by Lang Leav
An Artist in Love
I drew him in my world;
I write him in my lines,
I want to be his girl,
he was never meant as mine.
I drew him in my world;
he is always on my mind;
I draw his every line.
It hurts when he’s unkind.
I drew him in my world;
I draw him all the time,
but I don’t know where
to draw the line.
The Seventh Sea
The answer is yes, always yes. I cannot deny you anything you ask. I will not let you bear the agony of not knowing.
Yes I love you, I swear it. On every grain of salt in the ocean—on all my tears. I found you when I reached the seventh sea, just as I had stopped looking.
It seems a lifetime ago that I began searching for you.
A lifetime of pain and sorrow. Of disappointment and missed opportunities.
All I had hoped for. All the things I can never get back.
When I am with you, I want for nothing.
In Two Parts
You come and go so easily,
your life is as you knew—
while mine is split in two.
How I envy so the half of me,
who lived before love’s due,
who was yet to know of you.
A Question
It was a question I had worn on my lips for days—like a loose thread on my favorite sweater I couldn’t resist pulling—despite knowing it could all unravel around me.
“Do you love me?” I ask.
In your hesitation I found my answer.
A Dedication
She lends her pen,
to thoughts of him,
that flow from it,
in her solitary.
For she is his poet,
And he is her poetry.
A Dream
As the Earth began spinning faster and faster, we floated upwards, hands locked tightly together, eyes sad and bewildered. We watched as our faces grew younger and realized the Earth was spinning in reverse, moving us backwards in time.
Then we reached a point where I no longer knew who you were and I was grasping the hands of a stranger. But I didn’t let go. And neither did you.
..................................
I had my first dream about you last night.
Really? She smiles. What was it about?
I don’t remember exactly, but the whole time I was dreaming, I knew you were mine.
Fading Polaroid
My eyes were the first to forget. The face I once cradled between my hands, now a blur. And your voice is slowly drifting from my memory, like a fading polaroid. But the way I felt is still crystal clear. Like it was yesterday.
There are Philosophers who claim the past, present, and future all exist at the one time. And the way I have felt, the way I feel—that bittersweet ache between wanting and having—is evidence of their theory.
I felt you before I knew you and I still feel you now. And in that brief moment between—wrapped in your arms thinking, how lucky I am, how lucky I am, how lucky I am—
How lucky I was.
Ode to Sorrow
Her eyes, a closed book,
her heart, a locked door;
she writes melancholy
like she’s lived it before.
She once loved in a way,
you could not understand;
he left her in pieces
and a pen in her hand.
The ode to her sorrow
in the life she has led—
her scratches on paper,
the words they have bled.
The Professor
A streak of light flashes across the sky. Thick heavy raindrops pound the uneven dirt floor, littered with dried leaves and twigs. She follows closely behind him, clutching an odd contraption—a rectangular device attached with a long, squiggly, antenna. “You were right about the storm, Professor!” she yells over the howling wind. “Yes, my assistant!” he cries, voice charged with excitement, as he holds up the long, metal conductor. She stumbles over a log as he reaches out to catch her.
They tumble on the dry grass laughing. He tosses aside the bent, silver coat hanger, wrapping his arms around her waist. The little transistor radio falls from her hands.
The sun peeks through the treetops.
She thinks of their first conversation. “I live by a forest,” he said, describing it in such a way that when she came to scale those crooked, winding stairs, it was like she had seen it a thousand times before. As if it had always been there, waiting to welcome her. Like the pretty, sunlit room that remained unfurnished, sitting empty in his house, now filled with her paints and brushes.
She would fondly call him her Frankenstein, this man who was a patchwork of all the things she had ever longed for. He gave her such gifts—not the kind that were put in boxes, but the sort that filled her with imagination, breathing indescribable happiness into her life. One day, he built her a greenhouse. “So you can create your little monstrous plants,” he explained.
