I don't want to lose you either, I sob in the dark. The sadness and tears would crawl out of my throat if I let it. Furthermore, I can't cry, because I already knew this was coming. How do you know these feelings are real? Please if only they would go away. But I've been told too many times. Part of me was always waiting for this day, today.

I already made my choice far too long ago.

supposed to be --

some-one more. i think i recall dazed days leaning over railings and stretching my arms out as if i could reach rock bottom within my imagination.

what could've been --

so much more. you are still the definition of grief, the name of death, and i pay my toll in advance so i can meet you again in front of the fraught frame of a freight train about to burst through oil paint and find its way out

from a still life, into movement once again.

november, ah, you passed too quick.

probably January will do the same in coppice bursts of chortling sun. this first month, the rain is moving somewhere else, somewhere farther, to the fancy ends of this most expensive earth.

extract my mornings from my grasp, and take me to your bosom.

clutch tight.

it's so true that the name of love is vengeance.

buttercups still collect dew to drink, i cough.

it's the first and last time i forgive you for meeting me.

Write stories on quiet pages. I ask you, write stories on quiet pages. I bless you to not need the page to be angry or loud, screaming defiance.

Let your stories be questions cupping the heart of your readers like water pooling, trickling through hands. Even if they eventually leave the world of the story, let the cooling touch of chilly water refresh them, let the surface of the water reflect back an utterly different and yet exactly similar face.

Let the features of the story belong to them. Let your words be heard in the emptiest parts of their souls, making tracing patterns over the walls of their heart with your fingertips.

Let them resonate, reverberate, not shriek.

Let yourself ask them over the due course of time, let yourself ask them why they are hurting so. Let your stories be kind and courageous. Let them be a little sorrowful and let them be haunted. And let them remember, you must do this,

let them remember there is hope and that hope is an exquisite thing, not an expectation or a capricious belief. It is not some heist in the night. Hope is steady, flickering, allowed to waver but similarly allowed to be relit.

Let them remember by your side that the pulsing of the heart shows life, and that constant silence means death. Let them remember how wonderful it feels to gasp, drawing breath after a long dive. Let them be difficult in your embrace, and still yourself to be the frame that catches their falling body. Let them jump into your arms, and let them wonder when they must. Let them worry, let them fail, just let them be children.

To grow up - know this, to grow up, a child must choose. To want to take responsibility for others -

that kind of love cannot be forced by years or by the spinning of the clock or the earth on its axis. It must be voluntary and you cannot nag at it to go faster. To let them grow up, you must show them how brilliant you can be. By example, then, examine their heart and yours, and learn from them equally.

There are many things you have also forgotten. Allow your story and your readers to help you remember, help you heal. It will take some time, some effort, but I promise that one day you will smile freely and it will be quite difficult for you to stop. Things change. Things will be different. Your voice will glow when you speak of someone and you will know that you can’t turn back.

That day, our day, my day, will simultaneously be the most perfect and the most painful day in the world. On that day, your own heart will make a request of you. On that day, I hope that you will find it in yourself to decide to trust in that waiting hand, give in, and grow up.

what year was it when your heart was first broken? where do you hear it smashing -

from in front, or behind you?

i know i am asking a lot from you, to remember that i have no intention of smashing it again. i know you hear the voice of your inner child whispering “this was a mistake” on the nights you lie beside me. i promise i hold no grudge against her.

in the darkness, we so often treat our vulnerability as a lamp. we hide it, thinking that the fragility of our hopes will be smothered by bystanders who hate to see the starlike creature within our hands.

please remember, though.

we’re trapped in here with you, too, and if you show your vulnerabilities, it only temporarily blinds us.

afterwards, it’s an inspiration that drives us wild with life, makes us insane with feeling.

quiet soon, all our incandescent hearts will flicker on together, enchanting the darkness with the hunger of a collapsing star birthing a new story.

bravery, encapsulated.

