hearts break all the time. it’s a fact of life, so move on. one day you’ll look back at this moment in time where someone’s fingers have been so utterly and hopelessly wrapped around your heart — and you’ll laugh. maybe there will be a tinge of regret, bittersweet on the calloused edges of your fingertips. but you’ll realise that yes, you can live without certain people and that while time doesn’t perfectly heal all wounds, it does try its best to sew close those open gaping abrasions that were once like black holes in trying to entrap you forever. and perhaps that’s all a person needs to gain closure; shut one door and walk right into the arms of another. whether these arms embrace you warmly or push you away, whether the door slams shut right in your face or beckons you in, you’ll never know. but you can try. it’ll be a long, arduous process of loving and rejection and hurting and bruising and all the stolen smiles in-between before you finally settle. and even when you settle, nobody can promise you sunshine all the time, or a perfect breakfast with your eggs done just the way you like it every day. but you’re content, and contentment is even better than happiness, joy or any of those fleeting emotions that never last.
and i wrote this more than a year ago so why have i not moved on
he was the silver lining when you thought you were drowning, the you’ll be safe now emergency kit carelessly tossed over which turned out to be nothing more than a tangled mess of metal wires. you trusted him, so you threw caution to the wind. criss-cross and sharp corners as it cut your hands and they always said tetanus killed once it was in your blood-stream. but oh, young and foolish with the world at your fingertips, all you cared about was getting out of the water and if he said the wires would help, they would. you were running out of oxygen and your brain chanted anaerobic respiration occurs in an environment that lacks oxygen, panicking until you forgot tetanus bacterium thrived in your surroundings so you let rust make its guiltless and effortless way to your heart. when the water receded you could breathe again, irregularly, but you blamed that on crazy teenage heart palpitations and never figured it was something more dangerous than that.
when the water receded you saw that in some ways you had been saved, but still you were not safe, you would never be safe again with the boy and his carelessly careful choke-hold on your heart.
i guess if i vanished you’d be better after some time (…) it’s been some time and i don’t think i’m better what if it could have been worse? well i don’t know for sure and for the first time i’d rather have gotten lesser than expected than nothing at all (…) i thought you’d forget about it and move on, you seem to be doing quite well lately which is good yeah missing you like crazy and trying so hard not to cry and second guess every last conversation we had to find out what i did wrong and telling myself every night not to text you again because it’s obvious from your lack of replies that you don’t care anymore, that you’ve grown tired of me, how could i have expected our friendship to last anyway - that was pretty good. a fucking breeze that’s not what i meant i guess things don’t happen the way you want them to it was never your fault (…) not that i ever saw you as a burden. (…) thought it’d be better, i didn’t want to disappoint and hurt you, so many opportunities for disappointment but you can only vanish once. (…) i might have been wrong so where does that leave us (…) have you ever needed me? i don’t think you have. i’ve done nothing for you, after all, and you - everything for me. (…) maybe we’d be good for a few days, weeks, but eventually you’ll probably pull another vanishing act and disappear for good, and if so i’d rather you do it now than later (…) but if you’re willing to take a shot at rebuilding our tumbled house of cards, (…) i’m game / if not, if you think it’s a hopeless case and too much trouble and oh sheryl is better off without me then yeah, same rule applies / blank message and i promisepromisepromise i’ll let you vanish without sending stupid late-night emotional texts / (…) then do know that you were the only person that kept me alive during those years and it’s almost impossible to move on from someone who’s been such a vital part of me. 2011 has proven that one year isn’t enough but i think in uh seven years tops i’ll be okay. that’s my best estimate because it’s been five years since doggy left, but i’m still, yknow. and ah i’m rambling because i think, i think i already know your answer. and i should shut up now. yeah.
someone that pesters your mind, good or bad - two boys and two men that refuse to stop pestering my mind and certain striking moments with them.
