If I knew then, how much it’d hurt to love you now,
Would I find a way to unlove you somehow?
Maybe I wouldn’t show up to our first date,
leave you hanging, waiting,
until you knew it was a mistake.
Maybe then I wouldn’t be in this pain tonight,
I’d be happy, I’d be alright,
at a sacrifice.
If I could go back,
I’d only relive all the good and the bad,
because there is no other way we’re meant to be,
than as you loved by me.
We’re like two boats,
you and me,
tethered together,
drifting empty.
But I rather cut loose,
than be lost with you.
We belong separately,
even in this churning sea.
My tears hang like string from your face,
I tie them up so you can keep my pain.
And you’re sitting there, in your chair, signing SOS in the air
How’d we get here tonight?
You turn left, I turn right, I’m afraid we will never reunite.
It gets harder every time
My only hope is we can undo this end and find a new way to be friends again
Is is it okay if I wait for that day?
Or does it make me too afraid?
Oh stranger, stranger can you still love me?
Even if we don’t know who I am?
Oh stranger, stranger will you ever come home?
Or am I to live this life alone?
It’s getting dark, you make a remark, that sounds like a cry
Why’d I? Why’d I? Why’d I?
I have no good reply.
But I want to hide in the past where you can find me, if you ever find yourself hesitating,
you can always come back to me.
The pressure is getting thick, do I tell the truth to make this stick, or do I open the door
To let in one more lie?
I gotta tie this up tonight.
Why’d I? Why’d I? Why’d I?
Why’d I have to leave?
Why’d I have to believe there was something better for me?
Why’d I have to go?
And leave us all alone?
Oh stranger, stranger can you still love me?
Even if we don’t know who I am?
Oh stranger, stranger will you ever come home?
Or am I to live this life alone?
Or am I to live this life alone?
I’m still at the start,
I’m still here at hello,
Trying to make it through,
To the moment I lost you.
I loved you last,
I loved you most,
I love you still, as a ghost.
There’s no mistaking,
a heart that is breaking,
the pain comes rolling in,
like a storm,
it breaks through me,
until I can’t breathe,
flooded with your memory.
Photo: Martina K.
Sometimes, when I am walking home alone,
down Prosperity Road,
I imagine a small hand slipping into my own.
Sometimes, it feels so real,
I squeeze my own hand,
lost in this fantasyland.
I want you to know,
my little hand holder,
even if you are not meant to be,
there was a moment, you were real to me.
1
The process of writing
makes me appreciate more
the process of living
2
Sometimes I feel my writing goes in circles,
and you are the square I am writing to.
3
Writing is like my own little secret…
that I share with the world.
4
Sometimes I feel like there is a trail of words following me,
waiting to be written.
Many times, I tell them there are others
who are much better at putting them together.
Other times, I resign myself to writing,
less of a choice,
and more of a responsibility.
5
I am less of a writer,
and more of a conduit.
6
Love is fleeting,
but writing makes it last forever.
7
Life is so full of stories
That sometimes I don’t know how
not everyone is a writer.
8
These words aren’t mine,
and by attaching myself to them,
I make this business of writing
much harder than it has to be.
9
Sometimes I have to stop myself
from interfering in my own writing,
and just let the words be,
even when they come as a surprise to me.
10
I could write a whole book on all the books I never started writing.
Loving you is as easy
as the breeze
rustling through the leaves
touching you and me
—
Like leaves in the fall,
we pick each other off,
floating lost
I have written so many versions of us. There is a version where I go to your Halloween Party that night and drink just enough to sit next to you on the couch, and we inch closer and closer together, emboldened by the thought of us, until, at last, I rest my head on your shoulder, and settle into you for the rest of my life.
But we both know I didn’t go and I didn’t know that night was the last chance at the chance of us.
You are like an
opportunity cost
and I’m still calculating
what I gave up
by not choosing you
unwrithings 