I cannot separate the good from the bad. I feel torn like the woman cut in half in a magician’s box or coffin or whatever you may call that box of illusion like rabbits in dark hats, disappearing and reappearing like dollar bills. Up your sleeve, you had your own special tricks. Blinded by the gifts I’d mistaken as your love language. If only I knew how the thrills could turn into drills for the fire we’ve started. The flickers made room for catastrophes so soon we realized our innocence was all but dust and ashes, replaced by two adults being suffocated under the weight of the smoke of our burnt dreams. Great expectations birthing greater disappointments. We leaned our ear against the seashell to hear the ocean when we had the waves sing to us at our disposal.

Back to that dim-lit restaurant near Oxford Street. Back to when you’ve had me in the palm of your hand and I thought I was the one hunting, yet I’m haunted ever since. As I’m writing, writing on and on, I remind myself to kill my darlings and I feel like I made you up in my mind and all those moments we were on cloud nine and you made me feel like a Mona Lisa. We’ve been through a lot. A lot. I leaned on you for support when you had the invisible terms and conditions coming in only to discover the devil hiding behind your smile. You must have cared. A lot. Looking back I can see all the red flags, all the ups and downs we’ve been through felt a lot like I was at Six Flags.

I wonder if you have a rotten heart and when I fail to find any symptoms I realize you were hiding under false pretenses, under your heavy storms of love with thunder striking your explosive madness showing your true colors just for a split second. A flash, where I see your scars unhealed, hidden behind power figures. Your personality rotting under the grotesque shadows of pretension. Phantom of insecurity flashing like a camera across your face occasionally, like the summer sun visiting winter. I was drunk on the sticky air of nostalgia. I should have married the bed the bed. Bury the hatch the bad the bad. Kill a couple of Bills for peace, my escapism. This “situationship” my penitentiary, my burning sun I’ve held hostage at the bottom of a wild boiling heart writing tale after tale with no sad endings, while you wrote all those tales to suffocate me with the synthetic scent of roses masking the air my oxygen my bliss. We leaned our ear against the seashell to hear the ocean when we had the waves sing to us at our disposal.

Box of forevers

Crisis creeping in like morning sun signaling
Passing time dying
Slow.
Untamed ticks and tocks
Consistent bursts of seconds beating like a
Young heart. Young at heart. Out of
Control we roll & sway within
The low, the deep, we cannot slow down
Every second gone is gone forever.
Torn.
Take the malleable memories
Like a pill, brains warped & sucked in
Time like blackholes & dropped
Like tiny bombs on a war zone nesting on my
Chest— my eyes no longer see my I’s— all
Possessed by my fall my fallen grasp on
Reality—
Each time we pick our pieces up, clean our
Tiny knives messy shards
Up so we hurt none other than
Us.
Dust them off from the attic
Of our mind, we thought we
Could abandon them in a box of
Forevers or mementos, each tick separating us
Carry us forward and back to another version we
Label as moments
Magical only to be bombarded
With dark dark elements escaping Pandora’s
boxes. Robbed of what a sunlit day
Has to offer yet we can be broken but
Powerful—
Pick up the light from the prism of glass broken
Use them as a weapon with words
Venomous vindictive conveyed in a
Lullaby lethal, rhythmic. Waking
Dreams up so we can embrace escapism
Put our nightmares to sleep deep
Deep. No forever is untainted with
You and your memories red dark with
Fangs wearing a smile or a violent hiss
A monstrous angel or an innocent
Devil you are a work of confusion.