What if what we have is naught but a fleeting glimpse of something we may never feel,

A whisper of something we may never see.

Yet still,

Still, my lungs are but a gaping hole when you are not the breath that fills me.

When the dark night of my soul threatens to ensconse and envelop my existence,

You are the light I cry out to

To fill me and turn me into more of myself.

Leave the light on, Darling

You used to leave the light on in the hallway. At about two thirty a.m the bulb would become exhausted, and from then on it would flicker. I used to watch it when I couldn't sleep. Eighteen seconds peace, then fade. Twelve seconds later, when the light had dimmed noticeably, it would begin to flicker, like someone was willing it to continue, but it wasn't sure if it had the stamina. Twenty seconds of this, one second of darkness before it would jump back to it's full strength.

You were always a deeper sleeper than you thought. I told you that we ought to get the light fixed, it just wasn't safe anymore.
You asked me what light I was talking about.
'You know, the flickering one in the hallway?'
'In the hallway? That doesn't flicker, does it?'
For half the night. Five hours. You never noticed it because I'd always get up just before you and turn it off.
'Oh. It can't be that bad though? I mean, I haven't woken up to it, and I wake up to everything.'
Babies crying, yes. The garbage truck coming two hours early. The time when the lady two houses down, Mrs. Hendricks, had a heart attack or a stroke or something and the ambulances came screeching past our house. When the days became longer, the light creeping thought the blinds earlier than you were used to. But not this light.

Five hours of this continuous cycle. I counted it once, one night that it was too hot to sleep. Fifty one seconds a cycle. Sixty minutes each hour. Three hundred minutes. Five hundred and eighty nine times a night. It's a wonder I wasn't ever driven mad by it.

One evening I took the light out. You were at your sisters and I had come home late from work. The funny thing is that though you never noticed its absence, I couldn't sleep without it, without its sizzling pulse, and I wondered how deep then the madness had became.

Winters arms lay still over the cold coloured sky. I stared into you, about to tell you what I didn’t want to say and you didn’t want to hear.  We were too young, too foolhardy, too everything except ready. 

And what I was never ready to give to you, you resisted, for the sake of us. The snow that fell outside my window that morning was older than us, was older than the world. The sky gasped and the words, the worlds I had never meant to reveal came spilling out.

You live with my heart

So I'm sitting here alone, writing by candlelight, trying to put into words this feeling that is residing between my heart and my thoughts of you.

But I can't.

Once again, you leave me breathless. Nothing that I could say, no words that I could string together could ever compensate.

Sometimes, all I want is to convey this aching in my heart. This desperation for more that dwells within me, to grasp beyond what I know.

So I'll try different paths to express this longing, but the anguish buried in my chest just overwhelms all my senses and I am left to crawl away. 

How do I tell you how much I love you? I am left inarticulate when confronted with everything that you are.

The time of shaking hands has passed. I remember it vaguely, the touch of your skin, the warmth that you gave to my cold skin. It's like you hold life, and by touching your fingers, I felt at last what it is like to be alive. 

I see you in every place I've been. In every face I know and love. In the moments of silence between dreaming and waking. 

You told me, long ago, that you wanted each moment of mine. I was scared, so I ran. Ran from you, from your presence. From your promises. Scared that I would fail you beyond recovery, scared that I would never live up to your love, I hid. 

For days, weeks, months, I lived in the darkness, half scared and half hoping that you would find me and draw me back to you.

And you waited. And step by step, I found myself gravitating towards you once more.

You are truth, and my, oh my, how it frightens me, but the same time, attracts. Like a moth to a flame, I want to become closer, I am desperate to.

But I refrain. I relent. I pause in my motions, silent in the hope that you will speak to me. That you will see me in the doorway of your heart and call me to you. That my advance will not lead to rejection, but to you.

You are the love I will never forfeit. You anticipate my every move. You live with my heart.

And oh, how I long to know you more. 

Do you remember?

Do you remember that summer, back when the days stretched out unbelievably long, and all we could think about was how slowly time moved for us. I'd wake up at five in the morning, and you'd already be up, staring out the window at the new day.
'I seem to have this uncanny knack of waking up five minutes before anyone else gets up', You said to me. I wondered whether it was just your way of being competitive in something you could always win.

Do you remember the days when we'd have to change the sheets four times a week because you couldn't stand the thought of sleeping in a dirty bed. I had suggested we sling hammocks outside, but I think deep down you liked the closeness of another body, the comfort in the soft heat radiating from my back.

