after all is said and done

it's been hard to admit that i miss you.

i have been struggling with it for a while now, since before i knew i would, when i did not believe i could. and now it happened and here i am, and there you are, and we're not the same people who met briefly in a place where we could have been so many others.

how unfair life is, that people should meet under such particular circumstances and find something in someone else they never knew they'd miss. i never knew what i wanted until i had it and it was taken from me, and i never knew just how much i have refrained from giving.

but it's not the missing that kills me. it's the guilt at wishing i could stop, the painful honesty with which you asked why i couldn't simply be there, why couldn't i have been born elsewhere, that we might be together. it hurts, because i can't ask more of you, but i don't know how to stop.

i just don't know how to not want more.

intoxicating substances

i am drunk off you
i am drunk on you
the way your lip twitches when you say my name
the way you taste when i kiss yours

i want to hold your hand
the whole extent of you
i want you to hold me
tight, warm and strong

i want to kiss you,
taste your lips
and my name as it falls from them

i want to be wrapped around you
deeply, so tight that you may forget
where you end and where i begin

i want to love you
hard
fast
ever way
always.

scars,

“How dare you linger on my lips and then kiss me like a stuttering apology with excuses stapled to the roof of your mouth. I still remember you like a dream tattooed to the inner walls of a long term memory but some days I wonder if you existed at all.”

- Rudy Francisco

serendipity

what a unique experience, and to think it has your name written all over it;
i have whispered it, laughed it out loud, kissed it into your mouth,
i have cried it out, moaned, bitten it back and swallowed it.
it never tasted better than when you said my name, "je t'aime, bella."
... et je t'aime aussi.

merci, mon coeur.
merci.

kissing on a roller-coaster high

adrenaline shot through every vein
the sun shining high in our eyes
atop the ride of steel and it truly felt
like we were on top of the world
where i might be wonder woman
and you could be my superman

one more thing:

"you don't kiss anyone on the mouth but me."

i can taste the bitter sweetness in every kiss (which can be the last kiss)
and we hold our hands a little tighter, hold each other a little closer
we sleep less and kiss more and laugh harder than we did before
and the drinks keep coming,
but we've been drunk off each other all this time

you keep asking if i'm yours and i keep whispering i am
but property is a complex thing and we thought it would never come to this,
but i am yours, and you are mine
even if it's only for a little while

i may not know where we are, but i know what we aren't
so kiss me hard before you go,
we don't have very many tomorrows, but we have a few tonights yet
though you make hot summer nights feel like winter when you leave

aroma and nostalgia

"you smell like make-up and coffee, like an early morning at the office."

i think about all the sensations of being here, of sitting quietly in the dark waiting to feel lonely or sad, of listening to the silence and longing for familiar, warm noises. your hands are big, and calloused, and stronger than mine (by far) but maybe they haven't built quite as much as mine. 

though they are pale, and small and soft in all the right places,

they know struggle (do you?)

you hold me softly, tenderly.

you pull on me roughly, as if afraid i'll fight back,

and maybe i will; but then i don't and you smile as you kiss my hair.

we have come a long way from the shy smiles and soft-spoken words

our kisses are no longer stolen, no longer secret. 

they feel as real as if they ought to have been ours all the time,

as if my lips have never tasted others,

as if i have never missed yours.

we laugh, and we play, and your fingers tickle the soft spot under my arm,

and my tongue tastes your bottom lip and you sigh into my mouth, and i laugh your name out loud,

and we ask questions and answer them with an honesty we never expected to give

(but sometimes our silence is louder than words)

and sometimes your smile brightens up your eyes and i want to kiss your lids and hold your rough hands. 

you smell like mint and cologne and something i can't quite place,

and i smell like honey and summer air

i breathe you in and fill my lungs with your scent

and i drink you up as if you were summer rain.

i don't remember the last time we were silent

or when i didn't know you

or when i didn't want you

but it feels as though it's been so long (it hasn't)

and we have forever (but we don't)

i can smell your warmth as you hold me in your arms

and i don't have to tell you to stay (but i do and i will)

and i don't need to ask (but you want me to and i know)
i don't know how i didn't know you before.

