Star

by

She was something special –

We all knew it.

And now we miss her gone.

Loved,

And loved in return.

But all good things end –

That’s life –

A reality that’s hard to accept –

But I guess that’s life too.

This is what I know –

My heart breaks

And there is an emptiness,

A quiet place I never expected,

A sorrow that’s difficult to explain,

A catch in the throat,

An ending undeserved.

I hate good-byes.

 Know this –

Memory is strong

And you were always that.

Missed?

Undoubtedly.

Forgotten –

Never.

You were one of us –

A star.

Shine forever.

Flower

by

If I were a flower would you pick me?

I thought this today –

I thought, maybe,

Maybe if I was that beautiful,

Or that precious,

That delicate,

That vulnerable,

That person.

Would that have made the difference

or would everything still be the same?

I’ve lost count of how much time has past –

That’s a lie –

I still know –

I always will –

Isn’t that sad?

Isn’t that a pitiful existence?

A half-life

An eternal cloud, a mist, a fog

there today, for always, forever.

Do you know how long I’ve wished for a different day?

A day when I’d wake up

As if it were all a bad dream.

If only life were that easy.

No,

Day’s continue to pass

Day’s when I hate you for what you’ve done,

When I hate you for what you do

And when I hate you for what you’ll never do.

So here we are –

I’ve waved the olive branch

And I haven’t heard a thing.

You remain shut.

Am I to blame?

Yes, I pushed

Yes, I pulled

But behind the thorny exterior

was something deeply rooted.

So I ask again –

If I were a flower would you pick me?

Or would nothing change at all?

Moving on – part three

by

And so it passes –

Now I can breath again

Ah the greater good. I hear you are still with your other half, the significant other. Let me tell you, what you are doing is wrong. But you know that, don’t you? I guess that is why you have implemented the distance mechanism. Normal order is resumed. But I will play you at your own game and get on with my life without you. I think I’m getting better – how about you?

I hear that you met my closest friend and I was conspicuous in my absence? This must have really puzzled you. Why else did the beast you so successfully put to sleep rear its ugly head again? Where am I? Why was I not there too? Who was I with if not with her?

Well friend, let me remind you that life isn’t that simple. But it doesn’t have to be like this. I can imagine the inner torment, the conflict, the dilemma. I have had that talk myself, numerous times. In my experience your heart will always win out; it will recruit your head to make a plan. Yes, that will work. Simple.

I see your name pop up and I am yours again in that instant.

Life can be cruel. I think of a happy childhood and all I see is you. My heart, and how much it aches, lets me know that you are still my present. My head fills in the blanks of my future and all my plans revolve around you. My dreams are the constant reminder that I cannot go on without you.

So you see, it’s not so much about love and caring – we’re past that. We denied ourselves that. We’ve left the simpler life; ignored the greater good. Instead it is ALL about possession. You belong to me. I am yours. It is a constant battle to deny this one true fact and prove it to each other. Neither of us willing to let go.

Possession. Ownership. Love. Caring. Muddled and mixed. Confounded. Confused.

If I could hurt you I would, but I’m pretty sure that the damage is done. If I could break down your barriers, they would be broken. If I knew a way to show you what could be, well, I’d shout it out for all the world to hear. But in my heart of hearts, I know that you still wouldn’t listen. This is all about you and what you want – I think it always has been. You are more a mess than I am. You want everyone to be happy, even if it means denying yourself the ultimate happiness.

Worse, you want your cake. I know this because you say that you don’t want me but make sure that I am only yours. Yes, I’ve figured out your game plan. Little good that it does me.

We are both circling. We are both the same. We will eventually lose each other, of that I am sure. How? Because I am finding it harder and harder to hold on. I’m forgetting why.

For now I’m yours. But time is running out. And while I feel like you are struggling to let go, it’s for the greater good old friend.

I’m calling it moving on.

FC

Moving on – part two

by

This is a jumble of thoughts to match my mind, which is also all a jumble.

