CXCVI

This freckle on my top lip is new

It’s never been kissed by you

I wonder if it ever will

Be

Something you are accustomed to

Or if it will belong to a stranger

Some day

Soon

I wonder who

Is that something I’d hope for?

Or am I too busy hoping for you?

Somebody help me know

This freckle, where is it going to go

[Image: Giedre Dukauskaite for The Edit]

CLXXXV

Don’t fall in love in airports

At least not til you’ve boarded the plane

At least not til you’ve entered the gate

At least wait - 

Oh, there she goes again.

Strangers are romantic

It’s true what they say 

But strangers are never as desirable as you might think them to be

And the ones that are, it turns out

Are never strangers anyway

[Jean Campbell for Vogue Russia]

CLXXXIII

An Ode to Friendship

Not many people do the days with you

You know, each and every day

The day you wake up and your heart’s so heavy you need help carrying it out the door

The day you thought would be fine or even great and it wasn’t, it was almost unliveable

The day your world falls apart in front of your very eyes and you don’t even know how to say it let alone do anything to stop it

The day it starts fitting back together again

The day something happens

The day nothing happens

The day you feel everything all at once

The day you feel nothing at all

There’s not so many people there, on all of those days, or even most, or even a few

And the only way to know is to know 

And the only way to see is to wait, and see

It’s easier to be there, almost, for the months, for the years 

Skipping the tough stuff

Hearing the resolution story

Getting the short of it, because the long of it is done

And it’s not everyone’s burden to bear

The days

But there are some who will

And there are some for whom you will

And there is the beauty 

And the blessing 

And the best of everything 

Don’t you forsake it

Not even for a minute of those many many days

Don’t you forsake it

CLXXVII

Are you still in love with me
Like the way you used to be or is it changing?
Does it deepen over time like the river
That is winding through the canyon?

Are you still in love with her?
Do you remember how you were before the sorrow?
Are you closer for the tears
Or has the weight of all the years left you hollow?

Are we strangers now?
Like the Ziegfeld Gal and the vaudeville show?
Are we strangers now
Like rock and roll and the radio?
Like rock and roll and radio

- Like Rock & Roll and Radio, Ray LaMontagne


[Image: Russh Magazine]

CLXXVI

To anyone who’s ever crossed oceans for love. To anyone who’s ever faked a love of fine art, or quick-crammed knowledge of ancient Rome or spent more money than they had to spend for love. To anyone who’s ever agreed to a new home, a new culture, a new way of life and a new skyline for love. To anyone who’s ever promised, “I’ll wait for you”, who’s ever lost a presence and gained a pen pal, who’s ever waited by the phone for love. To anyone who’s ever granted a second (third, fourth, fifth) chance, who’s learnt to forgive or just to forget. Who’s learnt to trust again, for love. I salute you. I hope they made it worth it. I pray they gave you all that you deserve. Because you gave it to them. Because love is a risk worth taking.

 Because only the people crazy enough to believe that love exists, are the ones who find it at home in their hearts.

[Image: Achro SS17]

CLXXIV

There’s a reason we celebrate love the way that we do - weddings and anniversaries and valentines and roses for no reason at all - because as much as we live in a world that honours independence, and the power of one, of going it alone and making a lot of things happen for yourself; none of us can truly deny the sheer joy and great relief it is to find for yourself another human being who’s willing to give you every part of them, forever, and to take every part of you as theirs. We all want to be understood and if that’s what love is, understanding, then the surest critic can’t dismantle the innate human desire to be fully known, and fully loved. Maybe marriages fail because we can’t hold on to our independence and our deep desire for an other both. We must decide. And for some, the decision is harder than once thought, the fear of losing yourself a simple byproduct of a culture that tells you to be dependent is to be weak and to be resilient is to always have an escape plan hatched that only you know about. But it isn’t true. It isn’t true. Love cannot operate in such hostile terrain, it can only ever be a shadow of itself in such foreign territory. Love is brave - to love another truly is a brave act, and a noble one, noble in the way that self serving and self seeking never could be. There's a lie going around that too many hearts are breaking over - how many more can it take? Before we all awake, to love as the ultimate letting go and getting; the most selfless and rewarding; the truest act; the noblest pursuit; the only stealer of breath, still-er of a beating heart. To be independent, in truth, is to be alone. When will they let us know it?

