Month: January 2018

“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly, then your love would also change.” ~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

The moon lingered near the horizon, enormous and beautiful surrounded by a hundred million stars when her voice permeated my dreams.

In truth, the memory of love satisfies the soul the way sweet dreams settle the mind, and sleep comforts the body.

There is an echo to heartbreak, however, that shatters time. Time is both relevant and irrelevant at this sad juncture, for it feels as though it is lost, and as though it stands still.

In the case of the former, it is because I live in the past with memories of her, and I think of the memories we could be making now if she were still here. In the case of the latter, it is because I don’t want to experience another moment without her, and so the notion of time being at a standstill is to await her return.

Though, I am convinced this will never happen given that she has from the realm of my dreams and into the shadows of dreams that belong to someone else.

Perhaps that was the magic trick, and love was nothing more than an illusion. A lie which I lived for much longer than I even deserved, but how can I permit myself to believe that?

After all, we started a life together in a sea of opposition and flourished amid the waves of hypocrisy that crashed against us. Nothing stood in our way as we laid our foundation. No one deterred us from each other as we fell deeper in love. During our era of affection we made plans, we made mistakes, and we made love.

Oh, what a sweet love it was, too.

The kind of love poets write about, but seldom experience. The two of us poets who defied the fate of unrequited love. We rhymed without reason, because our hearts had reasons that no logic could comprehend.

She was my muse for the better part of my life. She remains my muse now. Drawing out of me my inner most thoughts and feelings. They spill on the page like an ink jar knocked over. The blood of my heart stained her purity. My tears bleed into the fibers of the paper and leave the scent of what once was to linger for her breath alone.

Though I no longer cry as often as I did, I still do shed a tear at random times throughout the day and night. Not long drawn out sobs, but short bursts of emotion where our memories leave me in the form of minute storms.

The clouds dissipate almost as quickly as they gathered, so as to not obstruct the moon when she lingers into my dreams again.

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” ~Khalil Gibran

Remember when the world fell at our feet?

You were my sunset and I was your dawn. Now we remain as distant as stars, beyond each other’s reach and no longer in each other’s orbit.

I have spent many days and nights in my head, lost among the veils of my thoughts and in need of finding my way out. For it is a dangerous place to be for a hopeless romantic.

I would hide in my heart, if it wasn’t broken, but there isn’t any comfort to be found in the absence of love. It is a cold and desolate place at the moment. A dungeon where the prisoner is memory and I cannot bear to watch it die.

My soul, too, has been shattered by the hammer of betrayal. The pieces leave me in the form of tears.

Some days are easier than others, and though logic dictates that eventually each day will get easier than the last, I can’t say with any certainty that that will actually be the case.

Though experience tells me this will be an inevitability, experience can only provide insight through the lens of its own visual. Which is to say that my experience has never seen this kind of pain, because I have never felt this deeply for anyone else. Thus, making this experience a unique circumstance in the paradigm of my life.

You were the only woman to have led me through these highs and lows. The only woman I have ever allowed myself to be subjected to these extremes.

Though I may not be the one whom you will remember as the love of your life, it will be with regret on both our behalf that you will learn when it is too late that every woman only gets one man to love her with such depth, just as every man only gets one woman to love him with her entire heart. I had hoped we would have been that for each other. Alas, it appears that was not to be our fate.

Some days it hurts too much to breathe. Some nights, well, actually most nights sleep isn’t an adequate escape from the pain.

I try to bury it. But the deeper I dig the more of you, of us, I find entrenched in my existence. It’s as if who I am has absorbed you into my being, and my identity is no longer mine alone.

You changed me. Perhaps I changed you too. Not in the trivial, idiosyncratic way, but on a profound level where our consciousness has slightly shifted and we will never look at love the same again.

As a consequence, I do not know who I am without you. I never imagined I would ever have to find out, because I believed we were on the path to forever…sinking into the depths of love.

“There can be no peace of mind in love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a starting point for further desires.” ~Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

Our love affair began innocently enough at the dawn of adulthood for the both of us.

Igniting a flame of friendship that burned fiercely into a blaze of passion for nearly two decades. Time and circumstance led us on divergent paths, but the fire never diminished.

Despite the darkness of our lives and the distance that had grown between us, the intensity never dimmed. In fact, the realities in which we lived merely served as an accelerant that preserved our flame and nurtured our feelings for each other. Until it burned like coals, no longer light and flickering, but deep and unquenchable.

The heat of passion unwavering against the night, pushing out against the cold of loneliness, drawing us closer together and leading us to become one.

A simple touch was all it took for me to etch my name on your skin. Invisible ink from my fingers bled into your soul, and I never forgot the way you felt and quivered beneath my touch.

You later trapped the poetry I wrote on your flesh with tattoos that concealed our secrets. Years would pass before I’d touch you again, only this time I penned a love letter on the inner walls of your heart.

