Archive of Our Own ^beta

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I keep forgetting my life. So, I write, and I write, and I write.

I write to remember you. To remember the moments I keep losing, remember why I feel the way I do. To remember you are my family, my sun before the storm. And I miss you.

I miss the moments I cannot remember and miss the words said that I cannot place with the feelings I carry in my chest.

But in all the noise I remember you the way you are. Sad eyes and a perfect smile. The way it had always done the trick, for everyone but me, charming people into thinking you are only beautiful. But there is something about your full-blown smile, your slightly closed eyes, hair that falls into your face and dimple on your cheek that is more than breathtakingly poetic. 

I remember you, no matter how many times I tried to forget you. 

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I want to tell you, but there are so many words to say. I want to tell you, but somehow my own words get in the way.

So, tell me, tell me all the ways to love you and I will. I will.

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As I fell to the abyss, the black pit many call loves, I laughed at the odds of you catching me. I jumped with no fear of the cold hard ground embracing me with a final kiss from your lips. I have jumped to my death many times, for many people, but for you I did so without hesitation.

I didn't expect of you to catch me, I was aware of my fate before I took the leap. I would shatter upon impact. I didn't hope for a better outcome. I didn't hope for salvation. I left my fate in your hands hoping, but knowing better, that you would not walk away.

So, I drown your image with a shot of something that makes me forget you. A poison that might kill whatever makes me hope for a better tomorrow. Because your ghost lingers in my memories and I can't live with the presence so close to touch but always out of reach. I cannot live shattered on the floor waiting for your hands to mend me together.

I tried. I tried to remove you from me. Because it hurts, the broken pieces shatter further, when I stand next to you – when I hug you, kiss your forehead, look at you and get lost in your eyes and get lost once again. It hurts to imagine you next to me. To dream of your lips upon mine. So, I tried to cut your sweet poison from my veins, I opened them up and drained myself of you.

Yet you still linger. Ghost of you still lingers.

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To lie, I don’t have the strength. To tell the truth, I don’t have the courage. And so, I will forget it in the moment of the present. Remember again when I open my eyes.

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I feel your touch when the world goes dark. It calms me down; it makes blood rush through my veins. Skin against skin, lips against lips, you bring me to life with a simple kiss. My body is alive, but next to you my soul ignites. Like a phoenix I rise from the ashes to feel my essence entwine with your smile. I kneel at the sight of the fire that burns behind your eyes. I am powerless underneath your touch.

I have found my peace in the solitude with the thoughts of you. A vivid color of blue with all shades of purple entwined, fingers in the middle of the night playing with the music of life. In a vacant room I am lonely for you, yet in a room filled with strange faces and even more absurd masks, you are nowhere to be found.

And I didn't mean to fall into the darkness, into the abyss trying to find your heart, claim it to be mine. I didn't mean to be stuck in inferno of my own mind searching for you in the halls of my own unbeating heart.

Yet I rummaged through it trying to find where did you hide. In the darkest corner, I found you, holding a candle and tracing the scratches I have made in my own madness. You were gentle unlike my own fingers, caressing the wounds like they were long lost lovers.

You are a contradiction to what I believe the world would be like when I step out of my room. You make it seem so easy, loving people despite all their fears. All their faults. Their shortcomings.

You make me believe in a world I have only dreamed about. Believe in a fairy tale ending.

I wish to hold you the way you haven't been held. To show you the world I have created on my own. Write your name in every line of my poetry. I wish you could live forever in the ink my fingers will gently write – but, I cannot. For as soon as I find you, you disappear. You are on your way to somewhere where I cannot follow.

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I am not them. I am not those who hurt you.

I wished so many times to tell you how I am irrecoverably in love with you. That I do not care; if you hurt me if I hurt you. That I love you more than I fear to be broken. How I am willing to risk it, willing to pour my fucking heart out to you when I know there is almost no chance of you staying. When I know that you will get up and leave the very second, very moment, that I do. How it is so hard to con myself into staying silent and letting you go from person to person searching for something I know I can give you. Because every time I see you, you grow more and more beautiful until I can hardly stand it.

So, fuck it. If you ruin me if I ruin you. Who the fuck cares of the consequences, of the future this might hold?

