A Writer's Antics

flying, defying gravity, 

some things were never meant to be but here i am

thriving, defying destiny, 

forcing the fates to sing off key to make room for me. 

i was built to fall apart right from the start 

but fuck “written in the stars”

i am a piece that can’t be found in anyone else’s puzzle box

but here i am. 

***trigger warning: mention of suicide***

i haven’t been active on this blog (or like, any) for a long time, but today i have a story to share and didn’t really know a better place to go. 

today is my best friend’s birthday. she should be 19. she took her life almost a year ago. 

i was writing a poem for her that was supposed to be a birthday present for her last year, but it wasn’t finished in time and then things started getting really bad with her. i had forgotten about it and i never gave it to her. it was a poem meant to celebrate how far she had come in her battle against mental illness and how proud of her i was. i regret that i never finished it in time. i regret that she never read it. i don’t think it would’ve changed anything if she had, but at least she would’ve seen it. 

i’m so far from the world.

up here, my only friend is the sky, 

the moon. 

we talk and i tell her my troubles. 

what plagues me down on earth 

in the midst of it all. 

we talk and i tell her of sadness and of anger

of dangerous places and hidden tears.

it must be pleasant, to be the moon

i say

to see all those things

all those lives

the comedies and dramas and love stories

reaching up to her like beacons

must be pleasant, 

i say

to be above the names and places

above the details that the devil likes to hide behind

to watch everything even though she can’t see it. 

do you see us like we see the stars, 

i ask, 

beautiful but simple, 

even though we are complex? 

do you read us 

like we read the constellations on clear nights, 

at peace and full of wonder? 

must be nice, to be the moon

i’m wonderfully alone

wonderfully all-by-myself. 

i learned the other day 

that there’s a name for the smell of the earth after rain 

that a person looked at something inexplicable 

and decided it deserved a name

now it’s explicable. 

now people can identify it. 

a name, and now we can talk about it

share our experiences.

bring it to life. 

so the smell of rain-wetter earth has a name.

i remember how it was like a dream 

how our dresses’ fabric tangled and bled into one another

how our colours seeped into the clouds and painted the setting sun’s sky

how we sang like god could hear us

like any god could hear us

i remember waking

and forgetting in that special way 

in the morning when whatever paradise you slept through slips away

only leaving enough of itself for you to remember it was ever there

i remember your smile and your kisses, 

i remember the stars you traced with soft fingertips

and the way your laughter rang up above the sky

and how you got lost in my eyes 

when i told you the insanity inside my mind, 

and how our heads touched

 when we gazed at the galaxies we couldn’t leave alone

i remember your arms and the way they felt around me

how cold they were and how you told me you were stealing away my warmth 

and how i said that i would give you my beating heart 

i fall in love with the little kinds of life 

the kinds that say someone was here before me

or the kinds that say someone will be here after i am gone 

i fall in love with initials scratched into a tree’s bark, 

with hearts locked on lonesome bridges, 

with art sprayed on the sides of passing trains

i fall in love

 with the way it feels to rest my head on my best friend’s shoulder

and with the smile on her lips

i fall in love with sleeping with a fuzzy blanket 

and with the soft memory of a gentle dream

i fall in love with children’s artwork given to me proudly

and with yummy-smelling candles when they’re lit

everyday, i fall in love 

with every little thing,

all those tiny, immeasurable things, 

all life’s little remnants

i wrote so honestly 

of a time i’d never had

spoke so softly

of a memory that was never mine

reminisced with you so eagerly you almost fell into belief

and here we are

looking at photorealistic drawings

and listening to love songs in a language nearly real

here we are

and here i am

and we’re so close we almost touch and 

feel the warmth under each other’s skin

so close we almost taste each other’s breaths

and almost match each other’s heartbeats

and almost see each other as what i made us out to be 

the truth of gravity was forced upon my shoulders 

it was a signature on my back,

a contract i was forced to agree to

a rule thrust upon me 

a burning chain around my wings 

and now i’m stuck here on the ground 

left only to create a faux sky around me

to imagine what the colours of a sunset feel like 

i’m amazed by you

every day you wake--

and your heart is broken,

and your knuckles are bleeding,

and your hopes are wrapped around your neck--

but you persist, 

untangle, 

stand in front of a mirror...