3. Nov. 2023

oh, but you're so necessary to me. holding onto your hands, it's like we're the last people left in this world.

what is the way you love me?

it's raging for me,

when i can't find anything left to even mumble.

it's bracing me up when a storm is a-coming.

t's you, being there, even when it's clear that you're not enough to get me through where i am going.

it's you, desperately grounding me to this doomed love. you deem the imperfect worthy.

Become the sun, you children searching for a beautiful horizon. Become a home, and you will find a heart willing to make the bare bones of your house a whole world infinite. Find comfort in the hands of a hugging love, that before calling you beautiful, calls you a friend.

I find dead ends sometimes. walk down, a little country trail or a cute alley or a back street filled with blood and then there it is, a solid brick wall in my face. stating - what goes on beyond here is none of your business.

I am iced over when you shut me out, the fractals of frost creeping slowly over a leaf floating on the surface tension of chilled water.

This is the final step, the last capital letter I write to you in scrawled qwerty.

The rot in me is freezing over. One day, when you see fit to step back into this grimy bathroom, the snow will have preserved the dirtiness of this world for eternity.

But if you were here,

I wouldn't even need to work to make this world beautiful.

- sufferingiscute 5. Dec. 2023

the sun rose early today. you take me back to a part of myself that is unhindered and uninhibited by cowardly caution, with you I am free from doubt and fear.

That's the trust I have for you. This is our truth. Our sounds so right with you by my side.

I'm sure wherever we go,

(replaced the I with a we),

your hand in mine and your stunned gaze meeting mine (my stunned heart meeting yours)

will always be the best feeling, the sweetest memory I want to clutch and clasp on tight to with my hands pressed tight against my leaping chest.

- the sun rose early today 7.00 am 30. Oct. 2023

I don't understand or remember you sometimes, and your soul is unfamiliar to mine, but we've shared the soup. Minestrone stains. Crumbs from that time I broke bread in bed. Tomato under a corner. We've shared the soup. Imprints of you in me.

why else would I write poems?

I forgive myself for wanting to love you so badly i lied about it. I forgive you for pretending to believe it. Distance will blur everything. You can fly now. Still, come back to see me sometime. I think you'll still miss me, so I'll meet you by the gate where the cornflowers, long grass, and thistles grow.

You can pick some of the miniature violets. You planted them, afterall.

I'll play you couplets and you'll read me cello. Maybe one day we can write a beautifully messy, entirely distracted script together and the notations will be written in soft black ink the colour of berries. I'll hum the tune under my breath when I'm alone at home and you'll play it on guitar on a bench at a bar on your holiday and when pressed for more information we'll tell the birds and the drunkards who hear that this is a song we wrote together to sing as a duet,

as a couple,

to an audience.

and when we meet again, when you come home, we'll turn our faces away from each other and pretend to have forgotten ever writing such a song whilst making pointed references to it and refusing to look at each other while trying not to mutter and whisper the lyrics under our breath.

And we'll get drunk on cooking alcohol in the kitchen while our German potato pancakes burn and curse out the local politicians with no lock on our door, the car engine revving outdoors, and the birds chirping at a twilight that seems entirely too rowdy for just the two of us in a house more like a barn with gaps in the wooden steel-banded door. You'll sit on the step and give me a long look and I'll stand in the doorway and fall over immediately, wobbly as a horrid

drunk, and you'll let me fall in the mud without catching me.

the mud will splash on you too and then, then you'll pull me up with one hand and drunk, you'll whine a soft growl into my ear and we'll giggle like kids, again - again, when the sun starts to set and we get inside to shower and sober. Sober, we might do something inexplicable. We might watch TV together with the fuzzy static on the channel and one of your hands on mine, the other holding up the remote as you surf focused through the channels, tilting your chin in concentration. I'll have my leg linked over yours and the other foot on the coffee table and we'll lean over each other to savour the only warmth we've had in a long time and sabotage our relationship.