Those evenings we'd drink tea out of jars, and sit by candlelight. You'd play guitar and I'd work on that novel I never would finish. The evening breeze would swirl the curtains in a silent waltz and the candles would flicker and finally go out and we'd joke about sitting in the dark because candles were so costly.

In my head an orchestra plays when I think of those times. When we had as many years between us as dollars in our bank, when the beauty of living was found in it's simplicity, in the midnight swims, the dancing in the summer storms to cool down.

I still think of you in those times, you would roll your trousers whenever we had to go somewhere important. We rebelled against conventionality, against materialism, against shoes to embrace that side of life we so desired.

In this house that we built

Our hearts are like old houses.

You tear things down that are decaying, you break things accidentally.

Time becomes engraved in the memory of the walls. Your presence becomes part of it, in the wearing down of the steps. Nothing can stop this.

It is the inevitable decay that the presence of human life brings.

And you keep moving forward, because that's what you do, isn't it?

I suppose there's good parts, better parts.

The parts where you build up the things that were once merely good and you make them better.

Sure, when you leave, the place looks almost unrecognizable to the uninformed, but that's a good thing... isn't it?

And maybe, just maybe, in this house that we built, the love that we have completes those parts of us that don't fit right away.

It's not us that need to change to fit each other, it's the way we love.

Isn't it?

What we have become

'It's crazy', he said, looking at my hands. I was tearing up an old ticket for something we went to months ago.

'I left you alone for that one night, and everything changed'.

 I wasn't so sure it was just one night. I think it was time, gripping us without us realising, squeezing out of us everything that we used in resistance to it's deathly grip, until we had no more.

That summer something changed within us. The ice-cold drinks, the midnight swims, the perpetual effort to cool down our burning souls. I think we just did too good of a job of cooling.

Lethargy. That's what we became. The blood pumping through our veins did so no longer with youthful enthusiasm, but with the exhausted cry of one who has long since given up. 

'Given up on what?'

'Oh, I don't know. Life. Good conversation. Caring if someone put the red wine in the fridge and left the milk out.'

'Leaving the radio on?', You suggested.

'Yeah. Things like that.'

At the end of all things

It was raining that night. The night I saw you standing at the edge, at the end of all things. I cried out to you, but you were beyond hearing. Nothing I could do would change anything.

Now, filled with the restlessness of a grieving man, I move from town to town, revisiting the places we once stayed, sitting alone in the rooms that were once filled with our laughter.

Those who know better look on in sorrow, watching me grasp smoke and memories for a last taste of you.

In the thick of the night my stomach lies in knots, waiting for the time when I’ll know beyond all certainty that you're gone. That nothing I will ever do will bring you back. 

I woke up startled the other night. My mind had finally caught up, and all I could feel was pain. And these bright winter lights, they bring my thoughts to you. 

I knew your blood well. It ran with you, drove you. I knew it as if it was mine. The taste of skinned knees in summer, the colour of it on white, on yellow, on blue, the tears that left it to fend for itself.

I have your blood on my hands.

I have your blood on my hands. Your arms around my heart. Your voice in my head. 

I woke up screaming the night before last. I gasped and began to weep, crying for you to unhand me.

The most terrible thing is, I don't want you to.

The snow on the path hasn't changed since the last season we were together.

The lights in the windows still look the same. 

Spring still comes early, children still run out to the streets in the brisk mornings, laughing in the thin sunshine, dancing in the promise of summer.

There are days when I don't think I can make it. Days when the weight of the memory of you becomes too much, so much that my lungs ache. Ache because you are not the breath that fills them.

You changed my world.

Changed the way I see. Changed the way I see life.

But you could never be as real in my head as you were then. Full of life. Before the winters, the falling of the leaves, the mellow drowsy heat, before the unbearable heat, at the budding.

Back when you were you, and not just a memory.

Taller than your soul

'There is a place like that, you know. A place where mountains just keep going and going and going forever, and before you know it, they're back, crashing into the sea, with no warning at all. The trees stay with them all the while, clinging weakly to the steep sides, until...' He looked at me sideways, 'Water.'

He was so fascinated with things like that. Maybe it was the unmistakable peace of grandeur. The fact that nothing these mountains could do would make them any larger, nothing could make them any more majestic.

I looked up, afraid in myself that I didn't see things like he did. In truth, I saw the beauty in the small things, in the sounds the river makes in the still of the night, in the pattern of veins on the back of a leaf. I found him there. But looking up at this mountain, I wasn't sure. It was as if I had a veil over my eyes, hiding its splendour, and no matter how hard I tried to squint through it to see what he saw, all I wound up with was a sore head.

