Resolution

"All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle." 
St. Francis of Assisi

~

Where to start?

Unbent horizons and hollow cigarettes. Broken ties and eye-tearing smoke. Imaginary bonds and colorless daydreams. Dramatic plot twists and star-gazing epiphanies. Time-twirling questions and good music. Guest appearances and starring roles. Comfort zones and -

A new year comes with new promises and new surprises, a new you and a new me.

~

Her eyes, they spoke of words unsaid and torn manuscripts that were never read. They blinked with the sound of the turning pages of an untold tale; eyelashes that could paint fiery courage pale. Yet, the voices recurrently told me that silent songs and buried bones share an eternal friendship, that a breaking heart in a broken home is an open door to an empty room, that there is an infinite light and a single candle staring down all the darkness of the multiverse, that there is a forgotten hourglass beneath the chest with sand that smells of fraudulent heartbeats, sand that shakes to the sound of the fractured violin and its stuttering echo, both jumping the rope of this infinite loop. But when I looked at you, none of this ever came up. When I looked at you, the voices just wanted to listen.

Her eyes, they spoke of stars and constellations, scattered across our interwoven dreams.

Her eyes, they spoke these heart-pressed lines. They sailed the waters of remixed rhymes. But I was taught to trust no one, not even myself. I was taught to notice the invisible, to make long-distance power plays -with people who didn't know the power-play dimension- right before the end of the game, to lose in every damned dreadful way before I land my final strike. Throughout the years, I learned to doubt every line and definition until I forgot my own shape. I learned how to map lies on someone's face and how to lose mine in the frozen shadows of sinful icebergs that bear neither name nor memory. I swam through letters just like these until I lost sight of the shore and I never looked back because home became an array of pixels beyond a screen. There, I pulled three roses up my chest, through my trachea, and I laser-blasted them away from my eyes into 'virtuality' slipping what was left of my dreams into the pockets of blessed fictional characters. Then I filled that cardiac space with songs that wore a perfume similar to that of the crack-ridden petals that fell off.

Her eyes, they spoke of future visions paved inside the hallways of the Grand Design and old childhood swings that unknowingly operated at the frequency of the Golden Ratio.

Where to stop?

The dreamer and the dream. A candle in the mirror. Words in his heart. And music in the dark.
The dreamer and the dream. A play of light and shadow. An addiction to fiction. And a thirst for reality.
The dreamer and the dream. The truth behind the veil. A tale of myth and legend. An empty holy grail.
The dreamer and the dream. The chill upon your skin. The tears that won't come down. The fracture in your crown.
The dreamer and the dream. The broken beat within. The game of love and pain. Rays through your windowpane.
The dreamer and the dream. The mirror in your eyes. And the love in your words.
Listen.

Her eyes, they speak.

So listen to the music sitting behind the countdown.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

~

"Either define the moment, or the moment will define you."
Walt Whitman

Bulletproof

"Lost my heart

When I found it

It had turned to dead, black coal."

Sixto Rodriguez

~

He shoots.

Imagine an ocean covered in clouds. Come down, and through. And look right. If you look closely, there's this thin horizontal space hovering in-between white and blue. And that's where you're suspended. Now, if you have water on your face, then you must understand, deep down, that one must not dwell in metaphors, no matter how swell the reflections on the waves or how comfortable that bed of clouds.

But everything's interconnected and it's beautiful. And while the two voices in my head tell me that the universe is within and that all the colors of the world extract their ink from your retina, the third voice sings the discordant chorus in the background: "Run, quit and disappear. Get back to bed." And it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder if all this wondering is coded in the same pattern my feet always sculpt in the terrible sands of reality. It makes me wonder if I'm at least a good enough runner to get some sand up there with the useless dust -at the turn of my chin- on that mirror. Maybe that way, the guy in the reflection will appreciate the effort and let me fade away without the extra bullets in the back of my head. Maybe one day, your reflection won't let him shoot. And they'll both watch us walking away into this hellish madness, painting gardens of bliss under our feet.

Are you fearless or are you too afraid to even realize what it is you fear?

Are you fearless or do you just have nothing to lose?

How can you be both fearless and loving?  It stars with an F.

[...]

If only you knew my story, maybe then you would understand why I vanished; first last sorry goodbye.

Perspectives and interpretations dizzily spin above two concentric circles, and the colors, if any, shift from warm or cold on the light spectrum - nothing to declare.

Enter dark cold rain. An old white hoodie with blood-orange stains. The river flows in you and so too does the light from that train. The mind wanes and wails and trails behind the rhythm so you put on your headphones to follow the pain and silence the source that echoes it... that maimed heart, masquerading as this crooked hand, bent to write all this 'inkkrap' just to get through the night.

[...]

The broken deconstruct the script. The bent twist the tale. The dreamer designs the metaphor. The actor salutes the empty stage. The dust seeps through the mirror. The clouds impersonate a smoke screen. The story becomes the characters... or is it the other way around?

He bows.

~

"But don't bother to buy insurance 'cause you've already died."

Sixto Rodriguez

Child

"I'll be yours
When it rains it pours
Stay thirsty like before
Don't you know that the kids aren't al-
Kids aren't alright."
Fall Out Boy

~

I need to do this well. I need to do this right. If I don't, then I'll have nothing left to hold on to. If I can't jump over this wall at the edge of my fingertips, what does that make me? I tried on many labels and none of them worked. If I can't write anymore, what else should I do? If I can't arrange the words in a way that makes me feel something, how can I genuinely move anyone else? If I keep forcing this by intentionally lining up letters to face my existential crisis for me, will this headache go away? Why are all the holes in the ground waiting for me to dig deeper? Why aren't there any holes in the wall? I'm just tired and out of breath. And I need to let things out. But I can't write anymore. I can pretend. It's very easy to pretend, as you can see. But like most things in life, this is bullshit. I'm sorry.

Now, I must dedicate this to this voice I can't recognize as my own. And as it now silently transforms my dedication into the empty acknowledgments of a worn-out novel made up by the blank pages it contains, I would like to thank, most impassively, the dark shadows in between the papers, putting the desolation to light and mysterious sleep. This is the emotionless story I make-believe about all that within me beats in vain. And it now ends with your eyes, gazing as blankly as they should.

None of this was supposed to happen, but it did. It happened and I didn't. And if I could destroy all these mirrors I call metaphors, I would. No, I wouldn't. I would never give up this illusion for the terrible delusions of reality. I would rather live forever in this uninspired lack of inspiration than accept this collective brokenness, that grand affliction pushing against my eyes, against the heart I hid behind the void, my beautiful impermeable void that challenges this failing world to pierce it.

Yes, the world is ugly but my horizon is unbent. My horizon is unbent. The world is ugly but I live on because there's good music and good people - and because Christmas is coming. The world is ugly but there is a loophole in this loop of holes that have me by the neck. My horizon is unbent. The world is ugly and I can't breathe well. The world is ugly and I can't breathe right. The world is ugly but I have you to hold on to. The world is ugly but there's no wall I can't jump over if I know that come dawn I'll have your skin at the edge of my fingertips. The world is ugly but all its labels blur out whenever we lock eyes or hands or bodies or the door and the world behind it before we go to sleep. The world is ugly and I can write time into oblivion just to make your heart skip a beat or two with mine by its side. The world is ugly and I hope this is making you smile because I broke all these walls just to get here and hug you. My horizon is unbent, you see. The world is ugly but I'm hugging you now and this is wonderful even if it's not really happening. In my head, the world is, sometimes, almost as beautiful as you are.

And thus we knock on the door beyond chaos and perdition. And then we knock some more. We play hide and seek with the magic seeping out from each side of the veil. Sometimes it's light. Sometimes it's pale. And sometimes it's dark. But there is a remedy in the music that moves all that is frail. So can you hear the beat in this awfully composed cure? Can you hear the faint melody knocking on your chest? Can you see the magic painting your face? Or are these blank pages on the surface of your eyes?

