How do you start a story that never ends

If only I could tell you the truth, I’d tell you how much I miss you. I’d tell you how much it hurts to suppress that thought. I’d tell you how my chest is about to explode all too often from the tension within. I’d tell you how I eat on the go and work late hours, till I pass out of fatigue, not allotting my mind a single free minute to think of us. I’d tell you how understanding of our work and the future we are trying to build, not for ourselves but for others, prevents me from ever letting myself anything but a quick gentle thought of you. It passes like a light breeze on a hot afternoon, that thought, tickling my forehead one minute, gone and forgotten under the unbearable sun a minute later.

I miss you, my friend. I don’t regret making the mistakes I have made. I don’t regret taking the path I have taken. You warned me it would be hard, and sometimes it drains me of ability to feel. But even in my weak moments, you insist on showing me the way. And so I keep walking. Never toward you, always side by side. Always toward the same goal that is so much bigger than us.

Image credit: m0thyyku

6 a.m.

I long for other you
Unable to release
This grip
Of fingers turning blue
I act at ease
Then hide to weep
Under my skin
From hand of fate
Its painful scratch
For I have seen
Your falling state
Please stay and catch
Day's quiet cue
Please try to be
For sunrise longer
The other you
Hold on to me
Till I grow stronger
And leave behind
This place
Its dust
My lover’s mind
His fading grace
His lust

Your face
My past

Fire, fire

I see your sky is coming down
with the same color as mine
Oh, it seems to me
you and I are not safe to combine...

So you sit right in front of me, the pupils of your eyes bright, the flashes of your smile sincere, our thought exchange meaningful... once again. I can’t help but wonder, what should I do with you? Should I put you in my pocket and carry around like a notebook full of quotes from a read I want to remember even as I put it away? Can I keep the book itself or will the life library charge me life if I don’t return it 30 days from now? Should I close the book as soon as the words I want to hear become a distraction from what life says should be heard and done or can I flip the pages for just a few more bittersweet hours till the candle buns out and the dawn strikes my eyelids with the sharp awareness of reality that’s so unreal? Can the book be recycled after pages were torn out, torn apart, thrown in the trash and taken out just to be used as tablecloth in the attic of secrets, to cover things that would otherwise embarrass the collective perception with their nakedness?

Or maybe, just maybe, I can put it in the drawer by my bedside and make it my Bible, and take it out each day for a stroll on a path where flowers are grown not of seeds but of minds, and the rain is soaked not by skin but by spirit itself. Maybe I can keep it in the inner pocket of my jacket as I take a bus ride on my escape route from life, seeking the inexistent yet place where the hearts above guide the stalled ideas below, leading them away from being as told to be by life, reminding them to listen instead to the whisper of the single shivering leave on the tree that grew upside down in the most real of afternoon dreams.

Even though this chapter of us may be the shortest one yet, all that matters is how much meaning we are willing to put in each word, how loud we are eager to yell over the gray habitual buzz to help the world hear our voices, and how high we’ll strive to fly to touch the rainbows... even if only once.

...As thousand days roll by
Come for it
Come for it again.


Lyrics used in the post: Fire Fire by Asha Ali

A little lost

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

How do people say things as pretty? Can I do that... please? Sometimes I think my words sit under this huge rock in the sea that is my thoughts, ideas, feelings and desires. The category five storm needs to happen for them to be thrown out to the surface, spit out by the waters that are too dark otherwise to tell where the sunshine ends and the abyss begins.

Sometimes I think lack of pain kills inspiration. Sometimes I think pain overdose does it too. I find chapters of comedy and tragedy as I try to frantically skip any prosaic pages in life. Slowing down seems to be a sure motivation killer so I run fast, and bump into walls, and get hurt, and get up again, and keep running, and bump into walls...

