Phoenix

"Dusk is just an illusion, because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel to be always together, yet forever apart?"

Nicholas Sparks

~

Free your mind. Regain stability. There is nothing here for you.

This barrier is weak and broken.

They're all fighting shadows. And I'm fighting with this pen. And it's unable to salvage what's left of me. My senses fail to capture the music. And my heart fails to feel it. Doubt is all-encompassing. And I am not here. I'm that gap between the heartbeats, the forgotten leaves in the wind - a fragment of torn silence that couldn't make it through life's blind spot. We are who we are, failing, fading and forsaken. We're that broken down dust at the beat of dusk, deluded by the bruised colors of sky and sea, drowning in their symphony.

And now the drugs don't work. And all the stars are out. And there is nothing to look away from. The world is ugly and this blackness is bliss. So let there be light, and many, many shadows to shelter us from sight. And, you, dear weakened soul, go back to sleep, for this wand you hold, it bleeds but fraudulent magic. And I... I am here. I'm this damp gaze suspended in breathless vacuity, the infinite horizon that never was... that never will be - a loveless shadow in a deserted darkness.

Now, listen close, dear ruptured heart for now, it is time to go. Listen close and act at once so we can leave, so we can run, so we can row, so we can breathe [...] Now, go and sever that faithless bond and crush those picture-frames. And burn them. Burn them all. Burn them and build yourself great wintry walls of atonement from their residual ash. Have our new citadel of seclusion rise above perfidious pain, above tainted clouds and forlorn rain. The stars are dead and you will never see them again. The stars are dead. The stars are dead and their theoretical story is bitter sorrow - impeccably unwritten, eternally unread.

So let there be light, and many, many shadows, and I'll be that shadow that never lets you hit the ground.

Let there be light, and many, many shadows, and may the phoenix and the blackbird never again resound.

~

“My breaking heart and I agree, that you and I could never be, so with my best...my very best, I set you free” 
Rachel Yamagata

Maps

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
John Green

~

One of the moderately hidden patterns of life is that a person often says that people never change right before he or she changes into someone very different.

Take a bowl of family problems. Add three spoons of trust issues and half a cup of self-esteem. Mix well. Drown them with a few drops of an over-complicated history of disinterest and seventy-one milliliters of unfinished business. I don't know the rest of the recipe but I recall that the whole thing has a very peculiar taste of emptiness.

So yeah I don't know why you want me to write about myself. But here goes nothing.

I usually dislike it when people call me weird because it reminds me of how I always fail to belong. Most of my recent problems stem from my tendency to transform everything I feel into ideas and concepts because it's far easier than processing feelings. I enjoy using song lyrics to think when I get bored of my daily recurrent thoughts. I would like to own a chain of restaurants one day. When I run into people, I try to envision how they used to look as children. I believe that true love happens only once and that it never dies. I also believe that friendship is more important than blood, that randomness does not exist and that society is a phantom concept. The contents of my head usually belong to one or more of five different sections: P, M, C, D and I. P stands for psycho-social, M stands for metaphysical and I'll tell you about the other three when I see you. In any case, let us call the PMCDI map, I-Map for simplicity. This I-map has a shadow counterpart for raw feelings called the L-map. The latter, however, does not contain sections because my heart happens to be indivisible; it's all or nothing. Anyway, the L-map contains songs, a number of unforgettable memories, fictional characters from stories and TV shows, people I know, people I used to know, and, of course, you.

The two maps are quite honestly worlds apart. And yet, in between the two lies a different kind of map, one of infinitely powerful links, that sometimes allows the dimensions to converge in moments of pure beauty. Two of four walls in my room and my beloved ceiling refer to this special map as the M-map. And though I'm not sure whether the M stands for meaning, magic or metaphor, I'm good with the name.

So in summary, I guess my being can be reduced to three maps: I, M and L. I know it might seem very boring now but when I draw them for you on paper with all the main theories, numbers, names, symbols and songs, you'll see how your initials happen to mark the treasure at the heart of the M-map, how the I-map shuts down every time we kiss and how the L-map almost beats out of my shirt when you jump to hug me.

I hope this wasn't too weird or too disappointing. I hope to be good enough for you. And I really hope that you will be smiling somewhere in the next thirty seconds.

One of the moderately hidden patterns of life is that no matter how much I change, I will always love you.