He showed her how to catch the stray butterflies that fluttered from their elusive neighbors, who were rumored to farm them for cosmetic use. She would listen in morbid fascination as he described how the helpless insects were cruelly dismembered, before their fragile wings were crushed and ground into a fine powder. “Your lips would look beautiful, painted with butterfly wings,” he would tease her.
“Never!” she’d cry, alarmed.
They spent much of their days alone, in their peaceful sanctuary, apart from the little visitor who came on weekends. When the weather was good, the three of them would venture out, past the worn jetty and picnic on their little beach. He would watch them proudly, marveling at the startling contrast between the two things he loved most in the world. His son with hair of spun gold, playing at his favorite rock pool and chattering animatedly in his singsong voice. She, with a small, amused smile on her tiny lips, raven hair tousled by the sea wind. She was different from anything he had ever known.
The Keeper
You were like a dream,
I wish I hadn’t
slept through.
Within it I fell deeper,
than your heart would
care to let you.
I thought you were a keeper,
I wish I could
have kept you.
You
There are people I will never know
and their lives will still ensue;
those that could have loved me so
and I’ll never wonder who.
Of all the things to come and go,
there is no one else like you.
The things I never think about—
and the only thing I do.
Us
I love him and he loves me.
We spend every moment together. When sleep parts us, we often meet in our dreams.
I like to take naps throughout the day. Like a cat, he says. He is a cat person.
He thinks my eyes are beautiful and strange. He has never seen eyes like mine up close before.
He says they look at him with daggers when he has done something wrong. Like when he forgets to order olives on my half of the pizza.
He thinks I am especially cute when angry.
We argue over whose turn it is to put the DVD in the player. Sometimes no one wins and we end up watching bad TV. Which is never really a bad thing.
He never imagined he would be with someone like me.
Now, he says, he can’t imagine himself with anyone else.
..................................
We’re kids, aren’t we?
>
Yes, kids with grown-up powers.
Swan Song
Her heart is played
like well-worn strings;
in her eyes,
the sadness sings—
of one who was destined
for better things.
Dead Poets
Her poetry is written on the ghost of trees, whispered on the lips of lovers.
As a little girl, she would drift in and out of libraries filled with dead poets and their musky scent. She held them in her hands and breathed them in—wanting so much to be part of their world.
It wasn’t long before Emily began speaking to her, then Sylvia and Katherine; their voices rang in unison, haunting and beautiful. They told her one day her poetry would be written on the ghost of trees and whispered on the lips of lovers.
But it would come at a price.
There isn’t a thing I would not gladly give, she thought, to join my idols on those dusty shelves. To be immortal.
As if reading her mind, the voices of the dead poets cried out in alarm and warned her about the greatest heartache of all—how every stroke of pen thereafter would open the same wound over and over again.
What is the cause of such great heartache? She asked. They heard the keen anticipation in her voice and were sorry for her.
The greatest heartache comes from loving another soul, they said, beyond reason, beyond doubt, with no hope of salvation.
It was on her sixteenth birthday that she first fell in love. With a boy who brought her red roses and white lies. When he broke her heart, she cried for days.
Then hopeful, she sat with a pen in her hand, poised over the blank white sheet, but it refused to draw blood.
Many birthdays came and went.
One by one, she loved them and just as easily, they were lost to her. Somewhere amidst the carnations and forget-me-nots, between the lilacs and mistletoe—she slowly learned about love. Little by little, her heart bloomed into a bouquet of hope and ecstasy, of tenderness and betrayal.
Then she met you, and you brought her dandelions each day, so she would never want for wishes. She looked deep into your eyes and saw the very best of herself reflected back.
And she loved you, beyond reason, beyond doubt, and with no hope of salvation.
When she felt your love slipping away from her, she knelt at the altar, before all the great poets—and she begged. She no longer cared for poetry or immortality, she only wanted you.
But all the dead poets could do was look on, helpless and resigned while everything she had ever wished for came true in the cruelest possible way.
