“I loved you, I still love you. Part of me will always love you so very much. You were/are/always will be my first love. You let me into your life when you were blocking others out. You told me your secrets and plans and stories and dreams and all I could think of to tell you was how much I loved you, because that’s what I was always feeling. I was always loving you, always wanting to tell you just how great that felt. I had never loved someone so much, no one had ever loved me back.
Even when we were moving on, growing up, getting away from the small and into the big, even when we were giving parts of ourselves to other people, there was always still part of me that belonged to part of you. And then I kissed you, and then you held my hand.”
Me, 18 years old. Love letter to a ghost.
Sometimes I cannot believe the things my heart is capable of feeling.
Zachary is my favorite. Can’t wait to own a piece of his work.Into the Gaslight…..
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
Pablo Neruda, “Tonight I Can Write”
What’s Next? ~ A Resolution in Happiness
When we first met, I wondered if I could miss you. You stood next to me, trying to make me laugh, telling me stories, maneuvering your way around the defenses that I was so eagerly putting up, and I wondered what it would feel like to miss you.
We drank wine out of plastic cups. We walked in circles around records and around people. You were trying harder than I thought you would. You were gentler than I could have imagined.
So many words danced on the tip of my tongue. So many truths, so many stories, so many flaws, so many habits. I wanted to kiss you the first time you said “goodbye”. I was scared, I was nervous.
And then a month, and a date, and a thousand kisses, and I missed you. I felt fragile and alone in the city for the first time. I felt small and insignificant beneath the weight of the buildings and all of the people who didn’t care about me. When my family was gone and I locked myself in my temporary bedroom just to feel some familiarity, I found comfort in hearing your voice. My hands missed your body, my heart missed your promise.
I dreamed up horrible, wonderful, chaotic futures for us. But never this. Never this shock, never something so sudden. Not from you. I’ve been tracing the patterns of your words and your actions, searching for any subtle hint, any single, tiny sign that I should have considered with greater weight. All I’ve found is your sweetness. Your generosity. The kindness in your quiet voice.
I keep waiting for that too-familiar pang of sadness to settle into my limbs. The ache that makes me want to stretch out my arms to reach you. That awful realization. The ghost of heartbreak resurfacing between every blink, breath, and heartbeat.
I keep waiting to sink back into the loneliness and the desperation that once broke my bones and drowned my eyes. To be unable to find the line between being completely empty and being filled with pain. I keep expecting to feel weak. To want to crawl into the darkness of anywhere just to sleep and to dream and to forget.
But instead I sit cross-legged, breath steady, eyes wide and dark and anxious and wondering — what’s next? My lips are overwhelmed by a relentless smile. My thoughts are soaring upward and onwards, through the clouds and toward the stars, never stopping, never yielding, never apologizing.
I’ll hold tightly onto the knowledge that I tried my hardest to be patient and kind and brave. I’ll pocket the memory of the blaze of possibility that blossomed the first time you kissed me and an afternoon of believing that you were the most perfect thing I could ever know. Because for a moment, you were perfect. The moment has melted away into nothingness, but it still existed. For a moment, amidst the nerves that made my hands shake and the fear that glistened in my eyes, I fell in love and you were perfect.
I can cradle all of my sadness in my hands. I can catch the regret and stomp it out before it is ignited into loneliness. You didn’t dig your fingers deep enough into my skin to break my heart. You didn’t sing your promises quietly enough.
The first time I missed you was the last time I missed you. I’ll keep trying to surround myself with real love; you can keep yourself buried in your irrationalities and your anger and your bitter resentment. I’ll happily keep the light of my heart far away from the darkness of yours.
<3C
“
Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me
in the old ways.
What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.
‘Love Comes Quietly’, Robert Creeley
love-in-a-mist replied to your photo: High-res →
I can’t find your ask box on your page, so I’ll ask here. What is love? How would you define it? P.S. Great Pic <3
I think love is a force of nature.
People liken it so often to only a feeling/emotion, but I’m not sure that’s truly doing it justice.
It’s one thing, perhaps, to love something, or to love something about someone, but to actually love someone is this heavenly, mystical, mysterious thing. Can I really even define it? I’m not sure I can.
Is that even what you’re asking? I mean, what does it mean about me that ‘to love someone’ is what I automatically started with, without clarification of meaning? A lot, I’m sure.
Or maybe just the obvious.
But to me, to love someone, to love in general, is the culmination of a lot of things. When I love someone I trust them (which, truthfully, is nearly impossible for me these days) and I experience a lot of soul-bearing moments with them. Whether it’s confessing a secret, or talking about what I really want, or the past, or the future. And, speaking of the future, I can see a future with them, even if I’m entirely unaware of what that future is.
