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.

Comatose.

If this is all we have, I will take it to sleep,

fluttering eyelids on a dimly lit screen. And soon,
soon we'll both fall asleep.


Your lips, my hand,
a half-awake dream.

Tipsy on love.

I feel myself sobering up.






It frightens me.

I am convinced

there is no fire
there is no ice
no hard fall's bruise
no slick blade's slice
no heat of sun
no guilt from vice

that burns like you do
in my mind.

Renewal.

I don't know all that much about God, but I like to think he lives behind the peak of the mountain outside my window, where the feathery rainclouds cast shadows on the rock, and I can't really tell where the sky meets the earth.

I am suspended in mid-air, the weathered walls of my room dangling on a thread, a thread stretched so thin I never really know when it's going to break. Or if it will at all.

When it rains here, this rapidly moving city sits still for a little while. The tiny cars below move a little slower, the voices outside are quieter. The air is thick with some sort of silent contemplation.
Hungover, listless people stretch out of bed and toss out empty bottles in time for the Sabbath, repenting a week's worth of sin.

Cleansing, washing, purging.
We wipe the rust from our wheels, the sleep from our eyes, the dust from our books.

Here, there is no amount of decadence the rain can't rinse away.

Waiting like the dawn

There's really no need to speak in riddles. But that's all anything feels like these days.
Penciled-in plans constructed on brittle foundations.

I feel you in my sleep, corporeal, palpable. Hair like the silk dress I left at home.
I awaken as brutally as I fall asleep.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forgetful.
Only time will really tell.
For now, there are strokes to glue a crumbling wall. Hundreds of strokes for hundreds of characters, hundreds of miles, hundreds of days.

Then perhaps in hundreds of days, we'll be able exchange uncertainty for beauty, pain for complacency, tumult for peace. And single-digit hours won't drive us to madness, delusions of our melting skin reaching tendrils into each other's subconscious.



But right now, I'd give a finger for your hand on my cheek
to dry the saline on this sunburnt visage,

bright sun on a moonlight face.