I used to fantasize that every car door closing, the bright headlights passing my window, meant you were coming home to me. Trudging through the snowy yard to softly come inside, cast open my door and crawl into bed with me, right where you belonged. I always thought it’d feel like the last piece of the puzzle had finally been dropped snuggly in place.

I guess I didn’t look hard enough to realize your jagged edges were no match to my soft forgiving curves. Although we may have fit together, I was always marked with deep grooves of regret and insincerity. And you wore your infidelity on your neck as my heart grew weary on my sleeve.

Now when I hear a car door, I wonder about you. Where you are, who you’re with, and sometimes I swear, right before I fall asleep, I feel you next to me once more.

Everyone has problems

Maybe you dont notice yours

Self-awarness is key

To fix what you left on the floor

The problem like a broken tailight

You cant even see it

But the cops will pull you over

Because the tailight is needed

And to think

I knew only a small part of him

Before I lost him:

I wish I could have memorized his smile

Because now when I dream of him I can only see one thing at a time:

His eyes, his hair, his hands

And it's hard to know someone when all I have left of him is a few pictures and a fragmented memory.

But you. You are different.

I am beginning to know all of you

Even the parts I don't like:

The ways in which you're an unsteady ship

Sometimes drifting towards me, sometimes far away.

I have memorized your formula for small talk,

Your changing eyes,

Your unforgettable smile

but when I look at you I can only see one part of you at a time:

your eyes, your hair, your hands

When I think of you I see you in your entirity,

and I see flowers growing

and I see hope left for us.

With you so closeby I can hardly breathe,

With you so far away I can hardly think.

As you become more real

he fades away,

until all I have left is his still, unmoving picture

his unchanging eyes

and forgettable smile.

"Can I tell you something?"

"Anything."

"I-I like you."

"You what?"

"I like you. Like a lot."

"Can I tell you something?"

"Yes."

"I like you too."

"You do?"

"I do."

"Would you like to um like uh maybe-"

"I would love too."

"Great."

"It is. It really is."

...

...

"Can I tell you something?"

"Anything."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"Good."

"It is good."

...

...

"I take you for better or for worst, for richer or for poorer."

"I do."

"I do."

A maiden traveling far and back

pretended there was naught she lacked;

yet when her needs came clear again,

found more to ink than met the pen.

In search of golden straw, not black,

a maiden traveling far and back

redounded past beginnings small

to fill each empty fodder stall

with honeyed hay of finest strand.

Inquisitive in fashion grand,

a maiden traveling far and back

encountered fairies, far off track.

Returning then, from fantastiqué,

to woo her farmer, mildly meek,

she lost her way again. Alack!

A maiden, traveling far and back.

It felt like a good day for a light-hearted quatern.

http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/quatern.html

I am squeezing every arduous word onto the page.

I have been cocooned for a very long time now,

And I forgot what it felt like

To imagine.

I am a soul of creativity

Locked in a concrete tomb of repetition repetition repetition

Habit-forming repetition

My choices now are to resign

To repetition

Or to try to climb

Clumsily, awkwardly, painfully

To risk waxing melodramatic

To try foolishly...

Better a fool than another piece of concrete.

I live among monsters.

But it's not the monsters I'm afraid of

Not the shadows

Not even the scars

It's the thought of slowly forgetting

That anything better ever existed

That chills me to the core.

Of surrendering hope for practicality

Trading irreplaceable time for sensibility

Of waking up old, and creaking,

"But wait! I was going to..."

I am jumping

Because staying on the ledge

Is more frightening than the fall

I am in motion

Because staying still is cowardice

And hesitation is death.

I've hesitated long enough.

And now, as I dribble each word

I am alive.

Slow, clumsy, emerging

But alive.

She's been crying for days. Everything goes on like nothing's changed and the ants that have infested this pulsing life globe live on; they move along like the sun's still out and the sky's still blue, and she cries, refusing to join the crowd.

The pain resurfaced a few days back, thundering out in anger until it became soft sniffles, little rumbles; a slow stream of droplets that keep on coming; it does'nt stop.

And the girl who sits in the house at the kitchen table, dry but cold inside -she wonders when the sky will end its tears.

Because until the clouds dry up she doesnt feel like cracking a smile. She's so so lost, her face as blank as a clouded sky.

Its her favorite thing, gloomy days. She's always liked the rain.

Yeah. She does like that. She remembers that.

Her second favorite thing is warm autumn days; with all the oranges and the browns and the pumpkins and the leaves and the childish fun.

It reminds her of the days where light was a feeling and heavy was a thing.

Where a stone was an object to launch into a stream and not a rock lodged in the pit of her stomach.

Where a game made people laugh instead of cry.

Where life was full and we all lived outside

Not trapped in our houses and in our minds.

She's learning about life and where she fits. She's trying so hard to be a One, a seperate from the rest, trying so hard that she's losing her goals, losing her way; she's obsessed with this pedestal version of herself, this goddess of strength and independance and difference that she ignores who she really is, because she wants she wants she wants this unreachable perfect version of what could be.

She's losing herself by trying to find Her Self.

For a long while she was lost in a sea of things she was never meant to be, and one day, its as if someone kicked her awake from a deep slumber;

WAKE UP

And she did. And she looked around and could'nt see where she was, why she was, who she was.

what had she become?

As she sat at the kitchen table, arms deep in a life she realised she never wanted, she began to cry. Everything was wrong, it was all backwards, it was'nt in the right order. When the cries became sniffles she thought of all the things she liked, all the things she knew for sure. She made a list of her favorite foods, her favorite colors, her favourite things.

And she decided to try again.