The Universe of Us

by Lang Leav

  Within My Reach

  I wish the love

  I have come to meet,

  was not an inch

  within my reach.

  I wish the prize

  was so far-flung,

  that I would not cry

  if it were not won.

  I wish the dream

  was placed so high

  that my panicked heart—

  would dare not try.

  Quiet

  I’ve grown quiet now. You won’t hear me talk about you anymore. It doesn’t hurt like it used to. I suppose that is something to be thankful for.

  I will never be the girl I was before I knew you. On some days, I miss her, more than I miss you. After all, she was the one you fell desperately in love with, even if you didn’t know it at the time.

  You’ve grown quiet too. I don’t think it’s for a lack of things to say. Sometimes, things don’t work out the way we plan. What’s the point in dwelling on what could have been?

  I went to sleep last night, thinking about you. Life is just a dream after all. Come and find me when you wake up.

  All I Ask

  Life: a question,

  death: its reply—

  a tender good-bye.

  Stay ’til our present

  slips into the past—

  it is all that I ask.

  Torn

  Some days I feel like my soul is being pulled in one direction and my heart in another.

  Loving You

  Loving you is like being ten years old again, scaling a tree with my eyes bright and skyward, wanting only to get higher and higher, without a thought of how I would get back down.

  What I Hope For

  I am hoping for a sign in the sky or a word from the stars. I am praying for a tear in the fabric of time so you and I can slip quietly away and not a single soul would think to miss us.

  The Weather

  It was raining on the day I met him—hair wet and tangled—droplets of water sliding down my cheeks like crystal teardrops. He says he can taste sunlight on my skin whenever cherries are in season. With me, he doesn’t think about permanence or possession. He knows I’m just like the weather—I’ll keep changing my mind.

  Crying

  You’re still crying about him aren’t you? Silly girl. What good will it do you to spill those sky blue tears? You meant either everything to him or absolutely nothing at all.

  Dark Room

  Tell someone about me. I can’t bear to think that I have vanished from your world completely. I can’t stand the thought of resting like a silent tomb in your heart, shut away from the light. I don’t want to be an inscription on the first page of your book or the opening of a trilogy. Have you forgotten everything we spoke about? Could you live the rest of your life without speaking my name?

  Tell someone about me; even if it hurts. You once told me that everyone has a dark room. Is that where you have put me? Do my photographs still hang on tenuous cords that twist into your memory?

  Tell someone about me. Don’t let me fade away like a Polaroid. Time can be cruel in that way. But you and I are still living and breathing in this imperfect world. What could be a greater miracle than that?

  Tell someone about me. I don’t want our story to end here, and your words may be the only thing that can save us. Relinquish your pride for just one moment—put an end to this interminable silence and tell someone about me. Or tell the whole world.

  Origami

  He says that I am ivory and indifference. My eyes are cold and hard like sapphires but behind their wintry gaze, there is a murmur of a girl. He takes my trembling hands in his and tells me I am safe with him. His touch is sweet like a memory of something long gone and I want to fold myself into his arms like origami. He says that I am paper, lily-white, and he will spoil me with words if I let him.

  Solace

  When all I desired

  was once promised

  to me.

  And all have conspired

  to keep it

  from reach.

  There is safety in numbness—

  there is solace

  in sleep.

  Contact

  It was the longest she had gone without human contact; without the soft, conceding warmth of someone else’s skin. She began to crave it after awhile, to obsess over the most trivial things. Like a hand on her shoulder or a kind word from a stranger. How long, she wonders, before I forget how it feels to be wanted? How long until I lose all recollection of love?

  My Heartache

  If this is my heartache, then let it be mine to endure. Permit me to feel it in its entirety. Don’t tell me how much of you I am allowed to love.

  Hansel

  A feast upon

  I feasted on

  when my eyes

  first looked at you.

  While deep inside

  as I looked on,

  a hunger grew

  and grew.

  The time we spent

  came and went,

  as you slipped

  from me

  like hours.

  Now I seek of you,

  a speck of you,

  left for me

  to devour.

  The crumbs you threw,

  the trails to you,

  I believed they led—

  were in my head.

  The crumbs you threw,

  will make me ill—

  yet they are all,

  I have of you.

