Sunrise

“Twilight fell: The sky turned to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars.”
J.K. Rowling

~

Letters and lines, they intertwine. They come to you as symbols and signs. But do you recognize the handwriting? Do you recognize the road? Don't look away. It's okay if you do. It's okay if you weren't listening. It's okay because the bright lights in their eyes have already stitched their glow atop your heart.

I wish I had words for fading memories, for lost friendships and forgotten songs. I wish I still had those eyes that could take me to the sleepless cemetery of stars. I wish I could take you with me, my beautiful cold, my beautiful dark, my beautiful corner; my ever-faithful void. For so long, I secretly thought that you had etched your pain upon every piece of me, that all the warmth I will ever encounter would eventually shiver at the sight of your gaze.

But now I ask myself and you,

Have you forgotten me?

I'm that child who saw the stars behind the rain. I am the enigma of self-inflicted affliction. I'm the boy who dug for the truth beneath the shadow. I am that seeker who fell in love with the horizon. I am the game, the game lonely children play to pretend they're someone else. I am the past, present and future interlaced in one broken moment. I am you, dearest void, as I have always been. So why are you not answering? And why is it colder than our usual cold?

I write to you today though I feel I should not. For I feel like an ancient recipe with expired secret ingredients unable to remember their distasteful failures. I cannot tell you what will become of us, or me because I don't know, because I can't feel anything beyond the pain of potentially losing you. I keep writing that word so that perhaps I'd feel it. And I know, deep down, that even if you decide to leave me to the road, I will keep you in my handwrit-

An echo interrupts the rain, blurs the shadows and their games. The void replies,

Heartbeats and souls, they interweave. They become you if you believe. Yet will you recognize the smell? Will you recognize the warmth?

You will never walk alone – unless you change the story.

I don't think you can.

 

 ~

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
Terry Pratchett

Dream

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?"
Tupac Shakur

~

The house is small. And it is made of wood; light brown exterior, reddish maroon interior. It has one door, three windows and a backdoor on the left side. It's a one-room-house in the middle of nowhere. Inside, the four walls are stacked with thousands of photographs, all staring at a single bed at the center.

I built this house when I was a child. I built it with early traumas and wet pillow covers. I built it with broken toys and fits of rage. I built it with yellow bedsheets and humiliation. I built it all by myself and wrote betrayal on the welcome mat. I'd been sleeping there every night for as far as I can remember. The few cracks in the ceiling even found a way to map themselves as wrinkles on my face. Perhaps it was their way of reminding me that no matter how badly my memory attempts to self-destruct, the pain of the past will always be etched in the mirror.

That house right there is the reason why I've always been homesick, why I could never belong. The world's beautiful lights could not compare with the dark grey brightness my eyes were accustomed to. And all those seductive perfumes people wore smelled nothing like the stagnant shame and regret entrenched in my lovely rotting mattress.

No one's ever set foot near this place. But love has a way of clawing at your insecurities, of tearing all the metaphors you hide behind back to reality's page. So here I am now haunting with words the haunted house that's sheltered me for years. The walls of sanity have been breached. Anxiety has hit like a storm. The windows have shattered into stubborn tears and the ceiling has finally crumbled onto all those past selves I can barely remember.

The door is still there though. And it opens with a single word. We can go inside and I could show you some things you don't know about me. But now is not the time.

Now is the time to wander off this barren land, past the broken house and the plastic castle on its left side, past the friendly void and its endless patterns in the concrete, past the rose and into the next adventure.

So, tonight, I'll get to sleep outside for the first time. I'll sleep in the bed we built together with love. And I'll look at all the stars I named after you and dream with misty eyes. I'll dream of the fireworks in your skin. I'll dream of the magic that pervades your blinks. I'll dream of you, of the younger you, of the older you. I'll dream of you, all of you.

And, maybe, tonight, we'll meet in the same dream – and we'll greet each other with that I-love-you-smile we're both really good at. Yeah... that one.

I guess we've already met in the same dream.

~

"Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?”
Edgar Allan Poe

Magic

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
Roald Dahl

~

Words fail.

I wish I could go back in time to see you as a little child, playing in your room. I wish I could heal the pain in their eyes. I wish I were brave enough to join my body the moment it leaves our bed in the morning. I wish I had the will to go through with my plans. I wish I had enough strength to keep those sudden bursts of heartache from showing on my face. I wish I could erase these scars. I wish I could erase these scars. I wish I could forgive myself. And I wish I could pause time and run to you, hug you, then unpause.

Words fail. Wishes fail too.

Yet these rivers of smoke sail through the glowing darknesses of the dark. And your watery eyes blur the scene as they gaze into mine. So I stare at the silence of my heart and into your gently blinking stars. And I see you. I see you.

Can you see me too?

Wishes fail. And all the questions they leave behind, they fail as well.

But I am neither wind nor fire, neither truth nor dream. I am but a fictional fact in factual fiction; that sigh we share as our fingers interlace in their ever-flowing faith.  And you are here and there and in every rupture of my heart. You are love and truth and beauty and everything in between; that eternal heartbeat that keeps our hands warm.

So can you feel this? Can you feel us? Are you listening?

We are music. We're the music that answers every question, the embrace that brings dying wishes back to life. And even when words fail, love does not.

Our love never fails.

Because we are Magic, Love; magical children playing in your room.

~

"I realized I was thinking of you, and I began to wonder how long you'd been on my mind. Then it occurred to me: Since I met you, you've never left."