I jump between extreme thirst for social life and desperate need for solitude. I think we give up part of our freedom the moment we choose to depend on others, be it for attention, time, means to survive, understanding, kindness, affection... But then, if others choose to depend on us, do we fill that gap with some of their freedom? What right does anyone have for anyone else's freedom? Being part of society automatically means being, in one way or another, unfree. Being absolutely free then... means being unsocial? And then there is solitude, which takes away the freedom to be loved.

The only true way to be free as I found it is to be free within. It is that type of freedom that I seek out and fight for and worship.

* * *

As I get tired of this buzzing world I take a stroll to the land of no emotion, but I get too restless on my way there to ever reach the illusionary destination of absolute personal strength. Few days into my "independence" I feel the prose of reality crawling at me like a giant heat wave, leaving no air to breathe, no shade to escape to on the surface so hot it melts dreams.

That’s when I take a big breath and dive deep into my poetry, finding there the only relief and a place of safety.

Sometimes answers are hidden in words. More often, words bring out more questions. Sometimes I wish I had words when none come out. At other times I wish I could just stay silent for hours... days. I think good words are hard to get and it probably only adds to their beauty. Then there are angry words and words that are empty, and I haven’t decided yet which one is worse.

* * *

"Why don’t you go blog about it?" I heard last weekend, and thrown into the heat of an argument, it was meant to sound offensive. I'm afraid "it" just doesn't do it for me, my dear boy. Hey, look who’s stronger now. I am on one of those freedom strolls and you’d better not get in my way. I don’t mean to sound amazon-ish but then again, I am so tired of fighting you. We’ve been barking at each other for so long, it started taking a shape of some sick entertainment. Another round, and we might as well start taking bets. At times, it boiled blood. At this point, it tires me. I am not meant for hatred, I don’t like harsh words given or taken, even if, especially if, they are empty shells thrown one's way to offend rather than convey meaning. I am no angel but let me dwell on it some other time. How are YOU going to find your way through such darkness into which you let your thinking wander, such anger with which you let it out? You can’t make a real difference, you can’t right the wrong if you fail or refuse (which is it?) to draw the line between passion and fury. You can’t be truly kind nor loving when you let your pride guide you, wherever it is you are heading.

Not in love

“Most affections are habits or duties we lack the courage to end.”
~ Henry Millon De Montherlant

I stopped a breath short of loving him in a room where love was no longer present. Only a hint of it has remained, not in his look but in the little heart drawn on my window, long time ago, with someone else’s finger. His attempt of a touch was cold, it was late, it wasn’t sincere. I shivered. Sobriety was filling me up with every new hour of dawn. No matter how hard I held on to Saturday night, Sunday morning was dragging me into its empty stomach, into another time, another room. I choked on the air thick with things unsaid. As I lay there staring at the ceiling, I realized all of a sudden that I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want to say.

So I let him go.

There goes the story of the night I found out that broken heart doesn’t mix well with tequila, but also discovered the strength in me I didn’t know I had.

I am now free.

* * *

Once in a house on a hill
A boy got angry
He broke into my heart
For a day and a night
I stayed beside him
Until I had no hope
So I came down the hill
Of course I was hurt
But then I started to think
It shouldn't hurt me to be free
It's what I really need
To pull myself together
But if it's so good being free
Would you mind telling me
Why I don't know what to do with myself…

~ Emiliana Torrini

* * *

To me, the image in this post symbolizes freedom. It’s hard to explain and might be even harder to relate to, because no two images are alike as perceived by two minds. I think uniqueness is not cherished enough. I think the gift of it can be most truly appreciated when we’re hastily poured onto canvas of life, mixed with other shades and brush strokes, spilled over blankness of fixed misconceptions and covered with layers of floating understandings. When engulfed by such vortex of existence, blending in means disappearing behind brighter colors of others, dissolving into nothingness. When stirred by trouble, it is our own inner tone, the color of that dream, the melody floating over this thought, the feeling evoked by yesterday’s rain, the way to lovingly wrinkle one’s nose in anger … the only one and impossible to repeat in a million years … that helps us survive.

