dreamersdownfall

[dreamersdownfall]

my heart hasn't been whole for a long time.

i keep the glass shards in my pockets. dust them over my eyelids. taste them on my tongue like bitterness. every piece holds a memory, and every night, i choose one glittering shard and hold it poised over where my heart should be. which memory will draw blood tonight? which memory will make me ache and ache until i press my hands over the vacant space of my chest? when will the emptiness stop feeling like a wound?

there are a few pieces missing. i know you have them clutched tightly in your palms. blood drips. i count the years between us in all the bright hurt in your eyes. you and i, our story was always going to end before our hearts stitched together. i remember every soft smile of yours that couldn't stop the sand from slipping through the hourglass, the falling and falling and falling, time slipping away, every kiss too desperate. every second was closer to when you'd leave, wasn't it? every second spent locked in our bodies, so helpless to do anything but love and hold and wait, locked in that hourglass, you falling with the sand, fingers outstretched. i missed you before you even left. i felt the pain of our demise tinged in every memory we made. a knife, that's what it was. twisting and twisting, aching and aching, eyes closed and coming undone, knowing that when they opened, the other wouldn't be there to kiss the wounds closed. farewells from the beginning.

but i remember you smiling, and i remember you pulling at the loose threads of my heart, tugging me closer, tangling it in your fingers, feeling the unravelling of every wall of my heart, every wound and every kiss sewn into the rough fabric that rubs against the constant longing living where my heart should. the broken pieces of glass that crunch under my feet where my heart should. maybe if i pulled forth the memory of your glasses. our fatality. the cracked hearts. maybe if i dreamed, i wouldn't be pieces of a person instead of a whole. maybe if i blew into my palms to give this wish its wings, i would finally ease the ache in my heart like tearing paper in the wind.

but you've pressed warm hands against this cold heart and wrenched it out with that soft look in your eyes. you've pried it open with gentle hands, torn it with tender fingers and left it vulnerable all over. left it raw and hurting. i remember when you left, my thread on the floor, when the loneliness settled in my bones and i spooled the thread back around my wrist. tucked it back into my chest with nothing but glass shards for it to stitch. it hurts and hurts and hurts and this longing is base, it is bare, it gnaws at where my heart used to live and somewhere, i wonder.

i wonder if there's a paper bird out there, wings faltering against the wind, tearing and tearing until there are no pieces to be found. until i realise they're in your palms like the missing fragments of my heart. until i stop staring at an hourglass whose time has long since run out.

we still replay in my dreams. on a moonless night, you tuck my hair behind my ear. you smile and i smile back. in my dreams, we are still those people. in my dreams, we are still lost and don't want to be found.

in my dreams, my heart is whole.

[dreamersdownfall]

intimacy wounds around people's wrists at night, when it thinks no one's looking:

i. i can feel it sliding around mine. it feels a lot like the way your gaze lingers.

ii. now that i have an invisible ribbon around my wrist, will you undo it? pull it slowly while staring into my eyes? feel it slide around your wrist, too?

iii. tonight, i want to have my heart handled with care. i want to do something about the way you look tonight, like all you want to do is dance with me slowly. like dancing isn't what you want to do at all.

iv. in the night, people unbutton their hearts and let fingerprints stain every inch. they leave lipstick kisses on the coldest parts of their soul. well? will you let me stain your neck red? let my fingers trace the contours of your heart?

v. don't answer that. kiss me before you do anything permanent. unbutton my cardigan, then unbutton my heart, too. make me come undone.

vi. we're all alone. i'm enveloped by the heat of your gaze. i'm a wrapped up secret in the night. unwrap me. unravel me. i'm your confession for the hour. your clandestine affair. kiss me as desperately as you can.

vii. my paper heart feels crumpled with the way you're looking at me right now. it feels half-opened, like abandoned origami. there are three buttons left, the intimacy's tightening around your wrist. the end feels so far away. what will you do now?

viii. are we ships drifting in the night? a graze, a kiss, then gone? a mistake in the morning, a dream of the night?

ix. you're a song i forget by daybreak. words half forgotten, half remembered, a fading fingerprint. the memory of a lipstick stain. when the stars rise, when i see you, the words come unbidden to my lips. words i've learned by heart. a dance i can only recall at night.

x. you can try to forget me, if you want. but the ribbon won't let you.

xi. i'll let you pray for me, i think. i'll let you kneel. it looks good on you, reverence.

xii. i'm lost in the haze around your heart. half drunk on the way you say my name. i don't need a map to find a way to your mouth, though. i don't need a compass to see the north star in your eyes.

xiii. i'm taking over your dreams now. i'm pulling at your ribbon. making this secret one worth keeping. the walls are watching as i stand on my toes and kiss your neck. they hear the way you whisper my name. smell the lies bleeding into truth. they're watching. should we should give them something to talk about?