As I said, I can pretend. It's very easy to pretend, though you might not see. And like most things in life, this is a love letter disguised as bullshit. And i'm not sorry anymore. I'm intentionally lining up the next letters to face you.

uoy evol I

And it now ends with your eyes, gazing back at mine.

That unbent horizon, this is it.

~

"And in the end
I'd do it all again.
I think you're my best friend.
Don't you know that the kids aren't al- 
Kids aren't alright."
Fall Out Boy

Disconnect

"When the paper's crumpled up it can't be perfect again."
Linkin Park

~

Yeah but, she co-wrote my life with the words she never said.

There was once a young kid who thought he could do anything. One day, he read somewhere about a common phenomenon among teenagers called the Invincibility Complex. From that day onward, he understood that 'eventually they all fall' and that no one is invulnerable.

"What if I fell to the floor..."

There was once a young kid who dedicated all his observational skills to discover the strengths and weaknesses of everyone around him. One day, someone told him that he was projecting. From that day onward, he started including himself in his analysis.

"Couldn't take this anymore..."

There was once a young kid who got hooked on self-destructive behavior. One day, he came across the concept of self-love but he could not comprehend it. From that day onward, at every given opportunity, he told people that they should not reduce themselves or others to the mistakes they make.

"What would you do..."

And she breathed out love when my blood was mere fire, when I only saw my bruises in the blue sky.

When the definitions are wrong, all our stories, whether written or read, neither, or both, will be flawed and misunderstood. The worst stories are those that have missing links, where the reader can only focus on how the events are unrelated, how it's all incoherent nonsense. The best stories are where the reader feels part of the story, where the characters can somehow touch him, and thus, change him.

This is not a good story. It's just me looking for one in the emptiness. There are no characters here. There are only voices that my mind is trying to silence.

The origin, you see, is a sad conversation on an old and broken phone. The process, so far, involves an inconsistent run over fictional obstacles. And the purpose is -

And she stood behind her silent voice, staring at the sea, all three conspiring to heal my broken skyline, to mend the horizon that bends behind my eyes.

This story isn't designed to make me feel anything. It's not supposed to make you feel anything either.

But how do you feel about not being able to feel anything at all?

Does it hurt? Does it hurt to be you? Is that blood on your mask? Is that pain in your heart?

Where did she go? I just wanted to make her smile.

~

"I see you up again wandering so diligent
Crossing your T's as though it weren't irrelevant
They say formality, this is what they really meant:
They can be the walk and we can, we can be the pavement."
Agesandages

Insanity

“I'll take crazy over stupid any day.” 

Joss Whedon

~

It feels as if there's a wall preventing me from expressing myself. I don't know what to think and I don't want to think anymore. So, instead of feeling this, whatever this is, I'm going to talk about it. And I won't feel anything.

He was born and raised in a country drowning in terrible feelings and poisoned ideas. As a child, growing up, he could not express what he truly felt or thought because it wouldn't be accepted. He wouldn't be accepted. And since the most essential need for kids is recognition, he, of course, didn't get any of that. Thus, a kid, he remained.

He wasn't doing well. He stayed that way until he was bruised by his own clothes, friends he would have died for. He wasn't doing well after that either. It started with 'under the bed' becoming 'in the mirror' but, eventually, he was able to see the monsters, whether actual or potential, in everyone, and everything. 

And then, something magical happened. Or, at least, that's why I hear him telling himself at night, that the world is rotten but he somehow found a loophole, that everything is linked and it all makes sense, that love and faith and art the strongest forces in the universe, and that he's one of their freedom fighters. But is he really? Or is he just a small lie in the matrix of manipulation?

So what's the problem? What's your problem? Are these your eyes? Is this your voice? Do you even have a voice? What have you lost? What have you lost? What have you become? What are you hoping for? Why the hell are you here? Why are you not feeling anything? Are you okay?

The most famous, non-technical definition of insanity is the following:

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” 

Does that make sanity doing the same thing, over and over, expecting the same result? Or is it 'different things' and 'same result'? Or perhaps 'different things' and 'different results'?

More importantly, what does that make you? Is it wrong to be insane in a mad world? What's the difference between people who talk to themselves out loud and others who keep it in? Is it terribly unusual for someone to envision their own personal world and talk to the fictional people in it? Is it okay? Is it that different from what you do? When you talk to the images in your head, of those human beings you don't truly know, these people you refer to as friends and family, when you weave this subjectively imagined world of ideas and feelings about them, is that okay?

He wasn't okay. The bridge between physical and psychological pain was nonexistent because they were both the same land suffocating under anxious heartbeats disguised in deeply distraught water-waves filling his lungs. It is also said, in my head, that to switch between sanity and madness you must learn the difference between leading your mind and being led by it. Good luck. He wasn't okay. I'm not okay either. Yeah, me neither. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry this didn't make you feel anything. I can't give you what I don't have myself, when I can't see myself. But that's okay. Everything is gonna be okay, right?

And then, something magical happened.

~

“Awareness is the enemy of sanity, for once you hear the screaming, it never stops.” 

Emilie Autumn

Flow

“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.” 
Honoré de Balzac

~

The theta-gamma-solfeggio stream runs the waves beneath the dream. In truth, we are nothing. Silence the delusions. Silence the noise. Focus. There is only the absence of you. And this. Closed eyes, open. Open eyes, close. Inhale the invisible rose. Beneath the wave, a heart once dove. In truth, I am nothing. Beyond the wave, the pupil moves in wonder. Jump into the void. The music stops. The links are absent because you are not me. You are not nothing. But I'm trying to show you what it means to be meaningless. Let me. Are these your eyes? I want this to be different. Are you?

In here, there is no you. In here, there is no me. There is a breathless song of a fraudulent freedom fighter trying to break free. In here, I know that there, there is where I want to be. In here, I think that here is gone and there is no there, that there is nowhere. Now take a pause. Pause. I said pause. What do you see? A very exact and delicate nothingness.

The voices rumble in your head, melancholic and misread. What is the origin beneath the concept that drives you out of equanimity? How uniquely insignificant is your identity? Are you searching for yourself in the corners of your imagination or are you forging this painting with red crayons in your eyes? Where are you on the envy/self-righteousness spectrum? I see that you are split between transparency and paralysis. No pause. Is there a link between the meaningful and the meaningless? I see you unattached from the concepts you replace your experience with. Now tell me, which is the holiest of all, Love or Faith?

The waves are as quiet. This dream is on repeat. In truth, I am like that Nightwish song, deep silent complete, drowning quietly in a completely unsound world beneath bursting bubbles of beautiful music.

So take this, please. Wrinkled face. Unpolished eyes. Broken nose. Broken smile. Crooked neck. Asymmetric heart. Darkened lungs. Shattered blood. Take it. I don't want any of this. I can't even capture my own moment, my own feeling, the glass that bleeds underneath the skin of these words that still can't spell home. Please take it and leave. I wrote this because I couldn't breathe. It's what happens when you unplug a dysfunctional brain. Raw data of a soul redefining refined insanity under the moonlit resonance of artless synchronicity.

Call it flow. Name it transient hypofrontality. None of that matters. It is but the thought of death that makes you dance - though all this crap comes without a beat. The origin is not the key. What matters is what you see, what you see in the patterns, the ones that move in you as you float toward your purpose, or away from it. My dance has always been about autumn leaves, about holding them on the surface of my eyes before they hit the ground that is me.

Enough. Enough is more than enough to keep you grounded. And all this is nothing. Nothing is more than enough for me to stay true. And I'm not doing well because I know that alone is all I'm ever going to be. Alone in my mind, with a mind that writes meaningless words on an empty canvas and then falls from his daydreams into the fetal position to sleep inside the letters' curls. But these letters are not you. These letters are not you.

The waves are gone. This dream is on repeat.

This dream is on repeat. And you're not here with me. You're not here with me.

