Summer.

Although the months of June and July were overcast and grey, it didn’t matter in the slightest. His presence was enough sunshine to burn through London’s hazy skyline. With him, life became a perpetual summer: the days were long and tasted sweet. Life was fanciful, and brilliant, and every moment could have been projected from a scriptwriter’s imagination.

Stitches.

And slowly, I started to miss him the tiny spaces that you just can’t get to. I missed him in the gap between moments. He stopped being a missing lung or a haunted street; instead, it had felt like something had been unstitched. His delicate weaves in my skin- his tender pulls and knots- were teased out, irreversibly and slowly. Each pulling thread was yet another wave in that ocean which kept us so far apart; the very ocean that continues to keep us in the fixed categories of ‘here’ and ‘there’.

It wasn’t that I was becoming unstitched myself, because I was still fully intact. I was still a whole. Losing him was a sort of numbing, draining, process. He was not an organ, preventing me from functioning, but he was vibrance. Things didn’t break without him. Things kept going, endlessly, tiresomely. I was stripped of colour, much like the northern sky that once streaked above us.

I missed him in sepia-toned sadness. Like our English summer, he was ephemeral and enchanting. But he flew away and I was left in a concrete jungle filled with hard faces and fake personalities. He stretched his wings whilst I had mine clipped. He found his paradise and I found my home in a cage.

I missed him lost on the underground, longing for his silent words of comfort and embraces sent along telephone wires. Only his voice could heal my woulds, and without it I was left cut and weeping. And I would call for him, desperately, endlessly, but he would never quite hear those words.

I stopped missing him at the dead of night, and started missing him at 3pm whilst having coffee with a half-beautiful man. I missed his curved teeth and curved speech. People here always asked questions, and I desperately missed his answers.

Eventually, I missed him when I realised that I  had forgotten him. I missed him on that Sunday when neither of us remembered to call. I missed him when I realised our faces stained other people’s photographs, but not each other’s.

I missed him when I realised that he was coming home this month.

(image via tumblr)

February.

He was my weekday delight and my Sunday torment. He was evenings sprayed with starlight and a flooded tube journey. He was burning bright blue, and he hurt me every time, even when it made me happy. He was an addiction that I never intended to pick up. He crawled slowly into my veins, seeping, corroding, until I couldn’t get enough.

But I couldn’t get away, because I was lonely and he was enchanting and he was the only pair of lips in a faceless city which would whisper my name.

(image credit photosbyajm.tumblr.com )

The North Star.

My summer nights are christened with your name, your smile adorning these rolling fields with garlands of light.  And I continue to spend my summer days falling fast into these wisps of straw, with absolutely no intention of getting up. With every beam of your rose-stained lips and every glow of your tangled laughter, these cold bones grow warmer, and blue flesh becomes flushed.

And, for the first time in a long time, I feel alive.

But I can’t have you: you are a Michelangelo and I’m a thrift shop steal. You are a symphony and I’m a broken string. You are a shining glory fallen upon my calloused mistakes. I am more than damaged goods; I am a fountain of broken glass.

I may look, but I cannot possibly touch.

But I don’t mind, because people have their places and relationships have their time. I would rather gaze across this gliding sunset than never experience it at all. And I will continue to return to these summer nights and have you bless every passing star which blankets us. Maybe one day my fractures will become joins, and maybe I will become a vessel that no longer leaks. Maybe then my ink-stained hands will be able to clasp something as tender as you.

Nevertheless, it is beyond a pleasure to witness your great orchestra, even if I am but a blurred face in a bustling crowd.

Fire.

Deep in midnight, we set these walls ablaze
We hurled daggers from our mouths
Breathed fire from our lungs
We mercilessly broke each other down until nothing was left
Our silent screams echoed for no one to hear
And we fell deeply, darkly into a restless slumber

But as the light of morning cradled your every edge
We awoke fragilely in a silver embrace
Chains were broken; freedmen were made
Wounds were cleaned; burns were healed
Curves dominated faces
We were free and everything had returned.

(image via tumblr)

Untitled.

And she loved him. She loved him with every closing of those familiar sliding doors, every glide of cigarette smoke, every last chime of wine-stained laughter. And she missed him, waking with that dull ache of reality as morning crept across her body. His smell had long left her room, but his mark was still scorched on her skin, in a place that could never quite heal.

But time had passed and drastic decisions had long been fixed in their ways. He would never love her. His passion began and ended on those cold January days, whilst she carried on burning. She made sure the flame lay low, deep inside where no one would discover the burning ash inside of her lungs. So she filled her days with empty conversations and tried to put people in gaps that just didn’t fit. She tried to forget him, she honestly did. He was tirelessly flawed and tarnished and painful, but he had a grip on her that her fingers just couldn’t undo. He was a masterpiece of broken glass; a summer’s day without any shade. And without knowing, she would always hope for dark eyes in the countless puddles of blue.

She continued burning away, putting away everything they had once shared at the back of her wardrobe. That is where her monsters would live. And she slowly accepted that she would forever be but a snowflake in his great avalanche; an exhale of smoke in his grand ballroom.

