[x]

MultivolentOne year and two months ago he handed her a gun and two bullets and said “Whenever you’re ready, just let me know”.

She laughed at him, thinking he must be joking, and ignoring the cold weight of it in her hands she asked,
“What’s the second bullet for?”

He never answered her.

.

“Tell me, when you’re ready.” He said.
She followed the motion of his mouth and shaped his words against the back of her teeth, enjoying the taste. Then she let Logic cut out Tongue to keep Heart from saying something stupid, and sewed her lips shut so he wouldn’t see the blood dribble leak from

pH.                                   Dear

         Sometimes I wish you would just strangle me.

         Then at least this pain would have an end.

          I don't want to feel my heart in your mouth,
       crushed up against your teeth with your tongue.

      &

dew that tastes like saltwatershe left 9 messages on his answering machine:

"when i grow up, i want to be a quick-change artist."

"there was no dew on the grass this morning."

"please talk to me."

"baby."

"i."

"miss."

"you."

"i think i'm in love."

"i love you."
- -

he called back and answered:

"when i grow up, i want to be happy."

"there was dew on the spots you cried on."

"we've already said too much."

"i miss you too. just look up at the stars and remember that a thousand miles away, i'm looking at the same stars."

"ok."
he didn't answer the last one.

- -

for every day he didn't spend with her, she wrote his name on a post-it note and taped it on her

wanderlust.00. she was afraid if she held him for too long, she’d lose this feeling – the rise and collapse of weak lungs, butterflies numbing her brain and tricking her vowels into slurs, hearts flooding and spilling over into messy red and white pools of affection.

01. she’s all eyelashes, splintered bones and eager dreams, while he’s just newspaper print, rough lips and hopelessness. they met in the turbulent center of a hurricane, swept up in disaster and lost in the redorange flames of another blazing skyline.

02. forever was seven letters too many, three syllables too close to smothering him. words didn’t matter to her a

Existentialism Exploration2 a.m. on Sunday morning and he’s staring at the ceiling, counting water stains.

He goes to church, just because, and listens to the sound of words like “grace” and “salvation” and lets his eyes find the broken lines and chips in the podium.
Breakfast is toast, because that’s all the diner downstairs serves, and it’s always eaten in five neat bites.
Light is always white, never sterile.
Stars are planets, never things to be wished upon.
And people are atoms and molecules and tissue and sliding muscle.

He works as a dentist, and asks “How has life been treating you lately?” and makes

Then and NowSomeday, you'll be able to tell him.

(You'll both be several years older.
You'll both have jobs. A home. A family)

You'll finally be able to say;

"Hey. I loved you."

And you will mean it, and you will speak in past tense, instead of present, so he can go home to his kids (the ones you babysit every Saturday) and you can still be friends.

(Because he will have forgotten that time you told him there really was no such thing as a past tense "loved". He will have forgotten the time you told him that it was just a comfort word; a word made up by people in couples therapy trying desperately to make it okay to not-be-okay anymore, to make it

ardor.all I can feel is this pulsing, the infinite beating
inside my brain, under my palms, racing through my veins.
the music mixes with your heart sounds and all I care about is that
beat
beat
beat.

it’s like you’re stealing the oxygen from my throat, like we’re
pressed tight enough that there’s not enough air for the two of us,
and I’m lost in the sound of your breathing.
(it’s too cliché to say you take my breath away.)

you burn into me and set my heart on fire, smoldering through layers of
flesh, capillaries and ventricles until you get to the very core, filling it with
fresh ashes and the spark t

ashes.the sky is all ashes today, painted black with the burnt ruins with what-used-to-be.

words are all i have left, so i guess i should say them, even if you'll never hear them:

i would've painted the world pink for you, just to make you smile [even though we both know i'd rather it be blue]. i would've jumped off a bridge with you, felt the wind screaming into my skin and fear rushing through my being, just to hold your hand. i would've ripped down all my glass walls if it meant you'd let me in.

we could've drawn a map of the world and then, maybe, we wouldn't feel so lost. but we'd probably screw it up anyway since we're both bad at directio

Acutorsion She wanted to study killer whales and polar icecaps. Instead, she found herself studying his killer smile and the freckles floating across his collar bone. She liked pretending they were icebergs, trapped in his frosty smooth skin, and that if she could just get beneath the ice she’d find her oceanic heaven.

