#sunrset

[[ A lover's Lost Heart ]]

In an oppressive stillness before I met her, the silence pressed down like a weight and I felt the sharp sting of something stolen from me — a part of my soul torn away and a fire swallowed by the sea while the flames dance helplessly against the dark waters drowning in the same depths that consumed the sanctuary within me; the one that was meant to flourish through love and longing. I had been torn from the chance to be someone who could love with reckless abandon or be unburdened by the paralyzing fear of being left hollow and forgotten. My lost soul bled itself dry draining itself just to feel seen, while my heart poured itself empty until it echoed with nothing but bare aching reverberations. My own voice that was once meant to be full and certain, grew faint and distant, unable to find its way back to me. Still, in the wake of that loss I watered the parts of me that ached to love with every breath and every fractured piece despite the ashes of the burnt bodies by the sea, until a softer heart emerged — one tender enough to cradle the world’s sorrows.

I became a lover.

I was looking for familiar comfort by listening to the echoes of the music we always drowned ourselves in, suffocating myself beneath melodies that once stitched us together. Each note a ghost and each chord a haunting that spiraled through memories like wind through hollow bones falling back into that place where our souls first intertwined — Behind the door within the cradle of those four walls. The walls that held us like hands around a throat, that swallowed our screams and absorbed our breathless quaking cries of release. Walls that memorized our names better than we did ourselves until every sound melted into a soft unbearable hum where somewhere in that bright echoing silence, she unearthed a fierce long-buried part of who I was — a raw, untamed fragment clawing its way back to life.

A lover.

As I wandered through days like a ghost hoping to forget her in the cyclical exchange of sun and moon, I find my own reflection betraying me. Eyes glazed and barren, reflecting a sadness so deep like shards of glass splintered across a road, glimmering but broken, invisible to the world rushing by while I stand still bleeding, refusing to feel the impact and admit that something in me was gone. That someone in me has died once more.

The renewed death of that lover.

Numb, yet everything vibrates, my insides quake like walls about to shatter while the urge to scream claws its way up my throat. But some days, I am able glue the shattered pieces trying to remember who I was and that I am still here. Still breathing. Still aching.

Still somehow a lover.

Other days the ache is a storm. Like my heart being torn apart thread by thread. The mention of her name tastes like venom and honey, a poison that burns and a balm that stings like a perfect morning stained with the ink of night. I become the monster she made me believe I was, a dark shadow carrying a black hole of mistrust and insecurities, forgetting that beneath all that hurt, she became the voice reminding me again and again that I was someone else. A self I had forcibly stitched together and a mask I had learned to wear.

I was no longer her lover.

Then in a circle of people who understood my pain and obsessions, another's shadow beside me breathed a quiet promise like the steady glow of a distant light cutting through the darkest fog. It wasn't her voice, not the one that felt like the dance of blues and purples swirling together in a cascade of light and shimmering through the darkest of my struggles — It was a color I thought I had forsaken. A fresh hue of green rising from the depths of a place as beautiful and effortless as the stillness of a tideless beach. It was a color so soothing and impossibly calming like a breath of air I’d forgotten existed. It was a breath lost beneath the layers of grays that had consumed me through time. Its emerald fingers wove around mine holding tight, strong but trembling, with eyes that pierced through the mask I wore. Eyes that saw the silhouette of someone relentlessly forced to be concealed. Eyes that unearthed the heart of the torn child buried beneath the ruins.

A fleeting glimpse of the shrouded lover.

I will speak of how her colors melded into shades of blue and purple no more. I won’t revisit the dark room with the flickering glow of a blue screen and pale green walls where the remnants of two shattered souls lingered, breaking further in their shared destruction. I won’t trace the lines of the cold, crystalline powder I inhaled to silence the specters of all the hands that touched her. The voices drilled in my ears of her moans with another’s sweat mixed with hers. The thoughts that echo through me like a haunting refrain because I couldn't bear to remember how I bled for her. How I craved her more than the lifeblood that coursed through my veins while drowning in her just to feel seen.

To feel like a lover one more time.

Still, the thought claws at me — To reach out even in spirit and let the song that once tethered us drift through the air, let our song remind her of the way her eyes lit up at dusk;

So I told her, Not be afraid, That I'd think of her at that time of day, So Id think about when her eyes light up, I think about when her eyes light up. The world, The whole wide world, That the world don’t matter when we’re looking at each other.

That incessant, unwavering thought of sending a silent transmission that reveals how i wandered like Alice through a world where everything felt drenched in a fever dream as if love itself were a fleeting grin — there and not there. I hallucinated a love so vivid it felt like mine, a love that slipped through my fingers like sand, leaving only the echoing lullabies of Alice's ghost

The lullabies of a lover.

But no — I must move forward. I deserve to feel, I deserve to feel joy, I deserve to feel whole, I deserve to smile with no apologies or guilt, I deserve to be wanted without question, I deserve to be seen as more than a fleeting desire, I deserve to remember that my heart once beat without breaking. I deserve to be the person who tastes the harvest of that garden carried through years of havoc.

