The Voice of the Beholder.

Beauty lies under the rust of the pocketed lies you spoon-fed to me when the ship sunk. If I could peel back layers I’d find a million golden yesterdays and a heart’s crusade interrupted by a selfish iceberg. A ripple breathes secret butterfly kisses onto the parched lips of a memory’s painting, awakening old sparks that have garnished the ocean floorboards for a century. I guess that love can sink a ship but a ship can never sink love; hearts simply rust and grow accustomed to waiting for someone to discover them and tell them it’s really over.

I suppose that usually, there is a world of difference between summer and winter. Summer is the way the air smells of sunscreen and swelters with heat. Summer is sunglasses and a cold glass of tea resting on a table beside the water; summer is Kenny Chesney belting from a stereo planted in the sand. Winter is furry coats and the innocent anticipation of Christmas; but after the first of January the winter wonderland becomes cold and hopeless, and we all hang by a thread from dead tree limbs, counting down the degrees until spring. But this year I found summer in November. I know this because looking back on this past winter, I can not remember even a single cold Indiana day. Instead I remember your arms pulling me against you and your breath, irresistably hot against my neck. I am failing to recall that shivering, teeth-chattering, bone-cold dread of stepping outside that has characterized all the previous winters of my childhood; I see only you. The air was always deliciously warm, my cheek against your chest, your lips against my forehead. At the brink of every goodbye you held the door open for me and I felt like a princess under the lamp light. A kiss was always too much and ”I love you” was never enough. At the strike of the New Year, you held first a kiss to my lips, and then a bottle. The first snowfall brought your footsteps through my yard right up to my front door, right up to my heart. I let you in and there we rested in the heaving quiet of a hundred un-watched movies, sheltered and cozy and alive. But now the clock is ticking June, and we have forced eachother out into the cold.

You can not rake love out of cobweb corners Or fabricate it from old couch cushions bursting with his smell. You can not lure it from the overgrowth of grape vines Or out of old memories in the photos of a yearbook. You can not carress it from the scars on your wrist Or seep it in from the stale pages of your favorite novel. All these things I have tried; but when ink dries, words lose their meaning. Love can not be recaptured simply because its letters lie in the back of a nightstand drawer. Setting two places at the dinner table will not change the fact that only one slice of pie is eaten, And his coffee will grow cold by afternoon. All these things I have learned; You can not make love stay by preserving memories and eating outdated leftovers.

umustcreate: I’m not a lover and I’m not a fighter; I’m a writer. I will love you through epic poetry, letters arranged in fridge magnets, books dedicated to you, journals of our lives and days and nights. I will fight for you with metaphor, with imagery and language so strong it will make a grown man heave a sigh and cry. I am a lover and I am a fighter; I am a writer.

I sit in the empty white space of my changing house and worry about losing you. In my mind I run back to the airport, back to waiting for you where the sweet smell of coffee from the nearby food court Starbucks helps to waken my senses and add to my already jittery nerves. Standing there amongst strangers once again, I look down the long white hallway, shifting my eyes every few seconds quickly to the window to watch the planes come in, and back again. Every stranger walking towards me bears your face upon his shoulders. Skinny legs, pale skin, dark skin, dark hair, red hair, stocky frame - I look up from their shoes and their features become you. In the back of my head where my heart beats at an abnormal rate, I reread every single sweet word you have ever written me. I can not wait to kiss your face. And then I see a young man in a red sweatshirt and it really is you. I don’t know where to look, so I study the monotone tiles on the airport floor much too deliberately. I glance up and see you are still a distance off and decide that looking out the window is always safe, so I stare at planes that landed minutes ago, planes I have already seen and studied while waiting for you. They do not move or change. Finally I can detect your distinct footsteps among the pitter-patter and morning chatter of the approaching crowd. I lift my head and my eyes sink into yours, but I find them colorless and dead instead of loving and blue, and my heart sinks instead. I didn’t think time could taint a passion such as ours. The clock on the white wall is now my worst nightmare and its tick a mocking reminder that somewhere in the course of loving you, I went wrong.  It is hours and days and years later, and I am still waiting to greet you, the stench of coffee burning my nostrils.

graciouswords: I want to be the one who brings you happiness each day in each and every action and in all the things I say but if your heart decides I’m really not the one for you I hope the one you heart selects will love you as I do (via graciouswords)