The ugliness between the lines

Sometimes I write summer rains, sometimes hurricanes.

[writinghurricanes]

I long for all the places I have never been to. For all the rooms I have not walked into. I long for smiles I’m yet to give, hands I’m yet to hold. I am cold and still I dream of a warmth that does not exist. I long for seas to get buried under. I long for days when I won’t feel like I have to wait around for good things to happen. I long for dances I have not danced, for songs that I have not sung, for hearts I have not loved. My own heart is pumping in my chest but I cannot bring myself to understand why it does that, so I long for hearts I have not loved. I long dreadful misery. I long for sins I hide behind to forget about the virtues I do not have. I long for tasting the salt in my tears and feeling the honey in my laughter. I long for my own paradoxical existence. I long for days that make sense to me. I long for nights when I find no regrets resting on my pillows. I long for kisses that linger and moans that echo, for the lovers that leave and for the love that stays. I long for the understanding that eye contact can hold. I long for digging my last grave and throwing away the shovel. I long for a way back to myself. I long and I long and I long for all of which is not here. Being stuck in the past is a miserable way to live, but living in your own future can be a treacherous thing to do to yourself as well, can’t it?

For All The Things I Do Not Have

by Lorelei

[writinghurricanes]

Cold was the night when we met. You came unexpectedly, yet I felt like I’ve been expecting you all along. You let me talk to you, let me know the best parts of you, so that I would have no choice but to fall for you. I image I felt exactly how Michelangelo would feel if David would come alive in front of him. I had built this image of how you were supposed to look like, feel like, smell like, long before I met you, so when you appeared in front of me on that cold night, I recognized you immediately.  And all of a sudden, I felt warm. Crowded was the bar where we met again for the second time. My glass of whiskey was untouched because you were the only thing I could focus on. I was jealous of the rum that touched your lips, jealous of the lights that caught in your eyes, jealous of the ring you played with around your finger. You left your past on the table and let me explore it and I was in awe of whatever it had been that led you to this. To me. Empty was the street when you kissed me. I was shameless in the way I clung to your jacket, burying my hands in the leather. The rum on your lips and the whiskey on mine collided, making the perfect cocktail. You had kissed me in the middle of a joke, caught my laugh and froze the smile on my face, and I could not believe I was kissing you. I could not believe it was so perfect. I could not believe that no amount of imagination could have prepared me for how softly you touched me, how badly I wanted to crumble under your fingertips. When we pulled back and you asked me why I had that dumbstruck look on my face, I told you that for the first time in my life, I could think of nothing funny to say. And you loved that. On the way home, we stopped to kiss at every traffic light. Perfect was that night with you. Perfect is such an overrated word, used but never meant, yet there is nothing else I could use to describe how you made me feel. Your hands were so gentle on my body, in a way I had never known, yet a way I could never unlearn now either. Even the small touches you gave me, like your hand playing with strands of my hair, your fingertips touching my knuckles as you lit my cigarette or your warm lips kissing my tattoo, made me feel privileged. Like I was privileged to live right then in the moment with you. And not even the morning after could have ruined that night for us. Gradually was how you pulled away from me. As you stopped writing, stopped joking, stopped trying, I could hear this ticking in my head like I was counting down the minutes I had left of you. I wanted to be blind to it, like any person wants to un-see a disaster even as it happens right in front of them. But you slipped out on me nonetheless, ran like sand through the very fingers that used to touch you, and no amount of ignoring or pride swallowed could have made me deny what was happening. You’d been once an ocean full of possibilities for me. Now you were just a drought. Furiously was how I walked out on you. With a last warning I told you I would leave and you showed me the door. I tell myself it was me who decided to run off, not you who kicked me out, but lying feels useless as I stare at the streets we used to walk on and still get that empty feeling in my chest. I wasn’t mad that you didn’t want me anymore, because how could I be mad at you for not being ready to welcome something great in your life? I was not sad that I had lost you either, because the days it took me to forget about you were surprisingly few. I was just angry. I still am. Because you snatched away from me the first real thing I had felt in a while. The first thing that made me want to laugh in the face of those who had called me heartless because there I was, my heart on a platter for you. You just didn’t know what to do with it, and I have to accept that. I go through the motions of remembering who you were to me, what knowing you made me feel like, and I could not help but feel bittersweet about it no matter how much I tried. Because in spite of what you believed, I didn’t love you. I just loved myself around you. I loved seeing how much I had to offer, how much I could feel if I did it the right away. But I was too much for you. And for me, you were too little.