What do you see?

Second chances?

She wants to be like
the water...

I can’t speak. I close my eyes and I glide on a smooth surface. Downstream. I can’t think. I am just lying there, letting the current pull me wherever it chooses. I can’t write. My words are sinking. I can’t fight. It’s as if my hands and my feet are tied with some invisible water bonds, which I can’t resist. I have no will to swim against the tide. I watch the waters get faster, angrier. I watch small rocks lurk out. I am still on the safe side, I can still turn around and swim back, knowing the danger is ahead, knowing I should not let myself rush through these rapids again, knowing there will be pain of falling. Please don’t pull me toward you now that I am almost cured of this pain.

...wish it were simple
But we give up easily

I think I reached a shore at some point, back then, after fighting so hard with the cold of the river. I think I actually sat there for a moment and let the water dry off my face. I heard the quiet music in my head and I sang to it... and danced, and watched the clouds gallop by, and smiled at them... I smiled! But then I saw you swim by and I plunged in again. Am I really going to let go so easily of all that I fought for? I don’t want to feel comforted by your presence. I want to be able to make it on my own. Was this new strength I thought I gained just an illusion? Here I am, not swimming forward, not swimming back. Floating.

You're close enough to see that
You're the other side of the world
to me...

Why is it so hard to just close my eyes and pretend you are not here? Why is it so hard to listen to reason and decide what’s right to feel? To feel what’s right... What’s right? The thing is, in my mind, I don’t want you back. I just have to negotiate it with my heart somehow. It is tricky, because heart wants reward here and now, it wants redemption for its suffering, it wants a blanket tucked around it, it wants to go to bed cozy. It’s like a child, demanding attention, thinking of itself as the center of the world, not knowing it can’t really see further than today, further than the chest it’s in.

Can you help me?
Can you let me go?
And can you still love me
When you can't see me anymore...

People who saw us last night might have thought we are a happy couple. But that's what they thought back then too, while we were sticking knives into each other’s hearts. Back again? And you really think you can build something steady on a pile of ruins?

I subside to the sound of your voice. My strength withers and I forgive easily. I know what’s right for me, but I don’t seem to be strong enough to act upon it. Maybe not quite yet. I am afraid of the mistakes I am about to make.


Lyrics from Other Side of the World by KT Tunstall

Grey’s the Color of…

Under frowns of clouds
Through the whisper of leaves
I reach out for your mouth
I’m not finding your lips

Knitted sweaters, wet air
Your stretched arms in the rain
You try touching my hair
I fall back through my pain

Words are lost in this weather
Puddles eat your reflection
I feel wind in your blazer
Seeking summer’s affection

Warm time’s over, I hear
Trees are wearing gold
When precisely, my dear
Did our hearts turn so cold?

You look, I die

I can write a pile of sentences, reread them and don’t find myself. They are often not good enough. They lack the strength to dig deep, take it out and spill it on paper. Bleeding heart calls for writing in blood and all I see is black ink on a dull white paper. Nonsense. Friday was good and I even believed I was getting better. And then came Saturday. You looked. I died. Again.

I want to take you off
Like summer hat in fall
Throw off your arms like gloves
That wouldn’t keep me warm
No more
Shake drops of voice
Out of my ears
Soaked in the cold
Of ruthless storms
Your words
Wipe off that touch
Out of the creases
Of my palm
You stick to me
Cling to my thinking
Roll down the spine
With drops of sweat
Making me shiver
In aching dreams
Can’t loving die
So I can live
Instead
Wait not just yet
Resists the heart
In which small room
Is filled with charcoals
Blue and orange
And amber
Like your world
I throw them in the fire
Where your ice
Is melted
Your picture out of the corner
Looks into me
I read a smile
In picture’s eyes
Half-closed
Half-opened
Hate never came
Into this room
It never will
My eyes meet yours
Half-closed
Half-opened
Was ever love
Inside your look
Did I misread it
Did I
Just throw your picture in the fire
My shaking hands
Are burnt
But it won’t burn
I cover it with charcoals
They turn to flowers
You still look
Right back into me
Your eyes
Half-closed
Half-opened
Your soul
Half-naked
Half... I’ll never know
And of that look
I die.