Does it really matter? In this moment all I want to do is to hold you and I don’t care if they say wreckage cannot be beautiful, because at times I believe that trees are grateful for the hurricane. I believe they crave it for it makes it feel alive. And fuck, I will be the one who crumbles, who wrecks for I wish to feel alive. I do not care.

If you love me, if there is a chance, fuck the fear. I may not be worth everything, maybe not worth much at all, but damn it, I’m worth more than the pain those insecure assholes left you with.

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You have broken me. Not in the way most people do. Not in the way cruel people do. You have broken me with kindness and laughter, and I am lost, lost in the memories of you, of that night when I got to feel your skin underneath me. And I am trying to forget the feeling of your lips leaving a burning trace on the back of my neck ever so gently reminding me which part of my brain you have taken control of. Soft, incomplete with the roughness of my own. Cracked, split open. And your hands as they trace the curve of my neck, tangle in my hair, pull me closer like you are afraid of letting me go. And it fits. It fits with mine just like I hoped my entire life someone's would. Like the last puzzle piece that I've lost at birth, piece I was uncomplete without.

And the image of you laughing has me tangled in my own mess, trying to breathe, trying to escape. Because there is something in the way your eyes shine when you smile. Something about you when you look at me that makes me terrified. Terrified because I do not know that look. I haven't seen it yet. Terrified because I don't want to forget the way it looks almost as you could love me. Almost like I could be good enough for once.

I know how your heart picks up a beat when I am close to you. As if you are afraid of the power, I could hold over you too. But I know, that while I feel myself slow down as I fall to the ground, you are flying like a bird free with the wind. I have found my home, yet you are a nomad going from heart to heart searching for something to call home.

''At least I have tonight'', is what I told you. You apologized, for kissing me, for letting me believe that you could be mine. Although, I knew. I knew that I had only one night. That when the sun rises you would leave, and the spell would be broken. And I tried not to cry, I tried to smile and be happy for that one night. But without your touch I am broken.

You came and left. Taking my cracked and chipped heart, leaving me with only hope that maybe I will grow old. Not with you, but maybe with somebody else.

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And on the mornings when I cannot remember my own name, I remember you. I remember your hands, I remember your smile, your laugh, your hair, your sad eyes, your worried glance.

I remember you.

I don't remember things you've said or what we had done, but I remember how you made me feel.

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I knew a girl that had too much love to give. Too much kindness she hid from the worlds reach yet gave to everybody who wanted it. And I saw the tears in her eyes when they didn’t treat her love, her affection the way it deserved. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with her heart.

Yet, it was so simple. The world knew nothing of love and kindness, nothing of the worth of her embrace. How could it not destroy, how could it not be unforgiving towards her soul?

When she called at 1 A.M. I wished with every fiber of my being to help her, to tell her she is worth more than all the people in the world combined.

I have wished times upon times to tell you, my darling, how the world is the one undeserving of your love, how the world is the one that should crumble at your feet for you to do as you please for you are everything this world has never been. For you are a the rarest of diamonds in a world filled with stones.

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This is written with drunk heart and a heavy mind. I have loved you like a drug addict hooked on your smile. Unreasonable and irretrievable. And I hope it doesn’t kill me one day, the judgement for my past mistakes for you are not a person that can be only loved. You are someone who should be worshiped like the goddess you are. You are a person that makes even the most reasonable of us insane with a simple touch. You are a person for whom feathers sink.

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I remember our first kiss so vividly. You placed your lips on the corner of mine. Your lips were so soft and delicate. And to be honest, now, remembering, I should've been terrified. I haven't kissed many people before you, and to tell the truth, I haven't kissed many after you either. But when you kissed me, that kissed surged through me. I felt it with every fiber of my being. Everything else disappeared. It was only you and me. 

And then it vanished. We stopped talking and I forgot about it. At least, I thought I did.

Little after my birthday we were sitting in a coffee shop talking and all I could think of was you. How you touched my neck. My hip. How you played with my hair. And each coffee it followed it got harder to ignore. 

I remember us sitting in that coffee shop on Jurišićeva street, me taking pictures of you. You had never looked more beautiful than at that moment. Like a goddess that has come to save me from the nightmare I have created for myself.

