?

The lead is back in my soul.
It’s almost an ache in the bottom of my rib cage. It’s like a thumping, pounding bullet.
I don’t know why, but I think I might be falling for you.
Or rather, falling.
Because I’m definitely not flying. There’s no air in my heart anymore. There’s no helium in my lungs. There’s just those sleepless nights, that lack of self-forgiveness, that obsession over the tiny things I remember. Those dreams and those days spent alone with my thoughts. But they’re hardly about you. I don’t know what they’re about. It’s almost an obsession with the sadness of falling again.
I feel like my mind is remembering how much it hurt to pull myself out of this before. But then I had gone in too deep and I was suffocating in a cage, a clamp of iron and lemon and salt around my soul and around my tongue. I cut through the wires that held my soul near to you, and I rose up, scraping my eyes and my lips and my heart against the bars, but when I reached the sun I put out my hands and I laughed.
And now I’m falling again. The wires are creeping around my soul.
But there’s no forgiveness this time.
There’s no laughing sun, no bright stars. Because I know I won’t pull myself up again.
I don’t have the strength. The words come pouring out of me like some liquid inner darkness, and sleep runs away with all the light I had before.
Is it the elephants again?
I don’t know.
Because I don’t know if it’s you. When I know you’re standing before me somewhere I need you. I want to see you so badly I bite my tongue. But when I’m around you, when my lips are touching yours and your taste and your scent are wrapped around my throat I don’t feel anything but lighthearted.
I can’t bear to see you gone, when you’re gone, but when you’re here I don’t believe that it was you, all along.
You might as well lock me up. Because if this is the elephants again I don’t believe you.
But what if it is? What if the pounding in my heart is their feet? What if the breath in my lungs is their scent?
Well, then. At least I understand my soul.

Mint and Lavender

There’s so much to say I can’t hold it in. It’s pouring out like water, like milk, like blood. Melting like ice. Dripping down from my eyes and my ears like wax.
My hands feel light, like bubbles are hiding under the skin.
The happiness is bleeding out of my forehead, out of my hair. I can feel the place where you touched my wrists. I can smell your scent still in the air. My thoughts are cold and warm and hot all at once. Do I have a fever? Maybe. Maybe it’s you, going on and on and on and on…..
I don’t want to brush my teeth because it would wash away you. I don’t want to move from here, move from where you were.
I’m cold.
It’s dark.
Where is the light, where are your eyes? Where is the beacon of your skin? All I can smell is lemons and the stale scent of nothingness, of myself in this space which is black because you are not in it.
Something stirred, in the corner.
Oh. It’s just my feet.
I am writing, writing, writing, as fast as I can get words out. We have the same heart, we have the same soul. Our blood beats in the same rhythm like the stampede of a hundred elephants. You lift me up and I know I will never fall. I know that if I fall I will fall with you and the helium in our lungs will hold us up together, caressed by the air.
You fill my soul with helium.
Every time I breathe out you breath me in. You breathe out liquid gold, purified in the chemicals of your soul, changed by the alchemy of our hearts.
Thump Thump Thump Thump.
Press my thumbs with your thumbs. Let us begin again.
I’m getting used to not speaking now.
I begin to digest and retain my thoughts, to prefer to put them down on white white paper instead of letting them hang like leaves and lead in the air.
I want to hold them in. I know that my thoughts are you, that dashing through the crevices of my mind and peering out my eyes is yourself. If I let them out will you go, too?
Will I forget about you? Maybe.
Never.
I will remember you with the scent of mint and the smell of lavender. I will remember you with the cold and the damp and the dark, and the softness of your eyes and the music that fell from your lips. I will remember you with your hands and your soul and your arms and your throat.
I will always keep these memories. Always.
I will stand and wait and feel you around me. I would rather have your arms around my waist and around my soul then I would have anything else, or everything.
I will never forget.

Soul

It sounds so wrong to say your name, when all I think of is some ghost with your voice and your soul.
When I walk around busy street corners, I can see you standing there. I see you in strange places, in the dark shadows, in bright corridors, in streaks of rare sunlight.
I see you on buses, seated at the back. I strain my head to catch a glimpse of you, but then you evaporate, and all that is left is a coat and two blue eyes.
I can feel you wrap your arms around me when I think of you. My legs suddenly are cut off from my body, and I can feel a sigh building up in my lungs.
When I listen to music, I think of you. I repeat your name whenever I can, wherever I can. I write about you nearly every day. I want to tell the whole world that I held your hand, but I want you a secret, too. I want someone to understand how I think, how I feel. I only want your eyelids.
I compare everyone to you. All of your faults seem priceless, like the streaks in the heart of a bloody gemstone. When I touch someone’s hair, I picture yours running through my fingers like liquid fire.
I want to walk on, and on, into the streets. I can’t bear the though of walking to your door---you’d think me foolish---but I cross my fingers in my pockets and hope to see you in the alleyways. I want us to meet secretly, to cast glances at one another and warm each other’s cheeks against the cold. I want to lose my head in your scent.
I hate myself for wanting you, but I don’t want you.
I only want a soul with your eyes.