This Is How I Let Go of You

by Lorelei

[writinghurricanes]

Not every joke you tell will be funny. Not every word you say will be listened to. Sometimes words will pour out of your mouth, unfiltered and messy, and you think and hope it will make sense to someone who is not even willing to understand. Not every declaration you hear will be sincere. Not every love you feel will remain. Not every person that loves you means it. They will think they do, they will believe you’re some unmet before presence in their life that is gonna make them better, and you’ll let them. You’ll let them think they love you. But deep down, when some will call you art, you’ll know you’re just a bucket of paint spilled on a blank canvas. Not every work of yours will be something to be proud of. Not every place you go to will make you want to never have to leave. Not every expectation you have will be met. And have you not learned, love, that expectations are just another form of self harm? You will have days when the only thing you can do is exist, and even that will be excruciating. You will have days when you will be annoying, unkind to yourself and to others, mean and irritating. But that is not the death sentence that you were led to believe. That is not reason enough to turn in your bed at night, wondering what is wrong with you. You will have maybe even weeks where you cannot find it in you to love yourself. But knowing yourself and loving yourself is not the paradox you think it is. You know not everyone is perfect, it’s the tale as old as time, but you still expect yourself to be. And maybe that’s in fact your only flaw.

Friendly Reminder

by Lorelei

[writinghurricanes]

Loving you felt like exhaling cigarette smoke, damaging but exhilarating, burning in all of my insides. Thinking I loved you felt like muscle memory, like a song you haven’t heard in a while but  to which you still manage to get the lyrics just right, like a house you can still make your way through at night in the dark. Realizing I didn’t love you felt like a guilty thought gnawing at your mind when you turn in your bed at 3am, but also like a breath of relief after the adrenaline of a moment fades away. Losing you felt easy compared to loving you. Forgetting you felt as natural as the movement of limbs, as undisturbed as being yourself when you know no one is watching. You will always be the street I skip on my way to the rest of my life, you will always be a nervous laugh I’ll give when someone mentions an embarrassing memory. But most importantly, while you think I have sonnets in my head dedicated to you, in the end you are just a line I wrote in a forgotten poem.

To All The Stray Dogs I Should Have Never Taken Home

by Lorelei

[writinghurricanes]

It was Fourth of July. The night was almost as young and reckless as we were, the ocean almost as wild and untamed as our unspoken intentions, the highway almost as endless as our possibilities. We were dizzy on so many things it’s hard to remember, but when we sat on the rocks shoulder to shoulder and watched the first set of fireworks, and your hand grabbed mine almost instinctively, I felt sober for those brief seconds. It was that moment you keep hearing about in the movies, where it just clicks into place, and all of a sudden you feel aware of something that’s been sitting right under your nose. And when I took my eyes off the fireworks to look at you, and found you looking back, it took just a glance to know that we were going to put the fireworks to shame that night. When you kissed me at midnight it was unsure but certain, it was rushed but slow, it was a mistake we didn’t feel sorry for. It was just something that put me in a haze that was going to last the whole summer, and I wasn’t even aware of it yet. Since then, I couldn’t tell if it was for the better or for the worse how further I was slipping away. Because you were fresh August air. You were nights spent late, driving down highways with windows all the way down and music blasting all the way up. You were beach waves at 2am that swallowed me whole until I couldn’t tell if I belonged to the night or to the ocean. You were cigarettes shared between pauses for breath, when complicated topics found us chatting on the front porch of my place. You were favorite hidden spots in your hometown, where you just want to venture into and tell no one about. You were hard liquor that doesn’t hit you at first, so you just assume you’re fine. You were that small, insignificant detail that once someone points it out, you can’t take your eyes off it. You were a summer I lost myself in. And somehow, fireworks kept on finding us wherever we went. But then, it was the middle of September. The weather was rainy, the sunset was hiding between the tall Manhattan skyscrapers, and I was in the car with you again, finally at a loss for words for the first time since I’ve met you. It was then when all of that summer magic went away, and I found myself looking at just a mirror trick, and when you kissed me goodbye at the airport, and I found myself unable to look over my shoulder, I knew I was leaving behind all the promises I had made you. That was the thing though, wasn’t it? What we had was really just like fireworks. Beautiful and entrancing and colorful and wild, full of all the pretty things you never knew you needed to light up inside. But when they’re gone, and you’re left with the deafening silence and maybe the pale memory of them still echoing in your ears, you’re starting to wonder how much of it was real, how much of it was as perfect as you had built it up in your head to be. We were just like fireworks. Dazzling and short. It’s October now. I’m standing alone back home, on a tall building smoking a cigarette and looking up at other fireworks lighting up the night sky. And far away from you as I am, and my thoughts full of questions as they are, I wonder why I had to burn the bridge that was us so I could find my way back home. I wonder what that summer ever meant to me after all. And I wonder why these fireworks feel different now.