[dreamersdownfall]

there is something about the word lover, like it was made for us. like love was made for us. languid and starry and kisses everywhere but my mouth. hands and gazes that linger. lovers. a painting, hands outstretched, fingers never touching. a great divide. palms destined to never press. it feels like a fairytale. it feels like hurt.

every night, i want. i want for things i should not have, i want for hands that should not be yours and i want and want and want for you to kiss my heart and heal these cracks, pour cold starlight down every fracture, let silver hold me together until i can see you again. everyone tells me to love someone easy, but i don't want to kiss someone easy. i want to kiss you. midnight, midnight, when will the night burn with our candles? when will your hands reach for me, shaking, like you can't believe i'm real? when will we become more than what the world painted us to be?

the tarnished clock in my fairytale room leans closer and closer to twelve. my heart beats faster than the steady tick tick tick and i think i see, i think i see your shadow stretching in the candlelight, i think i see you on my balcony, my body moves like light, and then there we are, facing each other, so, so still that for a moment, we are the painting, the lovers, but this time when your fingers reach for me, the red thread at my fingers tugging at the one tied to yours, when your desperation embraces mine, we touch. we touch like the lovers never could. my fingers in your hair and your hands all over me, mapping the star points of my mouth and the cities at the tips of my fingers and the ports in the sea of my hair.

we are the lovers that touch and touch and touch.

sometimes i wonder if we are what the myths spoke of. if you are the sun and i am the moon and every midnight we walk upon a bridge of stars to kiss. if the red string spans all the light years between us, if you twist it around your fingers pretending it is a lock of my hair. we cannot, we cannot, we cannot.

but i want to. everytime i kiss the mole at the edge of your lip. i want to. everytime you close your eyes to the sound of your name on my lips. a prayer. i want to.

i want to.

[dreamersdownfall]

i think you like the risk of me.

fingers sliding over my wrist, around it, when nobody's looking, but i am. i am. i'm still watching when you lift it to your mouth and kiss my skittering pulse. i watch your heart shining through your eyes, and i wonder, i wonder when you let it slip out of your sleeve and fall into my careless hands. when you stopped calling me friend and started thinking about all the danger behind my smile.

i like to lie to you as well as i lie to myself.

and you close your eyes and you savour it, every letter of the word friend, the lie tasting like the skin of my neck did, i think, leather and whiskey and vanilla. and i never tell you how thoroughly you make me come undone every night, and you never tell me how fast your heart beats when i start playing dirty. your dreams are all red neon lights and me looking at you, always looking at you exactly the way you like to be looked at. you'll never admit it. you already have, when you stare at me like that. all i can do is run before i'm caught. your fingers are around my wrist. danger, i think, danger, danger, danger, but i've always liked to invite trouble to kiss my neck, and i think i'm going to ask you to do the same.

liar, come pretend with me one more time. liar, wrap your fingers around my wrist. liar, you whisper, break my heart one more time, and our gazes are locked and your hands are everywhere and i'm breaking, i break with every dip of your eyes to my mouth, i break with every time you know you want to call me lover and with every time you don't. i break and i break and i break, and you put me back together because that's what friends do. isn't it?

but you've always liked hiding your heart in plain sight, and you like it when someone might look, and you let your longing wrap around me until i don't know what i am anymore. until i want what i cannot have. lie to me, please. kiss my shoulder. tell me goodbye and hide it in your eyes, tuck it in your heart, put me in there, too. you put your hands on me and i can't breathe. i tell you i'm not thinking about you and you close your eyes like you're praying. you say my name like one, too, a prayer for mercy. you look good when you want me, i think. do it more.

pray to me more.

[dreamersdownfall]

slow ruinations, that's what we are. broken ruminations. the tinder and the flint; the ink bleeding through water; the violence to the blade. we would have been beautiful, i think, if we were not who we are. if you weren't shades of menace, shades of every storm that roiled around me and called me shipwreck.

you wouldn't like me any other way.

i wouldn't.

why won't you take my hand? you're scared. scared of what i'd do for you. scared of every city i'd take in your name. every ship i'd break to give you treasure. i hold my truth in my palms. i wear my broken heart on display. it is yours for the taking. yours to ruin.

i don't want it. i don't want to leave you with ruin. the only thing i want to burn is every prayer i made in your name. maybe if i stopped letting you slide that burning gaze all over me, i wouldn't be so unravelled. maybe if your smile didn't feel like violence to my heart, i wouldn't feel so utterly unmade.

would you let me kiss you if i tossed coins in churches? let me kiss you if i pressed them over your closed eyelids and called you holy? religion can be turned into villainy quicker than i will fall to my knees for you. prayers can turn to ash. my love will turn you to myth and legend.

perhaps if i were a god, i would forgive you.

you are my god.

i am your siren; i have called to you, enamoured you and lit your heart into tar black flames. there is nothing holy about us. nothing soft and tender. turn me into a bitter memory and nothing more. i don't want you.

you don't want to want me. you lie and lie and lie but your heart has already slid its fingers into my hair. its knuckles graze my cheek. your heart wants more. your heart wants to sin. let it.

my heart can want and want until it fades away. i don't want to fall. i don't want to kiss your reckless smile. i don't want the dark and the light to blur. i will be lost.

you have already lost. wear the rewards of your defeat around your neck. i will make every moment forth seem like a victory. tell me you love me.

i will not.

is that as close to a lie as you will get?

any more and i will come undone under their weight.

then i will stitch you back together.