  The banquet done,

  for all but one,

  as the crumbs

  grow fewer and few.

  My love will flow

  on and on,

  while slowly

  I am starved of you.

  One Day

  One day she began talking to him again. After seven long years of silence, there it was, her voice on the other end of the phone, soft and lilting. She had one of those voices that reminded him of a wormhole. The power it possessed to close all that time and distance between them, the way it brought her back to him once more—tenuous and shimmering—like a dewdrop catching the sun.

  The Essence

  I saw a swaying tree,

  I felt it sway in me.

  A bird trilled out her song,

  To me this song belongs.

  What’s given is not gone—

  in something it lives on.

  The Girl She Was

  She doesn’t feel like herself. Not anymore. She was different once.

  Now she is like a watered-down version, pale and thin. She slips through the cracks unnoticed. She fades into the background, afraid of saying the wrong thing. She grows sharp edges and won’t let anyone get close to her.

  She doesn’t know how she came to be like this, how she ended up here. She only remembers the way she used to be—wild and reckless. Bold and unapologetic.

  Your Words

  Remember, your words are your power. Never forget your words.

  4000 Miles

  The lines stitched into highways,

  the never-ending seams;

  on roads that are less traveled,

  dividing you and me.

  I wish I could unravel

  the fabric in-between,

  and tear away the distance,

  to bring you close to me.

  Talk Again

  I want us to talk again—the way we used to when the sun was coming up, and we were miles away from anywhere.

  I want us to talk again—about all the things we would think about, yet never thought to say out loud to anyone else.

  I want us to talk again—like the way we did before we wanted to do anything more
than that. I want us to talk.

  And if we never talk again, I want you to know that I miss that most of all—and every time the sun goes down, I think of all the things I wish I could tell you.

  Breaking Up

  You think it happens when you’ve stopped caring. When all the tenderness and warmth are stripped away and all that’s left is cold and empty and broken.

  But you never imagine it will happen like this. With our arms around each other, our hearts full of love and neither of us wanting to be the first to let go.

  One Thing

  She looked up at the sky and whispered, take anything away from me, take it all if you want to; but please—please just let me keep this one thing.

  Chasing Butterflies

  She flitted in and out of his life like a recurring dream. Even when she was an arm’s length away—it felt like she was somewhere else. He would reach out and touch her and his hand would come away empty.

  And Then

  I always thought the words and then were a prelude to something wonderful. Like seeing a ship come in or finding a note in your letterbox, when you weren’t expecting one. That swift, surprising transition from nothing to everything.

  And then.

  Two little words that hold a world of promise.

  And then the light pierced through the dark, forbidding sky, and the rain stopped falling.

  And then I met you.

  Jump

  “Don’t you get it?” he said. “The ones who are afraid of heights don’t trust themselves enough not to jump.”

  Loneliness

  I don’t know when I last caught myself staring at the clock. It must have been before the hour hand began turning for somebody else. Since then I have become a deft collector of minutes, like a caged bird hungry for the sky. Do you know I have thoughts that could color all the oceans blue? Those who harbor dreams of being alone must have forgotten what loneliness is.

  Punished

  “We were happy,” she said, and her eyes, downcast and brimming, reminded him of how the sky was before the first splash of rain. “We were happy and they punished us for it.”

  Circles

  My mind, a Venn diagram.

  You, the overlap and the intersect;

  a pulsating glimmer—omnipresent,

  a lighthouse with its glowing breath.

  You are the stone that skirts the river,

  that skips along its crystal plane;

  a surface skimmed by concentric shimmer,

  and trembles with the touch of rain.

  You are worlds that spin in orbit,

  a star who rose and fell;

  infinity summoned for audit—

  a penny toss in the wishing well.

  Contrition

  There was a look in his eyes I had never seen before. And it took me a few moments to recognize it for what it was. Remorse.

  I don’t deserve you, he said, half-defeated, half-hopeful. It was the most honest thing he had ever said to me. And he was right. He didn’t deserve me. Not by a long shot. But he had me nonetheless.

  Your Darkest Self

  I think love is about being your darkest, most destructive self. To be loved, not in spite of this but because of it.

  Collision Course

  Tomorrow I will tell you that I love you. Nothing in the world can stop the maddening rush of those three words. I love you. I know you were born with your heart already broken. But the world began in pieces and somehow made itself whole.

