I have disappeared.
Slowly fading away, like the early
morning mist, drifting away into the
unknown, with no path, no destination
in sight, I simply faded away into the darkness.

I was beautiful once, I swear it,
full of life, passion, and dreams,
I sure was a sight to see.
But something went cold inside of me,
late one evening when sleep seemed like
something I had only read about, but could
never fully grasp, I laid awake, staring at
the cracks in the ceiling, wondering why
my life seemed so empty.

At one time I was loved,
it was my warm and caring heart,
my smile that lit up the dark city streets,
and the wild dreams my mind would conjure,
I made it easy for men to love me.
But there is a difference between lust and love,
and I found myself sleeping alone each night
tangled in cold sheets, wondering why I had
made it so easy for men to leave me.

So I began to fade, drift, dissipate, become smoke
and disappear into the darkness of corners,
silently transforming into a transparent girl,
the illusive, absent lover, the one that years ago,
you longed to make your own.

I ran away from the city, from the light,
and to be honest, I ran from myself, my fears.
And now I will remain to you, only a memory,
the shadow, the foggy image of the painted dreamer
the girl you once loved.

You tricked me, and somewhere in
the back of my mind, I knew you would,
I can curse you on these pages, scribble
your name and then rip it to shreds, but
I just wind up tasting the salty warmth
cascading down my cheeks, and
blame myself once more.

It had been so long since we had seen
each other, these miserable, lonely months
with the state lines a constant reminder
of the distance placed between our hearts.
But you were here, if only for a week, and
we vowed to share it together, and I have to
admit, it was so simple to fall back into your
embrace, it was almost as if you had never left me.

But the hardest part was pretending like we
had a future, like this was going to last, when
we both knew you would be boarding a plane
and ascending out of my life once again.
I tried to push those negative thoughts away,
and live in the moment, embrace the passion,
lust, I kissed you with my eyes closed, and
placed my hand on the back of your head,
twirling those soil colored locks in my fingers.
I gave in, just like you begged me to.

But you’ve done it again, you made me believe
that there was a place that I could call home
in your tired and rotting heart, I was so naive.
So here I sit in my bed, replaying your words
in my head, wondering what it is about me
that makes it so easy for you to walk away.

You were a trickster, a lovely little liar,
with those sweet words and soft lips,
and somehow you make me feel as if
I’m still the one to blame for all of my pain.

It was as if we had been here before,
right in this situation, both of our
painted bodies frozen in silence,
warming under the humid Florida sun.
And we had been here before,
this same position, parked right in
front of your house, where I remember
leaning against the hood, begging you
weigh the options and not just jump
to conclusions, oh how risky you can be.

I recited a monologue, so rehearsed and
perfected, after months of memorizing
and explained why you should give us,
and our love one solid chance.
With my sweet words and charm,
I swear, I could sell ice during a blizzard,
but you weren’t buying it, or me.

Let me take care of you, I know what to do:
I promise I’ll always be there to offer compliments
when they are needed, and confirm your beauty,
I will kiss you on the forehead when you’re sick,
tuck you in with a beer after a long day at work,
and never let a day go by without confessing how
my heart beats for you, and only you.

And just like last time, when we were caught
in this conflicting and heartbreaking decision time,
you never uttered a word in response, and it was
the silence that was so deafeningly clear,
and still aches deep within my heavy chest.

It all happened so quickly,
how we drifted apart and grew
so tired of each other, somehow
our relationship just became a routine,
and our love making was a chore.

We fell in love that summer,
one night after swimming,
I remember how perfect it seemed,
almost as if I had dreamt it up,
and convinced my heart to believe.
We laid there in our underwear,
drying off on the deck with our bare
backs resting on the splintered wood.
We took swigs from the bottle of whiskey
and you tried to teach me to
blow smoke rings, but I never got it.
We laughed until the sun came up
and dried our bones.

The humid months were filled with
kissing with our eyes closed tight,
panting and lusting under the sheets,
and mornings where we just laid there,
tracing the outline of each other’s
naked, painted bodies and whispering secrets.
We were in love, we were something else.

When did it all change,
how did we end up this way?
I struggle to remember the last time
we did more than simply sleep under
these cold sheets, and I’ve begged,
pleaded for you to touch my skin,
I’ve almost forgotten what you feel like.
I feel disgusting, there has to be a reason
why you make excuses and avoid my lips.
And slowly, we became silent lovers,
trapped in a relationship, like smoke
hanging in the stale air of the bar.