I deserve to be a lover anew.

I have offered myself and laid bare on a golden platter only to be cast aside. Denied, cheated, and overlooked. And for what? For who? Was the touch she felt on her skin as tender and consuming as mine? Did she call for God with the same desperation that once shattered her voice when she cried out for me? Did she scream their names with the same intensity and feral hunger that consumed her when I was the one to touch her and make her feel alive? So desperate for me to reach into the depths of her soul, my fingers becoming the bridge to places only love could touch, pressing against her with a tenderness that felt like fire and a touch that stirred passion deep within her very core. Did they erase who her eyes saw and what her body felt? How deeply etched I was in her heart through that time of her journey? The role I played in her story.

The role of a lover.

A little later, the fresh hue emerged once more — as hauntingly beautiful as a winter sunset spilling gold over a cold empty shore. A new soul with a warmth I didn’t believe I deserved. For too long I was called a “monster", my worth was twisted and broken by those words. But now, I'm reminded that love is still possible. That i can still be loved. Trusted. Respected. I can be enough. I can be better. That love carries the quiet assurance of being the moon to someone’s night, a love that brushes away the dust on my soul long lost in torment and despair buried beneath the weight of my obsessions. This left me gasping. Haunted by the fear of being seen, cutting through the darkness that once held me captive, unveiling a version of me I had long forgotten, whole and unafraid. I was seen just as I was.

A lover again.

I haven’t felt this kind of understanding in so long, a depth so pure that made me realize I didn’t need to offer anything in return. It still felt like I owed an apology for every flaw and every mistake that had shaped me. Apologize for my existence. For my pain. For my addiction. For my obsessions. For my trauma. For who i am. For my recovery. For being naive enough to believe in the power of love. For being me.

For being a lover.

Only then does she see the pieces she gave up time and time again, believing that those fleeting moments of illusion were somehow a form of love. Realizing that years ago she let go of someone she swore she’d never leave. Someone she painted a future with. Someone she promised a forever to. Someone she called the love of her existence. Someone that etched her name into my soul. Someone who left the fire unextinguished. Someone she said she loved. Someone who awakened a part of her that had died long before we ever met and reminded her of what she's always been.

That she too, is a lover.

And even then, she turns away choosing the easy path over the fight for love. But not me. I fight. I believe. I dream. I love, Enough to be called naive because I would cry and scream and claw at the emptiness for days at a time begging for her love. I’d hurl myself against the walls of her silence, so desperate to feel worthy of holding even a fragment of her soul in my heart. Just to hear her call me by all the names she once gave me. The name she whispered to a person in me she said she saw every day.

Her lover.

But still a shadow of her lingers, a haunting silhouette against those pale green walls. A reminder of the one I could not save. The one I called the love of my life and chose the easy way out while I stayed to fight the fires we set alone. While I remained, still burning, bleeding, dreaming and believing.

Always a lover.

It’s unfair of the one who drove me to the brink of shutting down, waging a silent war against my own heart. Unfair of her. Unfair of the world. Unfair of me. Unfair to the blank canvas I started filling with all shades of green. Unfair to the beauty of a land so vast I could get lost and still be found. Unfair to the hopeful songs I dared to create again, notes rising like new leaves after a storm. Unfair to the hours of laughter woven through days of struggle. Unfair to that forest still recovering from fires that raged for years. The ash of old obsessions clinging to its roots. Unfair to the person who made the mistake of loving someone as untamed as I am. Unfair to someone who unravels my defenses, making me surrender the inner battle against shutting down and opening me up slowly like a flower aching for the first warmth of spring. Unfair to the heart that finally sees me again for who I am now.

A broken lover.

My heart pressed its eye to the peephole, seeing a glimmer of light behind the door. It felt like the edge of a dream, a sliver between what was real and what I thought I could never touch again, and through that narrow view I saw a world steeped in greens so hauntingly vivid, that bled into the air like the first breath of spring, and vines twining through mist while carrying the scent of rain-soaked earth. Carefully, slowly, I opened that door. My world tilted. Time unraveled like a spool of silk as a new unfamiliar familiar spirit stepped through, drifting, like a haunting made flesh with a presence laced with the scent of things I’d forgotten how to feel. Eyes dark but light. Liquid pools shimmered with the promise of something soft and kind. Something easy and unburdened. Something seamless like the warmth of a morning light after years of sleepless nights. Like a lullaby of rain against a window long closed.

The ballad of a lost absent lover.