The God of Loss

“He tried to hate her.
She’s one of them, he told himself. Just another one of them.
He couldn’t.
She had deep dimples when she smiled. Her eyes were always somewhere else.

“That afternoon, Ammu traveled upwards through a dream in which a cheerful man with one arm held her close by the light of an oil lamp. He had no other arm with which to fight the shadows that flickered around him on the floor.
Shadows that only he could see.
Ridges of muscle on his stomach rose under his skin like divisions on a slab of chocolate.
He held her close, by the light of an oil lamp, and he shone as if he had been polished with a high-wax body polish.
He could do only one thing at a time.
If he held her, he couldn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn’t see her. If he saw her, he couldn’t feel her.
She could have touched his body lightly with her fingers, and felt his smooth skin turn to gooseflesh. She could have let her fingers stray to the base of his flat stomach. Carelessly, over those burnished chocolate ridges. And left patterned trails of bumpy gooseflesh on his body, like flat chalk on a blackboard, like a swathe of breeze in a paddyfield, like jet streaks in a blue church-sky. She could have so easily done that, but she didn’t. He could have touched her too. But he didn’t, because in the gloom beyond the oil lamp, in the shadows, there were metal folding chairs arranged in a ring and on the chairs there were people, with slanting rhinestone sunglasses, watching. They all held polished violins under their chins, the bows poised at identical angles. They all had their legs crossed, left over right, and all their left legs were shivering.

“If he touched her he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.

“The God of Loss.
The God of Small Things.
He left no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no image in mirrors.”

- from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

It’s ironic that you lent THIS book to me. It’s ironic that YOU lent this book to me.

It’s a great book. Life is ironic.

Not only good dreams come true, you know. I had so many nightmares about you and they all became a reality. This book of yours brought out a feeling of sad satisfaction in me. Sad, but satisfying.

The part above is so deep in its tragedy yet so beautiful. I reread it many times, receiving a bit of a gentle relief each time. It reminds me of one of those soothing melodies I listen to when riding my bike late in the evening. They blend with the freshness of wind pushing against my face and give me that tickling sensation of a flight above all the insignificant things in the world. They only matter if we choose for them to matter.

The part below is more earthly, but still captivating. It made me think a lot, but not about you any more. It made me look into me. I think it’s better this way, to finally think about me for once.

“In the year she knew him, before they were married, she discovered a little magic in herself, and for a while felt like a blithe genie released from her lamp. She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for Chacko was actually a tentative, timorous acceptance of herself.”

Despite all the pain I felt, I won’t deny that you played a significant part in my life, a role in my world that made me stop abruptly. To think. Although you’ll never know it, you helped me find the sides of me that I haven’t yet discovered. You helped me realized new truths and dig out the truths long forgotten, the ones that were covered with dust somewhere in the deep corner of my conscience, behind the shelves of doubts and stacks of fears. That corner was so dark it took the light out of my dreams. It made me want to postpone them until better times. Until when I’m strong enough. Until later. Lay Ter. But there is now, there’s today and I want to live it to the fullest.

You didn’t politely pat me on the shoulder, asking me whether by any chance I took a wrong route. This isn’t your way. You kicked me hard, pushed me against the wall and slapped me in the face, calling me a fool for not noticing a one-way sign for so long, jumping out of our time, onto your street, slamming my door, never to travel with me again.

I cried as you left, but then I smiled. I started accepting myself more and more each day and I liked it.

You reminded me who I really am and then you set me free. Always look for the positive side of things. They will only matter if we choose for them to matter.

I matter now.