(image via tumblr)

Empty bed syndrome.

She lay there awake at night, wishing she was somewhere else. Kisses were her company and hugs were her home. Her blankets were a limp arm and her lungs only worked if the air passed through other lips.

She was trapped in a place where even friends couldn’t fill the void: she no longer craved love. The only thing that kept her bones warm at night was the heat of a naked body pressed against her. She missed him. She still found his outline next to her at night. She pressed herself around his skinny waist and she kissed his nose and curled her eyelashes around his cheeks, only to realise that this was another body. This one wouldn’t hold her tightly in the final moment; this one wouldn’t chase the night away with silent whispers. He may be soft and gentle, but, to her, he was just a familiar shell of a long-missed body.

She realised that she couldn’t sleep with that empty cupboard next to her, because she could never have empty spaces in her life: everything had to have its place; everything had to be filled. And for this reason, she could never be alone. Empty air was constricting; open spaces were suffocating.

So she rolled over, wishing that he could fill that void, wishing that he would come back to bed and fill this ghostly space between them.

(image via tumblr)

Oceans.

The sea rolled her way onto the shore, and brought you back to me.

Her breeze hung on my hip like the way you held on when everything was crumbling apart between us. It brushed my lips like the time I didn’t know it was our last kiss, and then again against my cheek like when you thought I was asleep. I was encompassed by a golden glow, reflecting your gaze when everything was okay: holding me in the shine of the promise that we would make this next season. With it, I felt the warmth of your body pressed against mine on cold winter nights.

And as the winds picked up, I remembered that evening when words where thrown and things hit harder than home. I remember the salt water flooding between us, filling those open miles we had always managed to cross. I felt your muscles seize and your skin became cold. Everything became blurry; everything became pale. As much as I held on, I couldn’t stop the waves breaking us apart. And, for the longest moment, I thought I was drowning.

And for a while, I was. The freezing waters climbed down my lungs and filled my insides with numbness. All I could do was watch the waves pass over me, suspending me in this halfway house between sinking and making it through. Over time, I managed to raise my lips above those waters: just enough to know that it wasn’t the end. I just kept floating until I found somewhere stable. There, I finally learned to stand again.

And that morning I stood on that beach, and watched the currents pull you far, far, away.

(image via tumblr)

Crab fishing.

I called your name.

But there was no answer.

Empty corridors, silence down the line, a vacant stare, a message which will never come. I stand and stare out of the window, in the vain hope that your dark eyes will be staring back, twinkling in the mysterious way that I always adored. And I shake my head, not at you or the barren tarmac below, but at me, for the fact that I allowed you another piece of hope. So I pull on the wool of my cardigan, because the frost between us chills my bones too deeply.

And as I sit at my desk, I wonder if my ghost has ever streaked your mind. I wonder if, in between the cigarettes and the music and distasteful jokes, whether you manage to turn your mind to lips pressed onto cheeks; when green eyes grew as wide as her grin. Or back to sudden statements and black stained pillowcases and her body pressed as far as possible into the wall, far away from you as possible.

But I put down my pen and I remember.

I was never that special to you.

Ember.

You were the sun beams which cradled my face on those summer days; my oasis in the most barren lands. You were the voice which kept singing whilst all else was silent; the smiling eyes in the sea of unhappy faces. You were the bonfire which burnt in the deepest caves of my heart.

But that’s the thing about life, love, and everything in between. Sometimes the sun goes down, deserts dry up, and voices stop calling. Eyes glaze up. Fires become embers. Sometimes things change, people change, for reasons beyond missing that call on a Wednesday afternoon. Sometimes people outgrow the excuses you make for them. Sometimes the things you wrote about them become stories of two people who don’t exist anymore. Sometimes people have to become memories, no matter how wonderful they may be.

But as much as I tell myself this, I can’t shake this numbness which has crawled inside me. I want to crumble; I want to turn tables and cry until my heart stops bleeding. I want to break so I can finally be put back together. But it just won’t work. I walk around London with a lead chest and glazed eyes, hoping to feel something more than slight confusion and the feeling like I have forgotten something. I want to see your face and curse your name and give you hell for walking away without a decent reason, but I continue to make allowances for you. People say it’s because I’m too nice, or that I forgive too freely, but I feel like it’s because I understand: I understand what it feels like to be confused and lonely and self destructive. I remember what it feels like when life sneers and jeers as you try and get back on your feet.

But I just wish that you stayed. I wish you would have let me pick you up and brush the dirt of your knees and kiss where it hurt, because that’s exactly what you did for me. You stayed through the nights where I was no longer myself, and you cleaned my tear-stained face and held my hand when it was loose. You made me smile when I thought the muscles had emaciated, and you made me love when I thought that I was a lost cause. You laughed at my hopeless cliches and hyperbolic thoughts.

I know that people are different, but I can’t shake the question of why you kept this wall and stopped me from coming through.

I’m sitting here watching the last embers cling for their final breath, because I can’t bear to stamp them out.

(photo credit to Mitch Martinez via mitchmartinez.com)