In Between Being Young and Being Right

by Lorelei

[shareaquote]

Everyone has different personalities hidden inside of them. It’s no secret. We are all formed of smaller galaxies, that we take out and put on as coats whenever we see fit. It’s no shame. I have that. We all do. It’s no strangeness. I let some people see the summer rain in me, the warm coffee in me, the dusty old books, the smiles that feel like warm sunshine on my face. That’s the galaxy full of bright stars you just want to dive in. I let other people see the hurricane, the wolf blood, the sharp bites and whiskey smirks. That’s the galaxy not many explore, the side you don’t venture into because you want to. I perhaps have thousands of little universes like these that I bring out whenever I feel like it. I am not a chameleon, I don’t adapt to what’s asked of me. I just like to think that I’m not simple enough to be defined by one single thing. But every galaxy has its black holes. The one thing you don’t talk about, the one you keep hidden and pretend it doesn’t exist. I feel like the person I become when I get close to the black hole isn’t who I am. I see it as another person, completely separated from me. I keep her in a locked room. Or perhaps I don’t keep her, perhaps she has caged herself there, in a prison of her own making. She is sad. She is a weeping sky. She is angry. She is an unmerciful tsunami. She is mad. And she scares me. I don’t let her out. In fact, I think I have no control over her whatsoever. She comes out whenever she wants and she does what she wants once she’s out. She cries, she yells, she laughs, she scares. She scratches on the walls of my mind as a warning before she erupts. But she doesn’t stay too long. She never does. Maybe she just gets lonely in there, all by herself, and wants to make sure I haven’t forgotten her. We all have universes, stars, dangerous planets and black holes. Perhaps I am made of books full of raindrops and hunger and feathers and broken wings sparrows. Made of going but never leaving. Of had enough’s and trying too hard. Of cigarette smoke and poison and storms. Of poetry and spilled ink. Of shy mornings and midnight thunders. But do I ever think that makes me original or special or different? Not even for a second.

writinghurricanes, shades of blue (via shareaquote)

OOH MY GOD YOU GUYS, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE NOTES HOLY SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!!!!!! SHOUT OUT TO shareaquote FOR POSTING MY WRITING!!!!! 

(via writinghurricanes)

[writinghurricanes]

- A string in your guitar . . . #love #poems #original #prosepoem #guitar #string #dangerous #feelings #aesthetic #lorelei #mywriting #writinghurricanes #omypoetry #instapoetry https://www.instagram.com/p/By8luR2B9B9/?igshid=17ibyha3k1btu

[writinghurricanes]

‘This is the last time,’ I told you for the first time, so many years ago it feels like a lifetime away. We’d had our first fight, and I did what I always do best, which was push you away, and you did what you always do best, which was come back. I told you I am tired of fighting and tired of watching you go, so if we give this another chance, we do it for the last time. And what a fool I had been to believe that, like a future addict trying drugs for the first time, telling myself maybe just this once. ‘This is the last time,’ I told you again months later, after having already broken my first promise. We had fought about something I can’t even recall now, and we had said such mean things that, darling, it’s no wonder we’re regretting and thinking about them years later. We had fought and put a pause when the words had gotten too bitter on the back of our tongues, so we injected ourselves with the venom hoping it won’t kill us this time. But I was willing to try again because god damn, whatever was standing in our way, we could face it and make it out alive. Another needle in the arm. Just this one time. Inevitably, when we fought and broke up again, I tried to believe it was for good this time. But God, it was like there was just something always bringing me back to you without even trying. And like a junkie in withdrawal, I crawled my way back to you in spite of all the logic in my head telling me why I shouldn’t. But I was limping and life has always been hard, but talking to you always made it less miserable. So I pressed the dial button, knowing you wouldn’t be able to help yourself and pick up, and when I told you I was still in love with you, I swore to myself that this is the last time I jump in front of the train like that. Whatever we had, darling, it was an endless string of lies and last times. We clung to each other like stubborn magnets, we burned ourselves with our own matches, we swore to never come near the poison we were to each other, but fuck it, it just tasted so good, didn’t it? And I swear I tried to stay away from you, I tried to wash you off with strangers, with anger, with spilled ink and with denial, but you were the most stubborn stain I’ve ever had to get out. But that was the thing. Sometimes, you stayed away long enough for me to grow so blind with missing you that I forgot why I was supposed to get over you in the first place. So many times you knocked on my door, so many times I opened, saying it will be the last time I let you in, and so many times I failed in letting you go for our own good. I know the lessons by heart now, every mistake I did made sure of that. We are toxic and we are liars and timing is just a thing we will never have. So how come, when I find you knocking on my door again, five years after you first got under my skin, two years since I swore you off for good, and months after I saw you last, I forget all sense? How come I step aside and tell you, ‘this is the last time I’m doing this mistake again. This is the last time I let you in just to watch you go again, and this is the last time we’ll make messes out of each other.’? How come you come right in, knowing that’s a lie? And how come, for all the proof I have that you are just something I am not meant to have, I’d still find my way to you blindfolded?