You're not here.

You're not.

You.

~

“If you've never eaten while crying you don't know what life tastes like.” 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Chocolate

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." 

C.G. Jung

~

In what concerns the choice between vanilla and chocolate ice-cream, he codes the first with 'V' and the second with 'C'. V reminds him of the fall from grace and the loss of purity. C reminds him of the glow, the glow of the dark side. He chooses V after convincing himself that the glow is truly that of the hidden light of people living in darkness. This makes him wonder why the shop doesn't offer CV ice-cream in the menu and call it Life. Deep down, on the surface, he knows that he just prefers the taste of vanilla. Or does he? Shortly after, he lights a cigarette and then uses the light behind his eyes, the one he licked off the tip of blazing ash, to observe his tentacles. Again, he wonders. He wonders if he is a squid or an octopus. He already knows that he is a squid because he thought of it first and he is definitely not in a self-deceitful mood. Or is he? Upon pondering the significance of the respective colors of black-blue squid-ink and black octopus-ink, he finds his tentacles metaphorically patting him on his now reassured back of a squid. He whispers to himself, in the sarcastic tone of rudimentary intelligence he despises: "It's okay. it's okay." A second later, after subtly extinguishing the flame of a potential rebellion in Stress Level District, he considers the possibility of coming up with a joke about a squid that likes vanilla. But right then or a fragment of a second later, he notices the salivary metaphor, just sitting there in the wet white glow, waiting to expose the contents of the squid's black and blue feelings on paper-like ice-cream. However, a young and forgotten voice interrupts the trailing train of thought. The train makes its infamous whistle, a lullaby of cryptic words in the supposedly distant cigarette smoke. The indifferent child is just standing there on some random rail in the railway. He looks to his left at everyone he loves as they attempt to survive an overwhelmingly beautiful and ugly Reality. And then he slowly shifts his head to the right: a comfortable, colorless bed, a silent, color-shifting window, and a comforting, infinitely-colored screen - The realm of Fiction greets thee with the infinite hope of lucid daydreams. Look at me. This is where you belong. Otherwise why would this fictitious speech bear your voice? The train's whistle returns, moving upward in curly lines of smoky ink, blue from his quasi-closed lips and black from the sleepless nights, nights glowing like arched lamp posts reaching up his inflamed skin to the purple light suspended in his eyes. The child's mind screams 'jump' but his heart writes it off in lowercase letters. He imagines the swing of an old pendulum hanging onto nothing. Left, right, reality, fiction, love, dreams, death, void, stress, security, people, him, cruelty, metaphors, delusion, illusion, purpose, identity, love, right? Jump? Where? What does a baby squid write on vanilla ice-cream? Reality or Fiction? What a terrible joke...

What if I don't jump? If the train is real and I am fictional, it won't hit me. If the train is fictional and I am real, it won't hit me either. If we're both real, I'll be dead in a few seconds. But what happens if we're both fictional?

Blood. Void. Rewind. Love. Faith. Purpose. Become.

If this is fiction, am I the kid or the train or both - or the distance in between? Am I watching or drawing or both - or neither? Am I the unmentioned elements in the questions or the potential fruit of the tree above their roots - ? Are you listening to the sound of the train or are you some writing writing in the smoke - or are you the sudden void after every question?

~

"What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate." 

C.G. Jung

Sleep

“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
Akira Kurosawa

~

The echo behind the whisper in the voice told me that the meaning of the meaning of life reveals itself in those colored bits outside the lines.

Do you see them?

Now do you see the artist's hand tearing through the painting? It throws a spear into your left eye because it wants you to see it right. It wants you to get out of your supposed self, zoom out, and see the second painting, the picture of a recollection of a bloodshot awakening.

Now go back to the first one.
Do you smell the blood on your cheeks?

This is the blood of the heart of the heart of the matter, the co-authored fabric of a waning soul as it weaves waves of scented verses, a red and wrinkled rhyme, a poem on your face.

Truth is, broken borders are gateways for the gallant, to embrace the patterns beneath the chaos, to hold the pulse in the blood of the heart of the heart of the matter that has nothing to do with matter.

So can you hear it? It's knocking on the door behind you, like the wind of sinusoidal hope fading in and out of faithful light, through the only keyhole you've ever really known.

Yeah. Okay. Now what? What do I do with all these words?

[...]

How do I turn it off? How do I make it stop? Why am I thinking about so many things that I don't really want to say? I don't want to get it right anymore, I just want to get it. I want to say what's really going on. I want what's inside to come out unchanged even if all that I am left with is noise. I want the words to honestly reflect who I am without all the games and illusions. I want to make sure that I am not a fraud, that I am not a growing cancer of fabrications. I want to be real. I don't want to be a well-told lie about the content of an empty shell. I want to be real. I don't want fiction anymore. I want to be real. Why won't anyone teach me how to be real?

[...]

What a sad way to wake up. The pain brings you to your knees. You're all alone - just like you always were. And all these metaphors you take shelter in are just as weak and broken as you are. Just go back to sleep.

Live on.

I can't anymore.

~

"He who lives more than one life, more than one death he suffers."
Oscar Wilde

Awe

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” 

Rudyard Kipling

~

I was frozen face down, my nose nearing a centered hug to the edge of the pavement, and life's bare foot thundered down on the back of my head. Reddish retrocausal lightning ensued in a bloodied painting with no title. The shattered fabric of the crushed brain dyed the sidewalk dust with the dry dew of the paradoxical void - a silent story read in between the lines of cobblestone about a broken face of a soul that wrote itself off onto the empty memory of a conceptual black hole that sucked life's misstep into the razor-light mirror-like shredder I was hiding behind my eyes. And thus the only hug was that of a two-dimensional bear-trap set to the seventh Solfeggio frequency folding life's knee into counter-clockwise oblivion. The scent was that of frozen concrete melting at the touch of the eccentric lullaby of a victim of anti-heroism, an artless artist with ink flowing from the edge of his hair to the shadowy sunset of life's heel. What you heard was the melodic ink, a rhyme and a tale about the minute difference, all delicate and frail, between the hellish curtains and the holy veils, the ruptured mirrors and the punctured grails, the conceptual twist of the maze-like tails and the paradigm shift of the wind in the sails,

Adjusting.

Speak of necessary fine-tuning to the projector of meaning before the story ends, beneath the pattern that bends under the weight of reality settled on the surface of the black swamp in your hair. Speak to the night of the morning pale, the edge of colored thoughts and humid lyrics about the reconstructed taste of dawn in the tea and the Pyrrhic victory of two ends converging behind the illuminated bitter-sweetness of smoke. 

Failing.

There are no words.

Some see words as series of clawing strikes to the face of existence attempting to rip it of its raw beauty, leaving lettered scars in a light of diminished value. That's why they say that there are no words, why silence is revered in the realm of beauty.

Obviously, I disagree.

There are words. And when placed in the right way, for the right reasons, the words, presumably read at the right time, will change both you and your existence. And they will then tell you that it is up to you to change the world.

Re-adjusting.

My words often fail to make it back from the realm of metaphorical resonance. They fail to make a difference. But we are who we are and it is what it is. No.

Now, what if we could see the different scales that map the maze of mankind, the magical axis of imaginary time, and the bright light of childlike wonder floating in between the moment and the while - what happens then?

The iris was frozen in the labyrinth it holds, and life put a knife through its back.

So it poured its story of melancholic tears in the thirsty lines between cockroach mountains. No.

I found the axis set to the beat of my heart.

And I discovered that the light was made of metaphors. 

I opened the map at every turn and every curl and I kept asking myself, what do you see?

What do you see? What do you see?

I saw the map staring back at me.

I happened.

And now, there are no words.

~

"Once we realize the extraordinary power we have to compose our lives, we'll move from passive, conditioned thinking to being co-creators of our fate."

Jason Silva

Check

“Boring is the right thought at the wrong time.” 