Unknown

Observe

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
Morpheus

~

Suppress the bursts of emotion as hard as you can. Push the tears back inside. Push them back. You always knew you didn't belong. You don't belong anywhere. You never did and you never will. Deep down, you know. You know you can never show them who you really are. You know. You know they'll never realize what they mean to you.

No matter what, keep your eyes open because the hell within is far greater than the hell without. And keep your heart open so that maybe some of the hurt gets out. And, most of all, keep your child hidden in his room. He doesn't deserve to see you like this.

All around me, I see art. I see it in their eyes. I see it in the stars, in the waves. I see it everywhere. What ensues is a sort of appreciation devoid of passion. This is nice. And this same beautiful emptiness flows through my hands. So I write. I write to get a chance to capture the feeling, that gentle light that continues to elude me. And, still, I feel nothing. Over and over, I write to escape the void. Over and over, the void erases me. And, still, I feel nothing.

What do you see?

What do you feel?

Try to feel it. Try to feel it, now. Now, pause. Now burn the ocean on the canvas of your mind and pour it into a spoonful of liquid painkillers. Jump in. Dive in. Swim. Swim slowly through these hypocritical layers of a damaged psyche. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe out that self-deluded conscience that cripples your soul. Breathe in. Breathe out. And when you get to the bottom of shallow depth, you may find a shadowy metal reflection staring back at you. Are you watching closely?

The shadow becomes you.

And, still, you feel nothing.

So let there be light... and a shadow – you. Let it through. Then tell me where it hurts.

~

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

Carl Jung

Dusk

"We do not know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. That's what death is, don't you think?"
Uchiha Itachi

~

He sits in the darkness of his room, staring at a nonexistent reflection in the luminous screen. In his mind, the imperceptible ceiling above him is a grey sky. The usually unnoticed lines on his fingers are heavily accentuated by the white light. He perceives them as a reminder of the worry lines digging through his forehead. He knows that he doesn't know how to stop pretending. And though the weight of his world is a giant nothingness playing a relentless game of hide and seek with his heart's shadows, he remains faithful to the light.

When you close your eyes, do you feel less pain, or more pain? I asked him the question with a voice that escaped me, a tone I could not recognize. Less, he calmly said. And while I was drowning in tiresome thoughts about how my inner hell is greater than the fake fires of reality, he dropped the metaphysical bomb.

We've all been dealt a shit hand, Kambris. And we're all bluffing, just bluffing.

Thinking back, I realize now that I should've replied with words we both know very well...

"Art..."

The light either shines through the darkness or remains a timelessly fading shadow. The shadows are revealed like shiny scars, ripped at the edges, overflowing with immaterially dense tears. The light remains. The shadows are revealed, revealed and never discovered. The light is there, still. The shadows unwaveringly tremble beneath his delusional fingertips. The light is heavy, inside-out. The shadows seek revenge against your anonymity. The light is always knocking at your door. The shadows know you framed them because you couldn't own up to your crimes. The light is peeking through the keyhole. The shadows will hold you forever when you fall. The light rushes slowly through that nameless gap above the floor – beneath the child's door. The shadows toy with my fractured soul while my eyes watch their hateful reflection unfold in the grey mirror. The light breaks. The mirror breaks too.

Let there be light, and many, many shadows. Blessed be the brave and blessed be the child who closed his eyes.

The light breaks – through.

It becomes – you.

Dawn.

~

"Art... is an explosion."
Masashi Kishimoto

Normal

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
W.B. Yeats

~

The pale morning awakens and the time is ticking. Time is ticking and the drops rain down on the naked asphalt like a relentless anxiety attack. The incessant fluid motion orchestrates a focused flood on the most vulnerable pores in his soft skin. Time is ticking. His hidden hardened shell is progressively broken down and its shattered pieces find a temporary home in his throat -- alongside the disfigured bits of vengeful teeth and an expired chocolate bar. Time is ticking. The sidewalk reeks of his smell. Time is ticking. The raindrops that felt like bullets now feel like bombs. Time is ticking and the scene is set to the loud music of innocent laughter, of criminal voices in his head. Time is ticking. The bullied child stands up and walks a few steps. Time is ticking. The deafening honk of the speeding bus doesn't hurt as much. Time is ticking. Who's laughing now? Time stops. And the asphalt is dressed in a heavenly red.

Internalized pain and repressed anger. The little girl loves to play hide and seek with her silent imaginary friends and awkward cartoon heroes. She likes to run and she's not sure time exists. Most of all, she enjoys painting her walls with small stickers, secretly thinking that if the magical glue sticks well, the expensive stickers could heal invisible wounds while her favorites ones would silence surrounding screams. Now, she's sitting alone, in the back of the school bus, making up musical tunes with her lips and listening to them at the same time. She doesn't know what the autistic spectrum is. Everything stops for a moment -- even the moment, even her music. She ignores the panic and loudly laughs behind closed eyes and a quiet smile to counter the negative ambiance. A while later, she blinks. Everything goes back to normal -- her normal. She looks up through the window and grins. And then she sends an honest kiss to her clear sky. She looks down at her asphalt and does the same thing. In her eyes, they both wear a chocolate violet blue.

That's not how you spell 'Faith', said Religion.

I was born in a place that smells like adult perfume, in a time that tastes like deception and corruption. You never knew me as a child. Or, perhaps, in a way, you did. I don't know what's going on, really. I just hope that we are unknowingly weaving our future stories beyond this overwhelmingly complex pattern of delusion. And I hope that one day, the kids will be alright.