[dreamersdownfall]

tonight, you've left me staring at horizons i can never reach. i'm sitting in my mother's record store, and it's dark, but i've turned on the gold fairy lights, the ones wrapped around those old fleetwood mac and nancy sinatra vinyls. the streetlights are dim outside, and it rains. there's only one thing missing. one thing, to make this night the same one it was thirteen years ago.

do you remember?

my eyes are closed. i'm drifting, drifting to a night where—

—where you let the record scratch, eyes never leaving mine, playing the shining by the neighbourhood as if you want me to know. i love you. you want me to know, your hands finding me, mine finding you, and we're swaying—

—and i'm half-lonely, half-longing, living two nights with one body, eyes still closed, fingers entwined, i'm still pretending my hands are yours. you've painted me in bitter blue stripes of regret, of heartbreak, god, i wish you could turn me into every gentle shade of intimacy like you did that night, and here i am, all the colours in the world, all the tender vulnerability, and you're not here.

and that night, that night, our breaths mingling, noses brushing, your whisper mixing with the rain, the song, so broken, so hopeful, "i want to be your favourite memory," but i never thought you meant it. never thought the edges of this memory would be blurred. when you finally said, "kiss me", and the way it sounded like an echo of my unbeating heart, when you tasted like desperation and a little bit like goodbye, i yearned, i'm yearning, all i am is one unlucky card after another. all i am is the tight want coiled around my heart.

how are you now? if you met me after all these years, would i still look the same? still match the faded photograph memory of a kiss and a song? if you cracked open my heart, all you would find is nostalgia dripping like my tears did when you left. when you stood looking at me, just looking at me, so desperate, so hopeless, everything in your body screaming that you're going to leave, the lies spilling like you were afraid to believe in anything but me. like you were ready to believe in everything but me. a broken reality whose jagged edges never fit our perfect memory.

and when a tear streaks down my cheek, i still wish it was your fingers. i still miss you so much my heart feels taut with pain. cracked open with the way you pressed your forehead to mine and told me we'd stay here forever. well, here i am, here i am, years later, still living one night again and again and again, until i drop my own heart and watch it shatter, watch the pieces scatter, feel the ache like a twisting knife. until i pretend and your hands are in mine again. your eyes are on mine. foreheads pressed, we're about to kiss, aren't we? i'm lost, i'm fading, i'm only alive in this memory, i'm only alive in the past, in the rain with the glow of the lights and your soft, shy smile, with the song outlining us in gold markers, every pang of my heart timed to your every smile, every tear in the present timed to the reckless happiness and the way it broke like waves over the resigned look in your eyes the next day. i'm breaking and i'm undone and i'm still living in the rain, the streetlights, the song. i'm still living in you.

[dreamersdownfall]

we were dancing last night. our eyes never left each other. there were things brimming in your gaze, words you packed away into your heart. my lips parted, but i decided to leave the words sealed in the lining of my heart. i decided to part them to kiss you instead. thirteen times i wanted to say you make me come undone and thirteen times i chose not to; thirteen times my heart beat faster:

i. we let our gazes do all the touching first, didn't we? heated liquid stares of mercury, sliding and sliding and sliding. the slight curve of a smile. you always like to start slow. i want to tell you i long for your heart in my hands; i don't say a word.

ii. our palms press first, then our fingers, lining up like matchsticks i want to light. there is a note of yearning in your eyes, a song of everything you want to say but won't. i want to tell you to say it; my lips remain unparted.

iii. your fingers slide into the spaces of mine, slowly, slowly, you pull me to you, you savour, there is something about dancing, you always say, that feels like hearts stitching themselves together. i want to tell you to do just that. i don't say a word.

iv. if you sew the contours of your heart to mine, will the words finally spill from the linings i've tucked them in? i want to ask you; i don't.

v. you sway with me, your hands are everywhere, your confessions locked up tight. i am only the brush of your mouth with mine; i am only the dip of your head, the strange want in your eyes. i never tell you.

vi. do you realise? we are silhouettes entwined in the dark. your desperate want is so wrapped around mine, blue paint bleeding into the violet, all our words, all our ink smudged. i never told you i was the violet.

vii. i desperately try to see the remnants of the smudged words on your body through my fingers. the ink is spilled. i only glimpse the word love on your neck. the rest are faded lines from the soft violence of my fingers. i never asked you what the rest of it said.

viii. dancing and dancing and dancing to the music of mingled breaths and thoughts unsaid. dancing to your electric smile. we are all held breaths and waiting. i don't ask you how much longer we will wait.

ix. we aren't dancing anymore. you've pressed me to a wall of paintings, paintings of lovers that are us and will never be us at the same time. my heart is ringing with the memory of your kiss, with the anticipation of this one. why are you staring me with so much in your eyes? i never asked.

