I Know I Belong.

poem and photo by pangarina-angelin-a

The ghost of your skin is still warm on my palms. Your scent lingering in the spaces between my fingers. My eyes are still on the last place that held your shadow. You've disappeared through the door that's still open. I can't bring myself to shut it, for fear that I might lose you forever then.

The moment stretches on and I can't feel anything except for this dull thumping of my heart.

It was a mistake to hold you so close and kiss you with love. And it was an even bigger mistake to hope that you kiss back. Mistakes that cut off our red strings of fate. And now, like autumn leaves in the cool breeze, our souls are drifting apart, blown away from the other to lands far from this place.

Calling this heartbreak would be cruel. This feels like death.

As I feel the colours in me drain away along with the warmth inside, I know you've killed me with your absence. Or perhaps your presence all along...

I know you will never return.

You won't ever come back.

I won't see you ever again.

And I won't see this me ever again too.

The sky is still sleeping outside. And soon the love in me will go to sleep as well.

They say empty vessels make the most sound. But the screams of my soul only come out as whispers against the silence of this dawn.

I've lost you and I've lost myself.

As the sky turns to a mixture of greyish pink, I stand at the same spot you left me. Wondering why everyone says love is beautiful, when it has been a painful poison all along.

We are all someone's hero if not our own.

I asked......

Would you consider yourself, a hero?

Everybody is put here for a reason. Some of us are put here for others to look at and be the example of what not to do. Some put here for them to aspire to. Be the reason another person succeeds. Someone you want to be like. Maybe a hero, maybe a mentor. It's up to us to follow, or be, whichever one we choose.

Would you read your own story?

Or maybe, a question within your story.

The story of your life.

Would you read that story? Would you read the ending? What if the story told everything? Past, present, and future. What if?

What if your story told of every adventure you’ve ever had? If the story told of your heartbreaks and loves? If that story was the truth? And told as only the truth could read? Not like you’d like to remember at times.

If the story told about the highest highs, and the lowest lows? The times that you nearly gave up, and the times you owned the world? Your world.

If the story looked ahead to things not known to you yet? The events and people that will shape your destiny? New people. New hopes, and new tears. New love. The chance to live a long life, or a death that is as sudden as an eye blink.

Would you read that story?

Would it read like you would want?

Would you be the hero of your own story? Righting past wrongs. Living a full life. Or, would you waste the very ink it was written with? A story not worth telling.

Maybe, that is your question. Maybe you should ask yourself that very thing before your story is written.

A question within a story.

The story of your life.

And I asked this, because her story is still unfolding.

It could be considered a tragedy, be she herself wrote out that part.

So, when I asked her, “do you consider yourself a hero”, her answer was simply,

“I don’t know. Maybe some people see me that way. But I think we all rise above situations in life and we can all be hero’s.”

Be someones hero.

Sometimes you meet someone.

And suddenly all your poems are about them.

I am tired of writing about you.

But I can't seem to write about anything else.

I can't make you perfect, because you're not.

Yet all the lines I have ever written are full of love.

For you, I guess.

Because ever since we met,

my heart has always spoken your name.

In whispers, and then as songs.

Now in paintings and poems,

your existence sprawls across the walls of my house.

I only realised that it was love,

when pastel yellows became too beautiful to ignore.

Stupid thing love,

making me wait and hope,

when all this time you never were here.

I feel like I am inside a snow globe,

enchanted to stay a happy sight forever.

But deep within the walls of my heart and soul,

the winter of your absence has turned an ugly grey.

The snow no longer pure and white,

but tinted with the fading colours of my heartbreak,

and the lost yellows of your smile.

Everytime you smile it feels like I am bathing in the warmth of the afternoon sun, slowly disintegrating into the golden swirls that pour from your brown eyes. How often have I melted at your fingertips so that you may scoop me up and paint such beautiful sunsets that tell the stories I have kept locked away. I don't know which is more beautiful, to become a breath taking painting or to be the favourite colour of the painter.

“Don’t say maybe if you want to say no.”

— Paulo Coelho

There will always be reasons to return.

In the form of old forgotten promises.

Or slow songs filled with a sort of comforting sadness.

Patter of the raindrops will call you back.

Every twinkle of the stars will remind you of home.

Of the heart that awaits yours after all this time.

It's never too late they say.

But it still is too early, says time.

The passing days are a blur of white and gold.

But in the tiredness of the lonely night,

your smile still keeps me warm.

Sometimes I wonder if I have wandered too far,

but then I close my eyes and there you are.

Right beneath my skin and always on my mind.

Space and time may keep us apart,

but still the yearning hearts find ways to be alive.

There's a kind of hope that stems from helplessness.

And everytime I crave your voice, I hope I can hear them in the soft crackle of the summer's fires.

The colors of it seems too much like the shade of your eyes.

It soothes me in this lone journey of mine,

What a pity that I can't hold it in my palm.

But then again fire and water never did get along.

Except maybe for us.

Is that why the stars were aligned like this?

So that I may cross unknown oceans and you may burn in my absence.

But they never anticipated that love might find a way.

Because we did and we always will.

It's getting cold and dark and the sky is full of stars that remind me of your eyes.

Maybe when morning comes I can take my first step back home.

Towards your waiting arms.

And towards our forever.

Do you know how it feels to hold your happiness in your hands and watch it swirl there in a pool of golden light before the night comes and snatches it away from your bleeding hands only to leave you wondering why it suddenly feels like your throat is burning when all you ever did was take a sip from your lover's lips ?

All of this pain feels like it's been an eternity since I have been carrying them in my hands. I am tired now and can't walk anymore. Where do I bury the fragments of my heart?

I woke up to the sound of his heartbeats.

It's a slow rhythm, one that comforts me in this darkness.

With only the light of the fake phosphor stars,

I can see his pale, beautiful face.

He's asleep, but very much alive.

At least for now.

At least for a few hours,

I'll still be able to embrace the warmth that's him.

Until the fuel runs out and we are doomed forever,

I can hug him and listen to his soft breaths.

There's a strange beauty to our current situation.

We're literally lost among the stars.

Held by the other, breathing the same air,

we float amidst the lights in the vast empty darkness,

miles away from the place we once called home.

Because now, nothing else exists to me except him.

Now, all that's real are his arms around my body.

Entwined together, our fingers are the last remnants of life.

And as I drift away into sleep once more,

I press my lips to his shoulder.

A final goodbye,

and then we're gone,

together.

Two hearts lost in space, and in each other,

till the end of time, perhaps.