7/18/16, 4:30pm

You loved me like the monsoon loved the insignificant suburban town at mid afternoon in the heart of July. A sudden, steady intensity, a deliberate, blinding love, with thousands of droplets roaring the same simple promise of Forever. Thick with the heat of passion, dense with the sanctity of happy ever after. The world turns white, contained in a violent storm of Now. We are encapsulated in the fervor of Eternity, never wavering under the pillars of thundercloud strength.

I cannot see anything but this moment, you and I, our hearts beating in time to the brutal pitter patter of downpour. Time has stopped as we breathe to the rhythm of the growling grey skies, and of each other. I am suffocated by the humidity of your words, yet I grapple to breathe in more. I struggle to remember a life outside of this propitious, silver whirlwind. I don’t think I want to.

We could have only been evoked by a rain dance, the final resort of a man desperate for love. The universe has worked so hard for us to be, yet in an instant, we are gone—you, are gone. The trees have surrendered their wooden thrones, and the sidewalks guiltily reek of a damp, forgotten romance. Zeus watches, mouth agape, bewildered and inexplicably wounded. When the Sun finally reveals itself again, we dazzle in the specks of flint sparking in the concrete, begging to be remembered. The storm has passed, and nothing is the same.

Replies of Chloride

It makes me wonder

With every bitter word you say to me now

If the love I poured into your soul

Still burns on your tongue

With the pungent aftertaste 

Of defeat and loss and deliberate departure

And if

With every word I say back to you

Snide remarks made of useless blades

Dulled by the numbing pain of goodbye

The hairs still stand on the back of your neck

Like the first time I ever told you I loved you

Or if we’ve gotten rid of it all

and bleached each other out

stains of Love on our white satin solitude

Immune to the harshness of our voices

Raw with anger and the unspoken truth

That this wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

76 Framed

I look through the photographs of you and me

And my soul aches for that time

When I was yours and you were mine

But not for the reasons that you may think

I ache for a time where belief was alive

and Love rang through the air

a poignant blanket draped across the city

tucking our troubles away into a lullaby

warming our chilled hearts with the hum of forever

I ache for a time where all I could grieve

was the thought that we were not doing enough

with the magic that radiated in the spaces between our fingers

meandering through our bloodstreams

nestling its way gently between the tiny gaps of

I 

Love 

You

I ache for when I could see an entire lifetime in your eyes

and every crinkle and grayness was a sign

of strength and the pillars of our everlasting love

Stood tall with certainty and ambition

I ache for the nights where you would hold me

and the darkness would swallow us whole 

summersaulting with passion... and faith.. and trust

and the silences pulled us closer in a solemn hymn of eternity

I look through the photographs of you and me

and I fear that I will never be able to feel that deeply ever again

that I have grown numb to the mysteries of Love

and willingly turn a blind eye to all She has to offer

My soul aches for a time that is trapped in pictures

A time that cannot be replicated with lovers whose hearts are housed in the future

A depth that puts the endless secrets of the oceans to shame

A bountifulness that makes Eve wish she had not fall victim to that moment of fate

There have been fables

and there have been tales
told by our ancestors
and homeless men on the street

warning us not to fall

not to surrender

and feel it all

Because nothing will ever prepare you
for the self destruction

and the pity

and the pain that comes along

with knowing that something 

so overwhelmingly brilliant

can be yours

only to be felt once

and suddenly,
never at all.

2:30 AM Thoughts

Someday, when all your dreams have come true and you've gotten everything you've ever wanted out of this life, I hope you remember that there was one you left behind, deliberately abandoned in the back alleyways of your mind, like an unfinished sentence or a half-eaten slice of bread. I hope you dig deep within the sandpits of your soul and uncover the entire existence we made together, like opening up a box of distance memories filled with half-ripped, faded photographs. I hope you remember everything we thought we'd be and the life we so naively built together when we were eighteen and didn't know any better. I hope your eyes fill with the same tears I cried every night for months on end, and your lungs cave in from the weight of the regret you've been trying so hard not to feel every day since that crisp November morning when you so wrongly decided which dreams were worth turning into reality.

Where You'll Find Us

You will find us in strange places and tight spaces.

You will find us in between your couch cushions

and behind cartons of freshly bought milk.

You will find us under piles of paper on your messy desk

and the coin compartment of your first self-bought car.

You will find us in the back corner of your medicine cabinet

and beneath the box of winter sweaters in your bedroom closet.

Like gum wrappers that were never thrown out

and spare change that was too heavy for your pocket.

Like a half eaten sandwich re-wrapped for later

and an unfinished cup of earl grey tea.

Like a crumpled up sticky note with a helpful reminder

and an old grocery list for a big family dinner.

This is where you’ll find us.

This is what we’ve become.

The Next Time Around

Maybe it’ll be better the next time around.

Because we’ll have grown into the people were were destined to be—- it’ll be so deeply rooted in our souls that even the strongest wind won’t be able to shake it.

And we’ll have grown into our skin and known what it’s like to fit into it perfectly, all on our own, without having to feel like we’re missing a limb whenever we’re apart.

And we’ll have known what it’s like to breathe without our lungs intertwined in our chests and our legs in the sheets and for the first time we will breathe fresh air that is not polluted by toxic love.

And we’ll have seen ourselves in the mirror for who we really are, and stared at reflections that are only ours, not yours and mine or mine and yours.

We’ll be whole, and we’ll be ready, and we’ll be better.

Because we must find peace as two before we can find peace as one.

At least that’s what I’d like to believe about the next time around. 

We Still Have Time

We as humans have a funny little habit of telling ourselves and one another that we still have time. We still have time until we don't.  We still have time until the day we've been silently dreading for weeks on end finally wedges its way into the present. We still have time until we are in the very moment of departure. And then we freeze. Our minds go blank and our bodies go numb, as if the universe is refusing to let us comprehend the concept of one last goodbye. What do we say? What do we do? Are words enough? Is one last embrace enough? So we get sloppy, and we start babbling about things we've already talked about; dead end statements that can't possibly be added onto. Perhaps we do it to fill the awkward air between us as we desperately try to search for something meaningful to say—something that'll stick. Perhaps we do it as to not let the other person know how much the present moment is ripping us apart inside. We fight the urge to look each other in the eye because we know if we do we'd never want to look away. We ditch the thought of trying to memorize each other's features because that in and of itself indicates that we'll only ever exist in each other's minds from here on out—and that's just not right. We shut down. We become emotionless robots. We give careless one armed hugs as to not let the gravity of the situation drag us down with it—at least then we still have some bits of our deluded fantasies to hold onto, even when reality is forcefully tugging us in the opposite direction. We turn our backs to each other and call out standard farewells, none of which even mean anything, really. We turn our backs to the sound of each other's voices, the ones that have been the symphonies of our daily lives for so long, as they echoed down halls, filled up rooms, and seeped into the tender cracks of our hearts. We turn our backs to the only goodbye that will ever really stay with us, rejecting its importance in a useless act of protest. We turn our backs even though we are fully aware of the risk we are taking. This could be the last, and we're wasting it. We lock up our hearts with such ferociousness because we're too afraid of everything that's left to say—everything we still need to say. We convince ourselves that it's not the last time, because we know it can't be. We won't let it be. We convince ourselves that we still have time. Because we still have time, until we don't.