Our Love Was Untied ShoelacesStifled Laughter In Tear Stained Pillow CasesOur Love WasSummer RendezvousButterflyswarm

Our love was Untied shoelaces Stifled laughter in tear stained pillow cases Our love was Summer rendezvous Butterfly swarm in the hurricane Our love was Burning flame explosion With all the shrapnel Our love was Neck kisses Whispered words Our love was Teeth and Hearts Bared Our love was No secrets when the sun went down  And strange silence when it was up  Our love was Scorching Sudden

The Broken Boy Who Never Intended to Stay - Excerpt from the poem The Ways in Which I Have Been Loved

He smelt of coffee and cologne, and I did not mind at all.

All The Things I Never Told You

And I know it is hard to hear. But it is the truth we both see and choose to look away from. The truth is that we were artists looking for a new muse. Searching for inspiration. For someone to knock down the brick wall of writer’s block. We were two people looking to feel alive again, looking for someone to light the ashes of our mind on fire. 

How long did it last? A day? A week? A month? Of sweet nothings and soft caressing terms of endearment. Of pages of poems and colour covered canvases. Of seeing the world in a new light. Manufactured arguments for the sake of making up and making out. Now? I look for any excuse not to write of you. Look away from your messages. Your glances. The tenderness in your voice. 

Maybe it is the guilt that keeps us here. For we both have sinned. Maybe it is the grief. In lost time. In knowing someone and yet knowing nothing of them and even less of yourself. Perhaps it is selfishness. On your part, in wanting me for the distraction I bring that you masquerade as healing. Perhaps it is selfishness. On my part, to think that someone may want a small part of me and I masquerade that as love. Perhaps it is arrogance. In thinking that our love is helping. 

But I am tired. Of living my life on autopilot. I am tired. Of acting like we have made this choice. I am tired. Of stealing and wasting time. I am tired of living my life on autopilot.  For it is barely living at all. And perhaps this is the issue with two artists being in love. The issue with two humans being in love. But rejoice, for heartbreak will free you and fill you with inspiration a new. 

love is only love at first, after that it becomes a convenience

I used to have a night light Because I was scared of the dark that pressed into me. Now I have a write light Because I am scared of the dark that festers inside me.

Bleeding Out

There is comfort and terror in knowing that no one will ever know me like I know myself.

The Intangible Things

Each morning we wake and she holds my betrayal in her hands and sets it gently down and we go on with the day.

Absolutely Beautiful...

“Love is the look she gives me when we both come from work and we’re tired, but one of us has to figure out what dinner will be, and so we both go into the kitchen, put our hands on our hips, furrow our brows at what’s in the fridge. Love is each of us showering before bed, one after the other. We can’t shower at the same time, because we like very different temperatures of water, and that’s love too. I brush my teeth and she pees. The fog in the mirror gives way to a portrait of the two of us preparing to sleep. It’s a portrait of love, and we look at it every night. Love is the way her neck smells. That’s where it’s strongest, the side of her neck. And I lean into it and I breathe in, and I remember what it means to live with another person. Love is the hours we spend under a blanket on the couch, and love is also the hours we spend apart, earning a living so that we can return to the couch, once more lie down together. Love is the beat of the heart and the passage of air and it’s the circulation of fluids and it’s the equilibrium of all the functions that sustain us. Love is the absence of all she could say to me. It’s knowing that there is pain and choosing to never activate it. Not as a single choice made once and left secure forever, but a daily choice. Each morning we wake and she holds my betrayal in her hands and sets it gently down and we go on with the day. Love is not freedom. But freedom isn’t inherently good, there can be terrible freedom and wonderful captivity. Love is wonderful captivity. It is a constraint from which you never wish to escape. Love in the morning is a cup of coffee made just the way she likes it. And love at noon, as the way the sun through her hair makes an imprint on my breathing. And love in the afternoon, when I nap alone but nap knowing that she is pacing around the house somewhere. And her motion is near my stillness. And love in the evening, as a laying of hands and a stretching of limbs. And love in the quietest hour of night, when in a moment of wakefulness between hours or dreaming, I hear the soft hiss of her sleeping and feel what birds must feel when nesting.”

— Alice Isn’t Dead, Part 3, Chapter 10: “An Ending”