If you see mountains, you know what he is about. You'll see him in the ones that crash into the sea without hesitation, in the joy of unbelievable heights, in the secrets the clouds whisper to the snow. I was still in the water, trying to catch the drops that fell from greater heights than I could imagine.

I wanted to see mountains. I wanted to see past the small, to get even a glimpse of clarity regarding something so large. I just never knew how to find the way there.

I guess what I've learnt is that when you see him there, you'll see him everywhere. In the paths around your old town. In the new faces that you'll meet.

It's like finding that person you love, the one you knew all along, but took longer that you hoped to find him. You go all your life without realising, and then when you finally meet him, you have no idea how you could have lived so long without.

That's what mountains are like. They go on and on and on forever, and before you know it, they're back, crashing into the sea, just like before.

Raised by Gypsies

Young one, let your roots grow deep

Deep into the soil of time

Holding you fast to something bigger

Something greater than yourself.

Drink deep the waters of joy

For it is from the spring of life

That blessing will flow.

Doubt not in the creator

Hold fast to his words

Do this and life in it's purest will find you.

Claps and whistles, guns and thistles, roses and houses for two

Be my James Dean for a day, darling
We'll live off two cent kisses and farthings,
I'll be your dreamer, to guide like a star
at the end of your journey, from long and afar
I'm the life you've captured, in victory marching.

Oh, if you bring me roses

I'll sing you proses

Underneath windows for two

And when it is cold out, we'll clean all the mould out

Of places we've long since been to

Well, I'm just a time waster, a past memory chaser,
Looking for holes in your gaze
And where you, the wind goes
My heart will thus follow,
Dancing 'til we're lost in a haze

And though the storms may cry fury
Declaring themselves to be judge and the jury
And the snows may weep bitter and jade
I'll be your sunshine, your moonlight, your night-time
I'll hold the colours that won't fade

I'll put the spark back into your eyes
And you'll break the veil of secrets and lies
Oh, I am the rivers,
I am the mountains
I am the downpour, the wet and the dry

Oh, darling when the night falls

And forgotten are life's flaws

Gone is the aching

The moans and the breaking

I'll find all my life is in you

Time

You always said that time went too fast. That things should just slow down. That everything was just far to fast-paced for you to handle. I wondered if time functioned differently for you, whether days, hours and seconds just moved in a different pattern than for the rest of us.

That summer you made me switch rooms with you, From east to west, west to east. You said you couldn't stand how early the sun rose, that it was just a reminder of wasted days.

I loved waking up in the early morning, seeing the sun's first rays creep lazily through the slats in your wooden blinds. I had made you promise that I could keep them on your windows, you wouldn't need them in my room. So you slept westward, always waiting until the sun had set before entering your room, so you could forget the passing of days.

I never told you that I could sing. You found out one evening in March. I was home alone, or at least I thought I was, and was washing the dishes, carried away with some old gospel hymn. You must have stood there for an age, taking it all in, because when I turned around and found you, your shoes were off, and you were entranced.

I remember you berating me for months about never singing before then. I told you I did sing, just not around people. From that night on, you'd always try and catch me out again. For a while it turned into a game for us, I'd start up a few notes and you'd come bolting into the room, where I'd pretend I never sung, and you that you had never tried to catch me out.

We sat out on the grass in front of our house the evening that it was too hot to be inside. Our days were full of iced drinks, lazy fans and old jazz records. I was playing your guitar and you would sing softly when our drowsy conversation lulled. Those were the happiest times, you said. The times when you could just forget about time. You believed that time moved slowest then, and you thrived on those evenings.

I remember we spent way too much time together. You can tell when you start to tell each other about what you ate that day, even recalling the ratio of pistachios peeled to eaten, just for the fun of it. Even when we went on holidays without the other, we would end up sending pictures of our meals to each others phones, just because we were so used to sharing everything.

It wasn't until years later that I realised I was happiest in those times. I began to see how time moved and danced for you, and began to miss it in the years after, as one misses an old friend. I guess I try to find parts of you in the friends that I have now, but nothing really measures up. One person just can't be another, as much as you can sometimes wish. Now I guess I hold the most of you in my character, in the nuances and idiosyncrasies that I picked up around you. I see more of myself now in the people surrounding me, I suppose in a weak attempt to create, in reverse, the friendship I had with you.