after midnight

"We'll stagger home after midnight, sleep arm and arm in the stairwell, we'll fall apart on the weekend, these nights go on and on and on."

After Midnight; Blink-182.

swamping.

the cold film runs across my forehead, those clean fingers finding their way down a throat, a slightest metal twitch and there might have been birds there, once. but the adjustment is dizzying, but the teeth can't be fixed by sleeping, but they never learn to devour their loves. but my hands play a story they do not know and i try to feel the way. minute recalculations, the space of breath clicks beneath the tongue, rise up and... i was here. i waited.

it never joins. my head is so far away from the thoughts. only close enough to:

1) he is a child who needs violence, something to move him.

2) it will be a beautiful surprise when that new year comes.

3) terror holds my throat.

4) remembering love. waking in the night to attach to your fire, that breathing. and how you only found a garden, a joy, some suspension of the maths to later bite down hard.

5) i remove my fingers and place them in a box, with an intent smile and curiosity, a small comfort.

but if you stood before me now, no longer steeling the arcane.

but we would know.

some sky, a piece

too often the world is told to ants below, but I see seashells gleaning the light, worlds of sand, with those hours warming my vision, every crest a breath given, silkscreen clouds with their bodies giving, into each other, hungry into us.

teenage tide

you shall know our velocity

"But see how we are the same? You and I, Will? We both see strangers and we react. We don't like to walk by people without nodding. We're broken when people are rude. We're broken when people can't meet us halfway. We can't accept the limits of normal human relations—chilly, clothed, circumscribed. Our hearts pull against their leashes, Will!"

You Shall Know Our Velocity; Dave Eggers

i still remember that electricity.

a breath like paint, words staining his lips, his teeth, the spastic rivers teetering and immutable.

I can hear my bones, and set about with a smile, somewhere on odd knees, punctuations of mountains and stemming -

the colours settle, and i am back inside my room.

i always remember it is not - what i see, if you ever saw, everything would come apart for you. it's a such a goddamn mistake, with all that green leaking through the light, the pretty fucking vibrant leaves, life, where i can go. but i stay inside, looking at the world on a spaceship touchscreen, losing all my senses, big cutting lasers through my heart, blackest wound.

but i hear the song and i don't know which way is up, that this isn't your love.

but i take photographs i won't find ugly in the years to come.

but i bury myself in pounds of flesh.

but i still hear lightning.

the switch! the switch can't you feel the fucking switch! you peel the dry skin from the halves of your fingertips, catching your teeth on cheeks, spinning through a hangover, such reason for vomit and guts and hooks and earthquakes through ceilings.

the sky appears.

you are so perfect in this moment, smile wagging in the light.

beauty so poorly translated in the fringes.

all rushing through, winter in his voice, planets fill the room. but you're still only, still only exist on a page, you haven't been here for so long. and i've kept ... ridiculous heart, machine with all ports open, taking in too much. i touch dust where we once laughed, i read a book (you still a child) and tears - this weight of sadness slamming through me. i wasn't looking, but i found all these years. i brought them back. but it's only a shade of you, where you will never be complete again, half of your childhood smile hangs before my throat, closing up.

remember that night i was scared. i was always so scared of the dark, and i woke you up and i crawled into your bed, and we read books about goblins and talked about trains. i'll remember this always. and when we got a packet of glow in the dark space. planets and stars. i spent so many hours buiding it properly, because you could not build space properly. you never could. i touch those stars now and they no longer glow, cheap rubbed plastic, but how they ignite now.

i think of my dad, still young, the concentration on reading the tracklist (that cast bone of a smile, big toothed and thumping, now mine) paying sixteen dollars for a cd, his favourite cd he would ever own, a cd i would keep, so i could be so close to him forever.

disaster button.

and with those hands

if you learn one thing, it will be that you never ever have to feel sorry for your feelings. your emotions are a fucking triumph to your name, okay? it's only the people who give a shit and catch fucking fire that truly move this planet. we are made to open up and share these things, the stupid smiles and the absolutely seething hatred for those we love. i know everything these days persists to say otherwise, but it's all wrong, and we must set out to fight fucking gravity to prove that. always go the boldest bravest move, whether breaking down or wearing your name.

i must seem incapable of communicating in normal words, but this is just what comes out.

i just: you're protective. me? i am ... i keep a piece of everyone i know. if you mean anything to me, there's already a glint of your colour held deep within me, always. and so the one thing...the absolute thing...when i see the people i love hurt or sad or destroyed, it sets me on fire. i would do anything to take that pain from the people i love, always. so i hate knowing that you carry this sadness, even for a moment.

now, turning to the focal point, i understand how you feel, about friends and relationships. it's one of the hardest changes to deal with. and i know it's a sensitive issue, so i mean, i will say things, but it's by no means telling what you should do to 'fix' yourself - nothing like that, at all. i just want to try to offer the perspective that is hard to find by yourself when you're hurting. unfortunately, as with all overarching themes of balance and change, it will and has to occur. things change, and people do change. people grow and tectonic plates shift in friendships.

i think the most important thing to do when you're sad, especially about friends and 'losing' them, is to maintain very intently the idea that this person has been sad, just like you, that same crushing despair, and now they have a chance to be happy. so whenever i am feeling bad and missing people, i try to remember them sad, destroyed, coming apart. then using this, i can make a little spark, and apply myself fully to saying hello and making sure they're okay and keeping them safe.

