Notes on My Last Conversation With the Arian

I waited days to speak with you again, expecting it would be like the last time, only it wasn't. You sounded weak and weary, like all hope was drained from your body and thrown into the sea. And I thought, "Oh shit. I guess I'm playing shrink again tonight."

So I listened to you grumble about how you dislike your job and how people in your workplace underestimate you and how you feel bottled up and unable to reveal your true self, which, in many occasions, you have revealed to me. It is that side of you I like most: smart and funny and someone I would very much want to meet and maybe marry (yes, I have had thoughts like that, because we get along so well it's a shame we live an ocean apart).

But that night you sounded terribly lonely and your loneliness resonated and I almost cried because I, too, was feeling lonely. And I wanted to talk to you to infect you with my own loneliness, but you beat me to it and unknowingly bestowed upon me a fraction of your misery. It was then that I realized again how menacing loneliness can sometimes be. How it tears you apart as if cutting along dotted lines, the hurt little by little growing like a small potted plant abandoned on a windowsill, the curtains drawn not letting sunshine in. And while you were pouring out your feelings unto me, I hated you, unfeeling Aries, I hated you while telling you what I think you should do to make things better, while convincing myself I could save a person from falling into the pits of depression even without a degree in Psychology. And I tried to brighten up the mood, used up my arsenal of sunbeams but managed only a flicker.

I eventually gave up, resigned myself to the sad reality that the conversation was going nowhere happy. So when you said you were going to bed I didn't bother to protest.

I fell asleep wondering if you understood what I said about happiness being in your hands and woke up worrying I had not said enough. So I sent you a message, an appendage to our last conversation, and with it I sent an unwritten farewell.

I don't want to talk to you. At least not until the loneliness you fed me has completely dissipated and I feel I am myself again. I cannot afford to lose myself, not when people incessantly stray from who they really are, with some never finding their way back, leaving behind a fragment of themselves, nothing but dust from a fallen star.

To My Lover at Fourteen

Disclaimer: Just because this has line breaks doesn't mean it's a poem. It just felt more natural to write it like this. This is nothing.

you may or may not have been
my first love:
until now, i still have no clear understanding
of when and how like evolves into
love. but I was very fond of you,
that I must admit.

whoever finds true love at fourteen is
lucky, i guess,
and whoever doesn't isn't necessarily
the opposite--only ordinary, maybe.

we found love untrue at fourteen, in between the lines
of notepaper, in the negative spaces of pictures
we drew, in the split second breaths
we took between our words
and syllables.

you were so tall, you were
maybe close to six feet when I first
kissed you
when i held your hand, your palms
sweaty and your heart racing like it
was your first time, wait

it was your first time.
and mine too.

i remember the details: the color of dusk
the smell of crude oil on the wooden floor
sickening and, yes, crude
like you and i were

we were not prepared for love. we were young
not exactly wild, but we were free, at least
and we loved like loving was all
we were in school for
and we exchanged words
promised we would be together
for a long time, but
we left those promises hanging in the air
left them irretrievable

and that is why the love we had
at fourteen was no more
at fifteen. a love like that does not last
i realized. so we let go
and we never kissed again
the harmless kiss of that
afternoon.