For now, let there be light and many, many shadows. Blessed be the heart that glued faith to its walls. And blessed be the child who survived, the child who remembers. And blessed be the brave.

~

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
Rumi

Tickets

"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

~

Replace the echo that burns along your ribs. Take my hands and hold their applause for the sake of this loneliness the dancers call insanity. Forsake all that is broken. Forsake them and call the auction off because you can't lose what you don't have, because the world is rational and rotten, because the answering machine that's loudly whispering in your ear is you.

Breathe through the lines because you have nowhere to go, because all those burning bridges in your head have already mixed with the ashes of your cigarette. I can't tell you what happened because I don't really know. All I know is that I feel too much of this nothingness and I need to feel less of it. And this is the only way I can do that. It's okay. It's okay because when you're honest, everything happens the way it's supposed to.

Take this please. Take it off my chest. I don't deal well with stress. Take these tears that won't come out. Take these words that lie motionless upon my breath. Sing me to sleep under a starless ceiling and call it an ugly, quiet death. And take these feelings and flush the toilet so that the scent of my inner world becomes faithful to the drain.

Hold on. Rewind.

The ceiling breaks like toasted bread every morning and the falling pieces paint a garden of dust for the sandcastle in my head. I'm all alone here. Perhaps I always will be. Then again, maybe not. The echo burns ever so brightly for it knows these lines are not deaf. Together they send you a rose. So take a peak inside those petals: Red curtains. A wooden stage. Dim lights and you're just standing there. All the tickets were sold out but no one came. All you get is empty chairs, a mirror in your hand and a purple flower resting beside you -- Take a look.

Pause.

Let there be light and many, many shadows. Great surprises lie ahead and it is in these times that we must remember to always, always remember the titans. Blessed be the brave. And blessed be the inner child and all the love he thought had died.

~

"On with the show."
Queen

Enigma

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
W.B. Yeats

~

Illusions.

The smoke mixes well with the darkness. And the white light comes off the screen to crash onto the stranger's hands. Whose hands are these? The keystrokes brighten up when I push them. I'm not alone. I don't like it when I'm not alone. I wish I could die. I don't mean that in a completely suicidal way. Perhaps, it's only part of me that hopes for death. Is there a you in you that wants to die too?

Enter the void.

Thankfully, I can turn down the emotion-volume to a minimum—and you can read what remains, these letter-shaped stains that leak through my fingers. I'm alone now. All that is incontrovertibly true is saved in this bubble. Thus, I am not allowed in. But, at least, I can read off these spherical layers and I can transliterate tribulation. All I have ever known is here. My castles of repressed tears. My frozen rivers of rage. My beautiful sleepless nights and the starry sky that drowns them. All my old selves are here, buried alive beneath the ashes of my cigarettes. And there's him too, that motionless shadow which glows darker than all this madness, my madness. Stand here. Right there. Let your feet float atop silky ember. Yes, right there. This is where I last saw him, the shadow's owner I mean. He was just a little kid, a little kid who really loves paper-planes. And this used to be his playground. He liked to run, all the time. And... and this is where he stopped. He just stopped and looked at me. "What have you done?" he said. And that was it. He vanished. I never got the chance to explain.

Let there be light, and many, many shadows.

Take your best shot. Take your best shot. Take a shot of self-destruction with an aftertaste of fake redemption. I numb the hurt with self-deception and you, and you can turn up the volume because I've already fallen asleep. Take your best shot because your wounds are crippling your body language. Take your best shot because every moment is eternal abandonment. Take your best shot because you only have two bullets and the last bullet is you.

Blessed be the brave, and blessed be the knight of faith.

So comprehend apprehension for this heart-drum is forever paired with pain. Blink away this wretched ink and blink away the rain. Hold on to the key of fiction and redefine insane. Then turn the pages, turn the pages, turn the pages and decorate the veil. And burn off the reflection as you fade away. The purple heart implodes. The breathless voice erodes. All I have ever known is here. So how dare you ask me to—

Wait.

What was that? It was a dashing flash, a silent blur. Did you see it?

Look. No. No, not like that. I mean close your eyes.

It's a paper-plane.

Well open it!

7-SYS-1

~

“It's the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it.” 

Frank Warren

Cracks

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” 
Oscar Wilde

~

This air is bruised. It's cut. And still, it looks down on my broken heartbeats as they struggle to fall off my shirt. What if the sky isn't really torn? What if there's something wrong with my eyes? I know that you know that I'm not okay. But maybe, I'm okay with not being okay.

It was five to twelve and the sun was shining down on the playground. I stood there watching my schoolmates walking, running, talking, hiding, seeking, laughing. And I just stood there, slowly eating my homemade cheese sandwich. I was 7 years old. And now, 18 years later, it still feels the same way. You can't both capture the moment and be in it. Maybe I just never wanted to be found. Maybe, I really knew how to hide in plain sight. Or maybe, I just didn't want anyone to notice how slow I ran.

These walls are cracked. The fan sends a breeze of temperate air every now and then. My skin is dry. The lights are dim. My head slightly hurts. It's not that easy to breathe in here. It's probably better if I move to the balcony. People don't get it, you know? They barely ever look at the sky. Consider mine right now, for example. What do you see? Grey clouds and a light night blue sky. About 29 stars and 12 sleeping buildings with a few lit rooms. I wonder what they're doing. I wonder if someone else is looking at these grey clouds, whether they too are distraught by the idea of how the color grey always dominates the scene. I guess I'm people too. That means I don't get it either. Maybe, some walls never crack.