Another Needle In The Arm

by Lorelei

[writinghurricanes]

They keep saying how time heals everything, and how even though it doesn’t feel like that now, the pain you’re feeling over something will eventually  pass. I suppose you have to believe that. I suppose that, even though years have passed and you still have days when all you wanna do is lock yourself inside the house because a random flash of memories just flooded you, you have to believe that. You have to, and tell yourself it’s normal to still reminiscence, because it’s long gone and after all, why not? Why not let yourself drown a little bit in the small grasps you still have of what you used to be? It’s part of the healing process time is supposed to do. So there you are, either alone in your room, or out in town with your friends, or simply tasting a coffee that’s so similar to the one he used to make you, and it comes rushing back hitting you like a wall of bricks, but you can’t say you’re surprised. You’re used to days like this. And you take a deep breath, and welcome the familiar feeling like an old friend, with bitterness and fondness at the same time. Come on in, you say. Leave your shoes at the door so that you don’t stain anything, and make yourself comfortable, but don’t make yourself at home. After all, you’ll leave soon, you’re just a memory. You’re not meant to stay, and I have made too much progress since I kicked you out the last time, I want it to be different now. I want to welcome you with open arms but with a careful heart and watchful eye this time. You let the memory tell you things. You let it tell you of that first night, when even your gut feeling told you this was going to be something so good that it was gonna destroy you. You let it tell you of the more nights that came after that, in spite of your constant tries to run away from what you didn’t want to feel, and you let it tell you of the whole process in which he got under your skin. You let it tell you of that night on the small town street, when you danced to no tune but the moon’s, yet never felt so in sink ever before. You let it tell you of the days you spent listening to the strum of his guitar, and he spent listening to all the stories going around in your head. You let it remind you how you felt, like even as you were in the moment, you knew you were never going to feel this way, this happy, ever again. You let it remind you of the smell of his plaid shirts that you got a sniff of every time you stole another one, of the frown on his face when he tried for your sake to read every poem book you gave him, but failed miserably to understand. Then it makes you remember of all the songs you sang together, all the melodies you danced to that got stuck in your head for days on after he was gone, and some of them you still can’t get out of your head after years have passed. Most of all, it reminds you of how it felt to have someone finally understand you. It reminds you of the nights he spent talking you out of harm, of the sentences you never got to finish because halfway through he already knew what you meant to say. It reminds you of the shake of his shoulders when he laughed at the jokes you were sure no one else could ever laugh at. But then, the memory that was so fondly telling you of all these moments a minute ago suddenly changes its face and turns somber. And then it starts telling you of the other side of this. It tells you, and you no longer let it, but you no longer have power to stop it, of how quickly it caught fire and turned to ash. It tells you of the words you didn’t mean to shout so loudly, so brutally, of the door you didn’t mean to slam so hard, of the steps you didn’t mean to take away from him, but you still did. It tells you of all the goodbyes that were never “the last one”, it tells you of how you felt when he mailed back your things to you. It tells you of how you felt to find out he’d found someone else. It tells you of how you felt when all of this, on top of each other, made all the hope die. It tells you of how you didn’t want to let go, but you had to. And then, when it’s done, the memory turns to you with a sad smile and says ‘See? This is why we didn’t work out. This is why we won’t. This is why I come back, but this is why I also have to always leave.’ One more memory still manages to slip through the cracks, even as the ghost is ready to get up and leave one last time. It’s the most recent memory, of that car driving down the same familiar roads, with you and him inside. It’s the memory of a face changed, because years have passed, but a face you would still recognize anywhere. The memory of a reunion you hadn’t expected, hadn’t rejected, but that had still left you more messed up then you thought it would. The memory of acknowledging that you’re not over it, that you never were in fact. Because he’ll always be, no matter how much time passes and no matter how much distance you put between each other, the one that got away. When you’re left standing alone once again, when the memory has finally got up and left, you repeat the mantra over and over again. Time heals everything. Anything will pass if you give it time. Both wounds and happy memories get buried in the passage of time. You tell yourself that because you have no other choice, in fact. Believing the alternative – that you’ll never get over something that is past salvation by this point – is just a far worse thought. So keep repeating. Time heals everything. Time heals everything. Time heals everything. Right?