I do think that your feelings were true but I don’t know when or where those feelings started. Was it nostalgia for our childhood or just a passing fancy? Could it have been more? This is what I know. Being with you always felt right. It just did.

It was our circumstances that made it wrong. Every time that we shared moments over these past years, there have been other themes at play. Other hearts to be broken. Funny thing is that we always denied them to each other. Every time.

We were cowards. You still are. We do not live in some parallel universe. Neither are we part of some teenage drama where boy meets girl and – despite some ups and downs – find their happily ever after. No. Circumstance says otherwise. In this life, nothing will ever be handed to us on a plate. We must put in the groundwork first. Preparation is key and it was here that we failed each other.

If we were really grown up and truly honest, we would be together now. Instead we are separate and I am so angry with you. It was never going to be easy saying goodbye but how fair is it to play the devoted lover when your heart is clearly elsewhere? Can’t you see that it was for the greater good? Don’t you know that she would have realised it too? This was our Waterloo. This was when we sacrificed each other.

You may feel hard done by because I am singling out your behaviour (ha, perhaps your only act of singledom!) So fine, I am not blameless. I knew the state of play and still chose you – as friends of course. And no, I can’t believe that I’m playing the friendship card either. Me, the biggest advocate of the theory that men and women can never be friends. But please don’t judge me. When you care about someone as much as I did (and often still do), proximity is a must. Despite the trouble that proximity might cause.

It was a joint decision, making the call to be near each other. We made that happen, and it was wonderful. I have never been that happy and I often wonder will I ever be as happy again. Maybe a different type of happy.

I always thought that you would step up to the mark and remember the greater good. You eventually did, and that’s what broke my heart.

I believe – and hindsight is a great thing – that you did, and maybe still do, love me. And that is not a term to throw about loosely. Because even now you refuse to let me go. And god, you are trying. You avoid me. You don’t call me. This works well for you, and mostly for me. But you can’t avoid me forever. You hear rumours, rumblings. And you cannot sit back and let this happen. So you have to get me back. You cannot lose me like you did all those years ago with no goodbye again.

Your name appears. And I am yours in that instant.

FC 

Moving on – part one

by

If I was the light I would make you see

If I was a star you’d love me back

When I look back I realise that it started when I left. One glorious summers day – I was at the seaside. At home, my mother closed the last box and my father packed it all away. They shut the front door for the last time. And with that, we were gone. I never got to say goodbye.

For years I dreamt that I was back home again, for I still believe that this was my one true home (truth be told I’ve never been sentimental about leaving a place since). I would relive such happy moments or imagine new ones that, at night, seemed painfully real. I would wake up and feel that ache in my heart again.

Day after day I would wish that I could see my old friends again and I feared as each year passed that soon you would not remember me at all.

But that, my friend, does not seem to have been the case. I do not know how it happened, but you came back into my life. I remember one Christmas night – we talked, we laughed, we joked. Back then, things seemed normal so perhaps I need to look back further. To a summer before. I have a significant other who is making me wait. I’m angry because he is not here. But I bump into you and we talk. Now my other half walks by and you ask if we are together. I say no. Even now, I don’t know why I said that. And I don’t know how you knew or even why you’d care.

Trawling back further I remember talking about your insecurities. I understood.

Then you brought me out dancing one night. Despite my own insecurities and complexes, I was never ashamed to dance with you. I didn’t care who saw. I still don’t.

I remember seeing you one day, and I believe that this is my earliest memory. You were standing by your car and I walked past. I recognised you. I thought you had forgotten me. But you waved. I was alive in your eyes. You remembered who I was.

FC

The beginning – part two

by

This isn’t so much about love, as in caring; this is about property, as in ownership

If I could hurt you I would. If I could scream and shout, I’d do that too. I feel like smashing, throwing, shattering. But mostly I feel like you wont let me be.

Knowing you has been difficult. It has meant remembering a past, a happy childhood, a time that should be joyously and fondly recalled. My early years were full of running, jumping and climbing trees. A youth that centred on friendship. You were there.