if i am the summer and all its warm aromas
you are the reason i wake up to brew coffee
in hopes that you will find you like it,
and i love the smell of joy on you,
and how it mixes in with sleep

you taste like rain (and i, like the sun)
and it's only when we kiss like that,
that i cannot withstand the steam and the heat.

when you said tulips, i knew you were mine

property is one of the most complex concepts of the human mind. how we claim something is ours, how we establish that we alone have a right over it. that we decide what happens with it, and how. how do i define you? how do i declare that you are mine, and i am yours? how does a person belong to another? how do we become, as neruda thought of it, so deeply intertwined that i become you and you become me?

how and why should i want this. and why should i get it. questions i don't know the answers to. summer drizzles and lying on the wet grass, alone, together. laughing instead of crying. keeping lips shut and swallowing words that could become kisses. biting down on kisses that could become something else entirely.

we slept together but it wasn't the peaceful slumber that lovers share; we were alone, together on the same bed. you've reached into me, deep under my skin. i have barely touched your fingers.

it never occurred to me that i'd be yours, and you wouldn't be mine.

but i am, and you are not.

and there is nothing i can do about it.

maintenant

est-ce que je t'aime?
ceci, mon coeur. tu me manques.
j'ai faim de vous. vraiment,
je besoin de vos lèvres, vos bras.

je ne vous aime pas. mais, si je veux vous?

damned if i do . . . damned if i don't.

reír llorando;

El carnaval del mundo engaña tanto,
que las vidas son breves mascaradas;
aquí aprendemos a reír con llanto
y también a llorar con carcajadas.

there's a sweetness in sharing favourite poems whilst we lay together half-naked, still warm, sometimes cold. maybe my smile is too cool for the summer air, and maybe yours is still asleep. we could've been two different persons, but we ended up being you and me. 

we don't belong to anyone, but wouldn't it be funny to find people claiming us? 

i don't love you and i shouldn't, but the simplicity of it makes me wish that i could. we could fall in love here, and we could fall out of love where the weather's warmer and we have other hearts to cool down ours.

i can still taste you on my cheeks.

and i cannot even remember any other lips.

sometimes

sometimes the world is so heavy and i feel crushed under its infinite weight.

small things, like reading and seeing children carrying their own chairs to school because a faulty government cannot provide their educational centre with their own furniture, make me cry. but maybe it's not so small, and maybe i should cry. maybe i should feel humiliated that i am given so much, and yet i feel i have so little. i am humbled by the amazing will and strength of the people in my country. i am inspired by the children, the elderly, the oppressed.

i am overwhelmed by the desire to do something and the hopelessness of not knowing what.

tell me, what?

what can i do?

how can i fix this?

how.

empty cards and overflowing letters

It's been over a year since we found each other again and it's been longer, perhaps, since my heart recognised something of itself in you. I love you in a way I have loved no-one else, but that of course is as obvious as it is necessary. I don't think you can love the same way twice, but I might be mistaken. I hope I'm not. Because the way I love you is easier, simpler, kinder. I have loved only a few times, but I have known no better love and I have no interest in being proven wrong.

You came to me at a time when I needed someone who understood without needing me to explain. You came from the same bad place, perhaps, that I did. We know those wastelands. The stench is familiar, sometimes too close for comfort and oft-times it felt like they were endless, tireless and unrelenting. But since then, we have learned to survive in hostile places. We even learned to love them. You came out better than I did, but you had better reasons than I ever did. And though we were tired when we finally came around, we weren't seeking comfort in each other. I don't think we really knew what we wanted, or if we wanted anything at all. But life has a funny way of working and God has a funny way of knowing what we need, before we have a clue.

I love you because you loved me before I even thought I wanted to love you back. I love you because you, in the selfish way you love, reminded me that sometimes it's okay to be selfish. I love you because you know me (sometimes, a little) and you love what you know. I love you because you're patient, and you think it's worth the effort. I love you for understanding when I have given you empty cards and letters, that all my love is poured in them though you cannot see it. I love you because you don't love what I love, but you love that I love it. I love you for being all the things I'm not and never wished to be, but love that they're you. I love you because we never dance (but I remember a quiet waltz we shared one night). I love you because you softened me just as I was about ready to break.

But mostly, I love you because you love me, though I am so difficult and you're so easy to love.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e.e. cummings