Before Sunrise

I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

- Celine in Before Sunrise

I was standing outside last night, looking at the man on the moon. An insignificant spot on the face of eternity, he’s larger than us in some ways... smaller in so many others. I was looking at a swallow’s nest over my porch. I’m not sure how long it’s been there but the birds are long gone. They must have flown away to a better place, carrying their dreams on their wings, leaving my porch with an empty nest. My dreamless porch.

I am doing better at times. I think my mind is ready to move on, telling me there’s no reason to cry over someone who doesn’t care. But the pain still wakes me up in the middle of the night, every night.

I look back at this summer. There is a strong temptation to forget certain people, moments or days; but I don’t give in to it. It might be good to not have lived some of those days, but would it be right? I believe our mistakes are there for a reason. They remind us of our human flaws. They help us grow.

I look back at the day of the big fight, when I stood up for your right to take the opposite side and, as a result, lost my friend. There is another painful memory from that night, that of you slamming the car door and walking away. But you know, I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t skip that evening even if I knew what was coming. I wouldn’t try to save my friendship. I wouldn’t stop you from walking away. Because when you caught up with me at a stoplight a minute later, you told me that you loved me. I will eventually forget the tremendous negativity of that night, but I will treasure the fact that you and I were able to leave it all behind so easily, driving away into the night.

I look back even further and I see us in a friend’s garage at 7 a.m. in the morning, after just talking the night away. I see us going through a car wash twice, enjoying the little streams rolling down the windows in this rainless land, lowering the backs of our seats to lay down and listen to some quiet music, savoring the simple bliss of the moment. I see us walking through the farmer’s market closer to noon, without a single hour of sleep the night before but with our reflections still fresh and clear in each other’s eyes. You carrying the fruits for me. Your smile a reflection of a morning sun. I see us in your room, going though your family photographs. Your books. Your paintings. You making hot dogs in the kitchen. Me drinking juice from the bottle. You had no cups. You lying on the floor in an empty room, looking at the sun caught in the texture of my dress as I stand in the doorway. That dress looked tired of your witty remarks over the last 24 hours. I wasn’t. Remember? Us sitting on a staircase in your hallway, speaking about the meaning of life. You handing me a book to take home with me. You waving goodbye to me on my way out, then rushing down the staircase to give me a hug. One perfect hug. My hand shaking behind your back holding the heavy fruits. You releasing me just to ease my burden. Our shadows crossing one last time on the pavement, one unwilling to leave, another unwilling to let go.

That was our own Before Sunrise, wasn’t it. That night was the whole world, the perfect world in which we had lived and breathed each other before the real life began. Before your friends didn’t get along with mine. Before I pushed you away. Before your heart grew cold, unwilling to forgive my fear of love. I think it will take me years to get over that one night, an eternity to forget the perfect fusion of our thoughts, ideas, feelings and dreams.

I don’t want to remember anything else from this summer.

Dreaming with a broken heart

When you're dreaming with a broken heart,
The waking up is the hardest part,
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe...

- John Mayer

I roll out and I wonder... were you really here?

You were, just the night before, and after two long weeks of excruciating pain that burned my body and engulfed my thoughts every minute of every day, for a moment there I believed we could actually be happy together. Were you really here, holding my hand, or was it just a sweet dream, a short flashback in my crazy imagination... You came back into my life, but how could I be so wrong as to think that you came to stay? We walked on the grass barefoot. You told me about my nose in your paintings. You reminded me once again how you can touch my heart with the simplest things that you say. As I drove to work, the morning sky reminded me of your palette and I wished I could blend in with it, becoming the perfect tone of your skin, the shape of your cheeks when you give me that kind smile of yours or at least a note in one of your favorite melodies, so you could hum me every now and then.

You gave me hope but you wouldn’t let me anywhere near your heart. I felt slowly falling — the wind rushing though my body like the tiny pieces of broken glass — all the way down, to the very bottom of my pain.