[Image: unkown]

CLXVI

You have softened my body. You have softened my soul. Now you're hard up against it - the world, your own fear, all of it - and I'm losing you. 

[Image: Gemma Ward for Wonderland Magazine]

CLXV

Song for someone - 

I've circled the sun 3.45479 times with your ring on my finger, my darling. With your soul publicly wed to mine. And I regret not one of those 1260 days - not for any of their harmony, hurt, joy or sorrow. I understand you far more than I imagined and far less than I hoped. You see me both deeply and soulfully, and yet not at all, I feel. And yet here we are, still making our fourth go around this fateful orbit, and suddenly you say you're unsure. 

Immensity of fear and un-quietable loathing are knocking on my door. I can hear their jaunts from every room in the house, and I wonder how much longer I can prevent them from coming in.

You tell me, my once confident, courageous-love. How long ago did you open your door to all the demons we swore to keep at bay, or atleast to pronounce to the household before welcoming in to supper. 

Promise and trust. Where did those friends go? It seems they slipped out in the night when I thought you were sleeping soundly with me, but you were not. How can I call them home? Tell me. If it's a rousing song of my deep affection, I'll sing it. If it's a rigorous defence held against all of your afflictions, I'll take up my shield now for you, my love. Just name them to me. If it's unabashed honesty in recalling all of our failures, I've strength to face them. I've strength for us, my darling. Do you? Have you enough to let me carry you? Have you enough to say you'd like me to?

I don't know how the next 200 days will play themselves out for us, or even whether we will make it to the completion of orbit number four. A harrowing but honest thought, I tell you. All I know is that my heart skips a beat when it hears you say my name out loud, in a crowded or empty room my every fibre yearns for a sight or smell or taste of you, if ever there were a star I'd want to wish upon it would be the one that twinkles in each of your deep and soulful irises, and if tomorrow you tell me you love me no longer I know it would be as if every bone in my body were simultaneously broken.

Stay with me, baby. Stay with me. Stay with me, my suddenly lost love. Stay with me. Stay. 

CXLIV

I know what the love of a good man can do. 

I wish I could say 

I could have done it for myself, 

but it isn't true. 

A good man will take the negative noise a woman can't help but hear, 

and speak louder to her. 

He'll stand before her, and block it all from view. 

He'll fill up the room if he has to. 

I look in the mirror, 

most days, 

and admire what I see, 

because the love of a good man taught me to. 

I encounter a stranger and don't waver, 

or fall 

from standing on my own two feet, 

because the love of a good man taught me to. 

I hear the sound of my own voice, 

in the hush of a quiet room, 

and I speak in strong, steady beats, 

because the love of a good man taught me to. 

I think I knew, 

all along, 

that I was worth the world and more, 

but the love of a good man let me wrestle 

with the chance that I wasn't,

and never come up short. 

We like to be self-made, and battle-worn, 

and wisdom-aged, 

and hard-won. 

But I know what the love of a good man can do. 

He took everything I already knew, and proved it to be true.

CXXXI

10/5: What does love do?
Love would lean in, and accept.

CXXIX

His smell still lingers, for what feels like an eternity, in the room after he has left it. Skin-smell, and hair-smell, and sleep-smell. A sweet fragrance; the sweetest. I pray for it not to dissipate, but the ordinary inevitably takes it's hold, and I can't stop myself from filling up the spaces where he once was. A flash and a dance of splendour and then a long, arduous awaiting. In ardour. In expectation. My own skin can't keep the smell of where he caressed it; can't bottle it up to hold onto. So I wait. And the promise of return tingles every fibre of my being. Will he come again? And when? And how soon? Not for my skin to know. In ardour. In expectation. It awaits.