Pause the drama. Pause the loneliness.

Some people spend their lives trying to become a one-man-band. They don't see it. They can't see it. They need to hear it. They need to feel the pattern. When multiple instruments embrace in the same melody and all the musical elements become a single beating thread, the human-cosmic vibration climactically tears down your walls and unconsciously becomes you.

It's nine to six and the sun hasn't come up yet. The wind of the worlds sends itself into my bloodstream and breath every now and now. And now I am more than my dry skin. The shadows are dim and my head is in the grey clouds. It's not that easy to breathe through unlucky cigarette smoke. It's probably better if I tell you where I'm going with this.

No matter how often you lie to yourself and pretend that you are not you, no matter how fast you think you can run or how far you think you've gone, no matter how many masks decorate your affliction, and no matter how hard you try to avoid the pain, you know, deep down. You know.

Your walls are cracking.

~

“We were alone and starved for love. Kids that lived in a world full of hate.” 
Masashi Kishimoto

Implosion

"To run is not necessarily to arrive. "
Swahili proverb

~

The wand was broken. So was the dream.

I saw you yesterday, in my sleep. And I was wondering if you saw me too. The sky was both dark and grey. And the ocean was moonlit clay. And you just stood there, with your back leaning against a poster of your forest. And for some of the most part, I was there, breaking in and out of the violet mist.

Whispers.

Stop playing with the wooden parts of your heart for they are forever carved with regret. This feast you never cease to enjoy is not the fruit of creation. It is but your own flesh. And this mirror is bleeding at the edge of your lips.

And those walls you break, they leave their shards in your throat. And all these stars you cannot move, they crumble to cosmic dust at the tip of your pen. The word is lost. The world is lost. And the only prize is loneliness. This broken bread is soaked in red. But you’ve lost all your color.

Now repress the rage. I said repress the rage. Please. Sometimes you have to skip a line so it doesn’t bend your rib cage. And sometimes you have to consider every other perspective just so you could forget your own. This twisted plot will rot away. And all my words will fade. I told you not to fall asleep. I told you not to dream. I told you not to believe in magic. But off you leapt. And off you fell. And every breath was a number. And little did you know that you were dialing death.

Perhaps light is to physical objects what emotion is to ideas. And you probably have no idea what you’re sure about. You might actually not be sure about anything. In any case, the instrument is infinitely sinful. And though this music you compose is a chess game of delusion, I’ll tell you the truth in the end.

I don’t know which part of you is standing at which gate. And I don’t know how your two main principles mate at the top of the pyramid. I don’t know how the soul carries the mind’s flight. And I don’t know how these auburn shrubs in my head will turn yellow. But I know that I can’t face the dark without you—that without you I am but fictional ash, intangibly dry. So come, Love.
Come.
Let us kill the faceless enemy.

Checkmate, purple implosion.

~

"If you are filled with pride, you will have no room for wisdom."
African proverb

Love

“How do you spell 'love'?" - Piglet
"You don't spell it...you feel it." - Pooh”
A.A. Milne

~

"These are the words but the words aren't coming out."

But their echo does. And it's a ray of light shooting across the dying corners of my room. And maybe if you listen, if you listen well, you can hear a subtle melody. And maybe if you read this, if you read this well, its heartbeats will land on your lips. And maybe, just maybe, if you don't blink too hard, you'll let the beats watch those fireworks you cannot see. And then, perhaps, you'll hear a symphony, a glowing pulse in your eyes, shining back and forth, all the way through. But you won't know whether it's me or you, because your hand is already in mine, and you just noticed that we're dancing. And our shadows are too. Two souls made of fire, yellow, violet, blue, burn through the door of fate. Two birds emerge as one feather slowly falling into a quill. And this quill is frozen ice. Yet its broken tip melts, melts slowly, slowly at the darkness of these floating droplets of some meteor's ink that leaked through the ceiling of the night sky. We're still dancing. You forgot – again. You didn't even see how your fingers were rearranging my stars. But maybe, now, if you're seeing this, if you're seeing this well, you'll see them covered with that melting ink that seeped through my heart. You'll see them interlacing at the back of my neck composing a downward chill, set to an aftertaste of warmth; the kind of warmth we both close our eyes to – the kind of warmth that makes us smile while we're dancing. And, yes, naturally, I just hugged you. And this hug is a timeless vow – a promise. And this promise is a moment. And this moment is endless depth. And, okay, perhaps, my soul isn't infinite because infinity can't be broken down. But... I'm sorry I broke the rhythm but, maybe, in a while, the never-ending ending will start with better music. Okay, let's start again. Let's start with your smile. Smile, please. I'll follow your lead. And now you can laugh. You can laugh if you would like to radiate the kind of bliss that pushes the world's weight off my shoulders. It's not there now, though. Because we're still hugging. You forgot – again. Stop forgetting. Start knowing. I'm gonna stop whispering now. I'm gonna slightly raise my voice. Start knowing that your laughter is my cure. Start knowing that the words just aren't coming out. Pause. Please pause. I said please. You don't know what happens after this silence. You don't know what happens in the next frame. So let me tell you. After the silence, I get my legs back. I get my soul back. After the silence, I'll actually dance with you instead of writing about it. And we won't just fly in the realm of fiction against all that qualifies as wind. We'll also be travelling the world together, using airplanes in the realm of 'reality'. And to be 'realistic', well, as we're flying, we'll fall. We'll fall under white, translucid sheets and give our demons a taste of grace. So, yeah. Yeah, whether it's dancing or hugging or flying or running, we lay our hands upon the scars. And hope is that echo, that ray of light you've been listening to, that glow I once saw and could never un-see once your gaze was etched in me. But you need to close them now–your eyes, I mean–because I... I urgently need to kiss you.