x. my heart feels like a wild animal pacing in a cage. it is filled with too many words that haven't spoiled yet. your heart is in your eyes. i think they will tie themselves with red threads now. i should have told you. i didn't.

xi. every heartbeat, you lean closer and closer and i want to rip every stitch holding my words together. i almost succeed; and then you kiss me and i'm not thinking anymore. i have no words left.

xii. my hands are all over you. if i trace the contours of you, maybe it will feel like those of your heart. slow coaxing, i am trying to pull the words with gentle tugs at your heartstrings. tell me; am i succeeding now?

xiii. tonight, the words come unbidden to your lips. i love you. i love you. i love you. they taste like cherry wine. they taste like ripped stitches and open seams and spilled words. i want to tell you my heart has finally been telling truths lately. i want to tell you i love you, too. i think i will.

[dreamersdownfall]

you and i, we may be chaos and we may be hatred, but this game we play, it has rules. if they aren't followed, hearts will break.

i. by day, i will call you enemy. by day, i will be armour you cannot break. i will be every vow you dare not speak. you will look at me with restrained longing and barely concealed hatred. your dagger will always find the line at my throat.

ii. by night, i will call you my darling nemesis. you'll smile. i'll undo your chains and kiss your wrists and your eyes will never leave mine. your longing will not be restrained. you can break me now; i'll let you, let you like i never will by daylight.

iii. if you should find your heart in a tossing storm, i will be your anchor, but only if no one's around. i don't like kissing shipwrecks, but i will if your gaze nails me to the wall again, again, with that want. i will, especially when people watch. i will let your ship sink. i will smile.

iv. when we dance, i will let you call a truce. my fingers may slide along your neck, my gaze may seem a roiling sea you want to dive in, but careful, lover, careful. i can drown you and call your ships enemy just as easily. we may dance, but we are still at war.

v. when midnight nears, let me bury my face in your neck. let me be this person, let me wear these clothes i can only slide on at night. i want to take off my armour now. i want you to forget every sin i pressed upon your heart.

vi. i have been a liar all day, will you ask me to lie now, too? ask me. ask me to lie, and all i'll say is i hate you.

vii. when our palms press, and the jagged edges of half of your heart meld with the jagged edges of half of mine, you must kiss my wrist. it's a rule. i'll come undone if you don't.

viii. if you ever break a rule, i will stare at you as though you are a god i am forced to worship. i will turn you holy in the worst ways. i'll glare until your heart beats faster. i know it will, little hummingbird trapped in your throat, butterflies pressing their wings in every corner i'll end up touching. you must let me.

ix. when i ask you where it hurts, you must answer me. you have to press two fingers everywhere it aches so i know where to kiss. you have to hold this secret until your heart feels full with it.

x. if you break a rule, i'll probably let you. if you break a rule, i'll break one, too.

[dreamersdownfall]

i remember you as every facet of every person i used to be.

a broken mirror. every crack for every time i loved you, cold, hard lines dividing my change, every time one of us left the other standing in the rain, needing, wanting, frozen in heartbreak, pale pink ribbons tying emotions into one broken whole. i haven't seen you in years (it was yesterday when i dreamed of you) and in you i see every time you pulled my ribbons loose (and every time you tied my wounds into bows with sweetheart kisses). i made a home in the memory of when you left, i'll make one for you, too.

my heart has been waiting for you, dark and shadowed.

i've lit it up for you once more, see? walk through the threshold and you will see blurry rain on a dark night in rome, streetlights shining just for you. someone plays music on the streets, a violin. there, there are those flowers climbing someone's balcony, the ones you kissed me under, i'm remembering the way you taste when you murmur i love you and all the ways you burn when i dip a match onto your candle, light your wick, let you melt. we're recreating memories again, looking at each other in ways we shouldn't. this time, we will not end tragically. this time, i promise.

and here i am, standing before you, too close and too far away, my fingers pressing onto imprints in your neck i left years ago, hands sliding into your hair like a key fitting into a lock. turn it once, and see what you find. see what you unlock. even i do not know what dwells in the depths of my heart, under those white-tipped waves of heartache. it shines like a treasure long lost, gold in darkness, celestial. holy. edged with longing and kissed by intimacy.

i know we are on our second chance. our third, our fourth, fifth, sixth, hundredth, but we are here. we are here, and there are no shadows between us anymore. you've broken the thin cling of glass film i wrapped tightly around my heart, you're leaving fingerprints for the first time and i'm letting you. i'm letting our hearts touch. i'm lighting more matches, lighting the whole matchbook, staring at you in candlelight, at the way it caresses the tips of your cheekbones and the curve of your mouth. at the golden lines running down your neck, wrapped around your wrist, lighting your eyes in soft vulnerability. i think i see a loose ribbon at your neck. i kiss it slowly. i tie it up. watch your held breath and the burn in your eyes. the violin has stopped. the only sound i hear is that of your heartbeat quickening. that of mine mending. all i hear is a chance.

all i hear is some sort of salvation.

