by Atticus
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“A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
There is nothing quite
so pure in love
as a boy
and a girl
building castles
in the clouds.
As he took her hand
he gave her
all she had been
waiting for—
a shiver
down her spine.
When it comes to love
we are primates breaking sticks
while pointing to our hearts.
Love
is diving headfirst
into someone else’s confusion
and finding
that it all makes sense.
I’ll let you into my heart
but wipe your feet at the door.
I think it’s beautiful
the way you sparkle
when you talk about
the things you love.
We let our lives
mix with our dreams
like two colored paints
until we didn’t know
which was what
and we didn’t care.
I want to be with someone
who dreams of doing everything in life,
and nothing
on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
MY
ATOMS
LOVE
YOUR
ATOMS,
IT’S
CHEMISTRY.
The beautiful thing
about young love
is the truth
in our hearts that it will last forever.
“There’s too much risk in loving,”
the young boy said.
“No,”
said the old man,
“there’s too much risk in not.”
I promise
to live a life
so rich of love
that at the end
I will not be
so shy of death.
Love is
throwing yourself into a stormy sea
hoping there are arms to catch you
knowing that without the leap
there is only the safe
and lonely shore.
Put a girl in
moonlight
and tell only truths
and every man
becomes a poet.
Love
could
be
labeled
poison
and we’d
drink
it
anyways.
Poetry
to me
is stumbling in the dark
searching for
the right words
to describe
the feeling
I get
when she smiles
while she sleeps.
I JUST NEED
YOU
AND
SOME
SUNSETS.
When I look at you
I find it hard to believe
that the whole universe had not conspired
to bring you to life.
I can’t think of a more beautiful reason
for it all to exist
than for you in this day.
Don’t worry—
you see,
to some you are
magic.
“If I had all the treasure in the world,
I would follow my dreams,
play with my children,
and spend time with my wife.”
“No,”
said the old man.
“If you followed your dreams,
played with your children,
and spent time with your wife,
you would have all the treasure in the world.”
My sweet darling,
all these tears,
this hurt,
the pain in your heart,
do not fight it anymore,
it is a gift, you see, to feel this much
and even though it’s hard
it means you’re alive
with each of these tearful breaths gasped
your soul awakens,
more alive in the pain
than you were in the numb,
you are coming back to me now, my love,
lucid in this darkness—
so cry aloud,
yell,
and fall,
and I will be here waiting
to catch you
when the waking up is done.
It took me a long time to realize
that I am happiest
not at the parties
or the dinners
or the shows
but at home with you
and just our books
our movies
and our tea.
And wherever we go
for now and forever
we will bring this happy with us
for home lives
inside us now
wherever
together
we go.
True love comes
when you lose
where you end
and they begin
and the atoms
in your souls
forget where they belong
and slowly you become
pieces of each other
too close now
to ever be apart.
Daughter of mine—
for your smiles,
for your tears,
for your skinned knees,
and your broken hearts,
for the love you give,
and the love you find.
For whatever you become,
or don’t,
it is far too late,
I love you already,
long before
we ever meet.
I looked at my mother
and smiled—
she does
so happily exist
in that moment
of one too many
glasses of wine.
Watch carefully
the magic that occurs
when you give a person
enough comfort
to just be themselves.
Does the sun promise to shine?
No, but it will—
even behind the darkest clouds,
and no promise
will make it shine longer or brighter
for that is its fate,
to burn until it can burn no more.
To love you is not my promise
but my fate—
to burn for you
until I can burn no more.
And as I sat and looked at her
and the rolling hills she sat upon
I thought, what amazing luck I have
that the world had created
such beautiful things
and given me the eyes to see them.
The words never meant much
that’s not how I loved,
it was when she stroked my hair
when she thou
ght I was asleep
that I knew she really did.
I will follow you,
my love,
to the edge of all our days,
to our very last
tomorrows.
When I saw you first, it took
every ounce of me not to kiss you.
When I saw you laugh, it took
every ounce of me not to love you.
And when I saw your soul, it took every ounce of me.
We drowned out the voices in our hearts
that our love had run its course,
for this night at least
the old music played louder
than the truth that beat beneath our shirts,
and as the stars melted into morning
we smiled at the old stories
and left our love hanging in the air
as we embarked alone
on our tomorrows.
You and I
will be
lost and found
a thousand times
along this
cobbled
road of us.