I love you by the way. And, your eyes should be closed. Because we're still kissing. You forgot – again.

"I just wanted you to know."

~

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”
Edgar Allan Poe

Empty

"Repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward."
Søren Kierkegaard

~

Let there be light and many, many shadows.

I know you're tired. I'm tired too. And I don't think there's a word that stands between clarity and confusion. And I'm not even sure I know how to describe it. But my handwriting sure looks a lot like it. I need to finish that book. She's right – I never finish anything. I know. The depth of the word is the depth of the hurt. You keep saying that. But who cares? What will you gain from this? What will you learn? Nothing.

But maybe I just have a few things to say. When I was young, I always thought strangers had this mysteriously beautiful aura, this gleam that I needed to discover. It's not like that anymore. I wish it still were. I'm not sure that's what I wish. I'm not okay. I know you're not okay either.

Somewhere, right now, there's a snowstorm. And that snowstorm is set to music, a music no one can hear. Maybe the most well-kept secret is that matter is generated by consciousness. Then again, maybe not. And maybe I don't want to be understood because I know that once understood I'll be seen. I'll be seen for who I truly am – an ugly broken pen.

I don't know what's missing. I know that you don't know either.

The absent wind turns into these vapid words. And the old bland void strangles the breath. The answer plays in his imagination. But it's not really there. The only thing here is the night and it's racing the heart's attempt at throbbing to a slow death. The lights fade into his eyes and merrily turn to fire in hers. "Are you feeling what I'm feeling right now?" he asks. His skin is itching. His heart is aching. His art is lacking because he can't see her next to him, smiling. The pain pushes the pulsations back to a hellish pressure in the chest. Dawn won't be breaking soon. Your stars are the same as mine. Your soul is the same as mine. And... and I love you and that's all that matters. And maybe, even if you meet me, you would love me still. These roads don't need to be paved. They just need to carry your scent. And, yeah, I'll carry your heart and your smile and your laughter and your perfect face and anything you want – anything you want to picture in our future.

I know you think all we need is each other. I think so too.

Herein runs an emptiness that was once a red and flawed cardiac river.

And if it ever comes to back to life, you can have it.

~

"Hope is a new garment, stiff and starched and lustrous, but it has never been tried on, and therefore one does not know how becoming it will be or how it will fit. Recollection is a discarded garment that does not fit, however beautiful it is, for one has outgrown it."
Søren Kierkegaard

Fall

"So smoke 'em if you got 'em
Cause it’s going down
All I ever wanted was you
I’ll never get to heaven
Cause I don’t know how."
LP

~

So he wrote a letter to life. It started and ended with the same line:

What do you want from me?

I find myself asleep. I find myself pretending to dream. Again and again, I find myself not finding myself at all. Could it be? Could it be a thirst for the taste of purple melancholy that drives my blood to abandon its lively red? This inescapable need to be part fiction, part reality splits me in three:

You, drowning in uncertainty—You free-falling in reality—And I, the hopelessly hopeful ghost, playing hide and seek with the void.

And I told you not drown. And I told you not to fall. And I told the void that I’d stop hiding. So it found me.

Pause.

My fingers flirt with the play button but they do it at a distance. They’re too busy choosing between past and present tense. And as I walk to enter the realm of grand delusion, I read the sign at the door.

What are you doing?

I told the night to leave me be. And I told the stars I couldn’t see. I told the ocean I couldn’t breathe. And then I asked myself:

Why won’t you wake up?

Now inhale the confusion. And then you’ll understand—that I try my best to breathe out the truth—that I try my best for me and you.

I can’t go on. I can’t go on. I can’t go on.

Why are you doing this to me?

I don’t know what you’ve broken. I don’t know if we become what we lose. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I don’t know what to do.

I wish you could pick up my pieces and hug them back to animate glue. But you can’t. For they make up the map that leads me home, to you. And I need to find you. I need to find you. I need to find you.

So dear foreign heart, I implore you not to trigger thoughts and words about faith and trust. For tonight is not about hope and dreams. Tonight is not about identity and purpose. Tonight is not about unconditional love. Tonight is an overflow of information, a mindful con, a paradigm shift, a transformation. Tonight is an absence of internal music, a silent restless dance, a failing numbness, an underrated emotion. Tonight is not a flowing ocean. Tonight's a broken rhyme, a nonexistent sign, a colorless color of a flawlessly flawed design. Tonight is devoid of plot twists. Tonight is everything and nothing—switching sides. Tonight is a beautiful, muted, song. So stop singing, 'cause you're out of tune.

Never stop.

~

“If you are falling....dive.” 
Joseph Campbell

Dancing

"Hold
Hold on
Hold on to me

'cause I'm a little unsteady

A little unsteady."

