Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Graceless Hearts

She had always thought happiness was something you acquired through other people.

That it was through friends and family that one found joy.  So when her life began to empty and her list of contacts grew short, she felt the weight of loneliness press against her chest. She found herself wondering if she could ever be happy if she had no one, if no one wanted her. She feared the silence, the darkness, the reminder of the emptiness.

She had always thought love was a dance that required two people. That love was holding hands and holding hearts. She had always thought love was only possible with the help of someone else, with the help of him. So when the distance between them grew stale, when the spaces between conversations became canyons, she feared the worst. He was her everything. How could she find love when he'd left with her heart?

She had always suspected heart break to ruin her. But it felt more like a fracture of her very being. It didn't ruin her, but untreated, it tore at her insides until she was nothing but an empty shell. Until muscle pulled from bone and she was left weak and dying.

She had always thought people were made of up of halves. That you lived life searching for your "other". The one to complete you, to make you whole. Day after day, she mourned the loss of her chance, yearned for someone to make her whole. So she sat, alone, waiting for his return, begging him to come back to return her heart, to give her life again.

Days turned into weeks, weeks to months.

The world cares not for a single heart break. It keeps on spinning as it always has and always will. The days always end, the nights always cool, madly on it goes.

His silence pressed against her chest and made it hard to breathe. But his words were even worse. They were always filled with empty promises of a better tomorrow. But it always stayed the same, like waves; always coming and always going again.

She was not expecting it to happen, but something moments of clarity sneak up out of the darkness. The moment she realized it, the moment the world brightened. The moment she felt the earth move with absolute certainty. The moment she realized she was wrong all along.


"I don't need him, I only need me."

And she laughed. She laughed and she pounded her feet against the ground and she spun herself around. Tears slid down her cheeks and sobs pulled from her chest but she could breathe again and she felt the distinct pounding of her heart; thump thump thumping to the pounding of her feet against the earth.

She had always thought happiness was something you acquired through other people. She had never thought of the happiness she could only find within herself.  The joy she'd find by looking at herself in the mirror and smiling because she knew she was something special. The strength she could feel when her head was held high.

She had always thought love was a dance that required two people. She had never tended to, never nurtured the love for herself. The confidence that could only come from knowing exactly who she was and exactly what she wanted and not being afraid anymore. Not afraid of the darkness, not afraid of the silence, not afraid of him and all the things he never said. Because heart break didn't ruin her. It tore apart her insides and it caused countless nights of breaking down, but never did she not rise at the beginning of a new day. Never did she lay herself down and refuse to get back up.

"I don't need him, I only need me."

And maybe he wasn't coming back. And maybe no one would take his place. But she'd been dragging the corpse of them along with her for miles and the burden was never any lighter from the day before. And she couldn't grow anymore with that weight on her chest, with his words like knives against her rib cage.

And maybe it'd be hard, maybe the journey forward would be no easier than the journey she'd already made. But she was dancing and she was crying and she was breathing again and she was real again and when it really came down to it, she couldn't ask for anything more than that.

"I don't need him, I only need me!"

Friday, March 9, 2012

Some Poetry

1
I want to see all your scars
I want to show you mine
I want to put my hand in yours
Even through hard times

I cannot promise you forever
I can barely promise you today
I know what I want
But what I want doesn't always stay

I have dreams about possibilities
But dreams can lead to lies
And "Never is a Promise"
And I don't want to lose these ties

I understand my weaknesses
I understand my strengths
I have all that I want to say
But prefer to keep you safe






2
I never said yes
I never said no
I never let my emotions
Endlessly flow

I kept all my secrets
I kept all my lies
Wishing you could still
Tie all my ties

I held you so close
But pushed you far away
Not wanting you to go
Never asking you to stay

My heart was in your hands
You never knew it's weight
So here is where we stand
Both resigned to our fate




3
A touch of lips
A brush of air
His fingers running through my hair

A fantasy
It's just for me
This yearning-Oh just let me be

Alone with him
My only friend
In hopes my broken heard will mend

A silly dream
My fantasy
A thought that will not let me be

I close my eyes
Hope not to rise
This reality has become my lie

His arms hold close
His fingers press
All of my fears he does undress

My fingers quake
My chest does ache
My sigh his words alone may take

Alone I dream
Of Wonderous things
Away from my own
Mediocrity

Monday, March 5, 2012

The Silence

The air was wet and heavy. The night cold and lonely. She waited again for a change but was met only with silence. The silence that had been following her for so long it felt natural. The silence that had become her constant companion. Not even the rain fell to keep her company. Not even the darkness cared of her woes.

It hadn't always been so haunting. It hadn't always been this empty.

Once Upon a Time, his words filled the void with color. The sounds he spoke strung together into symphonies that carried her through her days. Together they created duets that painted a masterpiece. Their whispers became her prayers.

Once Upon a Time, The Silence was only a shadow because Their Silence was a wonderland of possibility. Of mysteries and or maybes. Once Upon a Time, they meant something to each other.

But somewhere along the pathway, their strings began to snap and their songs turned sharp. Their duets became her solos until she gave up all together. Giving into The Silence as it came to her with open arms and a wicked grin, claws pulling her far away from a world of color.

And so she sits. Waiting for a change she knows will never come. Yearning for a song of Home, a place she's not sure even exists anymore. She sits and listens to The Silence breathe. The heavy thumping of her own heart beat her only comfort.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Lost

Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised in a summer haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days



The snow left the world feeling soft and soundless. The two of them stared at each other from across the table, cups of cooling coffee between them.The moment stretched on, both lost in the silence. Her eyes were grey today, he noticed. Grey like when she was lost. It was only by her eyes that he could read her; her words were laced with pleasing deceptions, trying her best to say what she wanted with out upsetting the precarious balances between people. But her eyes never lied. Their honesty was what first caught his attention all those years ago. The raw emotion that flickered through them when she looked at him. Green when she was angry, aquamarine when she cried. But grey when she was lost, when she was off in the world that only she could understand. The place where she locked up all those feelings she had. For reasons he still wasn't sure of.

