Memories

by Lang Leav

  Waiting

  I try to think of a word that is closest to love and the only thing that comes to mind is your name. I try to imagine what I would say if our paths ever crossed again but I keep drawing a blank.

  I’ve forgotten what it was like to feel the sun on my skin without worrying that it could hurt me. I’ve stopped throwing myself from cliffs, with my arms in the air, waiting for the splash below.

  Every day, I look in the mirror and I see more and more of my mother’s face staring back at me. Every day I measure the weight of my past against the present and feel the drag of what could have been.

  I find a photograph of you and wonder when I’ll stop hoping. I stare at the clock, with its slow methodical hands and dread the day when I’ll know it’s too late.

  Dear Love

  Love, he has abandoned me,

  do with me as you will.

  Love, he left—unceremoniously,

  why must I love him still?

  The best of me I gave to him—

  the years, the days, the hours.

  Precious little, in turn he’d given,

  like dew to a wilting flower.

  Love, he sheared away tenderly,

  my beauty, my strength, my mind,

  the gifts that were bestowed to me—

  were swallowed in his pride.

  Love, has he forgotten me?

  Please tell me what you’ve heard,

  I guard his memory jealously—

  with him I’d placed my worth.

  Revelation

  Here is the place where you found me. Under the half-moon and its half-light. You said, if only I had met you there that night. Perhaps we could have found our way. I learned something about sadness after that day.

  You showed me insanity, as you promised you would. Like an open window, seven storeys high. And it was just as terrible and as beautiful as you and I.

  And you said ecstasy was a storm cloud, just before the rain would burst into the night sky, like a thousand aquatic stars—and not one single moment before. And you were right. You were right about it all.

  Language

  I remember learning the alphabet. How those strange markings, alien and incoherent, grew more and more familiar, like the name of someone you love.

  The moment words found me, they burrowed themselves into my bones, they settled like dust in my lungs until I felt them every time I breathed in and out. I would place them side by side like fractals, in a myriad of verse.

  I remember learning your name, the strange jumble of letters that danced under my tongue, that leapt from my hungry mouth. Those four syllables that bit deep into my soul like poetry. I remember how I whispered them against your lips.

  And you would say, this is how I am with you, with you.

  It was words that I fell for. In the end, it was words that broke my heart.

  A Poem

  I wrote a poem about a girl who loves you. I said a soliloquy that was spoken in her honor.

  I felt every word that burst from her lips, like shooting stars, into the air around us. If it were possible to hold love in your hand, it was her hand that trembled as I held it.

  I could taste her tears that ran like rain on windshields. The kind that searched with longing, for lonely drop after drop, to form a pool of forlorn belonging.

  I wrote this poem for the girl who loves you—for she loves you more than I love you. Because she is sorry and so am I.

  In Love

  You’ve not yet had your heart in halves,

  so little do you know of love—

  to tell me I will soon forget,

  there will be others to regret.

  Now all the years have proved you wrong,

  my love for him burns bright and strong;

  you can’t divide the stars from night—

  from love there can be no respite.

  Sunday Best

  Do you remember that night I turned up on your doorstep? I was wearing my Sunday best. You watched the mascara as it ran down like fault lines, and you knew I had blood on my lips.

  I’m tired of running, I said—

  and the earth shook a little.

  So am I, you replied

  as it shook a little more.

  I don’t want anyone else, I whispered.

  And I felt myself crumble.

  You held out your arms and I was cracked porcelain. We looked at each other as we stood at the precipice. And I knew once I fell, I’d never stop falling. And everything before you would be time to kill. You said you were scared but you couldn’t ignore it.

  And that was the moment when we became real.

  Hope

  One day you walk into a cafe and there he is. It’s as simple as that. As easy as that. Then forever after, you spend your life, walking into cafes, hoping he’ll magically appear. Like he did the first time. Or there would be someone else, just like him, sitting, with his head buried in a book. He would turn to look at you and it would all begin again.

  When love finds you, it doesn’t come with crashing waves or thunderbolts. It appears as a song on the radio or a particular blue in the sky. It dawns on you slowly, like a warm winter sunrise—where the promise of summer shines out from within.

