THE TITLE SCREEN
Just pretend you’re in a movie. Be as brave and as full of love as the main character.
Because we all need to believe in movies, sometimes.
THE BLEACH
You are your hair and your eyes and your thoughts. You are what you look at and what you feel and what you do about it. The light from the sun is still a part of the sun. My thoughts of you are as real as any part of you.
THE STRANGER IN WAITING
I’m sure you’ve met them. They say they’ll put you back together while they’re tearing everything apart. And they use the type of lips you can taste for years.
THE HEART WE SHARE
Every time they cut you, I bleed.
THE ROAD MAP BACK
I missed you more than words and pictures can describe.
But I’ll try.
THE SHAPE OF AIR
You love the way air moves. And now I can no longer breathe.
THE LIPSTICK ON THE WINDOW
The words “I love you” become nothing but noise. But that’s why we kiss. To say with our lips what we couldn’t before.
THE ABSENCE OF OXYGEN
Forget the air.
I’ll breathe you instead.
THE SCARS YOU LOVE
There are a million ways to bleed. But you are by far my favourite.
THE ZODIAC OF ONE
When I look up at night, all the constellations look like you.
THE STATIC ON THE LINE
Don’t talk to me like you know me. Talk to me like you love me.
THE TENDER TINDER BOX
You’ve made the air flammable. These walls are just paper. And blood is gasoline. You shouldn’t have come here, made of fireworks, if you didn’t want me to play with fire.
I need a light.
THE SLIGHT PINCH
You and I could collide, like atoms in some scientist’s wet dream. We could start a new universe together. We could mix like a disease. And if we do, I hope we never get better.
THE WISHING WELL IN THE SKY (LETTERS TO FATHER TIME)
All I ask is that you let me spend forever feeling this way, before you take me.
THE HUMANS AREN’T RECYCLABLE
I hold you like I do, tightly because I know that one day, I’ll die.
And I am determined to do it with a smile on my face.
THE PLACE WHERE I WAIT
I’ll see you at your funeral, if you’ll see me at mine. I’ll wait at the edges for your ghost to rise (until the end of time). We’ll find someplace nice to haunt, an abandoned beach house filled with memories of summer sunburns. Children will giggle as we tickle their feet at night and they’ll never know the bad dreams we fight. We’ll make our own heaven. Walking in places we used to walk until death, dies.
THE EBB AND FLOW
I know I’m only borrowing it. I know I have to give Summer back to you. Just as you, have to give Winter, back to me.
THE POINT PAST PEAK FEELINGS
I know you have feelings left somewhere.
But they’re all so hard to reach.
THE PICTURE WE MAKE
The little things you forget, kill me.
THE DIARIES OF FOREIGN LOVERS
You are so patriotic to your heart. It keeps the country together.
But it tears the world apart.
THE LACK OF POSTCARDS
I know you’re not here, I can see it in your eyes when we talk. Where ever you are, come back soon.
THE TRANSLATION SERVICE
And when I asked you how you’d been I meant I missed you more than I’ve ever missed anything before.
THE FIRST TIME WE MET
It’s when you hold eye contact for that second too long or maybe the way you laugh. It sets off a flash and our memories take a picture of who we are at that point when we first know “This is love.”
And we clutch that picture to our hearts because we expect each other to always be the people in that picture. But people change. People aren’t pictures. And you can either take a new picture or throw the old one away.
THE AWOL HEARTS
Let’s play hopscotch in malls. Let’s drive fast with the top down. Let’s turn up the music as loud as it’ll go. Let’s put a couch on an island in the middle of the freeway and wave at everyone on their way to work. Let’s hug strangers in parking lots. Let’s hand out secret messages at traffic lights. Let’s make lists of all the things that make us smile and tick them off, one at a time. The world will carry on without you and me when we’re gone.
Let it carry on without us, today.
THE FORGOTTEN FEELING
I know there was something before you. I just can’t remember what it was.
