The Loneliness

It's growing harder to pretend that I am fine w/ the status quo.
It's more difficult to accept this reality.
My heart cries out to have you,
my thoughts are constantly about you.
I need you more & more every day but I cannot have you.
The loneliness engulfs me some nights.

Whole

He comes to me & I am fulfilled.
The lonely part of my heart is gone.
He smiles @ me & I come undone.
All the magic in the world in his eyes.
We are so fitting together,
like puzzle pieces who have finally found their match.
And in his arms, everything is perfect.
Our love makes me whole.

I am in love with a man who is not there,
who exists almost entirely in my mind.
He comes to me in between the moments of his real life,
the life I am not a part of,
and at those times, he is real.
He holds me tight & whispers sweet things into my hair & I believe this fantasy is reality.
But then he goes
quietly back to that real life,
leaving me hidden in his imagination,
and I have only memories of our time.
I cannot curl up beside him & feel his steady warmth,
cannot breathe in his familiar smell.
I build our lives on dreams & wishes,
fairytales I spin out of whole cloth.
None of it is real,
except for the part where he has stolen my heart completely.

Powerless

I know that nothing good can come from any of this,
yet I can't pull myself away.
Your siren song is my undoing
and I am pulled deeper into your captivity.
I should know better & I should tear myself free from your hold on me.
But something keeps me coming back for more.
I am powerless against you.

Light

You make me feel so light
like air
as if I'm made of feathers & fairy dust.
When we are together time stands still & everything seems right.

I am in love with a man who isn't there.
He stands as an apparition, a fantasy.
He isn't real.
He is what I have made him to be.

Somewhere else

This bed is lonely w/o you in it,
And I am cold w/o your body next to mine.
I wish you were here for me to curl up next to & wrap my arms around.
Instead you are somewhere else.

This is where

This is where I want to be,
Curled up next to you,
Feeling your chest rise & fall,
Your scent catching in my hair.

This is where I feel complete,
In the safety of your arms,
Where I can let down the public facade,
And be myself.

This is where my heart belongs,
Here in love with you,
Letting you in the secret places of my mind,
And kept safe within your love.

Again

I am in the comfort of your arms and everything seems so right.
This secret we are keeping together,
does it make the flame burn hotter?
Your beautiful body next to mine makes my fears disappear & I feel like I am home.
We were here once before,
and you walked away from this great love.
Will you walk away again?

Collide

Time has passed & led us down such separate roads,
our lives should never again intertwine,
our paths should never cross,
our ships should pass in the night.

But you reached out after all those many years, throwing your trajectory off course & colliding into mine.
You sought me out.
You couldn't leave well enough alone,
and you had to come back again to see just where I had been,
where I am,
and where I am going.

And so the question now is why are you here?

What purpose do you have here? Did you come again to see what might have been? To live in a nostalgic dream? To wonder about the what ifs?

Or is it more than just a pipe dream?
Do you come now w/ a heart full of regret & plans to make things right this time?

What is the reason for coming back & throwing my life off track?
For making me remember everything you once meant to me?
For whispering to me all the things I wished you had said all those many years ago?

And why do I love it so when we collide?

Falling

I'm falling for you again
Slowly, slowly, but falling still the same.
Eager for when I can see you again,
When I can wrap my arms around you,
Feeling so at home in your embrace.
I count down the minutes & hours until I can hear your voice again,
Kiss your beautiful face,
Revel in your laugh.
And I know it's dangerous to fall for you.
I have played this role before.
I know the ending to this story,
the one where my heart ends up broken.
But I can't seem to stop myself from falling into your trance again,
falling into the comfort of our familiar routine,
falling into the magic of the time we spend together.
I can't keep myself from wanting to be with you,
even though I know it will never be what I want it to be.

Split lip, broken dreams,
Ain't that how it always seems?

When You're Gone

You're here again
Like an apparition from the past
And I hardly know what to do with you.
The old routines are so familiar,
like coming home,
and I find myself falling back into place.
Years have passed
and you did not occupy my mind.
But suddenly I can't escape you.
I mull over my time with you, replaying each moment,
my own special memory.
But eventually you leave
and memories are all I have.

Fantasy

You have returned
My heroic knight
To sweep me off my feet again
And make everything good & solid.

But this fairy tale is merely an illusion,
A false world we've created for ourselves.
There is no truth to any of this.

Except we both want to believe it so badly.