outside of that though, as much as sometimes people go too far with new relationships and do tend to draw away from friends, returning to the other idea - balance - it swings both ways. we can distance ourselves in turn and add poison to the mix. but then, at the same time, we're not always perfect. our brain has mapped out a situation, it changes, and we press the disaster button. one fleeting moment, and we're too far into poisonous emotions (fuelled primarily by sadness) to come back from that. we all do it, but not always do we get given the grace to redeem that moment right then. but we retreat, and readjust our heads.

it's a scary thing to face, but it will happen and again, and ultimately, we have to try to remember that the change is ultimately making life a little more bearable for someone else, even if we ourselves suffer silently in response. but then, everything does balance out - it does - it will. so hopefully when the time comes, our friends will in turn understand when we fall into the deep end of love, and we are happy for each others happinesses, keeping each others sadnesses as wards for our own unsettlings.

i know this is a lot of words, and i hope you dont miscontrue any of it. you are one of my favourite people. truly. you have a huge heart, and the fire of truth. and you are beautiful, and not in the way that says we are beautiful for our personalities, either. everyone is truly beautiful, and everyone will look at someone, where other people might not see, and find a monument, a spark, a breath for weary lungs. the length of time differs for everyone, because we all weave our own tapestry of colour and story. how long we wait does not make it any less real, if anything, made infinite, igniting, every day fucking blessed.

i think i am just trying to say, don't be sad. keep every smallest thing possible close - everything to remind you. in the storm, find calm, find landfall, and see every beautiful stupid wretched spinning slowest thing. take it all into your heart and mind and soul and smile. then we can do amazing things and we can keep everyone safe.

i only know my voice when it is for you.

she kept the diary, not the other

i would never say happiness is overrated. it is the spark in the darkness, however fleeting, but always with highest hopes for its giddy rushing return.

but then in that, it is all a matter of perspective. because you are right in the sense that happiness does not, can not and will not last. there is no permanent state of happiness because permanence makes us numb to ebb and flow. even if we fall madly perfectly in love and nail the perfect career and we're amazing and brilliant and flawless, we would never stop. we don't. the brain doesn't allow that. it's always teetering on the brink of something it can never ever attain, always taste but never touch.

so then, really, speaking from the depths of the sadness that everyone knows, always remember and feel the little things. the sparks before that brink. because they are happiness and they are real, but they cannot stay. they flitter and you smile.

but, truly, i would never say any of this to diminish what you feel. just trying to share the memory of lightness, while i am currently teetering (because i am denying this night and this doubt and will declare right now brilliant, and so the perfect place to teeter.)

p.s. you are read, and you are heard, and you are loved, and you are not alone in anything.

the falling star

"Falling stars fallen past, thawing now, this winter's glass."

flashhearted

Like a flash-freeze, but bathed in light, warmth.

can you hear me?

little transportational

But I liked that, trying to find my page number in the subway

already finding your thoughts flowing in with the light.

the pain you feel is real, but so are the people you love. but they don't fade with the morning sun, they move just before it, biggest smile stretching across every new sky, keening to reach you for every little moment.

relic punch

And every minute, the night is a hunter for my mind, and every second, I was fighting only to be kind.

heat faults

because when they know your name, they're only taking as much of your breath as they can stave, and not one of them saying, Thank you for your breathing, you will be okay, too.

naïve. super

"There's something very strange about girls. First they're not there and everything is a little difficult. But then they're there, and things become nicer. It happens incredibly fast. It only takes a few seconds before everything is nicer."

—Naïve. Super; Erlend Loe

night wounds

every sound was paralysis, every colour resounding, a dizzying arctic heart, lips shedding their skin, ravening touch, he, brandishing the night.

sometimes the wanderers, we

We are violence. We know we are. We are always aliens furthest from each other, neither bright, nor left behind. These uneasy, mercurial shadows cast from fingertips, and acid on teeth, always—always—looking in mirrors. We lose our voice, and we sing so loud. There is always another song in need of silence.

(structures are important to us, anything to cling to, silently stare on.)

We swallow days. I imagine cracks, where cracks cannot go.

(always try to find some order to it, but never—always shifting.)

Could we accept anything? Or do we cave so simply? Is that it? Well, it is refused. They don't understand. They have not yet—always have not yet—have not yet.

(thumb dragged across a cheek.)

So it must get frustrating for you, a million worlds inside a single thought, and spreading out. It could be a vast worry, but we still hold out for the spark, how clear a mind can be.

(three fingers, to lips, like mud.)

like mud.

I am sorry. I am still hiding, here. I want to say "we". I am so aware—so painfully aware—that it needs to be "we". I am not alone, and I don't want to be alone in this. And it's not the rest of the world that's "we", and it's not him, but it's you, and all of the others—far aliens, mercurial in pain, uneasy, acid bite—always—cracking—mirrors. It is you. You would understand, in some small way, if you ever saw. The violence becomes shapes, and recognisable feats of colour. But start small—start close. So we are always falling inwards, but we try.

It is just these periods, without the spark, and we cannot be assembled properly. So we are thinking, but it all comes out upside-down, shuddering colour, a bright sound. So we don't need anyone.

(but we need each other).

But how else can the spark be generated? There are small moments, always, but the battle is large. Looking out a train window can't keep you safe forever.

I struggle—the most—with communicating—without the spark.

I only want to share things that are felt. So you will feel. So all of my journal entries. So no one. And so much of it.

But if we are looking for hope, for each other, and not for the crash—if we are looking for hope, we sometimes drift away with it.

It would be that story of midnight, and her rotting eyes, and she stays. She fucking stays.

It would be the aeroplane, and he saves him.

It would be someone here made of mending.

So, just remember, the thick chlorine of the memories, in those places of, steam, and water, and holding your mother's hand. She loved so fucking much.