you’ve always loved so gracefully,
but you’re falling hard this time and
there’s nothing magical in the way that
this rollercoaster has just taken you
for this ride and there hasn’t ever
been seatbelts for you to hold onto.

there’s no pretending that this is
some sort of dance you can just
waltz yourself through anymore
because your eyes tell me that this
is for the long run and
you’ve started off sprinting.

you can’t catch your breath here.

(but they must be oxygen and
you’re dying for some air)

my body is not my body,
but a hollowed out mannequin.
and my mind is my mind,
but a machine in which
words spill out instead of numbers
and they’ll string themselves together in
ways that are half-smiles and
narratives that glide so smoothly
into a story someone must be telling.

there are flowers under my ribs and
they have begun to breathe with my lungs
and steal the oxygen that is meant
for the body that is not mine.

so when i cut those flowers
and presented them to my friends,
they told me they were so vivid and
dyed with colours that they
could see other universes in the petals.

it must be captivating:
what grows so blindly in the dark
and when revealed to the light
turns multicolored

(they must have taken parts of me then)

i saw the stars when my eyes softened
just enough to stop straining
against the black of the sky
to see the pictures that
danced on that dark canvas
and the airplanes that were just
temporary visitors on the moon’s
work of art.

the lamps were too bright,
and the glow of city life seemed
too noisy for me to truly see
the galaxies between these bright lights
that have been dying
hane died and passed on
to a celestial place where once unamed
were given another place to belong.

(i wish i could lay in the snow and stare up for hours.
the cars on the road didn’t seem
to appreciate my wonder)

“it’s easy to step on water, just watch me and see. look, aren’t I doing it so easily? yes, I know it’s ice. don’t give me that look. what you don’t realize is that it’s all really about working around the problem. things you thought were obstacles might have actually been there to help all along. sometimes you just need to look at it from a different angle. don’t be so quick to give up. if they say don’t run, then dance. no one ever said there were only two ways. just use a little imagination. live a little.”

( — i recalled a conversation that’s stuck with me even now)

he cuts his tongue on the envelop he’s licking to close. blood hits the floor. it stings and he laughs. thinks about summoning demons, thinks about the way that his coffee tastes like bitterness and metal, thinks about how he would kiss her and she wouldn’t be the only one leaving scarlet behind. there’s flecks of red marring the white, and he still hasn’t sealed the letter away, hasn’t locked the paper behind a lock and key of glue and a sheet that has cut him in the same way words used to. she looks at him like he’s insane. he grins slightly. can’t help but fall into the role of the madman she takes him to be. there’s no reason why a cut tongue seems so funny to him, funny in the way he knows his words have an edhe and he is always playing with a blade one way or another. his tongue will stop bleeding eventually. sticks it back in his mouth. the taste is strange.

(it still bleeds)

and oh we did it again, and oh there goes another part of me, part of us, part of something bigger and yet smaller than this world. i’d like to keep it right here between our lips, and it’s all too close that it hurts and yet somehow, i’ve deluded myself into think i love you. do i love you, is this love or am i loving the idea of you, the idea of us and this small world we like to hide in. and oh i did it again, and oh maybe this is the mess i’ve made for myself. i make messes, made a mess of myself, spilt them on the floor– there is no hazard sign. i’ve never learned to put up those yellow markers, slipped on water, slipped on ice, slipped into life and i’m still slipping, but i haven’t hit the ground yet

(perhaps this is luck, or maybe it’s just another mistake)

and so maybe you’re playing around
because you’re too scared to actually
take this whole thing seriously.

that i get,
because in the end,
we’re both just the same
in that way,
which means that we’ll just pretend
as if i don’t see through your lies
and you don’t see that fact that
i see through your lies,
and that means we can keep this.

we can keep whatever this is
right between the both of us,
and nothing will change.

(i think perhaps it’s not that we’re
afraid of the change, but that
we’ve gone down this path once
and it has never ended as well as the
stories tell us it will)

i’ll sit in a sea of students,
watch them walk by and
listen to after school plans.
perhaps it’s weird for me
to smile a little bit
but you won’t see the way
that i’m happy for their
happiness on my face.

lovely, really–
how so much care can pour out
for a single elaborate gesture
on a single day,
but even if my skepticism says
that this is all just a capitalist scheme,
i shouldn’t be too harsh
on the idea of
showing one’s love to another

(and so i wish everyone
all my love,
and that they’ll find love
coming home to them
in their own ways)

A phone rings inside the fluorescent office. No one picks up. It rings and rings. The girl pauses, considers picking up the phone. It stops ringing. She continues to walk past, and the ringing begins once more. The flamingo in the motel sign blinks when she turns the corner of the building and walks onto the side of the road.

(She smiles slightly, choosing to think of it as a send-off of sorts)