But you didn't. And my soul cries for those times. 

You know, when you kissed me on New Year’s Eve, I thought: "She's giving me a chance". But you were drunk and looking for someone to drown your emotions with. I remember the moment I realized. The pain in my chest. The burning behind my eyes.

Every next kiss I wanted more. I was greedy and I took all I could get. Every kiss. Every touch. Every caress. I felt the fire underneath my skin from the first moment and you felt nothing at all. 

I cried after you left. I curled up in my bed wishing you were next to me and cried my eyes out because the pain you left, the emptiness you left me with, was not something I could bear. 

I tried, I tried to find comfort in your presence after that night. Find solace in your arms wrapped around me when I hugged you close. And I could feel my heart thud in my chest. I could feel the pain. I tried to forget you. To distance myself from you, but every time I saw you, I was back at your house, back at that coffee shop, back in my room and I am kissing you, holding you close. 

But you chose her, and she hurt you. And then you chose the next one and she hurt you too. And all this time, I was standing by your side silently praying you would give me a chance. A chance to show you that I would never hurt you. That you would be something cherished and cared for.

Yet you never did.

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In front of the world I stand strong, in my dreams I shiver if you stand near. A distorted image of a reality wakes me in your embrace.

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And the Night has become my bottle. I drink every drop of a Minute, every sip of an Hour. This poetry is drunk for it is written on the edges of notebooks with the moonlights ink. Of forgotten memories with unforgettable people in the moment of pure madness. Hurricanes stopped with an embrace. The dance of eyes and lips. The start of a universe in your touch.

I have ignored the roars from Dusk, and I keep dodging Realities calls. I am running from dreams and nightmares for they don’t carry you with them, I run from people I don’t know, but I have known. I run like a criminal to escape the walls of this prison.

To whom? To what?

You and a pen so I can write how blood can still run through Deadman’s veins.

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I think about you from time to time, you occur as a passing thought.

Sometimes I see your eyes, the ones I got lost in so easily, in someone else’s. Sometimes I hear your voice while a song plays on the radio. And sometimes I see a glimpse of your smile in my own as I remember you; the moments, the memories, that I hold dear.

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When I think of it, I believe I might’ve been in love with you forever. Every hug I savored, every smile I remembered, every touch I felt with my whole being.

So, when I hugged you goodbye that day, I remembered to make it last, to etch every detail of your embrace into my memory. And when you pulled away, I remembered to look into your eyes remember their color, every shade of blue nobody else carries.

And I dared, for a second, to imagine what it would be like to put my lips upon yours, dared to think of what it would be like to know once again how would your lips feel upon mine.

Yet, I pulled away, making sure to remember that you are not mine to hold. So, I retreated from the thought of happiness of a second’s kiss into the embrace of pain and loneliness I knew too well.

I smiled sadly as you said you have to go, I don’t think you’ve noticed, because loving your soul, body and mind has taken everything my heart had to give. So, I broke my gaze and looked around at the bus stop where you were leaving me, not wanting for my eyes to linger, to betray me.

And I walked away because you are someone else’s. Even if that meant leaving the only person who knew me completely yet knew nothing at all.

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Mutter to me senseless nothings, whispers of the worlds unknown. Tell me where you hid my darlings, my heart, and my throne.

Your words spill on the page, and I cover you with ink. Statues of dragons slayed, portray of you and the way I blink.

Cigarettes and poetry, your every inch; rooftop skies and the beers you drink. The way you make me feel alive when we are not considered rich, the thoughts you do not say, but do think.

Sunlight might consider me crude, but the moon understands the likes of you. I painted words, pictured you nude, to bring to life the way you left me blue.

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“I think we shouldn’t talk anymore.”

At that moment I have felt your absence more than ever. Felt the void by my side where you used to stand. And my fingers itched to touch your skin, to calm my own turmoil, ease my pain. I wanted to reach for you, ask what I could’ve done, what I should’ve said to change your train of thought. My essence longed for the way your soul entwined with mine, how your colorful mind put my darkest corners to rest.