Once Again

I shouldn't go down this path again with you when I already know where it ends.
I should be strong enough to look away & take my heart to somewhere safe.
I should be smart enough to know better.

But you know how to unlock my resolve & destroy my will.
And suddenly I find myself caught up in you once again.

My Song

It's the same old refrain
playing again,
rising up like a ghost from the past.
I know this road,
I've traveled it many times before.
And every time,
it ends the same.
It's never a happy song.

Phantom

Why do you haunt me?
Like a phantom you return again & again to steal away my resolve.

You who can make my world feel so complete.
You who can make my world feel so hollow.

Why do I never know how to let you go?

Gone Girl

You still cling to me,
although tenuously,
in order to still have a connection.
You return when it is convenient for you,
to make sure you still can,
in case you want to return again in the future.

But you mistake my politeness as a welcome,
you do not realize that you have faded from my mind and heart,
and that only when you return do I even remember you exist.
You keep one foot in the door,
never noticing I don't live there anymore.

I am not the same girl you once knew.
I have grown & changed & become strong enough to realize how much better I am without you around.
You cannot break this heart again.
You cannot return to what once was.
You cannot know me anymore.

Do not confuse the fact that I wish you no ill will as me welcoming you home. This home is no longer yours and I have no room for you here.

Back Again

You were gone for so long
but now and then you come back.
As if taking my happiness in the past wasn't enough,
you've come to try to poach it away again.

But my heart no longer belongs to you
and the clever tricks & games you play have no effect on me anymore.
You come back to fill your own emptiness, the one that exists in you now.

But I cannot validate you anymore.
The time for that has passed.
I cannot provide the redemption you seek to atone for the sins of your past.
You come back to me to reassure yourself, to soothe your guilty heart.
But I am not your panacea for the wounds you have inflicted on yourself.

I have already given you the forgiveness you needed and I have moved on.
The cure for your guilt,
the thoughts that gnaw @ your bones,
is not found in me,
is not found in my words.

You come back time & time again,
to see if I am still here.
But I haven't been here in a long time.
You cannot find your salvation in me.

Foolish Heart

Oh foolish heart!
When will you ever learn?
That love is a fallacy,
a fantasy, a bedtime story.

Always hopeful,
you forget the tears I cried
when you were broken.
You want to believe in
the fairy tale of
happy ever after.

And you almost convince me
that the fairy tale might be real.

Elephant Graveyard

I have resigned myself to alone.
I know that I will crawl into an empty bed, night after night,
I will come home to an empty house,
greeted only by the shadows of my own self.
I will celebrate my joys alone,
I will cry on my own shoulder.
When I fall apart, no one will be there to catch me,
to pick up my pieces & make me whole.

I know who I am inside,
the dark, complicated girl,
the sadness inside that I ignore but that taints everything I do.
The sullen, quiet girl who worries too much about too many things,
who feels her own inadequacies so acutely.
The girl who so very much wants to be loved but who so very much fears it.
The hollow girl who has already had too much to bear.
The broken girl, the discarded girl, the girl no one wants.

I know who I am.
Under the veneer of slick, dry wit & a quick smile is the girl who is always a little bit apart from everyone.
The one who hangs back & never fully lets anyone in.
Being alone is easier when you don't feel lonely,
and you don't feel lonely if you never let anyone in.

So I know my place.
My place to exist in silent suffering.
The place where I am always alone.
My elephant graveyard.

Pretty Paper

Inside my heart
I keep hidden
The secrets that create me.
I bury them inside
And cover them with pretty paper.
I make myself palatable for the world to see.
Because the person I am under the shiny bows & witty humor
Is too dark & too wounded,
Too fragile, too afraid,
Too injured, too melancholy,
Too broken, and too destroyed
For anyone to see.

Tumble

I want to tumble into you
Into the warmth of your laugh
And let you unlock my secret mind.
I want to be open & let you see the person I am underneath the polished exterior.

To let you walk through the hidden corridors of my mind, letting you peruse the doorways inside. I crave to be understood & explored.

But he came first & destroyed the precious things inside. He left carnage behind.

So I'm locked up tight, deadbolted & secure.

Home

I want someone who will love me entirely
Who will let me be the one who doesn't have to always be strong.

I want someone who will let me fall top pieces,
Because keeping things together can get terribly hard sometimes.