Hands moving as if crafted from the breath of everything I had lost in the flames that scorched me over the years. From all the selves I became and buried, that were lost in the desperate effort of fitting into her world until I couldn’t find the traces of who I once was. I tasted the warmth of a touch that didn’t hurt and the tender ache of being held without shattering. My face was held like the last ember of a dying star, a light I thought had gone out. As they wiped away the tears of blood you carved into me so countless they could fill an ocean of sorrow, it felt like wiping off the ash from a forest trying to grow back, staying present through the night long enough for me to unravel while their imprint enveloped me like a blanket of gentle and serene velvet, cradling me in a soothing embrace and drawing me back to a place where love wasn’t a threat. It was a glimmer of what home could feel like — a touch so brief it almost vanished while their hands traced my skin like reading a forgotten prayer, with each touch a plea for me to remember that I am still here, still chosen, still worth holding. I wondered why it wasn’t you who gave me that despite the endless promises wrapped in your words while your actions betrayed me with disrespect and lies. Yet, all I could utter — all I wanted to ask the stranger standing before me that is now unexpectedly familiar was Where have you been? But the words are caught in my throat, tangled in the vines of all the years I spent shutting out the world, bound by the pain we inflicted upon each other and the agony that we could never forget or overlook. And in that space, where everything blurred like a fever dream, where time drifted like smoke— not the haze of escape, but the raw and unfiltered smoke that curls through the air, settling in the stillness and reminding me that what I've endured and lost still lingers beneath the surface. So green, convincing me to believe once again in the wild growth that pushes through the cracks and the soft warmth of hands that wouldn't let go. The gentle reverberation that reminded me what it was to be seen, to be wanted, and to be someone who was never too much to hold. To fully be myself, with all my messy, broken, tumultuous parts, and still feel safe.

To remember how to be a lover once more.

I will forever thank the universe for binding our souls and weaving them together through every storm, every wildfire, as if fate itself was hellbent on keeping us tethered. It was as though the cosmos conspired to pull us back to each other even as the world around us crumbled and the ground beneath us split open. We fought against the odds, against time itself, like warriors raging through the battlefield of circumstance using our love as a sword and shield. But somewhere along the way, we turned our weapons on each other, wielding words like knives and hurling silence like stones, until we tore each other apart with the very hands that once held so intimately. And now there’s no going back, nothing left but the ruins of a war we both lost with no victor, only the ashes of what we swore we’d never let go. I will carry with a relentless throbbing pride the love I grew for her — a love that swelled over 2,555 days with each passing second carving her name into my veins like a blade dipped in the ink of my blood. Even when my heart’s last beat surrenders, she will remain etched into every scar and every breath that rattles through me. After all, she was the first reminder, a vibrant reminder, of a person that was so far away I’d forgotten still existed.

The remains of a young lover.

But she walked away from the world I laid at her feet, a world that I stripped bare and wrapped in the ribbons of my own fragility, a world I placed in her palms with the trembling hope that she’d hold it and not crush it. She walked away with her heart unburdened, her conscience still as water, while I remained buried beneath the wreckage of every promise she whispered and never meant. She fed me scraps that tasted like the bitter aftertaste of lies that I'd swallow just to feel close to her. Scraps that meant so little because I had already given her my entire world and handed it over with my chest cracked open and my soul stripped raw just to feel the weight of her love pressing against me.

To be her eternal lover.

You often looked at me and chose to see only the ruined broken glass, the smoldering ash behind all the layers you gently peeled back, each tear unraveling like the scent of onions simmering in the kitchen on a quiet Sunday afternoon as I poured my love into every meal and every moment hoping to nourish something deeper between us while preserving the epic, fever-drenched moments we once wove like a dream. Moments that shimmered like constellations and felt too vast, too aching, too real to ever belong to us.

Too surreal to keep us lovers.

I would always hum softly in your ear during our midnight car rides the melody mingling with the quiet hum of the tires against the road;

Ill keep holding on to you, See no use perfecting love with strangers, If only you, If only now.

But now seems like forever, and I've been waiting for a ghost that haunts me not knowing if they will ever come back. I cannot keep waiting for a maybe to be wanted. I can’t keep waiting for you to pluck me off the shelf, clinging to the hope that one day your hands will remember to hold me. I need to pour my love into everything that reaches back — into the untouched places within me, into the shades of green that whisper life into my weary ears and the wild embrace of nature that breathes air into lungs that I forgot how to inhale deeply. Like velvet grass beneath a sunset that spills gold like a benediction, reminding me that I was always meant to feel this soft, this free. I can't love a ghost forever so with a heart fractured and heavy, I have to turn away, my eyes drawn to the living, releasing the dream that felt too ethereal and too achingly perfect to be anything but a mirage.

I am no longer your lover.

I am a lover to the soft embrace of the early morning sky, to the whispering forest and the towering trees. To the golden sun and the chorus of birds greeting the day. I am a lover to the world that smiles back, delicately cradling my heart in its tender care.

I am a lover.

I choose to be a lover to the bittersweet release of the past, A lover to the endless possibilities of an unknown future, A lover to the reborn pip that was buried in fear and chaos. From that point on, I decided that.

Cape Cod 2018 26