Paolo

I cannot keep chasing you

because one day I will tire

of stumbling in your wake

if I keep biting the dust,

one day it will grow stale

so off this beaten path I go

to misadventures that wait

I'm sure to fall someday

I'd bruise but I'll abide

no longer shall I twist

vain tries to fit your mold

broken souls must first mend

for love demands everything

as such we cannot yet love

while our pieces lie in chaos

I'm sure to fall someday

but falling isn't failing

maybe then we can fall

maybe then we can gamble

on tenses

wind time back. 

unwound my heart.

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XI: wind-up

Raison d'être

There is a fundamental difference between our lives that strains to sever our bridges. I am an anchor weighing you down as you sail towards your dreams. Even then, I have yokes to bear alone: frustration, guilt, and wistful despair plague me incessantly. After all I went through, the surprise at being cast away has lost its novelty. It is as you said: do not complicate life. I am a tumor practically begging for a surgical removal. I live vicariously, leeching off of things until I am rid of.

It occurs to me now that perhaps people cross paths with my own to ascertain what they truly want - not too different from coveting a toy from behind a window, going into the shop to speak with the maker, and briefly trying the toy out only to find realize that you never wanted the toy at all and so you return it and leave contented. 

I am toy. This is my purpose: to be loved for a spell only to be outgrown, before the hands change again.

This is my fate: to be cherished until the child is grown, after which my fate is my own.

Things

Between leaving this space to start afresh, and staying to maintain some semblance of consistency, I was made to stay. I have weathered storms that left me broken these past few months, but their telling is for another time, or it may never come at all. Things come to us that are beyond all forms of control: the weather, a rip in your suit, you stumbling down the pavement in picturesque flailing of limbs, chance meetings with a lost friend, sharing a smile with a stranger, laughing inwardly to a joke remembered in our heads. I have laid down drafts for my departure, all intricately woven as to reflect my belief in some grand design I cannot comprehend that has me entangled. Shackled. That at my weakest I whisper to myself that all is not for naught in the end.

In the end.

In the end you come waltzing into my life and I find myself caught in your embrace, and your whispered professions, your - your honest confessions come knocking at my doors, incessantly hoping to weather the rock that once was a heart. I rebuff and reason that everything is too soon, that this briefness of time comes with a familiarity to it: a bitterness in my gut and a salty tang to my eyes. And in the end we come to this.

I hear nothing but the last beats of this heart at my feet. I see nothing but your face contorted in honest pain and yet your eyes still enthrall me so - I brim with the force of thawed ice that I cannot hold back. You whisper those words again, one hand raised in a final plea. 

Forgive me for this sin: I took the fall.

These Days

Dreams dwindle the afternoons: the city softly blurring into the periphery of vision; the stereo churning out songs punctuated by (our) laughter, rhythmic reminders of lyrics lost in the mirth; the shades shielding against the glare. We slow to a crawl, making memories, freezing moments, listening to shutters whir away.

We ripple away from lazy power lines, from bright commercial facades, from looming billboards(THIS AD SPACE IS AVAILABLE). Road signs tell us we move closer to our destination(  Mandaue City ↓  ,) wherever that is. Our conversations turn to photographs:  life metamorphoses to the surreal when viewed through a lens, when boxed in a photograph; our conversations turn to art: we create for the joy of creation; our conversations turn to poetry: abandon all hope, ye who enters. We go in circles, their circumferences degenerating, our conversations spiraling to love: you don't know it yet, but you're renting a one-bedroom flat in my mind.

One drifts off to sleep, briefly worn, the diffused light resting on the planes of his face, delving the recesses of laugh lines, peeping from the shade of his jawline, from behind his cheekbones; the other's hand ensconcing his, welcoming the soul beneath the callouses.

The sky, ablaze with shades of red beyond count, and the horizon, caked with diamond dust, greet waking eyes, their edges crinkled, roused from slumber by an insistent breath towards his ears, stray locks quivering in delight. We sit on the hood, living memories: listening to the waves hiss in surrender(or was it bliss we heard?) as their brief lives end, beyond all control, upon rocks, only to be raised again; capturing moments: the spray and the foam always frozen in flight.

We go on, lost in anecdotes: this one time, at ...; lost in food: raw garlic, pasta, onions, black angus steaks, cheese, wine; lost in our thoughts: each idly caressing the other's hand, animatedly whining about school(our teachers and all the cliques) *click*, offhandedly cracking one-liners *whir*, cracking smiles *click*, curling smirks *whir*, rolling eyes *click*.

The night is afire with stars, the Milky Way filling us with child-like wonder(what if The Supreme Being's farted us to existence? That we are precipitates of some trans existential noxious gas?), imposing the enormity of the Universe, shoving our infinitesimal lives down our throats, brandishing it at our faces as we lie upon our mat beneath the limitless expanse of the cosmos, the sea-breeze ruffling our hair, its rich tang filling us both, taking our senses to new heights. You curl aside to face me, to take my hand, our skins silver in the moonlight: living a memory, freezing a moment, listening to words unsaid.

Asleep

Emily Browning