X Ambassadors

~

He lay in bed, eyes fixed to the ceiling, picturing how their first dance would be. He knew she was somewhere being herself, and he hoped she was thinking about him in a positive light. And as they moved together in harmonious motion, his imagination was consumed by the tireless movement of his gaze—glued to the heavenly feeling painted on her face, rhythmically swinging from left to right, right to left and then, back again, over and over, wondering how her soul and its shadow could compose such spellbinding art, a love that could silence tragic pain, a promise to the light, a slow dance in the rain.

So run the pressure and the beat. Smother the darkness in this heat. Endure the unbearable delusion. And break. Break the intensity right before it knocks you out. And as your eyelids now both stumble to meet, examine the romance that's cracking the ceiling. Embrace the lovely and the intimate. And know that this bleak fall is reaching down to find the sweet flower at her feet.

Now focus. Focus on the fading difference between fate and freedom. Lose all sensation, all delight, all safety and might. Drop your arms. Drop your masks. Drop your pride. Drop your ego. Drop your delusions. And... and lay your love softly on the ground. Then look. Change your focus. Don't look at the words. Look at your reflection behind them. Look at your reflection behind them. Look at your reflection. Look at it. Look at you. I am nothing. I am no one. I'm not even a memory. I am not future hope. I am not tomorrow. I am now and this now does not exist. You can pierce the veil. So pierce the veil. You're not listening. Listen. You're not listening. You're not listening to your heart. You're not listening to your heart. These words do not exist. But you do. So start acting like it.

Even if you don't trust yourself, trust the moment.

Even if he can't see her, he can see her. He can feel her. He can feel her skin on his.  Even if she doesn't know it, they're together—always. They're together against all odds, until time forsakes all effort to break their unity.

Even if you give up on us, in my head we'll still be playing board games with our children in my side of the house, right next to your personal library. Even if your heart decides to beat for another, mine will always be on our small balcony at 3 A.M. secretly wondering when you'll wake up and give it a surprise hug. Even if you think that doubt and mistrust will always stand in our way, I'll keep daydreaming about how I'll propose. And even though you feel that you're very much alone right now, you might want to check your heart, because my hand is pressed upon it. And maybe, just maybe, if you close your eyes, you'll feel it.

And maybe, when you see the way I'm looking at you, you won't look away.

You'll smile instead.

~

"I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her
I'm right over here, why can't you see me
I'm giving it my all, but I'm not the guy you're taking home
I keep dancing on my own
I keep dancing on my own."
Callum Scott

Violet

"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society."
Aristotle

~

I wish I could say that but I can't.
I'll just tell you that life is about filling in the blanks before they fill you.

There was once this little girl who wanted to imagine a color that doesn't exist. Little did she know that she was trying to remember the color of her soul. Her grandfather had recently fallen in love with balloons. The little girl gave him her favorite balloon. It was white and she tied its grey ribbon to the left side of his wheelchair. And when she asked him what balloons reminded him of, he told her that, in a way, they represented the Holy Spirit, but her strawberry ice-cream and mysterious daydreams kept her from listening. He knew that his answer didn't register in her memory but smiled nonetheless at the sight of an idea - the idea that the Holy Spirit would later reveal herself to her through the eyes of another human soul rather than industrial helium. Little did he know that his love for balloons was merely a desperate way to hold on to that lively feeling of lightness he knew he was going to lose.

The harmony of the scene was suddenly broken when a little boy bumped into the old man's granddaughter. The small black Frisbee he had thrown to the sky and ran so hard to catch - as if it would return a divine gift - fell right next to his face as he tripped clumsily to the ground. High-quality strawberry ice-cream was slowly dripping down the girl's yellow sundress. She innocently smiled as she ran her finger through the pink coldness on her lips and softly painted a small warm home for it on the tip of the boy's nose. The little boy's face had turned whiter than the balloon. He blinked violently at the touch of her finger and then, after giving her a flying kiss and his Frisbee as an apology, he ran away so quickly just to blink again.

And as he blinks you see the boy a man, his wife beside him in her perfect yellow dress. She asks him about balloons, what color they would be in his perfect world and what he thinks they symbolize for him. He tells her they'd be white and purple and that they remind him of the kind of empty dreams people aren't supposed to hold onto. She innocently smiles and naturally proceeds to answer her own question. She says that her ideal world would have balloons in all colors, even those that don't exist. And then she stops and smiles again as she remembers that beautiful painting she loves and instantly decides that a balloon represents hope, hope against all odds. She tells him about the painting, while maintaining this heavenly drawing on her face, but not about hope because that's not how she wants them to find eachother. He blinks violently to savor her sudden, unsolicited laugh and then turns and runs as fast as he can to catch the red Frisbee that flew from her hand. And as he catches it while losing his balance, she blinks to keep him from falling - and then she blinks again.

And as she blinks, I see the girl and though she doesn't know it, she's here sleeping right next to me.
I hope you know that what's left of my heart is hope. And I hope you know this hope is you.

~

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
RWE

Faith

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them."
Gebran Khalil Gebran

~

Heart of a child. Mind of a warrior. She's like a... a kind of fireworks that doesn't exist - a show like no other. You can't help but look up, into her eyes, and you only notice that the sky is clear after the raindrops start dripping down your chin. Then comes the prodigy, the boy who smells like childhood, the blindest and most brilliant composer of heartbeats I have ever met. He tries to cover his colorful soul with pale monochrome outfits. Little does he know that no one remembers what he wears, because the glow in his eyes blurs out everything else. So, in any case, she tells him all her weaknesses outright. And once he attempts to help her overcome them, she reveals that she was only testing him, that her only weakness is that she can never trust anyone.