Jack Gardner

~

Seize the moment, if you can perceive it. Wait but what if you're running short on moments? What if you have the wrong glasses on? What if everything is monochrome and you're invisible? What happens to moments that never make it out of time?

Let the moment fill you. Transform the edge of your skin into a boundless ocean of existential stupor. Write about the unpredictable high side of the melancholy before the feeling is gone. There is a light and it never goes out. But why?

This is a moment. Can you read it? Can you feel it? Is this your voice or mine, your mind or mine? Are we sitting on a bench and having a conversation or are you just messing with my head? Who are you, anyway? And why would you put a comma there? Where? Where are we? And why doesn't any of this make sense to the suffering?

Who cares, anyway? I'm not unhappy. I'm content that I understand how and why things are the way they are. I'm happy because I have had the chance to meet wonderful people in my life. I care about moments because they're kind of all I have. Moments either symbolize the start or the end, though they usually appear masked as whatever's happening in between. 

Nothing's happening in between. It's all a game. But people matter. No, they're just figments of your imagination. No, they're real and it's my duty to take care of them. Society is a ghost concept - you know that. I'm starting to feel that you're the only ghost here. How can you lie to yourself when you know this is all an illusion? I'm not lying to myself; you're lying to me and it's a DELUSION - for the most part. We've been having different versions of this same conversation for years - isn't it time to get over this mundane schizoid monologue? Isn't it time for you to tell me about my real fears and insecurities? Well played, old friend. You're not my friend - you're that nothing in between.

The melody is on repeat. It's always the same note, and almost always the same dialectic on that shore that tells the waves to call it Horizon. Hope and delusion, justice and evil, recognition and selfishness, love and despair, freedom and basically anything that stands in its way. The waves are set to the same old playlist. And none of these people can tell their waves from someone else's. They're all confused because they've forgotten about the light shining down on everything, every moment, every moment.

Some think that life is about turning the duel inside into a duet. Others believe in a third, secret player hiding in the audience. Some people are cold and hungry. Others have died on the highway of trying to figure this whole thing out. Some are born with superpowers they can't see. Others hope they won't die before they get the chance to make them see.

The moment is gone but its echo lives on. In art, in memory, in the quiet commonplace distance that exiles most kind words and that other one, that terribly loud one with the broken road at the end of which everything becomes calm and still, when you find the heart you thought got crushed in between this breath and the next.

Moments come and go. But you are here. You're right here and people change people.

Moments come and go. But I'm here with you, in the undefined meta-level that only meta-levelers understand. We're sitting in the numb paradoxical void of metaphorical euphoria. We're sitting on a bench - with nothing in between.

Seize the moment, if you can feel it.

Your move.

~

"Time is an illusion."
Albert Einstein

Wolf

"Tout ce que tu ne sais pas donner te possède."
André Gide

~

...that the roads lead to nowhere when you have walls around your heart.

There are outer obstacles and inner scars, wounds at the surface and fractures that tear you apart. There is the decision or a lack thereof, the drive to authenticity or a falling to pieces, the will to build on goodness or a forgotten painting about forgetting - forgetting what?

Then there's you and you and everything stuck in between.

Then there's me and it feels as though I've lost all my pens, as if the words perceived my thoughts as unfair taxation laws so they drowned all the instruments of expression into the realm of immaterial ink and then wrote themselves off. Thus, I now find shelter in words that describe how the old ones used to arrange their letters in me. I know that my eyes have been closed for a while, and that none of this will open them because the roads on my eyelids are flooded with apologies that never made it out of my head - unless dreamworld counts.

For now, the dot follows the patterns that match the mysterious code of identity. The dot can't always see the dot within. The dot breaks itself into symbols under which obscurity hides meaning and meaning hides light. The dot sees itself in other dots and, sometimes, the other way around. The dot has no understanding of scale because it has never met a unit. The dot's favorite geometrical concept is the infinite line it can't wish into being by itself. The dot knows of the third dimension but pretends that it doesn't exist while it enjoys the two-dimensional labyrinth. The text, the paper, and the pen, they're all predetermined. But the dot is free. The dot is how much love you're freely willing to give. The dot is the handwriting.

Different people feel different things. But perhaps my void and yours are the same. My void compares itself to the empty center of a spider's perfect web, the eye of the secret storm that sees the Nothing in everything and feels the Everything in that Nothing. Perhaps that's what I hope to understand, the calm infinity dwelling in the nothingness of this beautiful song, the calm song in everything and everyone.

But the words don't always fit the music. For between the point where symbols fail to carry the feeling and the point where the heart can no longer beat off that feeling's weight, there is a line of lonely letters living lovelessly in the blind lavender ink spots of the imagination.

I watch and wonder, wonder and watch. I watch the games at their fingertips and wonder how aware they are of the game inside, the one between the hero and the villain, the victim and the pretender, the warrior and the chess-master, the composer and the lyricist, and my personal favorite at this moment, the ego and the anti-hero.

The game is won when the big antonyms become synonymous. I don't know them all. But for now, I can recall that sometimes unreading is reading, covering is uncovering, giving is receiving, unlearning is learning, breaking is mending, dying is living, doubting is suspecting, growing is a return to the child and, more often than not, I am you and you are me.

For now, in the seemingly perennial distance between being and becoming, I see a child riding on the back of a wolf, a grey and white wolf that was born in the snow.

I wonder where they're going next.

~

“Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone.” 
George Gordon Byron

Star

"And I just wanted you to know."

My Chemical Romance

~

An eternal feeling unhesitatingly and continuously screams in the depth of your dark abyss. Echoes bounce off the walls, fueled by a resentment toward the conditions of time and space. It says that it is unconditionally timeless, boundless yet wonders, under its breath, for how long it's been stuck in this hole. 

Some nights are broken, dead and true. Others are tender shattering dew. 

In the midst of noise, words crawl on a sidewalk. It must be really loud in your head, mockingly whispered the abyss. Even your words know there's no way out of here. Is our truth cold enough to puncture that heavy soul you so terribly wish to abandon? Paint the pain upon the brow, disillusioned by delusions, and punch the rain into your eyes, for this is but the world of lies. Like an inherently divided coin, sailing through the cobblestone, I wonder which side fortune will pretend-bury today, as its brother washes away under this dusty broken loan. Alas! Know that hell is not bounded by the red corners of your eyes. And so you must look further and beyond that gaze you distance yourself from - for the deeper you dwell, the closer your home to hell. 

We're in this together, said Heart to Horizon. 

Light music ensued. 

We're in this together, said Mind to Pattern. 

Mute lights fired through. 

Why is no one dancing? The soul wondered. 

I am, echoed Silence. 

But no one heard it. 

So listen. Listen to the shadow dancing in the rain, singing the praises of creation. Listen to your story and everyone else's, for a single thread can only resonate within its web. Listen to the lines hiding in their retinas, the ones their mirrors forget on the other side. Listen, second-most of all, to your silence. 

Some nights are broken, dead and true. Others just never make it through.

When time loses meaning, and you feel that you don't belong in this body, or at least that this planet is not your home, it makes you wonder if it's simply all a dream. Yet you can't help but try to make sense of the contents of your existence. Thus as I attempt to hug you, our feet planted at the center of the bottomless rift of our fractured identity, I find that you are as opaque and immaterial as I am, that this open-ended monologue is a meaningless echo that bounced off all the voices in my head.

I believe the main difference between the suffering individual and the individual whose brilliance is widely recognized is identical to the difference between difference and similarity, because empty space is empty, and because Divine Perspective rules them all.

Some nights are broken, dead and true. And the stars align with your suffering because they want you to be you. 

What about me?

What happens to me when the music is gone? 

How bright will the hour of my star shine when I pass?

How short is the breath to failure? And how deep is the road to contentment?

What about you?

What do you see in the horizon?

And how does silence make you feel?

How do you fill the many blanks between these lines?

