#poetry quote

You’re only a phone call, a text message, away. It would be so easy to type in your name and write out everything that has been on the tip of my tongue for months. Every thought I’ve had, every emotion I’ve felt, every word left unsaid. I would tell you how much I miss you; tell you how I wake up some days and I can’t breathe quite right because of the ache you left in my chest. I would tell you about everything you’ve missed – graduation, my promotion at work, all my adventures – you would tell me how proud you are of me; your voice would soften around my name, your gaze full of uncertainty and hope. How easy it would be to let the words spill from my lips and finally feel relief from this never-ending ache. You’re only a phone call, a text message away, but none of that makes you less out of reach. Every time I reach for my phone, I feel the weight of the possibilities; my fingertips burn, yearning to type out everything that I am drowning in – but you are just out of reach, a hair too far from my grasp. Everything that once brought us together, now stands between us. My phone has become a deserted museum of what once was – looted of its monuments; only specks of the past remain, glimpses of what could have been. Once full of hope, and laughter, and promises, now barren and forgotten. I ache to walk through its hallways, run my fingers over the walls, but there is nothing left for me there. No evidence that there was ever anything worth displaying – worth remembering.

unsent messages 2.0 (3/?) by (DS)

i. I graduate tomorrow. You were supposed to be part of that. The night you broke up with me, I wanted to ask you on a date so we could celebrate together. You always told me how proud you were of me. I remember how soft your voice was and how perfectly it wrapped around my name.

ii. Today, instragram asked me if I wanted to unfollow you because I don’t interact with your account anymore. I cried in the bathroom at work because I realized that it’s been a month since we’ve last spoken. It’s been a month since I felt right.

iii. They announced a sequel to your favorite movie – the one you showed me months ago. I still remember the excitement in your voice while you talked about all your favorite parts. You kept apologizing for talking, but what you didn’t understand is that I never wanted you to stop talking. I would give anything to hear your voice again.

iv. Part of me, no matter how hard I try to get rid of it, thinks you could still come back. Maybe we weren’t ready, or maybe it wasn’t our time; maybe there’s a chance that one day, we can love each other in the way we were too scared to.

v. I hope you never regret me. I hope that I gave you just enough of myself that you cherish my memory. I hope you’re able to think about me and smile. More importantly, though. I hope that one day, I can think of you and smile; I hope that your memory doesn’t always shatter my heart, and I am not stuck in this loop of reliving the moment your eyes grew cold over and over again. I hope one day, the world feels right, even if you’re not with me. 

messages i almost sent at 2 a.m. (2/?) by (ds)

If you must go, please hold me for a just moment longer. If you must go, tell me one last time that I was—am enough. If you must go, please promise me that you won’t regret loving me. If you must go, please don’t forget your key; please don’t forget your way, if ever wish to come back.

(5/30) by (DS)

i. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I spent so many years fighting the voices in my head; the ones that told me that I would never be good enough and that there is nowhere in this world I belong. I fought so hard. I hope you know that. I only ever wanted to make you proud.

ii. None of this is your fault, person reading this. I never really had any answers in my lifetime, but I do know this: there is nothing that could have been done to stop this. I know that because I tried it all. None of this was your fault, though. I don’t think it was mine, either.

iii. I only ever tried to be what you needed of me—a good daughter, a good sister, a good friend, but I only ever knew how to be a metaphor. A metaphor in which the girl who wants to die desperately tries to find something to live for; a metaphor in which the girl who wants to die tries to remember that living is no more punishment than it is a gift. I guess none of those were metaphors, but they were nice sentiments. I hope I was only ever a nice sentiment.

iv. I wanted to be enough for him to love me. I wanted to be the person they deserved. I wanted to learn what it was like to build something beautiful with them—but I only ever knew how to destroy things. Including, and especially, myself.

v. Before I go, know that there was nothing anyone could have done differently. I never felt quite right in this world. I spent many years teetering on the edge of not enough and entirely too much. So with that, I must go, but I do ask one favor of you—love yourself in every way I ever tried to; and when you look to the moon, know that wherever I am going, I am taking you with me. I do not know where I am going, but I hope it is beautiful. I hope I get to see you there. One day. Many years from now.

