In The Palace Of My Mind

In the palace of my mind

There is a chandelier.

Crafted from the shards of every shattered promise I have ever made.

(I always return to the scene of the atrocity to collect the peices left behind)

It is the most manficant thing you have ever seen.

Made up of every delicate dream and desire that was once whole.

Brilliant even if only a compilation of fractions of former glory.

It breaks the light to into a billion beams that illuminate glimmers of could have beens everywhere.

My house is glowing with the dancing rays that twist their limbs to perform every one of my mistakes over and over and over.

Moving breathtakingly across the wall, the roof, the floor, my skin like blood spatter. Warm. Spinning.

It is a mesmerizing thing to watch the possibilities play out in a trillion dazzling missed chances.

And in this way luminescence turns my home haunted house.

And I let it.

Become ghost with it.

Both the haunter

And the the haunted.

Bathed in light.

Blinded by glares the past.

So I slit your soul open and symphonies pour out the wound

Puddles of harmonies accumulate

Your tears falling in metronomic dissonance

The sound echos through every hollow chamber of my heart

Shattering the stones walls

Back arching with the crescendo

Drowning out any terrifying thoughts that would interrupt this concluding rhythm

But now it slows

The melodies seeping into the floorboards

Slicking the marble tiles

Someone will slip on these dead treble clefs

Whoever is unfortunate enough to happen upon the aftermath of this grand finale

But for now, there is you,

Bleeding out overtures next to me

Interludes of betrayal

You have found yourself choking on 'why'

And I hold you

There,

There,

My love,

My little

Lilting

Requiem.

Some pieces are better

Without

Lyrics.

Hush,

Darling,

And

Just listen

To

Your

Music.

Your breath a conductor slowing its orchestra

The distance between notes swells and they are quiet when they come

Though perhaps they are not

Perhaps it is just our hearing that is slipping

Into that place that songs go when they are over

I wonder

If we will survive as ghosts haunting the audience long after the performance

Until they cannot help but resurrect the tune on their lips

But the last chords of you drip onto my skin

I hear and feel them all at once

An inseparable duet between the senses

As all timeless pieces are

And then

A whole note

Warm and beautiful

So at last the music fades

And I with it

And we rest

and isint every holy place built on sin

birthed from the need to repent

glory be to the one

more merciful than i

perhaps i may at last be redeemed

in every way i have denied myself

~ please, grant me forgiveness, for all the things i have forgotten how to love

It has now been 13 months 19 days  9 hours 4 minutes and 3 seconds

Since I last held you

And 7 seconds

9 seconds

11 seconds

If I had known 

I wonder if I would have held you longer

I wonder if I would have been able to let you go

We were going to be stars

Tearing through the night sky 

Diamonds of light skating across eyelines

Dancing with ribbons of moonshine

Until our feet and souls ached 

But it would not matter because

We were going to be stars

We were going to slip

Into the depths of the galaxy

You

And

I

Let them make wishes on the diluted thought of us 

Trillions of miles too far to be touched

Or caught 

Or stopped 

We were going to be stars

Wrap ourselves around each other until we were our own constellation 

Let them make of us what they will

Stars do not care what they are named

We were going to be stars

And now that vision is a million miles away and so are you 

I stay up most nights fiddling with slips of moonlight that filter in through my open curtains

Sometimes in the quiet of the dark, I dance with the thought of you barefoot across my bedroom floor while the rest of the house slumbers

Afterall, stars do not sleep

I wonder if you feel the song echo through the chambers of your heart

Palms pressed against porch doors 

And birthday gifts sent in the mail

And impromptu deliveries of still warm baked goods

Made with the overflowing cups of time we try and make use of before they trickle through our fingers and down the drain 

Your smile is as radiant as ever 

And I find it in me to make wishes on the starlight glints that flicker when your eyes are caught in a beam of the sun or screen

You are

A star

I remind myself I am just lucky to still be alive 

But I miss you 

I grow more fearful of myself than the world unravelling around me 

As I become more sure I will come undone completely before it does

It becomes a race

Who will spiral away first

But time too wants to play

Suddenly a day passes in the blink of an eye 

Yet every second is eternity

The disorientating nature of a world turning so fast we often forgetting it is turning at all 

I close my eyes and try deep breathes to fend off the motion sickness

I sleep the day away and wake at sunset to a sky dripping mango sorbet orange

The summer heat never kisses my skin 

I forget the last time I went outside

I begin to memorize the constellations of my bedroom ceiling 

I rediscover the depths of myself and relearn to fear drowning amongst my sea of doubt

The TV drones in the background at 3 am

Talking about the unity overcoming us all wrong

It is not from something befalling us but rather by the thing we already had.

The vulnerability writhing in our veins.

We are all terrified

Of unbecoming 

More friendly smiles offered in the street lighting up eyes

All of us a little more willing to accept them

As though to say

I know you are scared

I am scared too 

But I am with you 

Sometimes it is love

But

Sometimes it is convenience

It is habit

It is default

It is staying for the kids

For the cat

It is 'the right thing to do'

It is a co-owned apartment and too much hassle to move out

It is the fact that your parents really like this one

Sometimes it is love

But

Sometimes it is duty

It is excuse

It is staying because you don't know how to leave

It is the infatuation with stability

With permanency

Sometimes it is love

But sometimes

It is friendship

Or lust

Or pity

Or forgetting who you are without them

But remembering is a vicious process

Sometimes it is love

But

Sometimes it is

I can fix him this time

He'll change this time

He promised he wouldnt

Do it

Again

Sometimes it is love

Sometimes it is

She promised

She promised

She promised

I

Promised

Sometimes it is love

But

Sometimes it is promises

It is living off nostalgia

It is chasing memories

It is trying to prove this is not like the last time

It is trying to make it work

It is damage control

It is doing everything possible not to go back on your word

But we are not the same people we were when we made those vows

Do they even count now?

I think they do

I think I want them to

I think I dont

It is trying to hold on to the person you were when you said yes

Sometimes it is love

Sometimes it is the the silence between us

That has never left me to brave the night alone

I am scared

Of what the quiet might become when it is wholly my own again

It has been so long

Since anything has really belonged to me

Sometimes it is love

But

Sometimes it is fear

Alot of the time it is fear

Sometimes it is love

Sometimes it is an apology

Sometimes it is the only way we know how to say I forgive you

Or

I am sorry

Sometimes it is love

Sometimes it is a mistake

But what good is acknowledging something you can't fix

What is The point

Of stating the obvious?

Sometimes it is love

But

Sometimes it is 2 children who let themselves believe they understood everything

So that they did not have to grapple with what they did not

Sometimes it is love

But

Sometimes it is pretending it is

So that you do not have to face

That it

Is

Not.

~ the things we call love when there is nothing left

“I often think falling in love is like being stabbed, for more than one reason. See, it is forced upon us without much choice. Plunged into the depths of our soul and we call the pain a blessing because at least something has reached us. Has touched us. At least we feel something. I often think falling in love is like being stabbed, for more than one reason. It is fast and violent, too quick for you to realize what is happening until you stagger back and realize what is really going on. You stare at the hilt jutting out of you, mesmerized, terrified. Because it hurts when it happens, but we are more scared of the pain that will come with the extraction of this thing killing us. We call the removal Heartbreak when really our heart was fractured as soon as we were hit, yet we only start to feel it when the blade that was keeping us together, filling the wound is taken back. And we choose the torture that is love every time Because we know we can either live with this ache or bleed out alone.”

— The Universe’s Sense of Humor