And you too, inscribed your affections on me. Searing my skin with kisses and a caress that leaves me longing for you. Your lips drank from the well of my soul, and your body lured me into the depths of your secret chamber that belongs to me and no one else.

In your absence, I roam the universe without a star. In your presence, I yearn for the embrace that reminds me of where I belong. In the silence, I ache for you to the point of being a broken soul.

My heartbeat falters, my breathing is shallow, my will to live fades, but the fire of love and passion burns deep, fueled by the desire you ignited.

“When she raises her eyelids, it’s as if she were taking off her clothes.” ~Colette, 1903

Kiss me, my sweet, with whispers of love convince me again we belong to each other.

Hold me, my dear, cling to me with your soul, set us on fire and illuminate the darkness.

Love me, my love, as only you know how and break these chains of worry and liberate my heart.

Let us wander into each other as we did at the dawn of our affections when we were uninhibited and our hearts filled with madness. We were innocent then, driven by desire. The world was against us, but we were together.

Our feverish tantrums of passion led us into chambers of unbridled love, trapped in a world beyond time and nothing else mattered.

Do you remember those moments?

They keep me alive, a fire that burns even though I can’t breathe. Your fingers once wrapped around my presence, your mouth rained upon my skin. Your heartbeat thundered against my chest and sent tremors through my soul.

You bathed me with affection, you cleansed me with the warm waters of your devotion. You surrendered yourself to my lust and my love. You kissed me in the night and vowed to always be mine.

Is it any wonder I am incapable of extracting you from my soul?

We made love with such passion and depth, I dare say our souls have become fused to one another. This truth has convinced me that I have God’s favor, for it is a blessing to have had you receive me into the warmth of your soul.

Though this didn’t begin with a touch or a kiss. Our intimacy was first experienced when we stood a handsbreadth apart and fell into each other’s gaze.

“True love, to whom my heart is prey, how dost thou hold me in thy sway, that in each day I find no fault but daily wait for love’s assault.” ~Pernette du Guillet, circa 1545

Mortal bliss called love is fleeting.

I’d pursue your scent dancing on the breeze. Your eyes they find me when I am bleeding. Your embrace alone puts my heart at ease. Your kiss sends a ripple from my lips to my soul. Your hands hold my face, no longer broken I am whole.

I die a little each day without you, because in love I truly lived. I grieve the loss of what we shared. I smile when I remember the way you used to give. You surrendered your heart, trading each beat with mine. You granted me love, a blessing divine.

You whispered your secrets that dripped from your lips. Searing my skin with invisible tattoos forged with each kiss. I knew happiness with your head on my chest. You shared your thoughts in the silence between breaths.

In the heat of our passions, your legs used to quiver. In the cold of your absence, my body can only shiver. I once looked upon you, my eyes filled with trust. I am now a man made of tin, paralyzed by rust.

You were truly my moon. For you affected my mood. Each night without you, I sulk and I brood. These are the waves, the crash of my emotions. The depth of my love rivals the oceans.

You punish me with silence, you torture me with desire. You have brought me to my knees, the situation is dire. I’ve lost all logic and make no sense of reason. I am unhinged, I am a breeze out of season.

I am lost to the world, after having lost you. This is no mortal bliss, my dear; this is a love that’s true.

“Longing chains me.” ~Indian Love Song, 1883

I remember the day we met like it was yesterday.

In a universe where the present just became the past, and the future just became the present, time stood still the moment I fell in love with you.

In retrospect, each day since that moment has felt like a blessing I never deserved. No day has been long enough for all the things you needed to hear, and no night has moved slow enough for me to watch you sleep.

Though I’ve listened to your breathing in the night, and memorized the beat of your heart, I am in exile for the way I have loved you.

To have been granted entrance into your soul is a death I’ll die a thousand times, because now I know what heaven is like.

I swam in your eyes when you smiled, and I drowned in the tears I once made you cry. I lived an eternity in your heart, and was condemned to hell when I broke it.

I was burned by desire where you touched me, and frozen with fear when you left. I had it all when you loved me, now I only know darkness and cold.

“Desire, even in its wildest tantrums,  can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.” ~W.H. Auden, early 20th century

You wore the night like a silk robe.

I looked forward to sunset just to be enveloped in your darkness. To wander through your shadows, guided by the stars in your eyes, gave my life purpose.

I searched for your secrets the way the ocean searches for the shore, no matter how distant I always knew I’d find you.

You, my moon, the beautiful reflection in the black mirror of my eyes. We danced in the darkness together, gravity pushing us together and pulling us apart. And I wondered, what great deed did I do in another life to deserve you for eternity.

In the ebb and flow of life and love, I find you and lose you when day turns to night. Except day has ended, and you did not return. You shed that robe and bared your beauty to another. One who did not love you before, and who will not love you after.