[dreamersdownfall]

you've taken a knife and drawn a bloody line right down the centre of my heart and all at once i am two people. the girl who kissed your wrist and told you stars hold no mercy and the girl who gripped the collar of your faded leather jacket with tight fists and told you to leave her thoughts alone. maybe one day, one day you can decide which one it was you fell for, which one left your heart restless and angry and full of cold, cold want. which one made you look at me, forehead pressed against mine, eyes burning, and made you tell me you dreamed of me. that you hated every second. that you savoured every moment.

i am torn in two.

my heart dances, eyes half-closed, to the tune of your whisper, your i hate you, your lies and the silver glimmer of your earring. cold alliances and colder stares, gazes full of liquid heat, your hatred, i want to stoke those flames in your eyes, set them sparking and turn them to ash. at night, when the moonlight spills through, drop by drop, i think of how you look at me in the dark when no one is looking. i think of how your lies blur into truths, and how everything feels like a half-dream, the word hatred inked and smudged all over our bodies, like we don't know what to do with it anymore. like we don't know if we believe it anymore.

your kisses turn slow. your secrets lie all over my skin. you give me strange looks and the curve of your mouth is soft.

and then you leave with one last glance and we're different people again and it feels like a party that's over and i'm left to pick up the pieces, left to recall the words of a song i've never learned, to search for the notes to music you half taught me before you left. i'm an unfinished painting, but i'll complete myself by sunlight. i'll be the other girl, and you'll look for the echoes of who i was at night while i search for remnants of the kisses you left. two different people, the sea and the moon in tandem, always dancing around each other, always pushing and pulling and lying and kissing. i hate you, you whisper. your fingers are wrapped around my wrist. i hate you. you kiss my neck slowly, lingering.

i hate you.

[dreamersdownfall]

Star's 1k Tag Yourself: Time Period Version!!

- i am so in love w y'all.

s w i p e --- >

i. the 1900s: sweet candied smiles, but your eyes spell ruin. you sit so pretty in your lace gowns, a painting half-finished, but when will someone look through the gilded frame and stitch your heart back together? when will they stare into your eyes and pull off those gloves so you can feel something? fingers in yours, all over your heart, a dream you weave with burning gold threads, and god, god, they feel so real at night, they spread through your chest like sunlight warmth. by morning, they lie cold and distant. by morning your smile returns. it doesn't reach your eyes.

ii. the 1920s: fractures in your heart, bold, broken lines, but they're filled with the pale gold of gin, and you wouldn't change it for the world, but maybe for two dollars. two's always been your lucky number, hasn't it? is that why you link your heart to others with gold thread? do you pretend it's sunlight, do you pretend you aren't drowning? as long as you have kisses on your neck, you don't care. you'll run, run and pretend you didn't leave your heart behind, run and pretend your dreams aren't flickering out like an old lighter. you can't run forever, baby. that tug on your heart will pull you back.

iii. the 1940s: polished wood and liquor and jazz; johnny sets the record scratching and duke ellington is your god tonight. the soldier you fell in love with hasn't written back yet, but you're smiling bravely and the sound of the rhythm and blues drowns out the radio, pushes away talk of war. dancing and dancing and dancing, you find your strength in forgetting, your eyes are closed, but by god, you'll live and live and live for your soldier. for the bullet that could have hit his heart. kind eyes and a pleading heart, wishes balanced on nervous tightropes, you're balanced on your toes, the wind in your hair. sometimes you wish you could fall.

iv. the 1950s: your baby has a hand over yours, the other gripping the steering wheel of his black cadillac, and you've never felt more invincible. you're both dripping dark leather, heartbreakers, burning embers, and old hollywood says you're stars. when you pull up to the bar, he looks at you just once, softness in his eyes, and says, "ready?" and you smirk. his smile turns razor sharp. all eyes are on you. on him. cold burning wildfire, that's what you are, your heart filled with all that fight, fight, fight, and the night is alive with your dancing. everyone's jealous. you love it.

v. the 1960s: easy love and psychedelic dreams, coated in orange, your heart's splashed with bright paints, your heart's a television for the art nouveau, all you want is to float in others' kindnesses and dance to soft rock. peace signs and your lover calling you baby, you're a home to every rejected hope, a caravan of first kisses. the sunlight flows through every vein in your body, isn't that why you glow gold? throwing words around like beat poetry, the freedom in every line of your body is bright blue, you believe in every god and lsd coats your bottom lip. rules break apart in your palms. they were never meant to exist.

vi. the 1970s: metallic eyeshadow shimmers, your eyes are half-closed, your body fits into every letter of the word hedonism, you're punk rock through and through. people stare at you with fear and worship, and they whisper rebel, rebel in hushed tones, and you couldn't care less. self-expression is so in, but you'd be caught dead before saying the word groovy. glamour burns in your after-parties and alcohol makes you sing. cold gazes and high fashion, that's who you are, and hearts break in your wake, but you press dollar bills to your forehead. you worship them like your god.