Fast forward. I knew from the very off that night that all was not well. I knew by the way you stood there, how you spoke and most of all, how you looked at me. I wondered how I ever thought you could have ever cared at all.

But love is blind and I chose to see the situation for what it was not. Unstable. Volatile. A time bomb ticking, ticking, ticking, getting ever closer to detonating. All I could see was the story in my head. Ah yes, my happily ever after. But that was a dream.

Years have passed since this all began, since the moment I told myself to like and the time since then when like grew to something more. And here I am now, alone. Seems to me that I am the one who was destined to pull the short straw, eternally hoping but never receiving. I am the one who cannot get through one day without thinking about him. I am the one who checks her messages a hundred times a day and prays that he might have called. I cannot get him out of my head and I cannot move on with my life without him. I cannot see a future with him gone.

Believe me, I want to get better but I just don’t know how. Who knows how to mend a broken heart? Who knows how to stop a girl from caring for a boy who has filled her head with hope and her heart with love? She loves a boy that she cannot trust. He makes her the happiest that she has ever been and every second without him kills her a little bit more.

I don’t know if I am explaining it right…

It is impossible. It is wanting to break glass, smash windows, slam doors and just scream, scream, scream. I have to keep moving just to escape it. I have to run away from the one thing that I would run towards forever. A constant battle. It follows me from dusk to dawn. Nags, niggles, pokes and prods. It is always there. And there. And there too.

I feel defeated.

You don’t want me anymore.

FC

The beginning – part one

by

I heard today that marriage was signing up to annoy him for life – ’til death do us part. I could have done that.

Sometimes he seems like a story I once read. Fictional. Sometimes, I forget all the bad (and boy, there was some) and remember only excitement, exhilaration, pleasure.

I remember the pain too, but it’s a pain that made us stronger. You see, in my head each problem is resolved and each obstacle is overcome. We are victorious. We live happily ever after.

But the fact is – and I can barely bring myself to say it – we are not happy anymore.

Now, we do not talk and it has been a while. I do not see him, hear him, smell him, touch or taste him. Gone. As if he was never really there at all. I swore I’d make myself forget. I made a promise that I would and could move on. And yet here I am, still madly in love. Where is he? I do not know.

I used to see him at the very moment where I would choose to make a stab at moving on. Oh universe, you make me smile. And now I wonder why he chose that precise moment to appear. I wonder if he could see me or sense the sea change. I think about where he might be and whether our time together had left us with an alarm that warned us when either might be ready to try life without the other. That maybe the thought scares him about as much as it has haunted me? A life without him. Is that a life at all?

I cannot pinpoint the moment that I knew I loved him. It wasn’t first glance, or second, or third. It was a steady progression of sorts. It was talking for hours. It was longing for a good-night kiss but holding back. We were friends. Friends that imagined said kiss and watched it grow in significance. It was all the things that were left unsaid. So much we wanted to say. So much that we couldn’t.

It was, and still is, him calling me his lady. Like I was worth the world and still priceless to him.

It was years ago. It was a night on the town with my sister. We are in the club dancing and from nowhere he and his brother come running and take us dancing. Brother with sister, me with him.

Was this the way they planned it or a happy coincidence? Sometimes I believe it was all planned, that the universe had a future mapped out and it involved us. Why else? Why else would it put him and I together?

We grew up as neighbours and friends. I remember he was the quiet one, but I didn’t truly notice him. Did he see me? He has told me since that he did. But now I am unsure.

The saddest part of our long, drawn-out tale is that there is now so much that I doubt. Months went by when I believed every word that he said. Years past when I fell into a great love for him. He was the reason for smiles, laughter and comfort. He was the person to go home to. He was the one that made the long journey home pass quickly, faster.

And yet all it took was one night to tear it all down; a few short hours to sweep away everything that he had ever said into an ocean of lies. Words that meant worlds; that meant a future.

Now they mean nothing.

FC