And here I am alone in bed,
blaming myself, wondering
what I did to make you leave.
I just wish we could go back to
those nights in the summer,
stop time, and live there forever. 

I am a strong person,
this much I know, and it’s
difficult to admit this, so
I’m only going to confess it once:
I cried over you.
Oh, how I buried my face into
those cotton sheets and feathers
begging them for answers,
please tell me why,
why did he have to leave.

I questioned myself night after night,
staring up at those sparking
constellations in the black sky,
I asked them for answers too,
but I was left in the dark.
You gave me hope, and brought
a warmth to my tired heart,
but you took it away so suddenly,
that I wondered if it was a dream
all those years together,
maybe I just created it all up
in my over active and wild mind.

Until one evening when you called,
and confessed you had made
the biggest mistake of your life,
leaving me.
You gave this speech, and the
whole time I wondered if you had
practiced it over in the mirror,
maybe even wrote it down and
edited it to make sure it was exactly
what you figured I wanted to hear.

But when you left, I learned
so much about myself, and
I grew stronger, and mended
my heart by myself.
And I cried, lovely warm tears,
wrote until my fingers bled,
and now you crawl back?

I cried a river over you,
now it’s your turn.
I hope this hurts, I do,
cry an ocean for all I care,
I am better off without you.

You gave me hope,
more than anyone had before.
It was different, a sensation,
almost as if it was a new power
I had acquired, nothing tangible,
no, I couldn’t hold hope in my hands.
But it was something I felt deep
within my chest, almost in my soul,
lifting my heart, breathing expectations
into my tar stained lungs.

I woke up smiling,
still waiting on moment,
the one I had been hoping for.
It was that anxious and innocent
feeling that you distantly remember
embodying when you were a kid,
like waking up on Christmas morning.
It was comforting, the way you told me
that something wonderful was coming
and it was on it’s way to me.

I went on for years hoping,
just like you said I should,
I wish on the mirrored clock numbers,
every star in the sky, but I felt that hope
slowly fading away, like the chilly winter
mornings in this sunshine state.
I tried holding on to this concept
you told me about, but I grew tired
so exhausted, waiting there for a change.

I sat there every night,
waiting, hoping.
When I realized something,
I don’t want to wait any longer
for something I cannot see,
I wanted to make a change.
I had to stop dreaming and
start living, making changes
not for anyone else,
but only for myself.

I refuse to be hopeless any longer.

The days, with their
burning sunrises, singeing rays,
dew soaked, humid mornings,
those I can handle.

But it’s the nighttime,
when the darkness begins
to slowly set in, as if the sky
was a blanket being pulled
over us all,
that’s when it all beings.
And it quickly gets worse,
you know, it’s that eerie feeling when
the sun retires beneath the line
where the ocean meets the sky.

The silence of sleep and tired
hearts, where I’m left with
no one but the darkness and
my over active mind.
I lay confined to this coffin of
a frame, staring out at the stars,
the narcissistic burning bastards,
and I think of you.

I pick apart the words we wrote
in the letters that year when our
love was torn states away.
And I search for something,
anything to possibly expose the
moment it all went so wrong.
Somehow in my mind, I think if
I can find the words, erase them,
and try again, it will be as if we
never disappeared in the first place.
But that’s never how it ends up,
no, for it was a series of moments,
days, months, years I spent slowly
fading out of your reach, and
suddenly, I had become someone else.

This is when I can’t take it anymore.
Here at night, when I’m left
with those arrogant stars and my
blurry, whiskey soaked mind,
waiting for the sun to wake, and burn
these nightmares of you from my mind.

We sat on separate couches
never saying a word,
the hum of the television
hung heavy in the silence.
I watched the pictures of
the screen light up your face,
you never looked over at me
and I wondered if perhaps
you had forgotten I was there.

But that’s how we have become,
silent, forgetful, and distant.
I can lay awake at night,
tracing the cracks in the ceiling
with my hazel sight, I count
the stars in the sky, and listen
to the heavy heaves of your
warm breathing next to me.
I always wonder if it’s me
that you dream of when your
lids weigh heavy, but I know
those are just silly thoughts of
a painted insomniac.