4/30 by (DS)

I don’t know where you and I will be five years from now. We could be in a tiny apartment, making coffee at 2 a.m. and watching those campy horror movies that I only watch to make you smile. You laugh at another comment I make about the fake blood; I rest my head on your shoulder. The world is calm. 

Or maybe we’re cities apart, separated by more than the miles. We are now strangers who know everything about the other; we vowed to never utter the other’s name again because it hurts too much. I can’t drink coffee without thinking about you, and you haven’t played that stupid video game in months because you keep thinking about all the jokes I made while I watched.

I don’t know where the world will take us, or if we’ll get to go there together. I do know this, though—right now, in this moment, your laugh is my favorite sound and I will do everything to hear it as much as I can; I know that no matter what happens, even if this only ends in heartache, I am so happy to have met you. So I am going to enjoy the right now, and do everything I can to give us as many tomorrows as possible. 

please, stay as long as you’d like by (DS)

I was five years old when I almost drowned. I thought myself unstoppable in my pink bathing suit and red floaty tube. I still remember the world going dark as I breached the surface, slipping through the protection of the tube around my waist. I remember my throat burning as I tried to call for someone, but they all went to lunch long ago. Most of all, I remember my bones aching from fatigue and, just for a moment, I thought about giving up as my body quickly forgot what it felt like to breathe—

verb; to take air, oxygen, into the lungs and expel it; inhale and exhale; respire.

We’re 15 years old, 7 years before we vow to never speak each other’s names again. Haris tells me of his mother and the panic attack she had the night before. He never speaks of his family, but he recalls feeling paralyzed, watching her clutch at her chest, gasping for air, falling to the ground. He desperately wants to understand and he knows that I know better than anyone else in his life—the feeling of water slowly dripping into your lungs, an unfixable faucet; the feeling of your blood running cold, solidifying beneath your skin. He knows that I understand what it is like to have your body betray you, to fight against its most basic survival instinct; the one that keeps us alive, the one that reminds us to breathe—

verb; to inject as if by breathing; infuse

I heard their voice for the first time three months ago; it was nothing like what you read about in the novels. The world did not turn on its axis, my depression was not suddenly cured, and my heart didn’t skip a beat. That is not to say that their voice is not quickly becoming my favorite sound. That is not to say that I wouldn’t give anything to hear their laugh or bask in the way my name sounds falling from their lips for as long as they will allow me to. Hearing their voice was nothing like what you read about in the novels, there was no grand epiphany, but that is not to say that hearing their voice, their mere presence, doesn’t remind me what it’s like to love to breathe–

verb— to live; exist.

When you tell people that you want to die, they never really know what to say. They never know how to respond when you tell them about all the times you’ve crossed the road, imagining what it is like to get hit by six cars in succession. Or that every time you go to the train station, you wonder whose day would be inconvenienced if you took that final step at just the right moment. When you tell people you want to die, they always say the same things. Some say ‘fuck.’ Some say ‘please don’t.’ Some say ‘fight.’ Some people give you every reason that you shouldn’t want to die. Some say nothing at all. No one, though, ever says—breathe.

breathe: the reprise by (DS)

I hope that someday when I am gone, someone, somewhere picks my soul up off of these pages and thinks, “I would have loved her.”

Nicole Lyons, HUSH

The Butterfly by Arun Kolkatkar

There is no story behind it.

It is split like a second.

It hinges around itself.

It has no future.

It is pinned down to no past.

It’s a pun on the present.

It’s a little yellow butterfly.

It has taken these wretched hills under its wings.

Just a pinch of yellow,

it opens before it closes

and closes before it o

where is it

The love I have for you is bigger than anything I’ve come to know in this lifetime.

S.A // It might swallow me whole, and I’m okay with that.

The world would be so much better if we never stopped loving each other.

S.A // It feels empty without you

Maybe when you try and give your entire heart to someone, it gets broken in half so that you learn to give half of it away and keep the other half for yourself.

S.A // Blessings in disguise

poetry is when an emotion has found its

thought and the thought has found words

-robert frost