Twelve years later, he writes her a letter. He tells her about his unrivaled capacity to find remarkable individuals, to observe them and marvel at every drop of awe leaping off their skin. He tells her about his friend, his best friend, how he saved his life, how he doesn't know that he saved his life because he never thanked him, that he one day will. He tells her that he loves her, that he always will. Later that year, she writes him a letter. She asks him why he hasn't written to her. She tells him that he's like a ghost, that he's always standing somewhere near, just staring at her, that she still checks that he isn't really there because her hands just need to make sure, even when she tells them not to. She also tells him that she met a guy who reminds her of him, a guy with a sunset on the back of his head.

[...]

People are only real if you want them to be. And those people never really leave. Everyone else does, like any chess piece in the game of conscious versus unconscious. But, they don't.

[...]

And love is that child knocking at your door, screaming poetry about fear and rain. And pain is this broken wrist that hid the doorknob in its veins. You find the key in the numbness. You find the key in this broken hourglass of incomplete tears, beats of a heart that's gone insane. And when you don't find the key, take your... take your cage back. I said - take your cage back. For these prison bars still spell your name. And your games no longer rhyme with rage. So blame the audience. Blame the stage. You still haven't opened the door. The echo of the child is gone. Run after him - run. He couldn't have gone too far. It's a different room. It's a different song. It's another field, another day, another heart where no rose can bloom. This smoke can travel beyond ideas of who you think you are. I don't know where you went wrong. I said - I don't know where I went wrong. I read words and eyes and I know when they're dead. So are you? Are you dead?

[...]

Arise, dear friend. Your pain is getting old. So stand up and fight. Fight for faith until it becomes you. The war has just begun. I said - the war has just begun.

~

“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
Alfred Adler

Imagine

"Everything is grey, his hair, his smoke, his dreams. And now he's so devoid of color, he don't know what it means. And he's blue."

Halsey

~

All the pictures were black and white.
But she had grey eyes.

Picture your most valued object. It could be something you bought or found, or perhaps it was a gift from someone. Okay. Now think about the event that has hurt you the most. It could be something you did or, perhaps, something that was done to you, or maybe, to someone who is more you than you, more important to you than you. Now let's call the picture 'O' for the object that is now in your hand - in the realm of fiction - and we'll call the sound 'H' for the hell it made or still makes you feel - in the realm of 'reality'.

But now, we need to play a game. We shall call it Oh! The Dramatic Game. You need to say H out loud while imagining that you're throwing O in the ocean. Yes, you need to say it out loud - the thing that hurts you the most. If there are multiple objects and hells, you need to picture all the O's drowning and say all the H's out loud. Also, since you probably haven't done the H part yet, it has to be said in a musical way, as if Hell were a song.

So say it now, out loud, over and over, until your most prized possession sinks in the water.

If you haven't said it yet, please stop reading. Only carry on if you did.

Congratulations on reaching the next level. I hope you didn't cheat.

You must now think about your ultimate purpose, the reason you're here, the dream you were born to achieve. Read on only if you know what that is. And, now, picture the person you love the most. It doesn't matter whether their body is dead or alive. They just need to be smiling in your head. We shall call this game DL: The Spiritual Game. In case you're wondering, D is for Divine and L is for Love. And there is only one rule in DL, and it is that your heart makes all the rules. So imagine whatever comes to mind when you think about your truest dream. And then say whatever you want to say now, out loud, to the person you love the most.

In brief, at the end of the game, before you die, you need to find the relationship between O and D and it has to be right dosage for the sake of your potential equilibrium. Meanwhile, you should also tell L about H, if you haven't yet, even if you're not sure they're listening.

Beyond delusion, in the world of souls and mirrors, silently frozen in pictures, the eye can only see two colors: Right and Wrong.
So look closely. What color are your eyes?
No.
Look again.

What do you see?

~

"You're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece."
Halsey

Cocaine

“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”
Jean Cocteau

~

It's okay. Everything's gonna be okay in the end. That's not true. Stop lying. Everything's getting worse and you know it. Enough with this 'there is a light and it never goes out' crap. This world is rotten and you know it. You know it because you can see it. You can see the pain on their faces, there where each time, a part of you dies.

It's not okay. It's cold. How terribly lonely it must feel to see all through their eyes while no one can scratch your eyes' surface. I know you're just pretending not to be dead on the inside. I know that, in my head, that white line twists into the first letter of your name because I can smell your perfume right before the broken snow invades my bloodstream. And it's cold because I know I can't hug you anymore.

I know you erase yourself and that's why you can feel what they feel. I know you can't even dare to face yourself. I know you can't even bear the sight of your own reflection. You don't have the heart to stand the hurt that's carved itself on your soul, that black stuff you think you can hide in the shadows. But you know what? I'm gonna tell you the truth, the secret of life. So listen.

The truth is that there are three kinds of people on this planet. First are the heartbroken who want to break everything and everyone else because they worship their own brokenness. Second are the heartbroken who keep looking everywhere just to avoid looking at the bloodied shards at their feet. And third are the heartbroken who have realized that all the little bits have mixed, that a renewed heart is a mosaic of the heart-bits we fall in love with.