vii. the 1980s: neon lights at motel nights and your heart slips out of your sleeve once more. your friends hold every broken piece of your heart and you go to malls at night, you play arcade games and your heart breaks at game over. sometimes it looks like little pink pixels falling apart, and you give it away too much, keep your feelings close and your friends closer, but they won't save you from falling in love with new strangers every time the moon comes up; tell me, does it feel like different shades every time? take care of it. it's glowing neon black, glowing bright white. it's lighting up the sky.

viii. the 1990s: butterfly clips and sarcasm, hello kitty and flip phones, you still feel like a little kid, feel like you were born to be a teenager, suffer the trials and tribulations of being known, to be truly seen, it terrifies you. you twine your finger around your pink phone cord and flirt with anyone who calls, living for beauty just for beauty's sake, you're venus walking in the night, all the pieces of every friend you can't remember and of every friend you can. you just want to be loved, don't you? by everyone. kissed by everything. adored until the day you die. worshipped like a shrine.

[dreamersdownfall]

i drink to the two times you pulled at the layers of my heart and peeled me open like the petals of a flower; one, when your gaze met mine for the first time, a sparking between four dark eyes, a slow undressing, your hand pushing back that lock of hair from your forehead and wishing it was mine. and two. two, when i stare into them now, eyes that have seen everything, a stranger no longer, a witness to my barest longing. there is the before and the after; before, when i was a mystery you were aching to unfold, and the after, when you slipped your fingers into mine, all the answers laid out neatly like the line of stars lighting up your eyes.

this is us, then, in two parts. strangers in the night, lovers in the light. the knowing and the unknowing. a ruining of the most holy kind. a promise made in a dark bar from one stranger to another. a kiss on the neck from one lover to the other. do you remember what you promised me that night? remember the way you trailed your fingers down my spine, the way you leaned in close like you had a secret, a confession. the way your mouth brushed mine when you said, "i'll be here tomorrow. waiting. will you?" and my answer was to kiss the corner of your mouth. a little corner of the world all for us, that's what it was. loud music and dark lights and your finger tips pressed to my neck. you could have been a liar, and i would have let you lie to me just to hear your voice, i could have been a sinner, a con, a thief, and you would have let me commit you to memory like a crime. you would have let me the steal the stars in your eyes, let me wear them around my neck. i would have let you crush the violence in my smile, let you bottle it up like elixir, let you ruin me and my heart would still want to stare at yours across the platforms of dark bars. my heart would still want to wrap her fingers around your heart's wrist and she would still want to pull at your silver starburst locket with her teeth. she still wants to ruin you like rain ruins prayers on dark nights.

and if we're strangers who saw languid nights and peeled oranges in our future, if we're strangers who stared into each other's eyes and knew, i can withstand a few ruined prayers. i'll let you fulfill my wishes instead of asking god. your eyes lingered over the smooth skin of my neck like you could see the imprints of all the open-mouthed kisses you'd press there. rubbed your thumb over my wrist like you knew i'd tattoo your initials there. saw the creases of my crumpled paper heart and knew they'd be gently smoothed. now all i have to do is write your name on it. all i have to do is ink seven words: i'll be here tomorrow. waiting.

will you?

[dreamersdownfall]

What does the arab in your carrd mean? Is it like afab and amab?

.. i’m palestinian

[dreamersdownfall]

there's something dark about neon lights, something hiding inside them—if i crack them open, do you think i'd find gold? an insomniac's potion? your kisses, maybe. but there's something, always something about the neon lights, the city lights, dark nights and half smiles that make me want to wrap my fingers around your wrist and run. i don't know where i'm going but you, you've always found your hands over my heart. i suppose finding love is easy when my heart's a glowing motel for wanderers that never come back, waiting, hurting, on to the next, but you've never been like that. you dropped your heart into my reverent palms and asked me to turn it into a shrine for myself. you let me reach for stars and drop them into your dark eyes just to make them gleam like that.

and tonight, you come to me with hurt in your eyes and hesitancy in your hands and you tell me i'm the only place you've ever let yourself rest. and there are things chasing you, things chasing me, and i take your hand in mine and hold you closer than i've held my own heart, don't you see? i've got two train tickets to nowhere and everywhere at once and we can run, we can run, and no one will find us ever again. it'll be you and me in cities lost, slipping in and out like prayers turned to smoke. it'll be my hands on your neck and your electric smiles, and we'll find fleeting homes in a hundred cities and we'll run until our footsteps turn into trailing red strings wrapped around the world, butterfly kisses to every place that felt like home until it didn't. every night, every night we'll make maps of everywhere you slid your fingers over my wrist and i'll have a black diary with names of everywhere you decided to smile at me in that soft way of yours, when the edges of your mouth curve like broken petals. every night we'll reach 11:11 and i know everyone says to make wishes, but the only thing i've ever wanted to do was kiss your neck anyway, so that's what i'll do. and when you feel lost, i'll sew you the night sky and wrap it around you, press my forehead to yours so you know exactly where you are. i'll let you smile at me in my neon purple motel heart and i'll let you lean against the counter, let you wait for me to ask you how long you want a room for just so you can say indefinitely. the lights will catch in your eyes and i'll lean forward to kiss you. i'll give you a compass made of every time i longed for you, a silvery thing that points north when you tell me you love me. i'll give you a prayer inked in crumpled paper and the only thing it'll say is my name. i know you'll taste it like it's holy. i hope it feels like an answer. i hope it feels like home.