It’s the admittance & acceptance of flaws, and seeing perfection despite that. Spending solitary, quiet moments together and still feeling a million different things afterwards. Counting things in moments instead of in days or anything like that.
There’s a lot of sharing.
I can write a billion beautiful things about love, and I can twist the imagery and make you believe that I’m in love, but when I really feel love, you will see it in the words I write down.
You’ll find it in the hesitation between the stanzas and the care placed in the words.
Look at how much I’m rambling; this is absurd. See? I sat down with this relatively clear idea of love in my head and even now I can’t place my finger on it.
ah, it’s the magickal-mystery kind.
mysticism {part two}: how to get over a broken heart in a year
I’ve always loved how mystical holding hands feels.
Kissing can be so passionate, and hugs are so sincere, but holding hands just yields so much more. You don’t have to be right next to someone, your body doesn’t have to be pressed up against them. Holding hands is a reach for someone; a tough, a linger, a staying power unlike anything else. If you feel carefully enough, there’s a heartbeat resounding in your palms, and it echoes so magnificently through the skin and bones. Two hands to hold a heart. It’s perfect.
When he said he didn’t like holding hands, I knew that we wouldn’t last very long, and I hated myself for knowing I was right. But he was cute and obliging and he liked things about me that no one else ever noticed before. So I took a leap of faith and twisted my left hand around my right hand.
I found myself liking bizarre things about him. He only ever stood on the train, no matter how many open seats were around. He ate all of the green Skittles before any other color. When we kissed, he twirled the ends of my hair around his fingers. He spoke quietly, laughed loudly. I loved him dearly for everything he was, even if it didn’t match perfectly with everything I wanted. It was before I said “I love you” but when I knew that I truly did that I stopped believing that we were doomed. When I found out he loved me, I knew we’d be okay.
And we were. For a long time. And when it started falling apart, I swear I didn’t see it coming.
He started saying “I miss you” more often. He started looking at the floor more than he looked at me. He left my hair alone when we kissed. And we didn’t kiss a lot. I found myself wanting to hold his hand constantly. But I never did. I never tried.
Maybe I should have known, but how can anyone know something like that? Maybe I should take the blame, but he just left. He didn’t say my name, he didn’t say he was sorry. He just disappeared.
I tried to miss him less than was expected of me, but it only made me miss him more.
He’d nestled himself inside of my heart and left his fingerprints all over me.
There’s a mysticism to holding hands. And there’s a mystery to holding someone else’s heart in your own.
And I just don’t know what to do.
—-
<3C
Part 1 by Kyle: here
Part 2 by me: here
Collaboration: here
liste de {dix} ~ bonjour décembre!
RE-inspired to start up one of my favorite traditions from this past year by Miss Kimberly’s Things that Make Me Happy from this morning <3
une. coming home to my tiny family
deux. chocolate
trois. christmas movies!/lights!/love!/decor!
quatre. relaxing at last
cinq. Tiny Book of Tiny Stories Volume One
six. collaboration
sept. the winter moon
huit. re-evaluation of self
neuf. peppermint flavoured everything
dix. CHRISTMAS
{and another, for good luck & good measure}
onze. creating new, perfect, beautiful traditions with perfect, beautiful, people.
en célébration! Happy December, everyone.
<3C
“
‘Do you love me?’ She whispered into the crook of his neck, as they laid underneath purple sheets, making their nighttime darkness even darker. They reveled in their solitude.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I do love you.’ He felt her lips shift into a smile.
‘I love you, too.’ She said carefully, walking her fingers along his collarbone.
He looked at her and smiled in return. ‘You are my favorite monster.’
He was her favorite kind of poetry. The chestnut brown, constant mess which was his hair — left in turmoil from running his hands through it whenever concentrating. His unnaturally dark eyes, and the languid movement of his mouth when he spoke.
‘Do you remember what I told you when we first met?’ He asked this quietly, as though sharing a secret, though they were quite alone.
‘I do,’ she answered, grinning once more into his skin. ‘Say it again.’
‘Of all the adventures in all the world; of all the demons to conquer and the monsters to make and the stories to tell — There is nothing quite so magical,’ he paused, traced the angle of her jaw, and kissed her. ‘As the adventure of you.’
A (tiny, lovely) Moment [on hitRECord]
- I adore the surprise! when someone RECommends a RECord that you’d completely forgot exist.