And the boy told the girl
that he would love her forever—
and she smiled and said,
“but one day we both will die”—
“maybe”
said the boy—
“but I want to
still try.”
IT’S A
LONELY
THING,
PROTECTING
A BREAKABLE
HEART.
It’s not the fear of losing them
that scares us,
it’s that we have given them
so many of our pieces
that we fear losing
ourselves
when they are gone.
We were strange in love
her and I
too wild to last,
too rare to die.
Do not fall in love with me
for I will break your heart
long before you realize
you were going to break mine.
I let her go
because I knew she could do better
and now she’s gone
I wonder
if I should’ve
just been better.
Love
is a strange magic,
where death
can only make it stronger
while the softest kiss
in the wrong direction,
can steal it away forever.
We so often want
love to work
but we are
fighting currents
of our hearts
that flow
a different way.
WORDS
WILL
SCRATCH
MORE
HEARTS
THAN
SWORDS.
Obsession is not love,
infatuation is not love,
when someone ignores you
or treats you poorly, carelessly,
or with indifference
that’s not love—
that’s a lack of love,
for yourself, for trying to fill
your missing pieces with theirs
but when someone is whole
and you are whole
and you act in kindness and benevolence, vulnerability
through strength,
love becomes an exchange
with another person—
and that is
its truest form.
Even those we love the most
can be a poison to our souls.
Break my heart
and you will find yourself inside.
Tell me,
she said,
about our house
our children
our garden
about the lives we will have—
but he never could
and it wasn’t until she was gone
that he understood
that she never needed the house
she only needed the dream.
What an impossible thing,
breaking up,
whispering promises
to ourselves
that other shores exist
and then blindly
wading out to sea.
WE LEFT
OUR LOVE
IN ASH
WHERE A
MIGHTY FIRE
ONCE
HAD
ROARED.
New love is the best cure
for old love gone bad.
I aspire to be
an old man
with an old wife
laughing at old jokes
from a wild youth.
I have seen your
darkest nights
and brightest days
and I want you to know
that I will be here
forever
loving you
in dusk.
Come, my darling,
it is never too late
to begin
our love again.
“I don’t believe in magic,”
the young boy said,
and the old man smiled,
“You will, when you see her.”
SHE LIVED IN ME
LIKE THE FIRST FEW DAYS
OF SUMMER:
WARM
AND NEW
AND
INFINITELY
POSSIBLE.
From
the moment
I saw her
I knew
this one
was worth
the
broken
heart.
I took her hand,
and my heart beat fast
as her warmth swallowed me up.
A thousand times I’d run this trail
but not with her.
Her eyes were all that young love should be,
and they lit me up
in every look.
We lay in shooting skies
and freckled stars, and
promised our love would last forever—
and so in our forever
it would
there in a castle atop of Blueberry Hill,
with silver moon rivers
and sailing ships.
Every girl,
if you leave her alone
long enough,
will
eventually
sing
and dance.
She was incandescently beautiful
and beauty was the least of her.
She wore nothing
but the moonlight,
I wore nothing
but a smile.
And the stars blinked
as they watched her carefully
jealous of the way she shone.
She was love at first sight to the
blind man in the dark cave.
A few drinks and the world was hers—
she wore her whiskey like a loaded gun.
She wanted to be rich
and she looked good on a yacht
but I wanted a girl
that looked good by a campfire
with freckles like sparks
to stain
the ashy sky.
I SIPPED
THE MOONLIGHT
FROM HER LIPS
AND STUMBLED
HOME DRUNK
OFF
THE
TASTE OF
HER.
A storm was coming
but that’s not what she felt.
It was adventure on the wind
and it shivered down her spine.
She walked
through her life
tired
from the
mighty wings
upon her back.
She flirted with life
and life flirted right back with
her,
as if all the universe
came more alive
just for her
and everything felt her glow.
It was
in the dew
in the stars
and the colors of the sky—
they all shone
bright as they could
in the hopes
to catch her eye.
There was a whole magnificent soul
burning brightly behind her “shy.”
It was never the way she looked
always the way she was
I would have fallen in love with her
with my eyes closed.
I fought
my eyes to stay awake
no dream was prettier
than the way she slept.
She was afraid of heights
but she was
much more afraid
of never flying.
I promised
to kiss her
a million times
before I died,
fifty a day
for the rest of my life—
so when I was gone
she could smile
knowing
there wasn’t a place
on her I missed.
All of the light
all of the trees
all of time