  We number our days and divide our seasons. We endlessly define what it is to be in love. When in truth, spring blurs into summer and always has, long before that line was ever drawn. Your love for him is the same—it runs wild and free. Like the air around you, it stretches all across the world, it does not leave a single thing untouched. You carry that love with you, like a bright and blazing beacon, a straight line from your heart to his. And it keeps alive that aching, throbbing hope, that somewhere in the world, there is a cafe and within those walls, he is there, hoping just as much as you.

  Stardust

  If you came to me with a face I have not seen, with a voice I have never heard, I would still know you. Even if centuries separated us, I would still feel you. Somewhere between the sand and the stardust, through every collapse and creation, there is a pulse that echoes of you and I.

  When we leave this world, we give up all our possessions and our memories. Love is the only thing we take with us. It is all we carry from one life to the next.

  New Light

  When goodbye was said,

  there it began

  the careful tread—

  the ones you chose

  to love instead.

  Yet inside you glows

  a candle lit

  those years ago

  and brighter still

  it burns for him

  a searing flame

  to stave the dark

  you hold within.

  The honor the promise

  you once made—

  when you and he

  were skin to skin,

  and the brightest star

  had ceased its reign—

  to herald new light,

  born in his name.

  Happiness

  I know my being happy is an anomaly. No one knows me better than you. But I can say without avoiding your gaze, without crossing my fingers behind my back; or the other things I do when speaking untruthfully—I am happy. I know the rain does not discriminate between day or night and either will hold its own light and dark—but now, at this very moment, I feel like I am the sun. And I know in my heart, I will always look upon this time—not without a sense of melancholy—that it was the happiest in my life.

  The Saddest Thing

  There was someone I knew, a long time ago. I was so in love with him I couldn’t see straight. The saddest thing is, he felt the same way about me.

  It was easy in the beginning. All we had to do was laugh at the same things and love t
ook over and did the rest. I had never felt so connected to another person.

  He would always say it felt as though I was made for him. How glad he was to have met me. We were so sure of what we felt. We should have held tight, onto that certainty.

  There is never one particular reason why two people are torn apart. All these years later, I have stopped looking for answers. I know better now, that love is never a guarantee. Not when you have the rest of the world to contend with.

  Sometimes you have to step back and look at these things from a philosophical standpoint. And I know loving him has taught me something about myself, it has broadened my understanding of the world. And if it has done the same for him, then it wasn’t all in vain.

  The Night

  It’s been a while since words have found me,

  the time between—you’ll come and go;

  I’d grown to love the sun around me,

  I’ve been a stranger to my woe.

  It’s been so long since there was silence,

  all around me, your voice had rung;

  like a bird who sings to greet the morning,

  to tell you that the day has come.

  It’s been some time since I’ve felt lonely,

  like a book that is no longer read;

  the darkness lingers on without you,

  it fills my empty heart with dread.

  It seems an age ago, since you have left me,

  time has filled me, with words unsaid;

  as the sadness seeps into me slowly,

  and I am left to face the night ahead.

  Her

  There is so much history in the way he looks at her. In the way he says her name. When they are together, there is a current that runs between them; like an electric charge on the verge of erupting into a perfect storm.

  I don’t love her anymore, he says.

  And it is in the way he says the word her—that tells me otherwise.

  Love

  I don’t know what it is like to love someone who the world tells me I am not supposed to love. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to love someone I am afraid to kiss on the street.

  But I do know what it is like to love someone who I cannot be with. I know how it feels to have my brain tell me one thing, and my heart another. I know how hard it is to have to love someone in secret. To live with the knowledge that if circumstances had been different, I would be with the one I love.

  I do know there are all kinds of barriers to love. I do believe the world needs less of them.

  Collision

  Do you think I have slipped into a time warp?

  It was your opening line. I didn’t know it then, but my past, present, and future were set to collide.

  At the time, the collision felt like a gentle wake-up call. Like a lazy Sunday morning spent gently parting ways with sleep. But now when I look back, I see it for what it was—alarm bells blaring at five a.m. and a plane I couldn’t miss.

  I got lost in the day to day. I passed by prophets on the city streets with their signs, warning me about the apocalypse. I never imagined it was walking right beside me, holding my hand. Night after night, I looked into your eyes but never once did they offer me a prelude to the destruction.

  Life went on without you. Of course, it did. Of course, it does. It was just an ending, they tell me, not the end.

  Part two

  Remember When

  A Toast!