[dreamersdownfall]

you always gleam.

your brass knuckles do, your rings, your bullets and your eyes, your eyes when i tell you i want you. half-lidded, always. like molten gold, like every coin you've stolen, every coin you've twisted around your fingers. i don't know if you believe me, but you want to. throwing yourself off cliffs is always fun, isn't it? even if the edge is my eyes, you'd do it for the rush. i'm dangerous. your heart won't survive the fall, so why do you have my initials tattooed across your fingers? as if you're mine. as if you were ever anything else, as if you ever wanted to be anything else. but i take care of the things i love. i take care of you, and you can't get enough of it.

my kisses are cold as gunmetal, my hands even colder, merciless. you want more. i can see it in your eyes, roiling gold seas that they are. love might be a game, but you play it with your eyes closed, you play it with half-smiles and a reckless heart, you can't get enough of the way i always hold all the strings, wrapped around my fingers as they are. we're cold criminals, we're kings and queens, but here, in the streetlights, in the gleaming city lights and the pouring rain, all we are, all we have ever been, is lonely sinners finding solace. violence drips from our fingers like honey, but you, i've always held you gently. gently. you touch me like i'm sacred. we don't want to break. we don't want to hurt. and when i push your dark hair from your forehead, when i stare into your gold, gold eyes, like the blood of gods, when i swipe at the blood on your lip (where did you get that, anyway? i ask. it doesn't matter, you say, eyes shining. it never does.) and when i lean in to kiss you, your blood in my mouth, i think i could worship you. i could let you build a temple in my heart, empty as it is. i could let you strike bells and set them ringing like you did my heart. maybe your eyes will turn it gold. i've always been in broken pieces, anyway, pieces of everyone who made me, and broke me, and sometimes i wonder. i wonder if i were to put them all together, if i were to turn myself into a mosaic heart, cracks and all, would the finished picture be me? would it be this stranger in my reflection? would it spell out the letters to your name? i don't know. i don't plan to put myself back together. i don't need to heal, and i don't need time to soothe me when i have your gaze and your hands and the way you pray for me.

sometimes you say my name like you want me to make you come undone. unravel you so thoroughly, you wouldn't know where you end and i begin. i don't know if i should, if your sinner of a heart would survive it. i've been called a lot of things, i've been a criminal, a thief, a cold killer, but i don't want to be called a heartbreaker, too. i don't want to break your heart, not so casually, so carelessly like i have rules. my justice is the devil's tragic tale and it only turns saintly when i look at you. my mouth kisses the lies that fall from it every day, but you're the truth, the only truth i'll ever graze with my knuckles. the only truth i'll ever press my forehead to. i love you like a fire loves to burn. i love you like a prayer unanswered. like violence loves the tragic. don't leave me, will you? don't let me leave you. it won't end well.

[dreamersdownfall]

thirteen truths and lies that i have told myself these long years; for even cold lies need to be held close. even arrowhead truths must fall apart like petals.

i. truth; my body is shuffling cards that fall apart and come together, kissed by whatever luck they find. misfortune means the cards slide down, the house of paper crumbles, and my heart freefalls. i like to think it falls into the eyes of the queen of diamonds i always seem to draw.

ii. lie; longing hurts more when it's found in lack of touch over lack of company. lie. i can still draw broken hearts over my palm and pretend my fingers are yours. my fingertips can touch my mouth and pretend it is your own; i cannot stare at my reflection and pretend you are here. i cannot pretend my answering thoughts and emotions are you speaking. i cannot pretend you are really here, but my hands can. my hands can. (they hold themselves with reverent fingers i call yours).

iii. truth; heartbreak comes in thirteen shades. a holy number, thirteen. under that dark, unlucky reputation, it still holds colour. i've only ever known one shade of misery and it's the colour of your eyes. i wonder when i'll see the others. when i'll feel them wrap around my heart, let them tint it until it's unrecognizable.

iv. lie; loneliness feels like emptiness. i sometimes think being lonely feels like a sort of fullness—of all the emotions i will never let myself feel. of all the people i can never have. an absolute breaking of my heart until i can respire in the pain, too. the ache. when i rub it, it hurts worse.

v. truth; love is a longing i can wrap around your neck like a scarf. i'll keep you warm. i'll let you wear each of my wishes on your fingers like rings, and i'll let you slip on all the ways i want you to touch me like dark gloves over cold hands.