Yet nothing felt worse than the realization how I was the harbinger of your pain. How my demons won yet another battle against my betraying heart. Realization of the failure to keep my own impulses to shout, and rage, and accuse, and overthink, in check. The understanding how the dark circles under your sapphire blue eyes, the crease between your brows, heaviness in your shoulders and tension in your posture, had been mine doing.

So, I let you walk away knowing that, once again, I am completely powerless against my own mind, my own doing.

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I don’t know what will kill me sooner, the solitude or the wine. Loneliness or a cigarette. But it kills. And it hurts to feel touches on this skin which do not belong to you.

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Date: May 16^th, 2020

Everything I wrote seems so unworthy of her. So insufficient. Not enough.

And I am spiraling. I wanted, just once, to write something that describes just how much she means to me. Just once write something that isn’t just pretty poetry. Something to tell her how much she changed me since she walked into my life with that smile. How much she made me believe.

I don’t care for the way her lips fit against mine, even though I love the feeling. I care for the way she taught me to smile more. Taught me that hugs mean something more than a goodbye. She taught me what family really means. Taught me words carry meaning. Taught me what it means to be loved, not for a second or for a week. Not for a while. She taught me that loving someone lasts.

Taught me the meaning of “I love you.”

Forget all the lips I kissed and arms that I embraced in this search to prove I am worth something. Worth more than scraps I accept as love and affection. She’s the only one that made me feel like it’s okay to crumble. It’s okay to put away the mask that I screwed onto my face to keep people from knowing I am not strong at all. I crumble. I crumble every night, every morning, behind this charade. I lie so they think I am okay, so they think I am not ashamed of every decision I’ve made. Every word I said, every thing I’ve done.

But what I regret the most, what I am ashamed of the most, is letting her in. Because they were right. I am toxic. My mind is pure darkness and my heart is black. I regret letting myself feel comfort in her touch, her embrace, because she didn’t deserve the destruction my fingers carry. She didn’t deserve to see my mind, so dark and vile.

Yet, I still promise “I am always here if you need me”. Yet, I still want to know how her day went, I still want to hug her and relish in the comfort it brings me. I lie to myself it’s because I want to be there for her when all I want is a few more seconds, a few more minutes in her presence.

And I know I have to let her go, but I cannot seem to. I know she’s better off without me. I know, I know, I know – she should’ve never met me, never kissed me, never let me believe in something so pure.

But I am a selfish bastard. And I lie to her, even though I promised to myself she’s the one I never would. I am that selfish bastard that gets worse with each day she’s away and I promise myself I won’t call her just so her voice could soothe me. I won’t tell her I am getting bad again with each passing day just so I could hear “I am here” cross her lips. Yet, I am waiting for the day I will forget that promise when I will break it. I am that selfish bastard that would, that will.

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And if I ever call you in the middle of the night because I need you – don’t pick up the phone. Don’t wonder why I called or how I am doing. When I call you in the middle of the night, choking on my words, because I miss you – don’t answer. Let yourself slip through my fingers.

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Your absence makes my heart ache. I want to say so many things, but you leave me tongue tied. Thoughts a jumbled mess. I don’t have the proper words. I cannot string a sentence. You’re here, on the other side of the screen. Yet I don’t know how to tell you anything that I am thinking of.

I miss you. So terribly. And I know your embrace would make all the worries go away. The shake of my hands you could soothe down. The tears that are rolling down my face because everything is so wrong, you could wipe away. My mind, which is always a mess, you could calm down with just a few words.

I have written about you so many times. So many times, I tried, I’ve tried, to put your essence on paper with black ink, but it does you no justice. Nobody could write the way you smile when you’re really happy. Nobody can fit on paper the way your hugs seem to heal all the wounds decades of winter have left on a soul.

I want to tell you that I am here. That I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to wake up and know you won’t talk to me that day. I don’t want to know I won’t see you through the lens of my camera again. I won’t compete with you who can drink coffee slower. I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know – you’re not here to make the pain go away.

And I know what we said, I know you need it, I know I am the toxic one. But I need someone to stay, I want you to stay. And I know it’s stupid, I know you can’t. I know, I know, I know. But your absence is so suffocating. Your absence makes the voices so much worse. It makes the world that much darker. That much harsher.

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Doesn’t matter if I forget the world, you are here. Written on paper with black ink, eternal and poetic.