And which of the seven versions of you is blinking right now?

Some nights are broken, dead and true. Others bless the divine in you.

~

"One who doesn't know how to dance, says the floor is crooked."

Nepali Proverb

Momentous

“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd. It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.” 
Stefan Zweig

~

A melody of subtle happiness travels in floating musical notes around the center of my eyesight in a masquerade of invisible birds and planes falling into shreds of feathers and paper, settling on a heart that beats pain and anger disguised in a helpless symphony of sadness.

One, a shortness of breath. Two, an echo of a dying heartbeat. Three, a mind beheaded by confused and elusive variables with the constant ax of pain. Four, her eyes were once full with the depth and breadth of life. Five, her eyes are now a broken portal to a non-existent dimension. Six, flowers wither. Seven, flowers wither. Eight, flowers wither. Nine, number-shaped bullets shoot the music down.

Discrete hands softly encircle the kitchen clock that makes up her neck. She can't tell the time because it's hiding beneath her throat, face down. But her breath smells like seconds. And the focus shifts from the heaviness of chest pain to that of a headache as a single minute dives through her blink and into her swallowed pride. This clock is broken - it lost its parts in a battle against time. This clock is broken - and her discrete hands were not her own. This clock is broken - and it took them thirty-one blinks to slowly slit her throat.

Maybe things don't need to make sense.

But assuming that things do make sense. Perhaps I'm seeing you through multi-shaded spectacles, with thick lenses stuck between the color of your soul painting its outer layers and the faded hue of mine lingering on the worn-out interior. Maybe everything happens inside the lens and everything else is just the illusory reaction of the universe. Maybe we should all take off our glasses to see things for how they truly are, how we are all one. But then again, we are not all one. We are free to become whoever we want to be. Whether you want to be a jet black anti-hero or a desert gold victim, a greenish maroon protector or a blood red mercenary, whether you're a frozen ocean blue that paints paralyzed waves or the fiery purple privilege of the night sky, whether you're the most broken grey of all or the light-ray that only made it to grey blocks of letters, we are not one. We are many and each one of us must discover his own true color, dip that dry, unused, magical brush in it and finally get to paint beneath and beyond the borders of this line drawing they call 'life'.

So to each her own passion, his own poison, her lying truths, his truthful lies, the moments that meant so much to her though they never really happened and the moments that shaped the edges of his bed while she was half asleep. Reality recurrently dies at an alternating frequency. Yet the Truth is right there, at every corner and every turn, in every wave and every curl, engraved on the heart of the hero, and questioned in the mind of the weak. So send apologies to the ego of every weak hero because they forgot their introspective glasses in the house. And send flare signals for every starving existentialist who's writing stories with the crumbs that were supposed to take him home.

The ice, it either melts or breaks. And the same goes for glass. So whatever you're made of, sooner or later, you will stand in the middle of the line that joins your melting point and your breaking point. And in a moment of momentous divergence, you will make your move.

'Who you were, who you are, and who you want to be,' that's seven-dimensional chess with three demons and an extra player you cannot see. We are not all one. We are the seven that only become one after twenty-one handshakes, two broken mirrors, and a one-in-a-million mixture of humility and courage.

So blessed be the titans and the knights of honor that unknowingly know the difference between a game of chess and a set of drums.

And blessed be the brave.

~

"You've gotta find your big, gigantic drum kit."
Nick Andopolis

Death

“You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist.”
Neale Donald Walsch

~

They got it all wrong. But I see things for how they truly are. That's what most tell themselves in secret, in-between breath and breath, in repressed silence. We all fail to notice the most integral part of reality, that we see nothing, nothing but ourselves, deformed.

They got it all wrong. And as they engage in thought while recurrently failing to pause the grand game of delusion and blind trickery, they also fail to notice that no matter how deep the intellect digs, the finite hole and its neighboring treasures will never account for infinite weakness.

They got it all wrong. And though it's admirable that they can see in the curls of simple letters old particles of dust dancing in fresh yellow sunlight, they still fail to recognize the music. And I fail miserably just the same to rescue the timeless tempo of the soul drowning in this ink.

They got it all wrong. And their pale figures are like beautiful old buildings tainted with the cheap paint of modernity and a touch of make-up to hide the battle scars. They left the castle and paved the circular road to vanity with expensive clothes, walking naked in copies of shoes as polished and tarnished as their faces.

I got it all wrong. I got it all wrong because I buried anger in the deepest layer of my being. And the calm silence that ensued continuously reminded me to forget that all these people were going in and out of my house faster than this lucky smoke I'm breathing out.

I got it all wrong because I write about temporary failures because I am both temporary and a failure. And I write this nonsense down as these words words fall from my eyes onto paper in a blink. So here's one for the upcoming death of my parents. And here's two for the people I love the most, since they're already dead. But that's okay. It's okay because we all paint death in broad daylight with the letters our lips draw - little bits of earth that align, layer upon layer, above our cold and motionless bodies beneath the gravestone that invisibly reads: How soon is now? 

Everyone you love is going to die. And that's okay because death is a good thing. For while the doors of life are a rite of passage from one lie to another, death is the gateway to truth and justice.

To be fair, there are some things here that are worth delaying death for. By 'some' I mean 'two', Love and the Human Spirit - Love and Art for short. And if by any nonrandom chance you manage to add purpose to the recipe, I have a feeling that death would take the long way home to listen to what kind of music you can make.

Now, things here are either for rent or immaterial. And all that is immaterial is either a well concealed lie or a mostly forgotten truth. Now the cool thing about mostly forgotten truths is that they're right there in front of your face resonating with the vibrations propagating across your shirt. And the coolest mostly forgotten truth is that other people are wearing shirts too.

My heartbeat is not for rent.
And my voice is my voice.
Great performances unfold in dramatic monologues. Yet memorable ones write future history in and with brief moments of mixed frequencies, voices that team up against life for the sake of an honorable death.

So run. Run toward death with your favorite soundtrack beating inside your invisible headphones. Run toward death and touch every heart you meet with grace. Run toward death and give it the parts you really want dead. And then, with whatever remains of you, run through.

~

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” 
J.K. Rowling

Wind

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns."
Chuch Palahniuk

~

I need to get this out.

This silent wind I breathe in is sharpening its heated nails with my lungs, scraping blackened red paint off the wall that falls for no one. So I light up one more lucky cigarette to fight fire with smoke. We all depend on things to make it through the night.

Whatever truly carries your breath and allows your mind to traverse this multiverse of lies, make sure you're going in the right direction. And whatever you push back onto the world with your lips and feet, go for watery brushstrokes of Art, on the right pages of earth and wind.

It's still there and I can't get it out.

The music fades like a vanishing painting and I don't know the spell to bring it back. What I know is that the rhyme is lost to me because the heart I once knew had its drums punctured over time. So what happens now? We light up one more for the sake of ancient fire.

There are two kinds of people. There are those who write the song title first and those who write the artist's name first. There are those who are busy in the race to become the best slave in the system and those who are busy becoming the best person they can be.

What if nothing comes out?

Ring the doorbell and break the wall. There are no doors beyond this smoke. You fall in the well, the well you sow, the well you sow before you broke. This reddish dawn is drawn with blood. And this rain is the ash of all your drugs. So with flooded lungs and shattered drums, reap the pain on which you choke. Breathe in hell,

The presence of missing links underlines a meaningful absence of coherence. What eventually comes out is thus unsound at best and, at worst, me. But the resounding question remains: Who are you? Perhaps you project what you miss onto the blank spaces I leave between the lines, here, and, in-between words and letters which, there, fail to materialize.

The first rule is to partially respect chaos. The second is to find meaning in the song. The third is to allow yourself to get lost in the melody. The fourth is to let go of the parts that don't belong. The fifth is to stop counting rules that don't make sense. And the last rule is to devote your life to understanding the constituents of the glue that stitches rules onto chaos.