vi. lie; love is an aching question desperate to be answered. it is the answer. it is a testament to the words i let you ink over my heart. it burns and flickers like nothing you've ever felt before, flames brushing the rims of my ribcage. all you ever were was the ember that sparked. look what you've done.

vii. truth; gazes can be read like books if you turn the pages gently. if you know which words to look for. i already know every facet of your eyes. the knowledge feels forbidden. holy.

viii. lie; my heart revolves around you. my heart turns only for itself. there is only night in this quick-beating planet; i've never liked mornings or sunlight. flowers bloom under the moon and my heart doesn't revolve around you, but my thoughts do. they tell me you're the kindest thing to ever happen to me.

ix. truth; i'm a sinner for pressing your broken heart over mine, for trying to fit the shards like they were puzzle pieces. your serrated edges would never line against mine. we can't be fixed once we've fallen, but we can breathe through the pain. i've heard that one day, it gets easier.

x. lie; if i touch you one more time, i'll break. but breaking is different from coming undone. breaking is different from coming apart. your fingertips lightly pressed against mine, i'm unravelling. i don't care what tapestry my heart used to make; it's spools of thread now. spools of soft violence. your palm presses against mine and i'm undone. undone. i don't want to be stitched back together. i only want you.

xi. truth; i am a pale pink, a pale blue when night comes to remind me of everything i left unsaid. the shades of my heart haunt me until i am alight with colour. maybe this is when i can finally see the second hue of heartbreak. maybe this is when i can forget you.

xii. lie; angels fall when they rebel against god. can they really fall, when all they do is reach for that last shred of mortality inside them, that last ember? when they turn it in their fingers, gazing at, examining, the human they could have been from every side? in the end, punishment comes for those who burn differently; for those who burn brighter.

xiii. truth; when you finally tell me the truth, the cool, precious truth, a link, warm and gold, connects our hearts. i have a piece of you now, a sliver of your heart. i think i will place it in the hollow vaults of my own. don't come looking for it, will you? i want to call your heart my own tonight. i want something to call my own.

[dreamersdownfall]

dark paradise - lana del rey

your heart. i'm trapped in your heart, and you're trapped in my memories, and i burn, i burn with one look, my wings turn to ash and when i follow the way they scatter in the wind, when i turn back to you, you're still staring. still staring, so helplessly, hopelessly, palms out, our love liquid gold slipping through your fingers, like you slipped from mine, i think idly. the same look in your eyes when you left the sanctity of my heart.

the music starts playing from the depths of my heart, and you step up, nose brushing mine, gazing down at me, hands finding mine easily, and we do this every time, we do this every goddamn time, you dance with me like you're never going to leave, you kiss me, you kiss me, and it tastes like a desperate lie, bitter, ashy, like my wings burned away, and i still want more. i still want more. love looks at us with pity. more fools falling for this game, he thinks, sad, playing and playing, revelling in the taste of ashes. of defeat, i add silently, but i've always gambled my heart away at the first sign of victory, always thrown coins recklessly into spinning wheels hoping you won't be a half-formed dream anymore. maybe this time when i touch you, you won't fade away. i'll toss my hope into my cards and hope the king of hearts smiles. i'll hope the next time i see you, the moment will be real, and you won't tell me we have to break, and it won't just be you and me and this godforsaken rain, it always slides down my neck in precisely the same way your fingers did, and i wish i could let your painting fade with raindrops, wish i didn't see it every time i closed my eyes, but here i am. here i am, standing at the threshold of your heart, and there, right there next to the entrance is an inscription, words of ink saying 'please. please don't leave my heart in shreds this time. turn me immortal in your memories once more.' and it's dedicated to me, and they wrap around my heart like a vice, like a sin, and if i cut it open, the taste of your kiss would spill like molten gold, molten gold like the ichor of the gods, and all i have left in it is this haunting tune that sounds like a mockery of when we dance, dance, dance, and all i have left in it is the glimmering shards of pain sharp in my chest. maybe if i enter yours, i'll be less hollow.

so i do. and it isn't empty like mine. it's glittering, full of treasure. full of our most golden memories playing like an old favourite song. it's a shrine to me. and, i think, and at least if you're not with me, i'm here. i'm engraved. for once, for once, everything doesn't feel all wrong, and the music trickles in again, and when i turn, you're there, and god, this hurts worse than when you turned away, than when you left me with burning knots constraining my heart, and you're listening close, you can hear it beating for you, asking you to stay. to stay. please.

please.

pleading. that's the look in your eyes. it's desperation and wanting and love is turning his back on us again, and then we're dancing, we're always dancing—a masterpiece ruined. a tapestry all torn up. i still don't care. i still want you, every fragment i can get, i'll sin and sin and sin like it's a prayer, and i'll let hell turn my shrine into a shroud, but god's only real when i kiss your neck anyway. god's only real when my wings turn to ashes. when you lie and when you let me enter your heart like it was a temple. it's all only the past anyway, playing again and again and again. we know the ending. we'll dance to it anyway.