"Do you ever wonder?" He whispered, her grey eyes flickered down to her coffee before up to meet his again.

"Ever wonder what?" Her voice was smokey from the cigarettes, from staying up all night again staring at the flickering cursor on her computer screen. From talking too much to herself. He shook his head at the memories of seeing her curled up in the arm chair, dark hair messy and pushed away from her face. The times she was most beautiful, most honest. Her crooked smile and silent laughter. The force of it made him turn his eyes away from the intensity in her own.

"Ever wonder what happened to forever. To the promises." He heard her hum and could imagine her cradling her coffee mug between her hands. Nails chipped but fingers delicate.

"I think it got buried in the snow of the never-ending winter. Lots of things get lost out in the snow." He glanced up at her to see her gaze trained on the window. The grey of the sky reflects in the greys of her eyes and he suddenly feels so far away from the summer time. When her eyes were bright blue and sparkled when she laughed.



The wind whipped through her hair and the skirt of her dress as her bare feet pounded against the grass. She glanced over her shoulder as she ran and he caught her breathless smile and felt his heart stop.


"You're never going to catch up if you keep running so slow, you know!" She called, her feet quickening their pace to run further away from him. He huffed out a laugh and sped up enough to gain some ground on her before wrapping his arms around her waist. She squawked as he lifted her off the ground, bare legs flailing and hands coming to rest over his own.

"If you drop me, I swear I will kill you!"

"I would never dream of dropping you. Come on, don't you trust me?" He looked up at her with a half smile, giving her waist a light squeeze. She looked down with an expression unreadable for a moment and he thought maybe he'd done something wrong. Until she gave him a small smile, a private smile only for him. The kind where her eyes soften and her fingers clenched around his own.

"Of course I do."



She'd never been a big fan of summer, much preferring the cool breeze of autumn to the sunshine and the crowds. Preferred the scarves and knits to the swimsuits and sun tans. She loved the feeling of curling up on the couch wrapped in a blanket, the smell of falling leaves and rain. But something about that summer, about the feeling of his hands in her own. Something about dreaming about fall with him had made the season so much more magical than any other. She wondered if it had been her. If she had been the one to take the spark out of him or not. He stared into his cold coffee like it held all the answers. To her or to life, she couldn't be sure, wasn't sure she wanted to be. He was as much a mystery to her and she was to him and for a while, it made things exciting. But by the end, it just made things tiring.

She leaned back against the cool brick wall and looked up into his eyes, strands of hair sticking to her sweat dampened neck. He brushed his thumb over her jaw and cradled her face in his hands.

"You're beautiful, you know that." She huffed a laugh and adverted her eyes fingers lightly gripping his wrists. He clicked his tongue and lifted her face so their eyes met again.

"I mean it. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it." She slid a hand into his hair, pulling him down close, lips not quite touching as they shared the same breath.

"How do I know for sure?" Her whisper ghosted across his lips. Her eyes bore up into his own, half smile giving off a bravado of confidence. But the cerulean blue of her eyes flickered in between worry and uncertainty. She needed to hear it more than he needed to say it and if it would help her understand, help her see what he saw, he figured it was probably worth it.

She whispered his name against his lips, her finger tips brushing over the insides of his arms and he shut his eyes against the intensity of her own, suddenly afraid his assurance wouldn't ever be enough to make her believe.



"I tried, you know." He said, finally looking up at her again. He noted the sag in her shoulders and the pallor of her skin. "I tried to make it real." She nodded slowly, training her eyes once again on the bleak snow fall over the sounds of the real world.

"I know you did. And trust me, I wanted to feel it, too. And it was...for the longest time it was real. But I can't do as much damage alone. We both know that." He wanted to tell her she was wrong and that she had been doing just as much damage when they were apart as she did when they were together. That at least when it was the two of them, he could hide from the reality in the fantasy of their forever. But deep down he knew she was right. In a lot of ways, she was too much to handle. Too unsure and too afraid and too defensive. She was rough edges and sharp words. She was too much coffee and not enough sleep. She was tough because she had to be, because that's how she kept herself safe. But it was so hard on everyone else. She just didn't know how to change it and he didn't either. He'd thought, at one point, that he could. That he could change things and fix things and make it okay again. But it hadn't done any good for either of them.

"Maybe someday..." She whispered, grey eyes glossing sadly like the frost bitten windows. "Someday maybe things will get figured out and maybe they'll be different. Maybe my strings will be all untangled. Or maybe they'll all be cut off. I don't know... I really don't." She blinked hard a few times and he was worried she'd start to cry. That maybe she'd never stop.

"But..." She choked out, sucking on her bottom lip in a way he couldn't help but go weak in the knees at, "But I'm not ready to say good bye to you." In an instant he saw it. Just a flicker, just a second of indigo around her pupils as she held his gaze. His lips pulled up in a tiny smile and he looked down at the swirls of his coffee. He didn't say it out loud, couldn't voice the hope he had. But the words flitted through his brain like a switch at been turn out.

Maybe I'm not ready to say it either.

It's the hole in my heart you fell through.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

One day there was a storm.





















And it was intense. And awesome.

Friday, February 3, 2012

So.

























One time, Christmas happened and I got a camera.