one day i met a boy
he was precious, smiled like the
moonlight reflected, sparkling
on the mirror of a lake
soft, yet gentle ripples betray
his wailing demons inside
demons i can't save him from
and for that i still
feel like i'm
too far away
so far away
feel like i can't
reach my hands far enough
far across the great sea
the great abyss of the space
between two screens
to wipe away the tears he sheds alone
to sit with him through the sleepless nights
to clear the fog in his eyes when the darkness
is a little too overwhelming

i remember my mother
telling me of how she wept
when she was ironing my father's
tattered white shirt, the only one he had
when we could barely put food on the table
when my father had to bend over backwards, had to let people
step all over him
and it wasn't really about the shirt
but her helplessness at seeing
a loved one suffer yet being unable to help
i was still a child but
now i think i know how it feels
the guilt, the misplaced anger at an imagined incompetency that feels sharp as a knife's edge and cuts just as deep

i know how it all feels now

(i have felt more in the year i've known him than the years i haven't. maybe i'm just young. i don't think so.)

i feel like apologising
even though i don't know what for
to whom, nor
to what end

perhaps because i felt like
he gave me his smile?
perhaps because i smile now
and it's always tinged with some sort of darkness
i feel like i'm wasting his smile.

why does my vision turn glassy
whenever i think of him?
why does my heart tighten every time
i think of him smothered by stormy clouds?
why is this so inescapable, so inevitable?

and this is really
more about me, than him so
maybe i think too highly of myself
maybe i am at least a little bit
delusional
after all
i have my own demons to run from

i thought i would only feel like this
when night fell and i am surrounded
by silent walls
then i could let go of my rational side
but no, this has no regard for reason
no regard for timing, just like it
disregarded all my inhibitions
and locked in on the one person
i knew from the start that
i could never have

(the one person i could never have. god. life could be easier.)

and i have wept enough to fill the
clouds that plague his mind
but he can never know
it is not his weight to carry.

(maybe i understand a little now, why people pray so devotedly. perhaps i understand why people look up to the sky with such heaviness and make wishes on fallen stars. and now i'm tempted to believe.)

and its ironic that i've always written
vaguely enough that only he can
read his name between the lines
yet have no intention of
letting him know of their existence

while we still orbit each other
i will try to smile through my red-rimmed eyes
and i suppose
i'll just let my hand
dangle in the space between us
after all.

(take it. take it before it's too late. keep me. keep me like i want to keep you.)

i'm tired.
i'm really
tired.