She learned too late that poets are among the damned, cursed to commiserate over their loss, to reach with outstretched hands—hands that will never know the weight of what they seek.
Lost and Found
A sunken chest,
on the ocean ground,
to never be found
was where he found me.
There he stirred,
my every thought,
my every word,
so gently, so profoundly.
Now I am kept,
from dreams I dreamt,
when once I slept,
so soundly.
Entwined
There is a line
I’m yet to sever—
it goes from me
to you.
There was a time
you swore forever,
and I am captive
to its pull.
If you were kind,
you’d cut the tether—
but I must ask you
to be cruel.
Soul Mates
I don’t know how you are so familiar to me—or why it feels less like I am getting to know you and more as though I am remembering who you are. How every smile, every whisper brings me closer to the impossible conclusion that I have known you before, I have loved you before—in another time, a different place—some other existence.
The Most
You may not know
the reason why,
for a time
I wasn’t I.
There was a man
who came and went,
on him every breath
was spent.
I’m sorry I forgot
all else—
it was the most
I ever felt.
Sundays with Michael
I hold my breath and count to ten,
I stand and sit, then stand again.
I cross and then uncross my legs,
the planes are flying overhead.
The dial turns with every twist,
around the watch, around his wrist.
Resting there with pen in hand,
who could ever understand?
The way he writes of all I dream,
things kind yet cruel and in-between,
where underneath those twisted trees,
a pretty girl fallen to her knees.
Who could know the world we’ve spun?
I shrug my shoulders and hold my tongue.
I hold my breath and count to ten,
I stand and sit, then stand again.
For You
Here are the things I want for you.
I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.
I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don’t know if what we had was love, but if it wasn’t, I hope never to fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.
I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.
Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And if I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. I want you to know that most of all.
Amends
I wonder if there will be a morning when you’ll wake up missing me. That some incident in your life would have finally taught you the value of my worth. And you will feel a surge of longing, when you remember how I was good to you.
When this day comes I hope you will look for me. I hope you will look with the kind of conviction I’d always hoped for, but never had from you. Because I want to be found. And I hope it will be you—who finds me.
A Way Out
Do you know what it is like,
to lie in bed awake;
with thoughts to haunt
you every night,
of all your past mistakes.
Knowing sleep will set it right—
if you were not to wake.
Dead Butterflies
I sometimes think about the fragility of glass—of broken shards tearing against soft skin. When in truth, it is the transparency that kills you. The pain of seeing through to something you can never quite touch.
For years I’ve kept you in secret, behind a glass screen. I’ve watched helplessly as day after day, your new girlfriend becomes your wife and then later, the mother of your children. Then realizing the irony in thinking you were the one under glass when in fact it has been me—a pinned butterfly—static and unmoving, watching while your other life unfolds.
Lullabies
I barely know you, she says, voice heavy with sleep. I don’t know your favorite color or how you like your coffee. What keeps you up at night or the lullabies that sing you to sleep. I don’t know a thing about the first girl you loved, why you stopped loving her or why you still do.
I don’t know ho
w many millions of cells you are made of and if they have any idea they are part of something so beautiful and unimaginably perfect.
I may not have a clue about any of these things, but this—she places her hand on his chest—this I know.
All There Was
My greatest lesson learnt,
you were mine until you weren’t.
It was you who taught me so,
the grace in letting go.
The time we had was all—
there was not a moment more.
Nostalgia
Do you remember our first day? The fog lifted and all around us were trees linking hands, like children playing.
Our first night, when you stood by the door, conflicted, as I sat there with my knees tucked under my chin, and smiling.
Then rainbows arching over and the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen.
How the wind howls as the sea whispers, I miss you.
Come back to me.
Before There Was You
When I used to look above,
all I saw was sky;
and every song
that I would sing,
I sung not knowing why.
All I thought and all I felt,
was only just because,
never was it ever you—
until it was all there was.
That Day
I remember our highs in hues,
like the color of his eyes