and your eyes are lit with undeniable fire, 

but you manage to deny it. 

somehow, sometime, someone convinced you 

that you cried your flames away

and somewhere along the way, you believed them. 

so you can’t see the wildfire raging in your irises, 

or the way the flames lap like waves inside your pupils. 

you can’t see how one glance in my direction blinds me, 

how you can blind all of us

as you wander ‘round your world. 

you don’t know the stars that make up so many chances

or the suns that inspire anyone who dares to look so close

or even the gentle candlelight that guides with warm, soft tendrils. 

somehow you don’t see all those kinds of fireworks 

that flash and shine around you

and i’m amazed by you... 

you are the way that autumn feels:

an in-between that satisfies my need for both, 

both hot and cold,

both high and low

both crazy and both sane

both eager anticipation and the wary waiting

for what winter is to come. 

the way that autumn feels: 

brisk air against my cheek, 

and sweet cider’s warmth spreading through my soul;

wrapped in scarves’ and sweaters’ softness, 

and gentle snow so soon to disappear all tangled in my hair. 

autumn: 

a season defined by its simple passing nature, 

by its leading, guiding hand into winter’s grasp,

by its happy summer’s remnants falling,

and watch as the words pour from me

an hourglass

finite in my stories, 

limited in the words that pour from one globe to the next, 

from my teeming mind to the teeming world, 

from their home into a lost and wild earth

irrelevant in my talents: 

my words cannot have impact

nor can my thoughts achieve power

it doesn’t matter if you, 

oh gentle reader, oh sorry, wanting mind, 

yesterday i woke with wings of glass and a heart too heavy to carry with me so i flew without it and i found you

the rest of them were just ideas which seems weird, now, to think about: all those ideas i planned out and imagined are nothing now. even you, i suppose, were just an idea too but you felt real

first, it was summer and laughing and swimming and everything that comes with the season, and it was electricity in a touch and unfamiliar greeting and realization and music... oh the music... and then it became as nothing as the memory of the leaves in the fall

fall was great it was remnants, mostly it was ghosts haunted palaces in Amsterdam that we explored together, it was medals clanging, taste of victory, it was home again and then it was over over like the competition was, like the adrenaline was, like the last bit of warmth was as winter came

you were winter you were the warmth cold people seek out you were toques and hoodies and solace, finally the cocoa and fireplace and the smile that warmed me from the inside out you were the winter: cold at first but beautiful as time went on crisp and astounding winter always was my favourite

I exist in a world of scrap metal roses and recyclable hearts A world of faux beauty, false hope, manufactured in a junkyard, A world of used love and life tossed away to give again to someone new... A world of mechanical motions and movements, Feelings wrapped up in a dirty ribbon and passed on as gifts.

I exist in a world of half mouth smiles, half mouth kisses, half mouth laughter. A world in which we sleep with one eye open and dream with half a mind, A world in which we taste with half a tongue and only love with half our hearts, A world in which we use one leg to walk, one hand to draw, one eye to truly see Each other's other halves.

I exist: Faux fraud false used tossed away wrapped up half dead but half alive sleeping smiling seeing drawing dreaming just about you I exist: waiting wanting wishing hoping aching for my life to come

I exist in a world where you and I have ceased to fit like how we used to fit together, A world in which I need you wholly and you're only part here, A world in which I can only have you to a certain extent, A world that makes me want to drop the half curve and kiss you with my whole mouth But can't

I exist in a world needing crutches that don't exist, Needing glasses that don't have lenses, Needing a heart that hasn't been regifted, Needing you,