But enough with theories and myths. Tell me why you're burned out. Tell me how you've strayed so far from home. Tell me how heroes become villains. Tell me how heroes become villains. Tell me how heroes become villains. I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry that we're all addicts, that we depend upon chemical explosions in our kingdom to forget that everyone's either dead or gone. Maybe that's why we keep trying to control other people - because no matter what they do, in our heads, they remain motionless objects we need to move. Maybe we know deep down, that no matter what we do, we're motionless objects too. And we're never gonna change. Now would you fucking look around? Look around. Is anyone seeing what I'm seeing? It's that same lie everyday. It's the same delusion every fucking day and the drugs don't fucking work. We're just pretending that they do. So take that mask off your face, will you?

Right now, I don't think you can find it. So I won't ask. I know you're lonely. It's okay. I know you feel more like a stranger here with every passing day. I know that you feel dead inside. I know that you're me and that I am not you. This storm is death. And I'm sorry I'm not good enough.

But you know what? I'm gonna tell you the real truth, the secret to life, the only drug you truly need. So listen. Listen close.

Hope.

Everything's gonna be okay. I can't promise you that. I can only hope for it. And I hope that I'm not lying.

~

"Memories consume
Like opening the wounds

I'm picking me apart again."

Linkin Park

Plastic

"By analogy, think of earth’s horizon. The horizon is not a physical thing. It is a concept. If you tried to put some horizon in a bucket, you couldn’t do it. “Yet the horizon is observable and understandable. It seems to be physical and it seems to have form and substance. But when you run toward the horizon, no matter how fast you go, it seems to stay ahead of you by the same distance. You can never reach the horizon, no matter how fast you move."

Scott Adams

~

I don't know. I don't even know that I don't know. Here I am, twenty meters away from the dark ocean, cross-legged on the driver's seat. I know that I'm not really here. And I know that part of me is under the delusion that their story is worth telling.

[...]

Here I am, now, a few hours later, seated in the same position, except this time I'm ten meters away from a darker ocean. And a part of me is under the delusion that it has to continue where the other part left off. Maybe we can never really be whole. Maybe we can but we just don't want to because it would be boring. And maybe it's true that our minds can only generate delusions. Delusions. Delusions come and go. They come as we try to fill the gaps. And they go to leave room for upgraded versions, gap-fillers that are better at pretending that no void-stuff is leaking. But maybe, there are some things that we feel, that we feel truly. Maybe there are specs of light in this immense lie, in this rotting darkness. I don't know. I know that I don't know. But I know some things - I guess. What do you know? No, seriously, what do you know?

Sometimes I think that dreamers are far less detached from reality than those machines who are so desperately trying to feel at home here. I don't even know where I stand on that graph. Yet, I've been thinking that the more I try to be down-to-earth and 'realistic' the more delusional I become.

I don't know. Well, I know the limits. The big limits that bring all thought to its knees, there, at the bottom, where the silent absence of answers makes you suspect that you have three different shadows and all three of them are synchronously dancing at a frequency of one point six one eight kilohertz just to remind you that you're paralyzed. I don't know.

Thirty minutes ago, I saw a homeless man sleeping on a bench on the side of road with a black plastic bag hugging his head, tightly clutching his face. He probably doesn't want the streetlights to wake him up. We don't want the streetlights to wake us up either. We're all wearing some sort of avoid-the-truth plastic bag. And you can go ahead and check. You can put your hand on that space between your nose and your left cheek and if you focus well enough, you can feel it. That's exactly what you check every time you wake up in the morning, the mask that filters most of the horror, most of the dread, inside, outside and in-between.

The difference, you see, between my light and your probability is scattered in Parmenides' lost fragments.

The road is long but the sphere is pretty small. And the end is near though we haven't yet begun. The faith is strong and the thoughts, unclear. All these seasons are a single fall - and it's the one you can't outrun.

When you understand the difference between metaphorical reasoning and metaphorical resonance, the difference becomes you - and you, something borrowed, something greyish-blue.

Blessed be the Knight of Faith and his sword of genuine love.

~

"One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?"
Stephen Hawking

Ocean

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
Werner Herzog

~

There are some details you fail to see. There are beautiful eyes no one ever notices. I don't write to feel significant. It's funny how they can turn their backs on the ocean. I'm so tired of being me. I'm not experimenting. I'm not doing anything at all. What have you broken? What have you stolen? What is this music you can't play? Who is this child locked outside your door? Why did he stop knocking? Why are you asking all these questions? Why would you hurt the people you love? Why are you not okay? Why can't you be okay? Why can't you pretend anymore? Why can't you clean this bloody ink off your hands? Why are you so weird? When will you find your place in the world? Why do you keep forgetting to exist? Why won't these dark thoughts go away? Why are you dying so slowly? When will you feel their 'cosmic smiles' again? Why can't the ocean beat in you anymore? Why won't you shut up?

There are no real boundaries here. My shadow embraces me. My shadow embraces me and there is only darkness.

[...]

If you want to transform the earth, you must first allow it to transform you.

The skeptic relentlessly tries to rationalize the magical act. He doesn't know why he's witnessing it. He can't see who's performing it. And he can't even tell that he's the main part of the show, that he is both audience and scene - and everything in between.

So instead, we scream to process the fear and we laugh away the pain. And happiness is a nonexistent old lady who keeps snapping her neck to look over her insanely paranoid shoulders, dying at every moment, at every turn, at every breath.

Why are you still here? Where are you going next? When are you gonna change? What are you still waiting for? Why is it always raining on this empty field you hesitantly stutter to call home? What have you stolen? What have you broken? Who is this child locked outside your door? Did he really stop knocking? Are you listening?

~

“I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.”
Dejan Stojanovic