o1. our first quarrel and you sang to me where did i go wrong / i lost a friend somewhere along ~ and i was crying then but my lips couldn’t help but curve up into a smile -
o2. hokkaido two thousand and eight, chitose outlet mall rera. a couple of us were having a huge snowball fight in the square and all of a sudden wham! - and a snowball struck the back of my head. i’d spun around to see your grinning face, and i pretended to be indifferent. after you disappeared down the corner though, i chased you with a snowball in hand and i took aim, threw - and threw more than a snowball to you. but both the snowball and my heart missed -
o3. you had approached me while selling coded syllables speaking of dreams and sincere lies, composing poems of staying strong and holding tight, singing and playing the chords to such genuine words, and handing belief to me in a bottle which you said i could count on anytime. in return i poured out all my secrets to you, handed to you my soul on a silver platter. never trade with the devil, they said but oh, who listens when they’re blind with love? the giddy mixture of intoxicating hope you’d got me to drink (forcing it down my throat the first time but never ever having to coax me to it after that, except maybe after the one, two, three, four, eight times you’d crushed my trust but i always came back) had bewitched me, enchanted me, destroyed me - so much so that even when you baited away my heart with laughing mirth, all i could do was smile and blink -
o4. germany two thousand and ten, it was snowing so heavily and god was it cold, but the quaint cuckoo shop offered a welcome respite against nature. it’d started as a game, your eyes finding mine, that two seconds where we just looked at each other, breaking away. then your hand brushing against my arm as you pretended not to notice. you gave your demonstration and each time you cracked a joke your eyes would find mine and i felt as though i was the only one in the room but oh i must be thinking too much why would a guy like you even notice me? upstairs again and you’d put your hand on my back, walked with me with your hand slowly trailing down to - such sweet torture - finally rest on the small of my back as you said are you okay? when you turned and clasped your hands together and told me you look so lost, how can i help? and when you’d stared at me and told me you are - you look beautiful. and when i had smiled and said thank you and wished desperately i had the guts to ask you for a photo, anything, wished desperately you’d ask me for my email - none of that happened and instead it was time to go. i walked out of the shop and out of your life but when i turned back for the last time you’d put your fingers to your lips in the most charming gesture of goodbye kiss i had ever seen and my heart was all in flutters again and -
and it comes down to this: the two men i didn’t fight hard enough for left, and the one lad i fought tooth and nail for didn’t even care.
everybody is falling apart i want to tell them not to worry, that things will look up from here on, that heartbreak’s temporary, that loves are inconstant, that we make mistakes but we’re not mistakes, that this will pass, not to feel guilty, not to seize up inside, to fight hard and fight on, to hold tight and hold strong / but this makes it sound like i’m making every little problem seem so small when in reality emptiness consumes your soul and it’s so hard, so hard to move on, so hard to pretend everything’s okay, so hard to believe everything will be okay, so hard to want to continue living, so hard to know where to go, so hard to know what to do, so hard to be alive, so hard to love again, so hard to put yourself back together. everyone is falling apart and someone who’s in pieces cannot piece people back together.
3072:
dusty dashboard compartments and knees tucked to your chest as he drives in circles around the only place you’ve ever known. it’s rainy and it makes the perfect song, like the ones you remember hearing on the ceiling of your room during a thunderstorm, counting the glow in the dark stars as a kid, pretending to be on a rocket ship to a place where your dreams were more perfect than disney movies. the way the raindrops slide down the windshield kind of reminds you of spiders and it’s gauntly in the same way it’s beautiful, and your heart pounds a step behind their tear falls. he reaches over, a slow motion time frame in your head and tugs your shoelaces apart, the string springing apart, falling apart at his fingertips, and he doesn’t look at the flooding roads when he drives, so you imagine crashing, crashing, bright lights and crushing metal, him smiling at you and you watching things fall apart.
him smiling at you and (you watching him,) you watching things fall apart
3072:
dusty dashboard compartments and knees tucked to your chest as he drives in circles around the only place you’ve ever known. it’s rainy and it makes the perfect song, like the ones you remember hearing on the ceiling of your room during a thunderstorm, counting the glow in the dark stars as a kid, pretending to be on a rocket ship to a place where your dreams were more perfect than disney movies.
hair barely damp where it’s against the frost colored window, and the way he drives with one arm on the tattered wheel and fingertips tapping out patterns against his dark jeans.