The hazy daze is spraying crazed footprints in my head and the stranded pen is stuck in the shadowy circle it sketched to project and protect itself. And I don't know. I don't know anything. Maybe the way for better days is coded in musical notes. Maybe it's in the key under the blind illiterate mat that reads Hope in Old English Text below the nonexistent door on the wall I couldn't break. And maybe there's nothing here. Maybe there's nothing here.

In a state of chaos, there seems to be neither cause nor purpose. In a state of chaos, there are multiple patterns and a single question. And the question shines in multicolored layers in your eyes:

What do you see in the wind?

~

“Words are wind.” 
George R.R. Martin

Imagination

"Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly."
Langston Hughes

~

A drum-roll is composed of two beats.

I fell asleep to the vague image these words put in my head. And perhaps, I never woke up.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been trying to reduce life to a system of ideas. Meanwhile, I also attempted to develop a system of principles for the purpose of ethical navigation. Over time, the two systems became entangled like two pairs of shoelaces fused together, joining the two right feet of an enigmatic human being who can only walk in circles.

In my head, the systems are invincible. Also, in my head, reality and fiction are knit together into the same mask I hide in the world of mirrors.

I don't know who this is or why he's writing with a particular shade of purple. I don't know if these words are the blood of dawn extracted from an afflicted horizon, above the sea of doubt, and below the sky of hope. Maybe they're just modern make-up for a play with no real script, a demonic game between the voices in your head.

In my heart, there is, to the best of my knowledge, nothing.

So why would you take a worn-out and empty container?

There are two nights in this ink. One of them is mine and the other is, naturally, yours. Now each night contains a vision, with a dream lying there underneath. In mine, I walk and run, and walk and run, and walk, and run. And then I stop and stand still. And as the deep dark dream pretends to be me, I pretend that I'm okay, and that nothing's wrong, closing my eyes to the idea that taking this deep breath will fix the broken dawn. Yet I know, deep down, that I'm dissecting the constituents of that air I'm breathing in, looking for a scented trace of life as my feet step on the guts of the dreams that committed suicide in my head.

That was one of the voices in the play.

Now it's your turn. So are you watching closely?

Are you running or walking?

How dark is your night?

And how dead is your dream?

Is the map beneath your feet a circle?

Is this all confused fiction in a real mirror or is it the purest reality in a fictional mirror?

Do you know what a mental drum-roll sounds like when the drummer's eyes are closed?

Close. 

Play. 

Listen.

What do you see? What do you smell?

Are you watching closely?

A drum-roll is composed of two beats.

~

"We sat in the car

& the night dropped

down until the

only words were

the crickets &

the dance of our voices.

& for a moment 

the world became

small enough to

roll back & forth

between us."

Brian Andreas

Cut

“In the cloud, reflections mirror reflections, cutting out the object and leaving only infinite emptiness.” 
Joseph MacKinnon

~

My hand was in yours. Your hand was in mine. And there was a moment where I didn't know which was which. Then, the moment was gone, and another one came. It was the moment of separation, slowly tearing the pages of the book we wrote in our minds, pages about the dreams that we carried in our hands, interlocked. Yet, right before that second moment ended, time froze. Time froze with the tips of our fingers barely touching and I knew that a blink later I'd be falling off your side of the edge like drawings of sands made of demons while you'd be falling, over and over, in water-drops, off mine, like an imagined suicide scene on playback.

But time froze because it knew we were timeless. And it just sat there on a dusty chair that had 'Faith' carved on its back, watching the motionless picture of Fear's sword of Doubt pointed at Love's heart of Hope.

Cut.

~

You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience, watching an ego disguised as reason taking up the role of the lead actor. You should know that this podium is not only set for a grand masquerade where the truth doesn't matter. It's set for anyone who has something genuine to say. And everything you see on stage is but a staged symbol, a moderately hidden clue for what's going on behind the scenes. So get up and come inside for it is in the dark curves of your mind that you find the scriptwriters. And when you do, it will neither feel nor smell good back there because all your lies, fears and insecurities dwell in the ego's lair, fueling your quest for a nonexistent power. Maybe, just maybe, one day you'll find it in you to write your own script, your own lines instead of lying yourself to sleep.

~

And so we spend the time that wastes us and write stories that erase us. Then time just vanishes because the shame leaves no place for any other concept but disgust. And they stare blankly at the conscience that died with its mouth open and its eyes gouged, screaming two simple words for the child that ran away into the horizon, Come Back.

~

Once, in a nonexistent time and twice, in a place of delusion, a child ran into his reflection in the mirror and broke it. Both were running to find themselves but what they found was something else. The boy in the mirror found a broken hourglass of sand and water, drowned in mud. And the boy with blood on his face found an open locket with an empty picture frame and a clock that's always stuck at dawn. Each paced around in his room in recurrent patterns of confusion between the definition of a curse and the 'nondefinition' of a curse. And as they walked through life, the pieces of glass wrote, with blood and footprints, tainted puzzled words and painted worded puzzles. They met again, and again, in different colors and shapes, on the surface of other people's eyes. And many mirrors were broken twice, and twice, again.

~

Whether you break mirrors because you can't see yourself in them or polish them because they withhold the truest lies you've ever written, know that you are neither of the elements of the inner fight, nor are you the sum of the broken mirrors.

You're that person still sitting in the audience, alone.

~

“Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.” 
Konstantin Stanislavski

Revolution

To whom it may concern,

I live in a country called Lebanon. I live among people who preserve a rare kindness in their hopeful eyes. All these people were once kids with beautiful dreams, dreams that were stolen along the way by a ruling band of thieves.

It turned out that those who were supposed to protect the voice of the people had managed to make us forget that we actually have one.

Now if you think you still have a voice, keep reading.

This is for all the things that never die, for those who once died for this country, each in their own way, though they now look at us and wonder how they are more alive than we are.

Know that this is not a poetically hopeless eulogy.

This is a call for a Revolution.

It certainly isn't coming from its future leader because I am nobody. And these words you read, you read them with your own voice and not mine. But perhaps, you will share this. And perhaps you will write or draw or sing your own call for a Revolution. Perhaps you will talk about it with your friends and they will talk about it their other friends until the future leaders of this country hear about it and wake up. They will wake up and unite the Lebanese youth under the name of a new political party that doesn't judge individuals based on their religion or how much money they have. Perhaps it could start as a think-tank whose nominated candidates would win in the next elections and change everything. Maybe if each one of us expresses their own revolution in their own way on social media and/or share their friend's, the idea will become a movement, and the movement will rewrite history.

So if you truly have a voice, start talking.

Do something.

Whether it's for the lost ideals of freedom and justice or for the people who suffer everyday, it's really all the same. What matters is that we must take our country back.

My revolution starts now.

When will yours?

Sincerely,
.

Dawn

"Those who are dead are not dead, they're just living in my head.

And since I fell for that spell, I am living there as well."

Coldplay

~

To whoever has buried the soul within, I write this to you.