whatever I have with you, I cherish it, even when I can't name it. Especially because I can't name it. I feel like what I have with you defies naming. And that makes me happy.

happier than I've been in a long time. Being with you helps.

inspired by @viverid 's poetry

I threw my dreams out into the daylight, and still, they wouldn't grow

never silenced, never silenced, silent, but never once silenced. you were moving through the frost, bulbs blooming patiently only when the time of snow melted away and said a warm 'goodbye'.

pithy smiles say pert lips' name and rub at the place where your spine hurts, soothing with low movements. your posture cracks and wail into the pillow, my love, i wanted your concerns to disapparate before me.

i may have been hoping to teach you to remember the feeling of dreaming and letting the wind carry you away in enthusiasm.

still, the bulbs came to blossom, blocking out every blade of grass that had sliced you clean through with stains.

the almonds cried and the willows shrieked. and again, autumn shirked its job to watch you romp, humouring us till the hour's end.

drive with me here, won't you? a terrifically fast clamour. clamp down on your straw hat, to keep the braids from flying apart and out, up, away.

we have today and tomorrow and forever waiting in front of us. don't be sad to say goodbye to what you so dearly loved, don't say anything at all. just run with me, won't you. run with me, dance with me, laugh with me

most of all, cry with me, into my shoulder.

I threw my back out, and still my dreams couldn't grow in the weeds.

most of all, cry with me, cry with me, don't say anything at all.

- verdure version II (throwing it away)

1. Nov. 2023

here's what i have been thinking: irrefutable, irresponsible, irresistible. i want the perfect elation of rest. i want to go home and sleep. i want the heavenly death. God does not accommodate me. He must have some other plans. oh, but i yearn still.

silent delight. the water boils. irredeemable hunger. how do i turn off the heat from the floors of my house, from the bones of desire. i want nothing more than i want to cease existing. i want the openness of no expectations. the opportunity to carefully open up all the layers of myself without shrinking back from being watched. i want to unfurl myself like the dying petals of a sugar white rose.

i need it. oh, but dear, how i need it.

Remember the feeling of aching. Of wanting something to be done for you, my love.

Be the thing you harbour that desperate hope of finding, and you will draw your love ever closer to you. Study the love you have found and copy it in sketches, filling walls with your murals of it. Make them dream the same dreams, feel the same sickening things aching and buried within, every time they stare at the ceiling. Remind them that there is a sky beyond what they have seen and their breath seeks a refreshing air that they have yet to taste. Be the personification of longing.

Be the spirit of hope.

Be the source of a gentle, unerring question that asks if this is really all they want. Be the guidance towards a lighter heart and a softer love. Show them what you have learnt.

at what point does not wanting to live become

not wanting to live without someone by your side whom you love?

at what point did it happen?

set an empty plate for you at the dinner table

laugh to imagine what you would make of it

then fall

back into melancholy realising you are not there.

if i keep thinking of you

i will never run out of stories to tell and cry over.

i hope that if nothing else you remember the truthful relief of me. I hope that what you recall when you think of my name is the effervescence of being caught in the lie you never wanted to make. I hope that you see me and think of bright summer days. I hope not to be held or to be feared, I hope to be the exhale of all your wishes, for you to know that I am a safe place for you to play and daydream. I know I can be terrible. So I hope that even though I am not what I should be, in perfection, I am sweet enough during those moments that the stars of safety gleaming in absolute morning darkness are what you remember of me. I hope to be a signpost, guiding you home, a little flag that the universe waves to show you you're not as lost as you think you are. This is what I dream of being. And I know I might never be able to own it, but I wish for a house that I can make everybody's home, an inn for you to rest in on your journey. This is what I want to be. People are cunning, but rarely malicious - how much of our pain is caused by the inability to move past our own selfishly revolving trauma for the sake of healing someone else? You want to be pulled out of it. You should be doing the pulling. This is my mantra, the one I write on my heart. I should be pulling.

- "if nothing else, four walls you can call home"