I want someone who will let me be wild & untamed in my strange & curious ways,
someone who will appreciate the hidden fragility,
someone who thinks I'm a beautiful creature, even when I'm a mess.

I want someone who can be my strength for awhile, when it gets to be too much for me.

I want someone whose arms feel like home.

Alone

Not everyone is meant to be a pair
Some of us are no one's match
Some of us walk through life alone

Untitled

I am wrapped up within myself
Sewn shut & hidden.
The exterior a pretty outside
And inside is kept from the light.

I want to be able to be free
But I am too scared & fragile for all that.
I exist as two beings.
The one within & the one without.

Status Quo

How can I accept the status quo?
We are so good together but so far apart.
The world tumbles around us as if nothing is wrong
But everything is out of place.
Why do we pass each other like ships in the night?
We collide like stars, hot & bright & beautiful.
And then we disappear.

How can it be like this?
How can we be so close but still so far?
Nothing can even make sense when it's like this, but this is the way it is.

How I ache for something to be different, for something to change, for this to not be how things are.

But this is what it is.
It will never change.
And once again the things I want, the things that make me feel complete, are out of reach.

Again

It's so easy again.
Like coming home.
Like warmth & comfort.

We laugh as if no time has passed at all,
As if the years haven't flown by in the blink of an eye,
As if nothing has even changed.

It's us again. Familiar & satisfying & comfortable. It's as if everything had just been on hold, waiting for us to come back again.

This is dangerous. We burn so hotly together, we are bound to combust. We are so electric together. Why do we match so well but can't seem to fit?

I am missing you again.

Amputation

Loss is an amputation.
It severs essential pieces,
leaving behind a different being.

I don't still love you. The pain of that loss has subsided. The grip you had on my heart is gone.

But the piece you tore from me, the part of me that you so cruelly ripped away, that will never return. The wound has healed, the pain is gone, but I will never be the same as I once was.

You damaged me & there is no returning to the way I once was. I have to learn to adapt to the way I am now.

I have to hope that the damage you caused isn't my complete undoing.

Contradictions

I am a strange little thing, aren't I?
Really quite the contradiction in every way.

I am beautiful, but also unattractive.
I am independent, but also needy.
I am strong, but also so very fragile.
I am loyal to a fault, but also distrusting.
I am a loner, but yearn for company.
I am a romantic, but don't believe in romance.

I am a confusing tumble of so many things. I barely know which way I am.

Shallow Fields

I walk through shallow fields,
My shadow my only companion.
I spend the long summer hours alone.

The secrets I keep, locked away where no one can find them. My deepest fear: that someone will open them & spill them out,
like broken teacups,
crashing heavy onto the floor.

Once they are all out, they can't be put back and then no one will know what to do with me anymore.

Hollow

My insides are hollow once again.
The void I learned to ignore is back.
I'd forgotten about it
in the days of warmth and steadiness.
When you were here,
you filled it in.
You nestled in,
a perfect, pretty fit.
The missing piece had been found.

But you've gone away,
as easily as you came in,
and left things empty again.
It had been so long,
those days of honey & nectar,
the nothingness seemed foreign.
It overwhelmed.
In my agony, I could no longer remember how I lived hollow all those years before you.
I twisted in the misery of my miserable heart,
the gaping maw open inside me again.

You, who knew of the emptiness that had once lived inside me, who knew the tender way that you stitched me to your side...
You knew but didn't care.
You ripped me @ the seams,
one quick, fluid motion,
and with that,
tossed me aside.

So the hollowness in me is back and now it's here to stay.
This time, I have learned my lesson.
Empty hurts,
but love is too dangerous.

Weak

I've grown weary of this part you're playing.
I struggle against the role you've given me.
Why is it that your voice still haunts me after all this time?
You turned away
Left me as a shell
Broken & hollowed out.

And yet, here you are once again
Hovering @ the edges
Just there enough so I know it.
I want you to let me be.
I want to send you scattering away, bruised words in your ear.
I want to be strong enough to make you go.
I want to be granite,
Steel,
Iron,
Stone.
I want to be the chill you left with me.
I want to sweep you away,
Ashes on the floor,
Effortlessly. Thoughtlessly.

But I am not the marble statue I long to be. I cannot shake you that easily.

My heart cannot keep its distance.
When you call, it soars.
I hate the power you still have over me. I want to crawl out of my skin to get away from myself.

But you still call
And my heart ignites
And I am left feeling weak.