THE FIRST CRACK IS THE LAST
I lied when I told you I forgot. I know it doesn’t seem like a big thing but I wanted to tell you the truth and never, ever lie to you.
Because that’s how it starts.
STARS,
THE PLACE WHERE YOU GET OFF
Outside the station, she stands with her child on the side of the street, taking pictures of cars.
You think she’s insane. Until, one day, you notice that she’s taking pictures of the license plates of the cars her child gets into.
Because you look. But you do not see.
And she walks out the shop with bags full of cat food. You think she’s some crazy cat lady until you find out, she has no cats.
Because you eat. But you do not taste.
It’s been a while since their last album but he assures you, he’s doing just fine these days, white flecks in his nostrils. Then he asks you if he can spend the night on your couch, even though it stinks.
Because you sniff. But you do not smell.
And they say “Just OK” when you ask them how school was. Then you wonder what they’re hiding until you find their diary and the last entry reads “I wish you’d give me some privacy.”
Because you listen. But you do not hear.
And they’ve got a bruise over their eye and you run the tips of your fingers over it and ask them how it happened. You believe them. Until it happens again.
Because you touch. But you do not feel.
And they walk past you everyday, one million stories, each waiting to be told. Waiting for you to ask.
Because you live. But very few, love.
THE BARGAIN
He gave me that night back and this time, I told you the truth. We talked and held each other till the sun came up. And as I went to hell, the devil asked me if it was worth it. I said yes. Yes it was.
THE SKELETONS IN THE SEA
Truth is the last thing I can take because it’s the last thing you took.
THE FORGOTTEN STAR
You keep telling me to be glad for what we had while we had it. That the brightest flame burns quickest.
Which means you saw us as a candle. And I saw us as the sun.
THE SERAPHIM AND THE PIRATE
You were better to the ones that were worse for you. And worse to the one that was better for you.
THE ONE I MISS
Just say goodbye. You can say it when you get up from the couch. You can say it at the door. I will say it when you get to your car. I’ll scream it as you drive away.
THE STRANGER IN YOU
My parents gave me a book and it told me I was made of dirt and dust. But you, you were made of ash.
THE LEFTOVERS
I made myself from all the love you no longer wanted.
THE END OF THAT
If you thought that was our second chance, you’re wrong.
It was our last.
THE BRIDGE FROM SOLITUDE
Just like you mistook lust for love, you have mistaken being alone with loneliness. So I’m fine. Thank you for asking.
THE SHEER ARROGANCE OF LONELINESS
Making love was never about you and me in a bed.
We made love whenever we held hands.
THE HEART IS RED
I’m so
rry. But you could never tell the difference between the mood you were in, and me.
THE BASTARDS TIED ME DOWN
You may continue to call it a breakup. I will continue to call it an exorcism.
THE SHADE
You are no longer here. So please leave.
THE TRUTH IS UGLY
In the movies, the person leaving you never has a blocked nose when they cry. And all their tears are pretty.
THE SKIN I’M IN
This is my skin. It keeps out the rain and words I’d rather not hear like “I’m tired” or “I’m fine” or “We need to talk.”
This is my skin and it’s thick. This is not your skin. Yet you are still under it.
THE FLOOR TAKES SO LONG TO HIT
Congratulations.
You took me down. And now, you have made everything that is sad, relevant.
THE CUPBOARD IS EMPTY
I’m all out of midnight phone calls and flowers sent to your door. I’m out of throwing letters off fire escapes and drawing a cathedral in the sand. I’m out of spray-painting your name on freeway overpasses. I’m low on cute names given between blankets and 9 am. I’ve got no dramatic displays of public affection left. And now everyone else I ever love is going to think me boring. Because I used it all up on you.
THE TINY ICEBERG
Fine. Maybe I’m the puzzle. But you’re still the pieces.
THE B-TRAIN
I’d leave the memory of you at the station, if it didn’t already know the way home.
THE ROSE IS NOT ALWAYS A ROSE
You can be in love and you can be in a relationship. But they’re not always the same thing.
