hurt me, like nobody ever will again in my life.


He hasn't got what you had, your sheer, ingenius brilliance of mind. The same brilliance that made me fall in love with you, the same brilliance that you gave a bit of to me, the same brilliance that ultimately turned me away from you. The same brilliance that is now dulled, masked, tainted into some unrecognizable form by the life you choose to live, a life that I wish never to be immersed again. 


But he has eyes that see the truth, hands with a gentle touch, and a heart full of love. Unconditional love  that not only did you not have for me, but also exploited from me. His mind holds the rain without the clouds. In him, I find the solace, the peace, the beauty of safety, of security, that I never found in you. With him, I am never afraid to love. With you, I always was. 


I have missed the feeling of loving passionately with no reserve.


Call this a parting letter, if you will. It seems clear enough now that our lives will not intersect much anymore, and if they do, it will only be a sort of passing reverie, a brief acknowledgment of everything we loved in each other, everything we hated in each other, before we both turn and walk in the opposite direction, something we both knew would eventually happen. We knew this years and years ago, even right from the beginning. 


But no matter how much you've put me through, how many years of emotional pain and torment I endured for you, I will still always love you and wish all the best for you.

Vulnerable

 — I am.

Door cracked open with the key in the hole. I teeter, tip-toed on the edge.
I no longer sing behind stone walls where they can't hear me.
The mountains, they awaken to my morning songs.

Cliché — I am.
But all lovers are. It is mocked until it is known, until you know

that the seas and skies are not large enough.
They are never enough.


Transparent — I am.
A sleek and polished looking glass. No flowery prose nor leaden lines.


Windowpanes defogged, and my sleeve is damp.
I trace patterns into the glass.
They see me. They know.



Vulnerable, I am.
I am not afraid.