  Tell me where to put the stars. Show me how the oceans keep spilling over. Your smile is a blazing trail of light, shot down from the heavens. And I know how much this is going to hurt. But it’s too late for me to get off this collision course. Tomorrow I will tell you that I love you. And nothing in the world can stop the maddening rush of those three words.

  He

  He is the thought behind the feeling,

  the swelling in my chest;

  the starlight in the evening,

  the yearning when I undress.

  He is the sound behind the sighing,

  the song of every bird;

  the tears in all my crying,

  the ache in every word.

  Predestined Stars

  He and I collided like two predestined stars and in that brief moment I felt what it was like to be immortal.

  Key Turn

  There we were at the breaking point when you told me you could explain everything if I would just let you. But I wouldn’t. That was the moment I chose to pull the door between us firmly shut.

  I always wonder what you would have said if I had let you continue. Perhaps there was something in your explanation that would have allowed me to trust you again—that would have made sense of it all. As unlikely as that scenario could have been, my mind remains firmly hinged on the possibility—the key turn of a chance that maybe, I had it wrong all this time.

  The Perfect Crime

  It wasn’t with knives

  my heart he tore;

  when he brought me

  to death’s door.

  It wasn’t his hands

  that had me slain—

  but he had killed me

  all the same.

  Cold and callous

  with no remorse,

  he turned me to

  a walking corpse.

  And I am imprisoned

  in this pain,

  while he without

  the slightest blame—

  free to do it

  over again.

  War on Love

  Write about the first thing that comes to your mind; that your heart has longed to remind you. Write about the thrumming rhythm that implicates you—the lingering thoughts that tempt you. Write about the one thing that absolves you.

  Write about the peace you’ve found in denial—the salvage in walking away. It’s okay; no one blames you. You can’t wage war on love if you don’t know your limits.

  Eros

  If time were governed by Eros, I would stay in your arms forever. If time answered only to lovers, I would never leave your side. The seconds pass by slower when I’m staring at the clock. And you wonder why I can’t take my eyes off you.

  A Bookstore

  Standing in a bookstore, near a street where you used to live, I found myself wishing you would walk through the door and we would meet for the first time—all over again.

  The Piano

  Love was never meant to be black and white. But I knew the truth could free me as my hands were poised over the keys and I could have made them sing, I could have made them sing, but the feeling went away and I lost the courage to tell you.

  Stitches and Scars

  We all want to be on par,

  to steal the wish

  from someone’s star.

  Our flaws and failings

  stitches and scars,

  to be loved

  for who we are.

  Remorse

  You loved her and now you know what you’ve lost. Now your hands feel emptier than before you met her—your heart feels heavier. But you were young and you were careless. How were you to know the value of what you were given?

  Yet a part of you did know. In some strange, mysterious way, you knew there was something special about that girl. In her eyes, you caught a glimpse of your own destiny. You knew it was meant to travel with hers.

  If only you could go back to that day; to the one where she stood before you, gentle and hopeful—waiting for you to make up your mind. When you had thought to yourself that nothing could ever look as beautiful.

  That was the moment you should have told her what your heart was telling you. If you had allowed it, she could have been your whole world. All you had to do was open the door. All y
ou had to say was, come in.

  Ravine

  I think maybe we were cursed or just plain unlucky. You had your ideas about love, and I had mine. And as much as we tried, we couldn’t make it work. I don’t think it was the lack of feeling or intention that broke us—it was one small misunderstanding after another. Isn’t it strange how a minor disparity can grow into a ravine? In the end, it was enough to tear us apart.

  Young Love

  Screeching tires, a near miss. A horn blaring sharply into the night. I close my eyes. Here come the flashbacks.

  We were losing track of the days and nights, counting fireflies and waiting for the sun to come around. I was so addicted to you. I remember the exquisite fatigue as I fought off sleep for another hit—another line of conversation. We drove down freeways and winding roads, in a sleepless stupor, the stereo blasting love songs that were a cheap imitation of what we were feeling. Sometimes I wished you would take us over the edge, and we would be forever young and crazy in love. Go slow around those curves. I only want you safe now. It doesn’t matter if we’re together or apart. I love you so much. I’ll love you, right until the end.