Scattered Fragments

One time, somewhere in that field of possibility; time and time again, we sit a while. Just this once, without getting anywhere; maybe again tomorrow, if it comes, we will have to see. We could be doing anything but there is just thought, or the idea of more, we can dream for a moment. Not again. What are we doing? I’m not even sure it matters. Time is the observation of change but I’m so unobservant and it all changes anyway, so what does it matter?

Boredom doesn’t occur when you have a lack of things to do but when you have a lack of things to think about. You can go on breathing and beating and scratching your name into the sand but your mind seeks food. You eat out of boredom and get bigger and bigger but your mind is shrinking. The world has become disinteresting, or you’ve just noticed that you have never found it to be. But what to think about now? Stop starving.

I'll have the tide take me out so I can drift along a while, wasting and whittling time into manageability. The waves merging though each heartbeat to a rhythm no ears can comprehend. Just dreaming of the stars that would paint music in your eyes. And we would lay together surrounded by subtle symphony in the infinity before the dawn, then we’d wake the morning colours so they may kiss our cheeks with roses. And though I sing of you as a garden suspended in immortal spring; memories return like cud with every moment I hear it otherwise.

He is inevitability and I am the uncertain. By calling mascara tears, nocturnal rain, you can paint a pretty picture, but all it really does is change the truth. I am the tingle of eyes brushing across your skin. His eyes are trapped galaxies. And we are all just metaphors and dreams.

It was the way she talked, like honey that dripped from nettles. The way she walked; a waltz of swaying petals, kissed by a reverent breeze. It was the way she smiled; laughter curling poisoned lips you’d happily drink from. It was even the way she breathed, stealing your air until you grew dizzy and drifted on static. She would drag you from oblivion and bare herself in a dance of promises, each gentle curve an invite that made your teeth ache. You would get lost in her for a length, the tulip lips and topaz eyes, then she would dart away before you could reach out and pluck her. A wisp of hair the only proof that she was tangible.

Why are you the cold days of Autumn at the start of Spring? Where all the days are hay-fevered hoping for picnic weather and illusive sunny streams that miss the windows. You hang like forgotten words on wavering lips; lusting for the taste of something to replace the bitter, something more strawberry sweet. The story I have written a thousand times bound in a book just out of reach. Are you just the bud in the vase of wilting promises? Maybe it will take a little longer; sugar-water and waiting, maybe tomorrow won't be so cold.

If love is so fickle is it really love or just a shadow? The way people say the word like it’s air and they need it, need to speak it, hear it, feel it form on their lips and pass through their teeth. So hungry for the feel of it they say it and scream it and whisper it to themselves hoping to spark a heart into beating a little faster, scare the stomach into rolling into some imitation. This mimicry is a mockery of the genuine. I won’t fall for it, I won’t hear “I love you” and know that it is so. I will wait for the wind to bring news of its truth through my window at night when I am alone and my thoughts refuse to stray. I will read it in your eyes and feel it on my skin before I ever believe the sound of it.

I want to be that one thought dancing on your mind until each movement draws you deeper. I’ll be a swan drifting on a lake of quiet thought, cause an endless ripple and spill rivers on your chest. But I am scared of crowds of feathers painting me into a mosaic until I’m lost in reflections of the sky. I will live in suffocation if it’s you who steals the air but I won’t be a stuffing for your pillow of a night. I want to watch you dreaming to see the paintings of your night but cannot bear to see prettier colours in your eyes.

Take me in your arms, hold me with your fingertips; and though you make me bleed these truths I never want to birth, I will suffer that to know that I am with you. Just don’t ask me what you possess to make me offer up my sustenance to quench your thirst because I have only hollow answers. This life is just a thing bestowed with wanton irrationality and I am not equipped to handle such adequacy. I would rather give it all away to a master of string than sit idle on a shelf and fade in dusty sunlight. I have grown accustomed to this copper taste that crawls across my tongue and the rivers of ants with no real destination that mimic my thoughts. Just let inevitability stake your rolling mind and only let go if you promise not to miss me.

I don’t want to stumble across someone and think that I was only ever a choice better than being alone. A float-some in the sea of seeking islands where the icy chill numbs you and I do nothing to abate the blue that creeps to your lips. I would despise seeing hunger for flesh before desire for warmth. A starving mouth wrapping lips around rotting fruit dreaming it was whole. When we first meet, I want you to look at me and see your favourite memory forming in the possibility of us, because all it takes is a chance and we could become poetry.

The sunlight streamed through the window, made more tangible by the dust motes that always seem to congregate more densely in the mornings. He lay there, barely moving, breath so shallow you could forgive someone for mistaking him as dead. He was so empty of thought for the first time in so long that he didn’t even pause to consider the difference death would make to that moment. His skin was pale but in a creamy way instead of sickly and coloured periodically with caramel freckles. This was the snapshot that made her realise that love couldn’t be as fragile as it was said to be if it could freeze a moment in time and preserve it in immortal reverence.

These scraps tell somewhat a story, but they have long lost hold of the spine that made them whole. Now drifting on whatever a wind they are caught in they can hint a little memory to souls searching for connections to something more. These listless compositions hold homage to the single stone washed smooth before the rest and to the leaf that dare let go when it’s still green. A picture may speak louder than words because it’s not beholden to a voice, but when words make a picture they speak the loudest of them all.