illusively

i. "come back," i whispered between sobs, "come back to me," i tried to shake you out of it. you had this bewildered look in your eye, like i was a stranger, or maybe you were. maybe it was just the fucking whisky. i could hardly decipher your slurred insults but i received "i don't love you" loud and clear. that's when i fell into a lifeless pile on your couch, until you picked me up and carried me into your bed beside you. i was terrified to sleep next to a stranger but i knew the real you was in there somewhere, trapped inside of this monster. i could never abandon you, even if i had to go through hell first. you came back in the morning a

"run away with me." "we don't have to run. i'll show you the way. just hold my hand." - - - have you ever loved someone so intensely that every part of you aches just to look at them? your entire body literally shakes with want and fear and need and there are a thousand thoughts pulsing through your restless mind and every breath you take is like a sharp, heaving gulp of winter ocean, but somehow, some way, you can hardly manage a faint trembling "hello". - - - i think if you touched me, i might break into a million pieces. - - - every time i close my eyes, i'm kissing your long eyelashes and curling into your chest, and when i wake

we've all heard the saying "one moment can change everything." but you don't understand it - not entirely - until one day, that moment happens. - - - have you ever looked into someones eyes (someone you've surely never met before) and swore, on everything that you are, on everything that you've been and will ever be, that you know them? not know in the sense that you've heard of them before, or that they remind you of some distant celebrity, or vague fictional character. but know. in a greater sense, as though looking into their eyes is really more like pulling back a velvet curtain and diving straight down into a crystalline ocea

i can feel your hands wrapped around my throat, fingers closing tighter, tighter, desperate, as though my blood might pour through your fingers like sand. you are a reptile, a python slowly constricting my ribcage shattering my bones. the colors of my bedroom are meshing into a sad blend of blue-grey-black, like a camera lens clouding with the fog-before-the-storm. keep going, darling - this is the most passionate i've seen you in weeks. maybe if you try hard enough, the bits and pieces of me will melt and solidify into glass so you can shatter me then watch yourself bleed.

the thing about mermaids, i must explain, is that they are not always born in the sea. i. nothing. it was nothing, she reminds herself, leaning precariously over the prim white balcony. the breathing ocean moans and sighs, sighs and moans against the fragile coastline. all of this is nothing and it is everything. she takes one, two, three bitter sips with a wince and leaves the salt air to find her sterile, cold bedroom. the new year is cursed, she decides as she falls limp and helpless into the wild mess of sheets that swallow her small body whole. (she closes her eyes and imagines the pale blankets to be rugged waves, breathing and g

sometimes, in my dreams, i can breathe underwater. i wonder if you can too. - - - we live in this desert disguised as a city, a world where pretty purple houses aren't houses but bits of broken glass stacked elaborately with the most innocent of lies and the best worst intentions. a world where the people aren't people at all but glorified ghosts shifting in and out of one hollow limbo to the next and the next and the next. i've just about used up my last wasted weekend with all the other wasted some-bodies and no-bodies. it's all chalked up to this: the realization that we can't escape our cancerous city who sucked the life right out of

i want to tell you to keep your lies inside of your poison mouths, that your slick silver tongues can't work their magic on me. i am not honored. i am not flattered. i keep your secrets because they are not mine to tell, but my god, i carry that weight around with me. - - - i think you knew it was coming. you are the one person who won't give their secrets to me - ( the only ones i want ) while the rest carelessly cast them at my ankles like wood to the pyre, you lurk in the shadows: quiet, mysterious. i would gladly add yours to the flames, would proudly wear them as a crown of thorns. - - - i wonder if you keep them distant b

then - i sit at my window and remember how love was my favorite thing, how i wanted to fix everything. - - - you grasped an empty bottle lying in the dirt and meaningfully cast it out against the cement; when it shattered, your lips curved into a smile. "i wish he hadn't fucked me up so badly when I was younger," you said, curling into yourself against the wall, "i always feel like I want to break something." - - - "i love you. forever." "forever?" "forever and ever." "forever is an awfully long time." "yeah, i know." - - - maybe it was wrong, but i sort of liked the way everyone hated you. - - - an old yearbook entry reads:

once upon a time, you told me i can't save everyone. - - - you will never read this, thankfully, ( i think, i think, i think, is what i tell myself like a record on repeat ) but i would like you to know i have so much left to say. i remember looking at you and seeing the entire world staring back, hearing all of the music of the universe playing at once. what happened? have you lost the notes? has the world torn that out of you? i'd give it all back if i could, but i'm afraid you don't want my silly confessions or sad-sorry-stories anymore. - - - i've become no more than pixelated text, a name staring at you blankly through the

dear you, today i learned about imprinting and homeostatic mechanisms; that socrates said "the truth can be discovered through reason and logic," and someone, somewhere, said that science allow us to control the environment. but listen, you, no matter how many times i substitute variables in the equation for heat, or memorize how exactly to convert energy and chemicals to matter and compounds,     i can't          control                you. you know, you, that the chaos theory is no way to dismiss this, and descartes was wrong when he said "all reality can be applied to mathematics." no square root of x will eve