I live and die by this certainty, because love has no beginning, and so love cannot have an end.

The star you chase is no star at all, but rather a comet made of ice. The luminous beauty alluring, but will only lead you into the darkness and abandon you once you have lost your way back to me.

My waters of devotion will morph into ruthless rage, because you will no longer be here to control my tide. You were to my darkness what desire is to love. My calm, my passion, my want, my need…my reason for knowing how deeply I could love.

You were my tempest of emotions for wishing it were true.

“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” ~Leonardo DaVinci, The Notebooks

Neither time nor my heart, tarry ever; and as a result both move swift and slow.

Swift, because when I’m with you time escapes me as my eyes briefly dance over your soul. My heart races to keep pace with my breathing in order to find the ever elusive love in your heart.

Slow, because the passing moments are but ripples in the stream of seduction reaching across the surface as my lips swim over your skin. The old moon passes, the new moon wanes. This is how I endure each night without you.

Oh, but to be in your arms again!

When time slithered as I slid into you. Without reservation, swift and slow, into a spring of little hope and a fountain of unwavering affection. The night passed silently and I wished for it not to end, because as arduous as it was to resist you before, it has become most difficult to resist you again.

The halls of my heart echo with your cries of pleasure and pain, whilst your hearth intensified at the stoke of my penetrating fain. Overwhelmed by emotion, my heart and soul shattered in places I knew not existed, and I relinquished a piece of myself into you. Passion poured through my skin and dripped onto you, racing along the contours of your exquisite beauty, hiding in the shadows of your soul.

When dawn approached, diffused and shadowless, your body lingered over me like a gentle fog over a river. The mist of your essence beckoned me once more and I knew I had fallen in love as you collapsed onto me.

I cannot abide my senses to resist you, to resist perusing my passions at your request. I cannot so easily oblige this, my dear love, because it was easier to resist your wetness in the beginning than in the end, since I knew not how blissfully your raindrops tasted on my lips.

“Blaze with the fire that is never extinguished.” ~Luisa Sigea, 16th century

I miss the way you breathed life into my lungs when you whispered, “I love you.”

God, how I ache for you. Even my demons do not indulge in their wickedness. I choke on tears to hide our secrets from the world.

I cannot speak without falling to pieces. I cannot breathe without suffocating from the pain. I cannot gaze upon your beauty without wishing I was blind.

The cold of winter does not numb me from the pain. I dare say death would be a futile endeavor when I don’t even know how to live without you. Truth is, I’ve never learned how to stop loving you.

If there’s one thing I have learned, it’s that when your heart breaks it doesn’t just break in one place. Mine has shattered a million different ways and glued back together by the mere proximity of your heart.

You raise walls I cannot break, you strike blows I should never recover from, and still I love you.

Perhaps one day you’ll reflect on my level of devotion to you and realize that a love this deep doesn’t happen for everyone, and it seldom happens to the same person twice.

In a world where everything else fades, my love for you will never diminish. Isn’t this what love is, unconditional…the unkept secret?

Some say, “Karma will have her way,” but I don’t want Karma to find you. I’d sooner shield you from her with my own heart, if I must, as long as it means you will love me.

This is who I am. I am yours.

You have left me in tears on more occasions than I can count. You’ve abandoned me to silence and shadows where time is irrelevant, and still I love you.

I think of our first kiss and I am reminded of a time when dreams came true.

Amid the darkness, amid the chaos, I follow the echo of your whisper, a love song with words that perhaps belong to someone else. Still, I love you.

I seek the fire in your eyes, the gaze that always warmed my soul with desire. I die with longing to feel your caress once more. Without you, I am lost…helpless, with a void in the center of my chest where only you fit, and still I love you.

You were my strength and my weakness, yet without you I am only left with the latter. My only option now is to cry you out of my system, but an ocean has nowhere to run as the rain keeps falling. Each drop leaves me feeling a little more empty, a little more incomplete…parched.

You were my life, my friend, my heart.

If I’m in hell now, it’s because you were my greatest sin.

The flame of my heart sustained on the wings of your whisper, when you said, “I love you.”

“I never wanted but your heart—that gone, you have nothing more to give.” ~Mary Wollstonecraft in a letter to Gilbert Imlay, her lover (Letter LXX, London 18th century)

With my destiny on a string, I cling to hope.

The hope for one more glance, the fire in your eyes to illuminate the darkness. The hope for one more whisper, a breeze in my desert of loneliness. The hope for one more kiss, a raindrop on my parched lips.

I have only ever needed your presence.

I have only ever wanted your love.

To lose you means to have been forsaken by God.

To be forgotten by you is to be cast out of heaven.

Still, I pray for your return. I’ve even summoned Lucifer, a bargain, my soul for your heart.

If I pull on this string, my heart will come undone, yet a single thread of hope gives me the strength to never let you go.