  To new beginnings,

  in fear and faith

  and all it tinges.

  To love is a dare,

  when hope and despair,

  are gates upon it hinges.

  Three Questions

  What was it like to love him? asked Gratitude.

  It was like being exhumed, I answered. And brought to life in a flash of brilliance.

  What was it like to be loved in return? asked Joy.

  It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence.

  What was it like to lose him? asked Sorrow.

  There was a long pause before I responded:

  It was like hearing every good-bye ever said to me—said all at once.

  My Heart

  Perhaps I never loved enough,

  If only I’d loved much more;

  I would not nearly had so much,

  left waiting, for you in store.

  If I had given away my heart—

  to those who came before;

  it would be safer left in parts—

  but now you have it all.

  Love Lost

  There is one who you belong to,

  whose love—there is no song for.

  And though you know it’s wrongful,

  there is someone else you long for.

  Your heart was once a vessel,

  it was filled up to the brim;

  until the day he left you,

  now everything sings of him.

  Of the two who came to love you,

  to one, your heart you gave.

  He lives in stars above you—

  in the love who came and stayed.

  After You

  If I wrote it in a book,

  could I shelve it?

  If I told of what you took,

  would that help it?

  If I will it,

  can I un-feel it,

  now I’ve felt it?

  Rogue Planets

  As a kid, I would count backwards from ten and imagine at one, there would be an explosion—perhaps caused by a rogue planet crashing into Earth or some other major catastrophe. When nothing happened, I’d feel relieved and at the same time, a little disappointed.

  I think of you at ten; the first time I saw you. Your smile at nine and how it lit up something inside me I had thought long dead. Your lips at eight pressed against mine and at seven, your warm breath in my ear and your hands everywhere. You tell me you love me at six and at five we have our first real fight. At four we have our second and three, our third. At two you tell me you can’t go on any longer and then at one, you ask me to stay.

  And I am relieved, so relieved—and a little disappointed.

  Pretext

  Our love—a dead star

  to the world it burns brightly—

  But it died long ago.

  Souls

  When two souls fall in love, there is nothing else but the yearning to be close to the other. The presence that is felt through a hand held, a voice heard, or a smile seen.

  Souls do not have calendars or clocks, nor do they understand the notion of time or distance. They only know it feels right to be with one another.

  This is the reason why you miss someone so much when they are not there—even if they are only in the very next room. Your soul only feels their absence—it doesn’t realize the separation is temporary.

  ..................................

  Can I ask you something?

  Anything.

  Why is it every time we say good night, it feels like good-bye?

  Some Time Out

  The time may not

  be prime for us,

  though you are

  a special person.

  We may be just

  two different clocks,

  that do not tock,

  in unison.

  The Wanderer

  What is she like?

  I was told—

  she is a

  melancholy soul.

  She is like

  the sun to night;

  a momentary gold.

  A star when dimmed

  by dawning light;

  the flicker of

  a
candle blown.

  A lonely kite

  lost in flight—

  someone once

  had flown.

  Sad Things

  Why do you write sad things? he asked. When I am here, when I love you.

  Because someday, in one way or another, you will be taken from me or I you. It is inevitable. But please understand; from the moment I met you, I stopped writing for the past. I no longer write for the present. When I write sad things, I am writing for the future.

  Sea of Strangers

  In a sea of strangers,

  you’ve longed to know me.

  Your life spent sailing

  to my shores.

  The arms that yearn

  to someday hold me,

  will ache beneath

  the heavy oars.

  Please take your time

  and take it slowly;

  as all you do

  will run its course.

  And nothing else

  can take what only—

  was always meant

  as solely yours.

  Broken Hearts

  I know you’ve lost someone and it hurts. You may have lost them suddenly, unexpectedly. Or perhaps you began losing pieces of them until one day, there was nothing left. You may have known them all your life or you may have barely known them at all. Either way, it is irrelevant—you cannot control the depth of a wound another inflicts upon you.

  Which is why I am not here to tell you tomorrow will be a new day. That the sun will go on shining. Or there are plenty of fish in the sea. What I will tell you is this; it’s okay to be hurting as much as you are. What you are feeling is not only completely valid but necessary—because it makes you so much more human. And though I can’t promise it will get better any time soon, I can tell you that it will—eventually. For now, all you can do is take your time. Take all the time you need.