his eyelashes stick together from that run through the rain to the car, but it looks like he’d been crying, and maybe you look like that too, like breathtaking sins. the stoplights change from green to yellow, yellow to red, but he doesn’t once slow down.
the way the raindrops slide down the windshield kind of reminds you of spiders and it’s gauntly in the same way it’s beautiful, and your heart pounds a step behind their tear falls.
he reaches over, a slow motion time frame in your head and tugs your shoelaces apart, the string springing apart, falling apart at his fingertips, and he doesn’t look at the flooding roads when he drives, so you imagine crashing, crashing, bright lights and crushing metal, him smiling at you and you’re just watching things fall apart, him falling apart.
he reaches over, a slow motion time frame in your head and tugs your shoelaces apart, the string springing apart, falling apart at his fingertips, and he doesn’t look at the flooding roads when he drives, so you imagine crashing, crashing, bright lights and crushing metal, him smiling at you and you’re just watching things fall apart, him falling apart.
3072:
he steps back into your life for the seventeenth time, saying like he always does, hey baby, how you doing? hey honey, are you doing okay? hey darling, do you still need me in your life? so you can only hold onto the back of his shirt when he hugs you, so you can only try to remember why you keep the window unlocked and door open. thing is, the thing is, the fact that he has you wrapped around his finger isn’t what hurts most but the fact that he has you wrapped around his finger without even wanting you at all.
he has you wrapped around his finger without even wanting you at all
because why would i want a relationship that doesn’t bleed me dry? then again, why would i want a relationship that bleeds me dry? my heart is a tangled mess of criss-crossed red and green wires; contradiction after contradiction. do i cut the red one, or the green one? i want a relationship that is emotionally intense, yet i want a relationship that is easy-going and relaxed. i want a person that loves me more, yet based on past experience i would never get into a relationship where i love that person less. i mean, i guess a lot of us settle for the safe kind of love, where you know you will have someone’s arms to return to at the end of the day - where you know your heart is safe. but deep down inside, i think all of us crave for the type of love that tears us apart and messes with our mind. no, i am not talking about the emotionally destructive sort of relationships. what i mean is - i think all of us secretly want to push our limits, test our boundaries and lose ourselves in the intensity and passion of here and now. we want to be kept on the edge. (yet we want to feel safe, secure in the knowledge that we will not spend the rest of our lives lonely and broken-hearted.) it is so hard to strike a balance.
the last person you kissed
i offer you my earpiece and quote something i heard in a television programme long ago. share music with me? i ask, cheeky grin never slipping. alright, you nod and take it. you scroll through my song list and demand to decide on the song we hear with your childish pouts. i throw a small tantrum and you throw a small tantrum and we end up laughing before i shove my phone over to you. ‘i wanna love you’ by the maine is what you settle on eventually. i know you see me looking at you and you already know - i wanna love, you already know is what you sing to me, and then i to you, our eyes meeting and our lips curving and our hearts jumping and
and that song becomes our song.
i start doing silly things like moving away from you so that the earpiece drops out of your ear, before offering a sincerely apologetic and guilty face. oops, i mouth, but you are the one who shakes your head and apologise, saying it is your fault for pulling away. i roll my eyes and you burst out laughing again, commenting on how silly i look when i pull away.
i end up pulling away seven more times after that, just because you think it is cute when i do that.
sometimes i say things and you lean right over to hear me, head almost resting on my shoulder. i repeat myself and your head lingers for a moment longer than it should and i think of the two days in which you had done that too but not pull away because there was no one to catch us or call us out. and i remember all the other things we had done and your lips and the air and your hands and i do not know if i feel sick.
because i am not in love with you and you are not in love with me and shit happens but that does not mean that we should continue letting it happen. and you are my first kiss first resting on each other’s lap first resting on your each other’s shoulder first arm around my waist first exchange of smoke but i am not in love with you. i am not in love with you nor do i love you (and believe me, there is a difference) nor am i a slut who does silly things like that without giving a flying fuck about love and faithfulness. so… why?
i ask you why and you tell me the answer is right in front of my eyes, except i refuse to see it or acknowledge it.
and i think for a moment and i blink and i say oh and then i realise that i am not the only one who is in denial.