Have I pushed you away that far? I wish you knew all the way that I loved you no matter what I did or said. I wish I didn’t do or say the things that made you run away. I’ll go hide my tears behind the rain, wondering how many more nights I will have to die before I can let you go.

Broken

Sometimes words hide from me when I need them the most. Sometimes I wish I could speak in tears, in looks, in songs… in silence. If you ever listened to my silence, I mean really listened, you’d hear the beat of the loneliest heart in the world. You knew I was vulnerable but you chose to hurt me nevertheless. I get up and I fall again. I lean on walls. The world is spinning. I hear your voice, again and again. In songs...

I wake up, it’s a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I’m not the fighting kind.
Wouldn’t mind it
if you were by my side
But you’re long gone,
yeah you’re long gone now.

It’s Your world, isn’t it. It’s Your freedom, Your fight, Your thirst for Your life. What about My pain? "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed," said Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fox in the Little Prince. You ran thousands of miles away from responsibility, you ran toward your freedom. I only wish my heart, too, could be free again. I wish it could be untamed.

I need a place
That’s hidden in the deep,
Where lonely angels sing you to your sleep.
The modern world is broken.
I need a place
Where I can make my bed,
A lover’s lap where I can lay my head,
Cos’ now the room is spinning,
The day’s beginning.

I don’t want to live, I don’t want to wake up into this new day. I don’t want to die either, I just want to slowly cease to exist, fade away like your feeling to me, turn into a fox and run. I think you might respect me more as a fox. I won’t have to worry about money as a fox, because that’s what I worry about, right? I probably won’t feel love, because that’s what I’m pushing away, right? In a simple world of foxes I won’t feel lonely any more. I will feel at ease, because I’m sure foxes are so much more human than many-many humans in this world.

I hope you fly free, if that’s what your freedom is all about. I hope you win your other battles, those you actually believe are worth fighting.

Why do I have to fly
over every town up and down the line?
I'll die in the clouds above
and you that I defend, I do not love.

When it rains...

The clouds dragged themselves with a certain difficulty this morning, as if trying to make it home after a night of partying. They struggled to keep their tails above the treetops, slowly pulled west by the wind.

It’s being storming all night and the morning didn’t look like morning at all, I told you as we drove through the wet sleepy city. Distant thunder broke the silence between us, raindrops cut into the windshield like a thousand little needles and the shiny road reflected the streetlights, a wild dance of red and green, and red and green again.

I dropped you off and ran away at 86 per hour. My thoughts were pressing me down to the slippery road, heavy like the clouds over the treetops.

As I sat next to you on the couch last night, I cried inside. I cried because of longing to be with you. I wanted more than anything to hug you or hold your hand but I couldn’t, I had no right. I gave up my right to love you as soon as I chose to follow my reason and silence my heart. I pushed you away pretending to kill my feelings, but all I really did was chase them away into the deepest corners of my heart, making them hide temporarily. They now lurk out in the shape of little flames that burn so painfully. Whom am I fooling?

To my best friend, my dream, my inspiration

We should have never said a word. We spent most of the evening in comforting silence, emerged in our work, feeling a quiet bliss in the air radiating from your art and mine. Your heart and mine.

You swore at me for judging you. You said you love me a minute later and that hurt too, because I felt I didn’t deserve your love.

We won’t remember it as that one night on a curb under a cloudy moon. We won’t remember the quiet music of wind chimes on a dark deck where the only light came from under our eyelashes. We might not even remember working together in a tiny room filled with the air of spray-paint and gentle thoughts. What will stay in mind is how mercilessly we dared to wound each other. Do you still think we aren’t better off keeping some thoughts to ourselves? Forgive me for making your heart bleed. I regret trying to change you in any way, but I also don’t seem to be able to change myself. Where in the world is the way out of this?

I know exactly where you come from and you don’t have to explain a slightest thing to me. I know perfectly well that for every opportunity I was given in life, the door was slammed in front of your face. I made tons of mistakes but I always seemed to get a second chance, even when I least deserved it. You deserve so much more than you were given.

