nikolaitheprivateer

to all the boys i never got

[nikolaitheprivateer]

i will carry you with me on every road my feet touch.

i will wait for you every night and every day.

i will weigh my luck and tell you the words embroidered on my heart across the years.

there cannot be someone else for me.

and so i will find you in every song.

until you find me too.

until you do,

allow me to weave your memory into pretty little sentences to show to my friends when they ask for you.

they won't find you in lebanon, you've been reserved for my heart.

because when you appear ghostly between my lungs, these sentences will embrace me to sleep.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

you taught me how to love without ever loving me. distance learning they call it.

to be fair, you've taught me much more than that.

you made me realize i could meet you in the next lifetime and love you again.

or perhaps this is said lifetime.

perhaps i have loved you before and before and before.

perhaps we have lived this story endless times before we met for the first time.

and perhaps my dreams and wishes are but memories from a life well due.

and maybe, the stories i weave every night await in a different place, a different time and on a different soil.

but there will be no doubt, it will be underneath the same sun.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

he is the work of an artist.

i don't know who built the stars.

i don't know who composed singing birds and sketched webbing spiders.

i don't know who sculpted every petal of every smiling flower.

but i know they had a hand in making him.

he is as distracting as a midsummer breeze.

my world tilts on itself whenever we cross paths.

busy hallways are made busier by his presence.

and in a lone stride across the neverending aisle,

my thoughts crowd around two suffocating lungs and an imploding heart.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

I keep checking the earthquake app in panic

thinking the world might slip beneath my feet.

memories of unapologetic swinging and loss of control,

heart racing with time and luck,

trying to find an anchor on this anchorless land

before my knees give out and my ruins litter the long hallways.

trying to remember the safety precautions,

but it's no use against this shaking.

certainly of no use against you.

they said to stay away from glass,

but how can I when jagged shards scratch away at my heart?

they said to run for safety,

but your safety isn't mine to have.

they said to evacuate shaky buildings,

not knowing my world shakes everyday from within.

and even if I were to run in the opposite direction,

your black jacket finds me around every corner.

your white shirts meet me in crowded elevators.

and the green jacket I've come to memorize is always on 5th floors of buildings in desperate need of renovation.

and I'm terrified.

because I know, they haven't created a device to predict earthquakes yet.

and the moment this building feels the slightest tremor, I will fall and you will remain as steady as ever.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

i loved myself all night long to meet you.

my glow is usually drowning in responsibilities and can only come after sunset.

but when it does come, it shimmers in the mirror the way your reflection does.

and so i let it shimmer to the point of blindness,

and i asked the music to play for me a deafening tune to accompany it,

and i unbrushed my hair to the breeze of my laugh,

and i scream but nothing comes out

i've been screaming for so long with my earphones in and my brain seeping out.

even my deaf ear failed to mute the screams

they come laughing at the girl loving herself only after dusk,

she won't remember any of it in the morning.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

i live my days and my years

and then i see you and wonder how i could breathe

seeing you again is choking me up with unwritten words.

they well up inside me until they spill from my eyes.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

it's starting.

there's a party and my mind drifted to you. before realizing that you're gone for good. after imagining you there.

you're sleeping so far away from me. maybe even on the other extremity of my diameter.

you're waking up so very late. half of the day is gone ever since you left.

and no matter how superhuman my vision is, i'll never look at a mountain range and know you're there.

fuck. i won't be bumping into you and your black pickup truck with the license plate full of 2s and 8s and desperate déjà vus. 

fuck you and your weird sense of judgement and the grudges you hold with the wrong hands.

fuck you and every atom in my body that has ever missed you.

fuck you and all the chances you made me hate myself for losing when they weren't there to win anyway.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

not a chance i could've seen it with you here.

but at last, i did.

9 years of friendship. 5 of pining. 2 of yearning.

12 of wanting to see the roads you learned to walk on and the houses you grew up in.

and today, i did.

it’s a shame you left yesterday.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

the dictionaries were wrong.

your name doesn't translate to "generous"

rather, it is the paint that dyes beirut's sunsets, and every blotch of color amidst its achromatic streets.

your blue rivals the skies blanketing my summer,

and the reddening nose winter brings me escaped from your palette.

you are the varnishing in a world void of radiance.

and the linseed oil missing from my paint.

you are my every favorite color, and my every favorite color is you.