THE MECHANICS OF PUPPETRY
I guess I should say thank you, for cutting all my strings. But if it’s all the same to you, I wish you’d left my wings.
THE BYSTANDER PICKS SOMETHING UP
I’m with them because, despite everything, I still love them. And while you might walk in and find me punching a wall, it’s only because I want to kiss their lips.
There’s no revenge here.
Love doesn’t hate back.
THE LEAVE BEHIND
I don’t know who you’re kissing now. But I do know who you think about when you do.
THE SIMPLE SHATTERING OF WATER
It’s because you and them were made of the same pieces. And afterwards, when you put yourself back together, some piece of them remained.
THE GLASS TOWER
Until you are no longer the pictures that chase me down a flight of screens each night. Until the part of me that you first touched, forgets.
THE SEA RECLAIMS THE LAND
I know you’re just a rag doll now, sewn together with memories that we might have had.
I know you’re just the dream inside of a dream
And don’t worry, I know I don’t know you, anymore.
THE WORLD IS TOO BIG
All the space without you in it, is empty.
THE GREEN CURTAIN
How many hearts would be invaded for the wrong reasons, if each time you said “I love you”, you meant it?
THE PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE
You cannot go back in time, even if you wish it with every fiber of your being, your heart and soul, even if you think about it every day.
Trust me. I know.
THE MONSTERS I MISS
And every single thing you ever did that bothered me, is every single thing I miss.
THE ERROR OF PARALLAX
The only reason I hate you now is because I loved you then.
THE HISTORY OF ARSON
When you lived here, it was a city. When you left, it became a town.
THE THINGS SOLD BY THE SEA SHORE
I could’ve sworn I was telling the truth when I told you I didn’t miss you.
THE TALES FROM BAR
You’re just another story I can’t tell anymore.
THE LAST DAYS
I just need you to be able to tell people I was here, I felt, I lived and I loved as much as I could, while I could. And that the person that I loved, was you.
THE SLIPSTREAM WE’RE CAUGHT IN
If time takes me (and time will take me), I will come back as a single feather.
So please come back as a breeze.
THE DEATH OF LOVE
Oh love. Why is your body so still, why do your muscles sing no more, why does your chest not rise and fall.
Oh love. Why is your skin so cold, why do your eyes not trace my face, why do you not get up and accept my warm embrace.
Oh love. I have no regrets for our mistakes, no heart left to break, for you have taken it with you to the grave.
Oh love. Love that turned to death, death that turned to longing, longing that turned away from me, leaving me here to bear it alone.
Oh love. Oh love. Oh my love.
THE MISSING EXCLAMATION MARKS
You’re ok. Breathe. Just breathe. Open your eyes. Come back. It’s ok. It’s over now. You’re ok. Wake up. Please wake up. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me. I love you so fucking much. Come back.
THE LYING TREE
The least you could do, is uncross your heart. Unhope to die.
THE DAY AFTER THE CRASH
The sun still, surprisingly, came up and shone down onto the cold, metal leftovers. No loud noises. No screams. No breaking glass. Just silence and sunshine. You would be forgiven for thinking that this all happened on another planet. It didn’t.
THE FUTURE IS THE PAST WAITING TO HAPPEN
And though you may not be able to imagine what I was like, I did live.
More importantly, I loved.
THE NEXT STOP
Only because it’s still so raw and real. Soon I’ll just be a series of images that sometimes flash through your mind, when you least expect it. And after that, only a few will stay.
Then, one. A memory of a memory.
THE SUN OR THE MOON
Things change the way you feel. And things change.
THE CITY RISES AND FALLS
You were a dream. Then a reality. Now a memory.
THE BLUE LINES
I couldn’t convince you that the blue you see is the same blue that I see. But maybe that’s how lovers know they’re meant to love; they see the same blue. And they both know it.
THE WATER IS ON FIRE
I’m not scared of never meeting you. I’m scared of having met you, and let you go.
THE SECONDS BEFORE LAUNCH
This isn’t me missing you. This is me missing the me I used to be.
I Wrote This For You Page 2