The night is still and the beat is faint as the fight continues between sinner and saint. The night is still and this world is empty for you have lost both self and will. The night is still and your face just turned off all the lights with that flickering candle dancing with your blinks. The night is still and this foreign body I possess longs to see the paintings on your skin. The night is still and starless as I breathe in a scent of dying sighs and microscopic supernovas. The night is still and I still don't know how to move at the sound of this soundless music. The night is still and silent as your lips slowly close and break these words I inaudibly bleed. The night is still and the empty feeling of emptiness envelops me because I am inhibited by an enforced lack of inhibitions. The night is still and you still don't get it, do you? The night is still and I'm failing at writing a musical letter because harmony has long forgotten me. The night is still and the rhyme is free, as I fill the blanks in my memory. The night is still and the blanks reveal themselves as ancient bullets within the beats. The night is still and my blood streams through the electrified hell I hide behind my eyes. The night is still and the supposed windows of the soul are bloodshot with reddish dew, burning in and out and through. So break the door and the still of the night, for tonight the angel's wearing black and the devil, smoking white. Break the door and kill the guards, before the spirit jumps off and turns into red and broken shards. I know that you are the light that shines on the broken and that each person is his own savior. And I know that I am numb and frozen still. But the night is still and I knit this painting with lips made of smoke. The night is still and you still don't get it, do you? The night is still and earthly love mostly swings between a proof and a quest for a self that's always somewhere else. The night is still and these are ashes of a cigarette and not those of a phoenix. The night is still and the fire you start in me burns this quill into blessed sinful ink. The night is still and calm and I wish I could smell your perfume as I imagine kissing the fire off the palm of your hand. The night is still and the wind is pretending to understand how destiny is handwritten with a flowering faith shaking in the storm that fights freedom, the storm that fails to realize that this rose is made of heavenly fire. So enter the world of lonely nights and dying lights. Enter the world that writes with that bright and blissful fabric you fail to hide, to paint the still night with bright broken letters in envelopes you unfold in your dreams. Still, the night is still, so still that it reminds time of my undying love for you while I remind you why those envelopes are undated. So break the door between your heart and mine. Break the door because the music within me is that dimmed light on the floor outside your bedroom. The night is still and you still don't get it. Please wake up. Wake up and break the door. Break it and enter this world with fire in your hands for the night will remain still until you light this broken sky with the dewy faith on your bedroom window and mend it with the reign of the divine love that's beating in raindrops within your chest. The night is still and you still don't get it, do you?

[...]

We are one with fire and rain. We are one with the rose and the flame. We are one with the birds and wolves. We are one with the equations we solve. We are one with the general emotion and the particular thought. We are one in this rainy drought. We are one with the wind in the music. We are one with the beats in our heart, and this heart doesn't rhyme with anything else.

[...]

The night is still but it knows that we are one even if you don't. The night is still and the ending is always the most difficult part. So enter this world of endless stories and maybe one day we'll write the ending of this musical masterpiece of cosmic love, together.

I'll start with the first line.

Your hand is in mine and the lines intersect at dawn.
[...]

I already know your line, by the way.

~

"But I believe in music... 

The way that some people believe in fairy tales."

August Rush

Smoke

"What I've felt, what I've known

Turn the pages, turn the stone
Behind the door, should I open it for you?"
Metallica 

~

It is a dark and deeply beautiful view. And I want you to be here with me. And I tell myself now that I want you here because I want all the stars hiding behind empty clouds above me get the chance to meet that one star that shot through my heart. But I know that I just want you here because I love you. And I just said those three words out loud four times in a row and I don't know exactly why.

Yet now I tell myself that words are but empty promises, hopeful fireflies that die when their ink catches fire, when the plot reveals that death is the hidden title of everything they wrote in the wind at night. And I suspect that this wind travels through me because I am not here, and that even if I were, the night would still magically lose its memory at dawn, just like it did yesterday.

So what happens to these forgotten moments of wonder where you only exist in my imagination? Do they die with me just like I'm dying in them, with the sound of your laugh in this fictional background? Perhaps the fireflies I made up will align in this starless sky to spell out your name in light, to make me smile right before the curtain closes and death applauds with the starry letters falling gently onto my empty bed of heartbeats. And, then, perhaps, you'd wake me up in the glorious morning night-people dream about when they're dead and that's when I'd tell you that you are the light and deeply beautiful view that erased the night in my heart.

[...]

It's almost morning now, and the silently still buildings are staring back at me with a giant grey cloud fading into pieces above them. And the motionless scene reeks so badly of death that I almost forget that there are hundreds of lives having dreams as vivid as the smoke in my breath and as dead as the breath in my smoke.

Yet, interestingly, just like smoke, the truth has three faces. And to every face, there are two scales. When you face your heart, the pendulum swings between Faith and Fear. When you face your self, the clock either ticks for Goodness or for Power. And when you face your soul at midnight, you'll either see that Love is a timeless mirror, or you'll be lost in the drama of self-deception, divided in images of broken silhouettes in the shards of glass you pretend to inhale so you can fall out of sleep from this grand delusion.

[...]

So enter the world of an enigma that was broken when it was born. Enter the world of lies, a world that tricks its own existence into death. Enter a world that can no longer tell the difference between reality and fiction. Enter a world of make-believe purple rain falling onto yellow autumn leaves to write a fairy-tale even though the author is colorblind. Enter a world where thoughts become footsteps that leave no trace on this desert sand, while all the feelings in the world are colorlessly buried alive underneath this damned map of empty patterns.

[...]

Just like this smoke, I have one face. Just like this smoke, I was once the purple fire that caught the curtain by surprise. And just like this smoke, I, now, into the morning wind disappear.

So wake up and read the wind and perhaps you'll comprehend how beautiful it feels to burn into love with the sound of your laugh in the background.

I know the night won't remember any of this.

But maybe you will.

I love you. It's only one whisper this time. And I know you just heard it.

~

"I take this key
And I bury it in you

Because you're unforgiven too."

Metallica

Words

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” 
Rudyard Kipling

~

The words can't flow because they're drowning.

And so I hide the cracks in my soul with these whispers of the metaphoric sand that carries your scent.

And they can't flow because people made of sand once lost all their words to the sea. And yet each time you place your hand on my skin, I find my dusty soul floating across the waters, like fireworks melting into constellations because of that slight magical shiver at the edge of your fingers.

And now my eyes are this quill of chaos with waves of heartbeats as their ink. And the words still can't flow because I'm drowning on the surface of this heavenly universe you enclose with a blink, because I fall deeper and deeper every time we lock eyes and I can't look away.

So here, at sunrise, are daydreams, and you, daydreams of you. And there, at the edge of nightfall, I am the night that's falling in love with you.

And thus, the quill, it spirals down the ocean, spelling your name in breathless bubbles, wondering if this is all a hopeless dream. Yet, what are dreams when my soul is building an underwater sandcastle with yours? And what are hopes when I have your hand in mine?

[...]

We build and break and fall, then tell stories to ourselves about the mysterious beauty of it all. But I know that these words are but a distorted memory engraved in the record of skipped beats and words unsaid, swallowed breaths and sighs unread. But next come the words that kill, beyond my darkest corner, in that old pain within me moving still. Next come the words that kill, temporarily scattered in disfigured letters floating atop the sea of untold tragedies I bury in my mind. Next come the words that kill, and I can't arrange those letters and read what they have to say because I know that they'll tell me that my heart is dead. They'll tell me that my heart was nice but now it's dead and that no metaphor in the world can't bring it back.

So what are you doing?
What are you doing and why are you walking next to the sea I never told anyone about?
What are you doing and why are you here?

[...]

In this world, you're either broken, dead or insane. And deep inside, no matter which one - or two - you are, there are words that could change you, words that could tear you apart and words that could bring you back anew. And they usually don't flow because they pity your existence and they don't want to flood it into void. Mine couldn't flow because I hid them in the nonexistent layer between your heart and my empty chest when we first hugged.

But I guess your heart rearranged the letters for me.

So next come the words that kill, faintly beating still,

Some things are meant to be.

~

“We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable.” 

Neil Gaiman

Starlight

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.” 
Rumi

~

The rain was falling softly on the two sides between your nose and your cheeks but you weren't blinking. And the sky was dark and starless because all the light and all the stars had found dwelling in your skin and in your eyes. And there was this moment, this very specific moment, when I was watching you and it made me run out of words. So I closed my eyes and ran after them and made them line up against the wall of my heart:

"You resonate at a frequency so intensely beautiful that it confuses the harmony of the golden ratio."

[...]