Why does the world put this impassable void between us, these layers of life, this divide that none of us is able to cross? Why is it that our hearts fly over this abyss like two swallows, meeting happily in midair, while our bodies stay put like stones, not moving even to the wind of circumstances? We’ll grow into the ground if we stay, you know.

I don’t want it to be this way. I fall for you over and over again every time I see you or hear your voice. And then I tell you again and again that all I can give is friendship. I quietly despise myself for that. I really can’t think of anything that would give a happy ending to this post. Erykah Badu’s song is all that comes to mind. I guess I’ll see you next lifetime… You know I want to stay around… I guess I’ll see you next lifetime… I’m going to look for you.

I’m going to look for you, my love. I’m going to look after you, too. Hush, no more words, let our hearts sit together in silence.

On the edge between friendship and more

You lie on the edge of the roof, your body stretched on a narrow surface between the short concrete wall and the abyss. You look down, then up at me, then down again. It’s crazy, you say, how it just goes straight to the ground. There are some 12 stories underneath us, and the shoe you were tempted to throw down would have ways to fly.

I trust your words yet I have a strong urge to check it out myself. I lean forward. Careful, I hear from a couple of friends behind, who grab my sleeve as I continue to lean toward the edge. It’s only when my eyes run down the vertical wall below — all the way to the treacherous pavement and the tiny shadows of parked cars and streetlights — that I fully comprehend how high we have climbed and how real the danger of falling is for both of us.

We ran many flights of stairs and climbed some shaky ladders to watch the city lights one night, eager to find adventure on the bleak streets of reality. As I looked down and felt the cool breeze hit my face, the solid roof under my feet started to fade into the unknown, reminding me of my life. I closed my eyes and pictured what would have happened if I leaned too far, the tingly feeling of free fall in my stomach. I’d open my eyes in midair and see you falling right next to me. I’d scream inside, trying to rethink the whole scenario, trying to erase the idea of reaching the ground, because somewhere in the back of my mind, through some inexplicable vision of the future, I knew the landing would be deadly for one of us.

You might say it was your idea to climb up here, but I have to point out you were careful about the ascend, watching your step and mine. I was the one whose walk turned into a sprint as I got excited about reaching the summit. It was me who took you to the edge and it’s me who’s about to take you over it.

Please take the stairs and walk off this roof, down to where we started. Run away from me. Don’t tell me we’ll fly together, because you know neither of us is an angel. Don’t let me pull your sleeve, because I can already see the pavement below.

This meal I can’t share

My face seeks the shelter in my palms,
A weak protection from the storm of uncertainty.
Run away from me!
Stop following me into the darkness,
We are not too far yet for you to be saved.

…Excuse me miss,
What would you like today?

Can I think for a moment?
Why the choices again?
Can I please… No, wait…
I just changed my mind.
Could I first have my confidence back
Followed up by some trust on the side
Could I have some hope for a drink
For desert give me back my beliefs
in me,
in people,
in something higher.

Can I have no ice in my drink?
Why? Can your heart get any colder?

Forgive me.
You chose the worst possible time
To enter my life.
You are pure as tears I shed… just months ago.
I don’t think I am…

Love is what you are all about.
As of today, I don’t believe in love.

Forgive me.
Maybe one day my heart will thaw.
I think one day I will allow it to feel again.
I know one day I’ll be able to look up
And find my reflection in someone’s eyes.
If you are still hanging there,
Maybe they’ll be yours.
That being said… you are free to go,
Escape from me
For I am too dangerous
As of right now.

You are kind, simple and true,
I cannot let you near this poison.

No, you can’t,
This chair is taken
By my thoughts,
This meal I can’t share
Please allow me to have it alone.

Stronger

Are we defined by our choices?

I hope not, or at least not entirely, because some of the choices I made this week embarrass me.