The one that got away

by Lorelei

[writinghurricanes]

Ever since I’ve known myself, I’ve had to find excuses for the way I feel. Apologies for people who found my emotions too hard to handle. It was always “I’m sorry that you’re making me feel this way” and never them taking responsibility for the aftermath their actions had brought. It was as if my anger made them uncomfortable. It brought up their own guilty consciousness, and perhaps they would have rather left it forgotten in some dusty corner of their mind. They left me bleeding and tried to stitch me up with half-hearted excuses and admissions of remorse that I was never quite sure they meant. And when I came limping and angry at their doorstep, with the bitter taste of hurt still hanging on the tip of my tongue, I showed them the scars they’ve left. And they told me how I simply had to get over it, that it was something of the past. That it was useless to keep bringing it up. That everyone went through things like that and managed to moved on. It’s funny how they made me feel like I should be the one apologizing in the end. For a while, I even did. I was full of apologies that made no sense, full of sorry’s for the way I felt, yet still fully aware that I was incapable of controlling my sadness over the past. I made it so easy for them to forget their guilt that it was quite a shock when I started fighting back. I realized how truly tiring it was to let someone break you, then to apologize for the pieces of yourself scattered across the floor. I understood my right at feeling whatever the damn hell I wanted to feel, and my right to set the pace I wanted towards healing. So pull at the sleeves of the ones who have hurt you and show them the mess they left you to clean up on your own. Turn your back towards them and tell them to wipe at the scars they’ve left on you, so that they see that they won’t come off. Put those people through hell for what they did to you. And don’t ever let them make you feel like they don’t belong there.

To All The People That Have Wronged You

by Lorelei 

[shareaquote]

I believe in moments. The fresh, rush, crush, of love. Taking a road trip across the country. Dancing under the stars. Crying in the rain. Being lonely until it hurts. Moments. I don’t believe in happily ever after, though I wish I did, and I don’t believe in love at first sight. But moments are real, and moments happen, so long as you are looking for them. Maybe I’m just a passionate, delusional person, but that summer my friend and I set off to have the moment of a lifetime.

mirandawritten (via shareaquote)

[purplebuddhaquotes]

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

William S. Burroughs (via purplebuddhaquotes)

[writinghurricanes]

This love was full of sugar. It started with a blush, it started with a glance, it started with a step, it started in a haze. It started with a knock, it started with an an open door, it started with something I couldn't just ignore. It started when you smiled, it started when you came in. It started when I thought you are meant to leave. It started when you stayed. It started when I ran. It started when you came back for me again. This love was full of rush. It went on with a kiss. It went on with few more. It went on with missing you for days on. It went on because you knew, it went on because you understood, it went on because I couldn’t bring myself to run from you. It went on with a song. It went on for too long. It went on no matter how wrong. This love was a mess. It collapsed in slammed doors. It collapsed on the floor. It collapsed on and on. It collapsed with harsh words we didn't mean, it collapsed with a final scene, it collapsed in late nights buried in caffeine. It collapsed when you left again, this time never coming back. It collapsed when I waited, in spite of all that. It collapsed when I realized, after all this time, this love was a joke, and it was coming undone. This love was fast, this love was cruel. Yet somehow I still feel it ended too soon.

Seasons

by Lorelei

(via writinghurricanes)

[writinghurricanes]

[purplebuddhaquotes]

I was interested in everything and committed to nothing.

Gregory David Roberts (via purplebuddhaquotes)

[writinghurricanes]

Trouble

[writinghurricanes]

I feel like I can't do enough. I'm in constant aliveness, and time is everything I have and don't. Tell me how to make it count. Tell me how to grasp everything. Tell me, so that I don't have to spend nights turning from side to side in my bed,wondering why life is a flowing,bottomless fountain, and I'm allowed to take only one small cup out of it.

by Lorelei