~

"Everything will change, but love remains the same."
Gavin Rossdale

Perfume

“The dawn of beauty always comes after night.” 
Sorin Cerin

~

It's ninety minutes past midnight and you're not here. It's ninety minutes past midnight and I'm not here either.

I wonder how many minutes we still have together.

Over the course of history, sleepless nights have born witness to too many people, their headaches and heartaches, wishes and prayers, to songs that silenced the passage of time and a music in the silence that only the heart can hear. And yet on this sleepless night of my own, I swear by the graceful movement of your perfect eyes as they read these letters, that I just want to hear your voice.

I can think all I want about the non-existent distance between your stars and mine, about how our heartbeats travel the skies and meet midway to plan our next hug, and how our spirits visit each other's dreams and therein vow to forget all about it in the morning. And yet I know that all these thoughts are only echoes of the 'I miss you' that won't stop playing back in whatever's left of my soul.

I honestly don't know what to write anymore. And I don't know if I should do the right thing and leave or stay and see you every day. I know you told me to do the right thing but what's more important, the right thing or the right person?

You once told me that the only signs that matter are those we cannot see because it is those signs that keep us free and I didn't tell you how that simple thought changed my world. One day, I'll propose to you an equally beautiful idea that will change your world too.

But for now, tell me, love.

Tell me how you stole a heart I didn't know still existed. Tell me how you brought back words I thought were dead. Tell me how your perfume magically makes my lips paint a smile on your neck. Tell me this dream is good enough for you and that it won't be replaced with another, that you won't travel the world with someone else. Tell me that we will spend many sleepless nights together, nights where we won't know whether you are me or I, you, nights where I will look into your eyes and tell you the three words I promised myself never to say again.

For now, I tell you this, with the low, slow voice that you called boring:

I'm yours to keep.

~

“May night continue to fall upon the orchestra.” 
André Breton

Frisson

“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.” 
Orson Scott Card

~

Silent threads of virtual ink stream in waves of darkened light toward bright eyes. And while the mind seeks to project a meaningful melody onto multifaceted words, I gaze into the friendly night in my room with my eyes open because I know that if I close them, I will see you.

I've long developed the mechanism of transforming intense feelings into concepts. And it usually resembles a giant water-wave fearlessly rushing toward me, only to find itself turned into dust, polishing the multiple sandcastles around my fortress. And yet, there you were, moving with profound grace, unknowingly leaving me out of breath every time you smiled or laughed. The supposedly invincible kingdom of thought has since become as lost and drowned as Atlantis and I honestly don't care because I just want to see you again.

In any case, it was dark and slightly chilly and I was settled on the grass trying to ignore the beautiful moon even though it was clearly playing hide-and-seek with me, trying to make me win, though it knows that I know that it knows how clouds become brighter when it hides behind them. Regardless, the scene was one of wonderful harmony as a mostly soft wind, soul-gazing stars, ancient trees and nostalgic music in my earphones all waited for you to providentially sit next to me and talk. Just talk. But you didn't.

So tell me, do you even know that you are Magic? Do you know that I can't think of metaphors when I picture you in my head because every element in my imagination momentarily disappears? Do you know that I just laughed at myself because I remembered how I childishly smiled when I saw you running in the rain? And now it's worse because I'm not sure whether the scene qualifies as 'heavenly' or 'divine' or simply both.

There are infinite questions and timeless answers, multiple worlds and recurrent dreams, half-written novels and wands at the ready. And then there are the stories that converge as our fingers interlace. And right then and there would come the ending and the ending would never end, because all infinity would be starstruck, and time would henceforth be suspended once the worlds and dreams dormant within my chest get to feel the rhythm of your heart.

And these words that run through me ceaselessly fail but that's okay because images of you are there too and they're interminably beautiful.

Now, moments of magic have always eluded me in a similar manner to how I transcended those that were tragic. And for most of my eventful life, I felt stuck, not knowing what to say or what to feel, how to go or how to heal. Yet, the irrational has happened and I somehow sensed a wind of unknown nature storming into my indifferent eyes.

A fire inside me has awakened.

A fire inside me has awakened and all I can think about is how it would feel to fall asleep around a campfire with you by my side.

~

“When people of similar frequencies come together, output is not a simple sum of individual work, but exponential. In science we term this phenomenon as resonance. Output at this stage is beyond any logical limit.” 
Ravindra Shukla