Cards on the table...

He wanted to break new ground. He wanted to leave a legacy. Something that would be remembered even when the world would turn to ash and fog. He wanted his life, his mind, his existence to mean something. What struck him as mesmerising is that he never really thought about, the thing he never really wrapped his brain around until now, was that in order to do that, in order to be remembered, in order to leave something significant behind, you have to leave. You have to die. You have to forever hold your breath. It's true, he's afraid of dying. He is afraid of the world moving forward without him, of his absence going unnoticed. Is it selfish? Is he such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when he does? That he wishes that every set of eyes would close with his?

All of me loves all of you...

You're my end and my beginning...

I am still learning what it means to love, and it seems that everyday I stumble upon a new definition, or at least vastly greater layers of it. There is no textbook, no rules, no clear guidelines - every relationship is different, and ours took shape in ways I never imagined. It is not to be understood or analysed, judged or taken as a reference. It can happen to anyone. One day you think you're meeting a friend for drinks, and suddenly you meet someone who changes your view of the world forever. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Life seems infinite.

I'm not the only one...

Guess it's true, I'm not good as a forever man,

my life never seems to go as planned,

I don't want you to leave, will you hold my hand?

Oh, won't you stay with me?

'Cause you're all I need.

This is love, it's clear to see,

so darling, won't you stay with me?

My moon and stars...

You will never leave me and I will never forget a thing. Every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn't happen twice. And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn't seem broken at all. You have made me wish we'd be something every minute of every hour of our lives. Let us be gay; let us be sad. Let us be cold; let us be warm. Let us be hungry ... have too much to eat. Let us be ragged or well dressed. Let us be sincere - be deceitful. Let us be truthful; let us be liars. Let us be honourable and let us sin. Only let us be something every blessed minute. And when we sleep, let us dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

I like to think that one day after I die, at least one small particle of me - of all the particles that will spread everywhere - will float all the way to a land given shape by my dreams, and be part of a flower or something like that. I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't. That it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else. That you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy. Even for you and me.

The shrine of my lies...

Drain the whole sea...

I need you to know that I really wanted to be strong. I wanted to grow, and be someone who can look past the mundane. Someone who can love unburdened by the obstacles life throws our way. I wanted to be someone who can be loved and someone who can love in return. Yet as it stands now, I see myself crumbling beneath the pressure of dissatisfaction. I am no more of a man than I was years ago. Not stronger or wiser or more patient. I am what I've always been, what you've accepted me as. I cannot pretend to be different. To be the person she wanted me to be. I need you to know that I tried. I tried letting go of my insecurities, of my pride, and of my inherent self-destructing nature. I tried, and I'm pretty sure that I have failed. I don't see a way to move forward. To shed my fears and embrace what is offered, instead of trying to secure what might forever stay out of my reach. These are the hardest of times. The most challenging. Those that shall impact the outcome of my life the most. I stand crying, and I lie in dread, for what is to come will hurt unlike anything before - the kind of suffrage I'm scared I won't survive.

Chilled to the marrow in my bones...

Just a man...

Some bit of hope, some bit of peace, 

some bit of closure, something good.

There's a thing we say when someone dies. We say it to their family, to their friends, to anyone they loved and anyone that loved them. We say I'm sorry for your loss. It's a pat little phrase, and an empty one. It doesn't begin to cover what's actually happening to them. It does not take into account that their lives shall be different - inherently void of what once was, and forever changed because of what never will be again. The phrase lets us empathise without forcing us to feel their devastation ourselves. It protects us from feeling that pain, even though their pain demands to be felt, for it is the kind that is dark, seeking, relentless - the kind that can eat you alive. Each death takes a part of you, until you die yourself. And while we may find solace, there is no real way to forget, no true way to move on, no plausible means to accept that death is here, that death is all there is.

If the heavens ever did speak...

Take me to church,

I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies,

I'll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife.

Offer me my deathless death,

good God, let me give you my life.

It's clear to see...

I missed the future, and I feel robbed. I realised that I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up that you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the sea is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again, yet

here are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.

Darling, stay with me...

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close. I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labour has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, yet still, I am in love with you. And my love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. My love for you does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. My love is patient, my love is kind. 

He demands a sacrifice...

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also stretch it's poison and leave your for dead with its yearning. The only choice is to let yourself love. You have to feel with you entire body, your entire soul. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up by someone else. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could, because trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. They are like me.

Swim with the current...

Cutting through the woods...

I want to hear raindrops falling down on an old tin roof.

I want to find a front porch rail and prop up my travelling boots.

See your silhouette in that firelight,

feel your body lying next to mine,

spend a few days together alone

and just lay low.

I want to end up nowhere on a map,

a little cabin sitting so far back

out in the country

just the moon and stars.

Are we going to know where we are?

When the world is at its rest...