I don’t know how colorblind I was before you,

even your black is one I've never seen before.

it takes up all the hue in a room,

and suddenly there is no hope for any other pigment as long as you're touching the canvas.

I wonder, how bad would it be if I were to get swallowed by it too?

[nikolaitheprivateer]

i draw my stories since you don't make a move.

i'll illustrate a pretty picture of us with a pretty imagination and even prettier lies

i'll teach you how to walk,

since you seem to beheading in the wrong direction everytime you see me,

and how to write classes you were probably too focused to understand today.

i'll teach you what it's like to be loved by a monster.

word by word, i will write your sun to my sunset,

and we will walk side by side until the waves crash against my horizon and steal you from my grasp.

and only then, will i break down every stair between my shore and your heavens,

butcher the ants crawling in your memory,

and burn every hell in my blazing heart to reach your sunset.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

i drank all my wine to find a bottle good enough to store the richness of your smile

doesn't matter i emptied the wine cellar,

i've been drunk on you for days anyway.

fists around my neck blocking off the alcohol from going back home

bloody lips and slow smiles stretching my heart to bone.

punch me in the guts with your bottle and i'll still float to your wine.

i think i might finally swallow the ocean swallowing me if i don't breathe in your smile

[nikolaitheprivateer]

people.

they litter the streets like finished cigarettes

some, the white of healthy teeth

some, crushed under feet and discarded.

he walks towards one cigarette pack,

wearing his faded cap and crutches and tissue bag in forgettable hands and an unforgettable face,

and I can't stop the thought following that face like smoke,

in a sea of littered cigarettes, what's a cigar doing?

[nikolaitheprivateer]

I watch the clouds with attention

but even they don't reveal you to me.

the usually colorless air has fogged up so thickly I can't imagine the outline of you.

perhaps my lack of enthusiasm pushed them to hide you

and perhaps it's working.

suspense for an unwelcome sight has made me look out in search

like a wizard's trick, a once there city who flaunted uncleanliness and despair, is plucked from sight.

and it looks wrong.

it looks so so wrong not to have you waiting..

but it's alright.

hide away in shame like you should've a long time ago.

I'll come pluck you back with the baggage of hate I overpacked here.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

my lungs forgot how to breathe

they're running an endless marathon.

and my pathetic broken heart,

so beat down it can't maintain its beat

just like my grandpa's lighter.

my ribcage is flowing with sand and iridescent popping candy

it's flowing with remnants of an avalanche

and the debris of a thousand tornadoes.

the sturdiest houses fall

the prettiest of flowers are picked

and my trophy of a heart was looted before the eyes of running guards.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

i have a distinct memory of hugging you.

forged from endless nights dreaming of your embrace.

modelled from my clay heart with love.

i have a memory so distinct from every memory that has ever existed

so distinct it never saw the light of day.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

our novel ended horribly

and somehow you ended up my only bestseller.

i'm living with the promise of seeing you again, loving you again.

and that promise has already been broken 12 years in a row.

it's broken like the last record of you, playing over and over and over and when is it going to be over?

i loved every exhale that ever left you and loathed every blink that stole seeing you from me

i loved every sniff of your scent and every glimpse of your back and the countless days of a youth i don't remember

whether i walked as far as my legs could carry, you were always around the corner

whether i stuffed my heart with as many people as it could hold, you would've always been my heart itself

whether i shed tears for decades, my eyes only lived with the promise to weep for you again

i'd avoid your eyes for a thousand encounters, and look for you the moment you turn around a thousand and one.

too many coincidences for this to be a coincidence.

too many years spent loving you for it to be one-sided.

too many times our eyes locking for it to be unrequited.

too much yearning for you not to return.

[nikolaitheprivateer]

the military academy is on the doorsteps of beirut

so i visit the capital and pass by your dreams on the way.

i'd look at the white walls and black gates and fearless watchtowers

but i'd be looking at your 9th grade self instead.

one day i'll look past all these fortified walls and know you stand inside,

and my heart would rest assured with the promise of our paths crossing.

i grew up passing by in a speeding car and waiting for that day with sluggish patience

until one day you flew away on a plane and left me nothing but black gates shutting me out with resistance.