[Images: Jennifer Stenglein]

CXXVIII

"I love you" is still a startling sound, even after all these years. When it comes from your lips, it is. When your eyes don't leave my face, it is. When your hands won't stop. I love you too. Even when my lungs give out from the weight of it all upon me, I do. I love you still.

CXXVII

You can't buy happiness, and you can't buy time. You can't buy true, authentic relationship, or love. You can't buy hope, you can't buy meaning, you can't buy any of it. The best things in life really are free - in the sense that they cost you no material value. But intrinsically, they are not free. They are hard fought, and won. They are bought with self-sacrifice, bleeding hearts, tired eyes, worn hands. They are broken and then painstakingly mended, time and time again. I should know, I have tasted them all, and all of them have taken as much as they have given to me. It's on you whether they're truly worth the fight.
I know the pursuit of happiness is. I know counting the minutes and making them count is. I know love is, and friendship, no matter what the cost - these things are not truly free. I know hope is worth the fight - I've known it most when hope has left me. I know meaning is worth the search, and the ache, and the candle you hold for it, and the empty place your reserve for it in your heart. Nothing ill-fitting can last in that place, it has to be right. So we wait.
I've been around town, not too many times, but enough times to know that it's never the things that you think will matter that do. Life is the ultimate catch-you-by-surprise, and you'll never see her coming, even when you do.



[Image: Myself Germany, July '17]

CXXIV

The kind've love that'll ditch the health train for a moment and buy the fresh baked Jam Doughnuts from the bakery across the street in a town you’ve never been. Because you never know, they might just be the best of your life. And that's a revelation I want to share with you. 

CXXIII

I cried like a baby when I had to leave you. Because the truth is I don't like living without you. I don't like the waking, I don't like the sleeping, I don't like the eating, or the walking, or the talking, the decision-making, or the question-asking. I don't like spending a day you don't spend with me. I hate to open my eyes and not see you, even from across the room. I can't see you from across the world. I can't feel your touch. I can't have you warm my cold feet. Or crinkle your face at my strange personality. I can do it all without you but I just can't bear to anymore. And it's so hard. 

I cried like a baby when I left you, because it's so hard not to. And I'm sitting on the plane with fat tears in my eyes trying not to let the distance get to me. Even as it grows. Even as I go farther in the wrong bloody direction.

Take me back, baby. Take me back. 

XCVIII

“I love you,” she whispered, without a hint of doubt or shadow of regret.

“I love you, I do.”

“I love you more than I have words to say; more than there are words to say.”

“To the ends of my being, and with every stumbling beat of this gentle heart…”

And now she stopped, and caught her breath, and put down her pen.

“I love you,” she whispered, with the utmost certainty, and tore every one of her precious words apart.

Because loving isn’t enough, and loving will never be enough.

Love was her escape, and Lord knows it couldn’t last misuse in that way.

First, to face her demons, and then, to love…

“I love you,” she whispered, “… I love you. But loving you just isn’t enough.”

[Images via Pinterest]

XCVII

'Love is free and time is fleeting.' 

Maybe that’s why real love is so rare; so fragile. Because imperfect people make imperfect decisions, and in the blink of an eye a person can choose not to love. Not to feel. Not to acknowledge. People make that choice everyday – and lives are changed, homes are broken, walls are put up and lifelines shut down. I do not wish to be one of those people. Love isn’t fleeting in the sense that a breeze is fleeting, or a flash of lightening. It is momentary, in that we make the mistake of loving only momentarily. Love exists. I know that it exists. It exists when I cause it to exist. It exists when I give it life, and action, and voice. It exists when I acknowledge it and when I nurture it. It exists, more so than anything else this world has to offer. Love love, because it is so precious. Make it your flag, and wave it.

[Images via Pinterest]

LXXXIX

I don't expect a thing, honey
Work with me on this
No dollar
No declaration
No private suite
And no twinge
Of regret when I walk away from you
Down the alley
Of lost loves and thieves
I don't expect a thing from you
But honey, you deserve more than me.

[Image: Celine]

LXXVIII

There is only one love language. "Die to self". 



[Words: Christine Caine]

LXXVII

A lifetime is barely enough. 

[Image form personal collection]