And as she was dancing she drew Metatron's Cube with her hands and that made me want to call back my only two imaginary friends from their endless pursuit of the metaphysical holy grail. And I did. And they instantly came because they knew I wouldn't contact them after so many years unless it was serious. So picture the scene: Michael, the best student in the mythical Pythagorean school and the first friend I ever made, was sitting to my left. He was the one who taught me to see the numbers in people, to visualize their attributes, their potential, and, naturally, their weaknesses. And to my right, sat Socrates' secret disciple, and the closest thing I've ever had to a brother, Gabriel. He was the one who taught me to see to the music in the numbers. Michael and Gabriel were both eternal rivals and best friends. And this whole time, they thought that they'd figured the secret of the universe, that they had nothing more to learn. Michael put it in an equation (6+12+23=20) which he discovered through Sacred Geometry, then he encoded that equation in the Triquetra symbol and convinced me to tattoo it on my forearm. Gabriel said there was an easier way that Michael had missed. And then he showed it to us with his magnificent handwriting. (Gabriel didn't have a voice, as far as I knew, but he could draw words in the air that only Michael and I could see.) And even after so many years, I still remember how the words floated above us:

The secret of the universe is revealed to you right after you honestly smile to a child, and right before they honestly smile back, in the silent music of that split-second-almost-blink-thing the kid always makes to accept your smile.
P.S. You're right, Michael. It's also 6+12+23=20. 

[...]

So as she was dancing she drew Metatron's Cube with her hands and that made me call them back. And I did. And they came, and they saw that they were conquered by what her divine dance drew in and beyond spacetime. And then I smiled at her and she kinda blinked and smiled back.

Then she laughed.

That's when Michael said: "Where are her numbers? Why doesn't she have any numbers? Something's wrong, Gabriel."
Gabriel was smiling ecstatically, which usually only happens when he claims that he can hear the Music of the Spheres, or when Michael attempts to draw the Flower of Life.

"I think she can see us," whispered Gabriel.

~

"The night was dark

And the dark, blue

And I was both,

Split in two.

The stars were bright

And the music, true

And you were the light

That went through."

Unknown

Ghost

"Time's forever frozen still."
Ed Sheeran

~

This auburn autumn leaf, torn to pieces in the snow, shares its broken structure with my tired mind. And though your snow had melted ages from long ago, replaced by legions of purple orchids blossoming in cardiac weather, your seasoned mind still thinks it's autumn, anticipating the fall.

So run as fast as you can in this frozen hourglass of melting seconds. Run quicker than your skin until it falls off and you become a ghost. Run and leave everything behind. Run and don't look back.

But before you start running.

Remember.

Remember those who fixed your compass.
Remember those who tied your shoes.
Remember the girl who fixed your glasses
Remember the boy who gave you his food.

Remember and know that without them you wouldn't be able to walk.

Play the memories in your mind on the scarred surface of the wall and watch how the cracks slowly and magically fade.

And forget me. Forget me but please stop running. Forget me and remember who you are.

[...]

Today, I couldn't see the color of your ink. And, today, my voice is the echo of a broken record.
And every word was an arrow shot to the secret mirrors I'd kept hidden inside.
And the arrows have hit their target.
So, today the glass is broken and the only sound is silence.
Today, you are not here and I am a desert in the desert.

Today, you are not here and here is gone.
Today does not know our name.

[...]

Now, I wonder if tomorrow is an empty circle of soundless movements of lips painting heartbeats that have fallen out of sync. I wonder if doubt is the greatest warrior that has ever lived, the warrior that has never died. I wonder how vulnerable I've become on a scale of 'void' to 'full of love'. I wonder if tomorrow will be as empty as my hands feel right now.

[...]

I wonder if our hourglass of sun and snow is running out of moments.

~

"And we’ll never be the same; 
Never, forever.
Like ghosts in the snow
Like ghosts in the sun."
My Chemical Romance

Emoh

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” 
Anton Chekhov

~

Shadows form when the light is blocked. And while many stipulate that dark shadows often stand in the way of beautiful colors, the truth is that this darkness is merely the vacant spot of unexpressed light. And while the obstacle moves closer to the source, the shadow grows, larger and larger. As a reaction, the source usually increases its intensity, making darkness darker, and turning the edges from which we fall into it to mysteriously shimmering black gold.

So it is likely for a shadow to appear as an intricately ornamented enigma which life challenges us to unlock when, in reality, the complex design perceived is one projected by the mind. The latter is one of the pieces of the puzzle. You can measure its edges and understand its limits to see the source behind it or you can simply fade into its appeal.

At most, if not all moments, our soul attempts to express something through our mind. The message is corrupted by the noise of false assumptions, misplaced desires and, most commonly, a dishonest sense of self. Naturally, the sources of noise overlap. And while only a magical blend of love, faith and wisdom can redeem the purity of the message, it is essential to remember that in a single life, a multitude of souls and minds are part of the equation.

Now, when you look at something, a wall for example, or a screen, there's always that distance between you two. And sometimes, when you truly focus on that space, it makes you lose focus, and it feels as if it's transferring you to a different world. It is in this same world that people imagine scenarios in their minds, scenes or memories of scenes that make them smile or blurt out parts of a forgettable script in front of strangers on the street. It makes sense now how, throughout my life, I had felt most at home while walking empty or nearly empty streets. It's always that same distance, that same space. You can choose to drown or swim in it. You can ride its tireless trains or just watch their fictional and occasionally thrilling accidents. You can visit people there, like those who stopped being in your life or those others with whom you've shared not more than a single honest gaze or conversation that was cut short by the ways of life. Clearly, this personal space differs from one person to another. Mine happens to be the closest thing to a constant home that I've ever had. And though it merely looks like a worn-out piece of stained crystal glass onto which my thoughts are registered with a permanent marker, the chaotic scribbles, graphs and figures have become like the curtains to a window. And these curtains seem to have far more appeal than the outside world.

I don't know if you've ever come and sat by my side because my eyes have always been locked on the tainted window. All I know is that I've been sitting here forever, slowly writing on fragile glass, painting layer upon layer of imaginary curtains, secretly wondering why the people outside can't see me. And right now I don't even know if there's a door behind me if anyone wants to come in.

Shadows form when the light is blocked. And my window is covered with curtains of words and faces, memories and dreams, lies and confessions, numbers and profiles; a drawing that makes no sense. Yet. fortunately, sometimes I can discern a distance between the window and me, and when I do that, a soul-sent message finds a peaceful place in the chaos, filling in the blanks with meaning, blanks I thought were vain bullets in my heart.

But it turns out that's where the light goes in, through the puzzle piece, through a letter your soul sent to you. . 

So where are you now? Are you sitting next to me? Can you see these rays painted with the light of meaning? 
A four-letter word shines through the specific locations of the puzzle pieces on the window of the story of your life. 
[...]

I've always believed that Art is an explosion and that Love would one day gracefully bring the old tainted piece of glass to pieces, to fireworks for two soulmates that sneak out of their windows for a late night embrace and a loud conversation under the night sky about the stars above them,followed by a silent one about the stars in their eyes. But, perhaps, I'm wrong. You might very well be this light that's piercing through, and I might even be yours. And, perhaps the light is divine. Either way, love is not the explosion of the glass-like story of your life, it's just an exchange of light blocked by whatever obstacles you have floating on the surface of your eyes. 

Some waste their lives trying to solve equations in the dark, with numbers and variables that only exist in that personal distance that no one else can see. Others waste it by breaking out, with shards of glass broken in their pupils, not knowing that a light not seen through one's own eyes makes them slowly bleed out till the human in them becomes too ghostly to be alive.

Perhaps love happens when a window momentarily functions as a mirror.

So look closely until you see the reflection. Or maybe just close your eyes. 

What do you see? 

Is his window hers and hers, his own? Or have they built a secret passageway in-between?

Who do you see?

Were they unknowingly sleeping next to each other all those nights they thought the bed looked too empty?
Were their fingers interlaced this whole time? 
And are they now both smiling at the same reflection?

I don't see any reflection.

Are you here?

Are we home?

~

"When you look in the mirror, do you look at yourself, or for yourself?"
Unknown