And now here we are,
the same place as August,
leaning against my car.
I can feel the heat of the hood
burning through my thin dress,
and you can see the sadness
welling up in my eyes.
We decided to remain silent,
holding onto each other,
almost as if we were trying
not to drift further away.

We never looked at each other
but kissed with our eyes closed tight,
and savored our silent goodbyes.

I became a memory,
a sheer thought of what
used to be, slowly fading
with the passing moments.
I am something you try to
hold onto, but sadly, I have
perfected the art of transforming
into the autumn breeze, quickly
slipping away, to reside
amongst the clouds, or wherever
the wind may take me today.

But even when your memory
begins to decay, the gaps in
time you struggle to remember,
it’s the hurt, the pain that will
stay with you the longest,
possibly until your eyelids
retire for the final time.

And that’s what you have harbored
deep within your heart, the pain,
the hurt that I caused.
I have become the bubbling resentment,
the bitterness hidden in the corner of
your sneer,
I am the painful past you beg
your mind to repress,
I am the broken pieces of your heart,
each and every one of them.

And maybe I am just a fading memory,
a past you had to abandon for your
own heart’s safety, but I know, deep down,
you will never forget me.

We started drifting apart
oh, how I could feel myself
tearing at the seams, the
threads slowly being pulled,
unraveling, you wanted to
expose the darkness inside of me.

We had become strangers
so quickly, that I couldn’t even
name the moment that I realized
how when it all went so wrong.
We were lovers, so passionate
and beautiful, with our traveling
hands and our wild impulses,
but oh, how things have changed.

I remember how you once looked
at me, with adoration in the details
of your hazel eyes, sometimes I would
catch you staring at me, and I’d blush,
running over to kiss you softly.
And now, I can’t seem to get your
attention, or cross your distant mind.

And here I am, still silently begging
to feel your fingers trace my curves,
and somehow, I can’t seem to remember
the taste of your kiss, how I wish you
would gently remind me.

I lay in bed each night with my other half
who has sadly become a stranger to my life.
I wish I knew what tore us to pieces,
pulled the threads that connected our hearts,
and placed this silence, this distance between us.

Sometimes I dream of running away.
Don’t you ever think of escaping?
Oh, how wonderful, liberating
it must feel to just abandon a life,
problems, troubles, heartache,
and just run.

Run as fast as your feet will
allow, until you feel as if you
are floating, your toes barely
touching the ground, just embracing
the wind that blows through
your hair, the cold breeze that
stings your eyes, you get used to it.

I imagine running away,
changing my name,
creating this wonderful identity,
and fooling everyone.
I could become someone else,
someone beautiful, passionate,
with a heart that has only known
hurt, looking for a fresh start.

I have only one fear,
that my past will find me.
Even with a new name, what if
the painful memories plague my
dreams at night, infect the new
life I create?
What if the hurt comes back again,
and this time, it’s worse?

I fantasize about how I will escape,
run away from this painful reality,
but sometimes I feel as if I just want
to run away from myself.
I can run, hide, change my name,
but I can never escape my one true enemy,
the source of my constant misery.

Myself.

I watched him as he dreamt
with his head resting on my lap,
his dark locks, chestnut strands
of silk, spilling over my painted skin.
His eyelids twitched every few moments
and I wondered what wild images
danced across his mind, what
far off lands he escaped to behind
those heavy and tired lids.

I ran my fingers through his hair,
soft, yet greasy, and I tried to smile,
cross my heart, I tried.
But I couldn’t help but dwell on
the distance that was slowly
growing between us, at a rate
I couldn’t keep up with, or even
attempt to control.

How could I be so close to someone,
yet feel miles away?
And in a way, I knew this would happen,
that we would slowly drift away over time
and become strangers to each other,
miserably trapped within an imagined
love that had disappeared like the
smoke from our tar stained lungs.

It was this expanding void in my chest
these constant thoughts at night,
wondering, wishing, hoping that there
is more to this life.
I dreamt all of the time, even with my
eyes open, walking this concrete jungle,
creating a life of passion, adventure,
and love with my wild imagination,
but now, only nightmares plague
my thoughts, and now I forgot how
to dream, as if my imagination left me,
just as you have.

He sat there dreaming on my lap,
a stranger to my heart, and I sorted
through the nightmares, wishing that
the man so close to me, didn’t feel
so distant from the love we once shared,
and hadn’t grown so tragically out of reach.

Sometimes, I dream you will come back to me.