Later, she found herself studying her face and the colors and pigments the human epidermis could turn after. She counted the number of black and blue islands an

soapstone heart.1.

we were on and off, just like rain and light switches, and i thought maybe we had the same amount of electricity. i sometimes thought of telling you 'no', but my kisses said 'yes', and my heart just wouldn't learn how to shut down.

it pissed me off.

2.

i pretended i didn't know your name and asked you to whisper it in my ear, just to be the only one to hear your voice. i'm selfish, but i think you already know that.
(if i could make a lasso made of gravity, i'd pull the stars down and take them. i promise i'd share with you.)

3.

you gave me a necklace that you carved from soap stone, and i couldn't tell if it was an arrowhead or a h

roadsigns.i.
i have searched maps, road signs,
songs, hearts. i have opened my eyes
and my hands to the rain, fairytales
singing in my ears. i have closed my eyes
and let my nightmares and demons
find me, i have

screamed on the insides, heart
barely beating. i have dreamed
of my own destruction, whispered
into the silence, prayed for the answer -

ii.
could i ask you for one last favor?

when you're sad, remember the way
i would hug you. when you're laughing,
remember that my laughter doesn't sound
the same without yours. when you're lonely,

remember that i tried to fill your empty spaces. remember
that i'd fall for you if it saved you

SereinOne.
What if you left?
And I was alone with the memory of the brush of your eyelashes against your cheek. The pages of your soul sighing shut, like a last breath. Like a last chance. (Like the shudder of a last chance.)

Two.
You're like black and white photographs (that are really just shades of grey), and summer rainstorms that came too late for spring; The puzzle pieces that seem to fit, but don't. You're a kitten tiger playing unnotice

ScratchitiYesterday, I told you the gates of heaven were made of glass, not light. You looked at me and said there wasn’t any difference. Smiling, I just shook my head and turned away.

Tomorrow,
I’ll rent a room down on Chandelier Street and tell you to come. I’ll dump all the furniture in the hallway, so that the only thing in this place, will be your cream seashell-dust soul, and board up every window so your eyes never seek anything except the white sunshine from the sliding glass doors of the balcony.
You’ll stand barefoot on oaken floorboards (because I stole your shoes), against pale walls, with that little frown wrink

12 : fuck"let's forget for a moment that love doesn't exist and rainbows don't last forever," he whispered, running his hand along the curve of her waist. she choked down a,"but i can't," and pulled him close to her. it's hard for her to remember that his heart doesn't beat for love when he kisses her collarbone and the smell of rainwater makes her dizzy.

"i want you, ohgodiwantyou." and she couldn't help but hope that maybe he wanted her for more than one reason.

x

he called it
"fucking" and she whispered,

the ways we destroy ourselves.one.

we were silences stretched out,
lingering in the pitter-patter of muffled
heartbeats. we were broken glass
digging into too-fragile lungs, we were
the shaking of the nervous earth beneath
our feet. we were bitter unforgiveness and
the screams of the world around us, we were
empty spaces, we were

everything but beautiful.

two.

happiness is on vacation.

three.

life is a sidewalk, he told me. life is a sidewalk,
and regret and pain and tears are the cracks,

and sometimes, he tells me,
sometimes, you can't fill them.

four.

there's a shatter in the next room, a broken
breath, a shaking in the bones.

we're all broken,
darl

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EndismLet me kiss you
After the rhythm and burn
And sweat and gasp
of running till I quiver.

Then maybe
you’d feel this strangled heartbeat
throbbing and beating
and screaming and pleading
in this coffin silent body.