I am trying to find the right way toward my dreams and discover myself along the way, but I take detours too often. I find adventure in them, but I also get lost. I get entangled in a spider web of my feelings, and I choose to turn my reason off at times, the decision that always gets me in trouble. I feel like screaming or hitting myself with something heavy.

I feel as if I’m not someone I want be. How do I find myself? When did I get so lost? Where do I go looking for a better me?

I would like to think that I am not a bad person, I simply made several bad decisions. My heart thought they were good, and I listened. More than anything, I would like to be stronger.

Our ways part here

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives. - Cyril Connolly

I wish I could take a permanent marker and cross the last couple of days out of my life, leaving only the good memories of us. I wish I could take a highlighter and make the two weeks before that stand out, overshadowing the mistakes you made in the end.

You left for good this morning and I think it’s for better, too. My heart is screaming right now, begging for my absolute attention. It tells me that now is the time to be hurting and feeling sorry for myself. I would much rather listen to my mind though, which tells me it is time to grow stronger. I bury myself in work and I put my heart to sleep.

I won’t be mad at you or judge you in any way, although you did cause me a lot of pain the last two nights. I think you have a potential of becoming a good man, but for now your actions still reveal your youth too much. Don’t apologize to me, I knew what I was signing up for from the very beginning and I saw all your little irresponsible and immature moments along the way but I would let them slide. I did not want to concentrate on anything negative because there were many good things about you to counteract that, and I had my mind set on having two wonderful carefree weeks together.

You have been kind, open-minded and adventurous. You never hid your emotions and you made me feel special in many ways. I wish you organized your life however, and set your priorities straight. I wish you stopped trying to be a crowd-pleaser and thought about what truly makes you happy, acting upon things which you wouldn’t regret an hour later. Maybe then you’d start making the right decisions the first time around.

I had a great time with you, my sweet California boy.
Stop saying sorry and simply remember me instead.

Linger

“…I'm in so deep
You know I'm such a fool for you
You got me wrapped around your finger
Do you have to let it linger
Do you have to, do you have to
Do you have to let it linger…”
-Cranberries

You asked me once if I ever thought about blogging. I came up with some joke to avoid the answer. I do blog you know. Although will you ever know? Probably not. See, if you know, then I can’t write for you. It allows me to whisper those lines to you… quiet enough for you not to hear.

Crossroads

So tired. So stressed. I wonder which one comes first? It feels like there is no single brain cell in my head not involved in thinking. I haven’t been able to relax my mind for the past week… two… a month? Not sure how long it’s been. How long has it been since my last post? Maybe that long. I’ve kept my sanity so far, so that’s good. It’s always better to look at the positive side. I am at what one of my friends called a “pinnacle.” Not sure if that exactly describes it. I stand at the crossroads and there are several ways which my life can take from here. I have to make a choice, which will decide where I will be in five, maybe 10 years from now… Whom I will be with. Who I will be. Is it really for me to decide? I have to make a step forward, and every time I raise my foot, I feel as if there is no gravity ahead, no stable ground to lean on, I feel like I have to go back… I put my foot back down. This can’t last forever. I will have to make a step. Which direction do I go? Why do I even have to make this step? Can’t things just happen in their natural way, their course, can I at least get a guidance of some kind? I am absolutely lost and I hate having to choose a path that will change my life forever… What if few years down the road I figure out I am on the wrong track? Will I forgive myself? Will people involved in this choice forgive me? I guess I will never know unless I make a move.

Should I toss a coin? My sanity supply will eventually run out if I keep standing. Friends tell me, “take your time.” Why do I feel like I don’t have any? Why do I feel like this pressure of thinking will crush me if I don’t take off my “safe spot” relatively soon? I guess I have another week.

Should I give more details? Is there a need? I always feel like more people will be able to relate to this if I don’t say too much. I am relatively new to this type of writing, so I don’t even know what to expect of myself. I know I will open up more with time.