Its tired
of being alone

It wishes
It could crawl up my throat
And into your mouth
And wrap its coronary arteries
About your insides.

It doesn’t know
There was never,
will never

Reality.
          She used to count the number of ways people smiled with their eyes.

          Now she counts the number of lies and ulterior motives; the echo of his voice hot against the shell of her ear, his explicitly implicit reminder that “They only want one thing, love”.  People aren’t clean things anymore. (she has to remind herself that people are not things, and that he will not/could not ever own her.)

Before. I never yelled at you. (Yelling doesn’t do any good when nobodies listening.) My screams always ended up on paper, usually blue notepads, or post it notes. Sometimes I imagined mailing them to you, or folding them up and sticking them in places I knew you’d go, but then I’d ask myself: was it really worth it? The answer was always no.

For awhile, I was your ADHD dopamine high, and you were my question unsolved. All you are now is that address and phone num

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Penumbra

by ~TheAfterWhys, Apr 25, 2009, 1:37:20 PM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / Philosophy & Perspectives

He sprinkled glitter between the sheets of her bed and said;

“Now you can sleep among the stars.”

She woke cold, exhaling icy comet trails, and wishing she’d reminded him how empty space was; (wishing she’d remembered to tell him all she wanted was to sleep among his arms.)

_{. i'm sorry .}

She collected atoms and draped them over his shoulders in pearlescent strands until the shadows of his skin sweated starlight. Her eyelashes brushed against the flesh of his wrist as she shut out the sight of his empty eyes, her lips/mouth/heart kissing the white marble wave hiding the pulse in his arm. (a blistered thumb spanned the ravine, a pile of melted razors at her feet)

She whispered to his veins,

“Dear heroes of mine,
please,
be strong a little longer
and tell this to his heart

tell him,
tell him for me
that i brought him universes
infinity in the infinitesimal

tell him
i brought him
everything he has ever been to me.

tell him
it isn't better this way

tell him
I said
Please.Don't.Leave.”

_{i love you}

Penumbraby ~TheAfterWhys

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Philosophy & Perspectives

_{Penumbra - a partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination.}

And she prayed that her little red cape messengers, would make it to his heart before gravity got the better of it.

Distance (any kind of distance) leaves us with miles of empty air space, and no word long enough or fast enough to fill it. For all so far away - I miss you, will miss you, do miss you, always.

[Sparky, this is for/inspired by you via 'holograph theory']

~~love 0 0~~

~~joy 0 0~~

wow 1 1

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~TangerineTerranova Mar 3, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I LOVE this!
especially tell him for me
that i brought him universes
infinity in the infinitesimal

~TheAfterWhys Mar 3, 2012

Thank you

(I quite like that line too)

~RequiemsandReveries Dec 29, 2010

This is ridiculously good. I read it a dozen times before commenting. Really deep, did he attempt suicide in this? The 1st two lines are really powerful, really draw the reader in right away. Superb!

~TheAfterWhys Dec 31, 2010

I'm glad you liked it so much. And in a sense, yes, it was about people who tend to mutilate themselves emotionally or physically for one reason or another.

Thank you, for the fave and the wonderful comment.

~RequiemsandReveries Dec 31, 2010

You're so welcome

*CrimzonRose Dec 22, 2010 Writer

Your work has been featured here: [link]

~TheAfterWhys Dec 24, 2010

Thank you!

I really don't feel like I deserve it, I haven't written something in so long.

*CrimzonRose Dec 31, 2010 Writer

You're welcome and you do deserve it whether you have written
in awhile or not, because if a person can keep going back to read
what you have written in the past and still find pleasure in doing
so...then you must have written something that is worth still being
recognized.

I love your poetry...old or new, so don't stop writing!

~TheAfterWhys Dec 31, 2010

Thank you. I love to know that you guys still like reading my stuff (even the old stuff).

~thornsandpaper Apr 15, 2010

i still love the idea of sleeping among stars, even if it feels empty as space.

this is amazing.

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