Sometimes I feel like I'm the worst type of pessimist.
At heart I'm an optimist, looking past the highest mountains,
trying to reach the sky with the tips of my fingers and
catch the clouds at the base of my palms.

However, in head,
I'm the biggest pessimist
finding the dark spots on the sunniest days,
herding death between the cracks in the concrete.

And the head is like the heart's big sister,
telling her to take a step back and make sure of her actions,
bossing her around, burning out her spark,
leaving the dead of the night with nothing but doubt.

But you've got my lips coated in sugar and
my intentions wrapped in flames.
You've got my heart scrapping its knees and
my head spinning

Because who would've thought
it'd finally meet its match,
unable to hold something down
with two hands and keep it in place.

But both of them are undoubtedly worried,
darling.
They're running for the hills and
finding a place to set camp where you'd never find.

Empty handed and confused, they're still searching and
the only thing going through their thoughts remains to be

"there's still time to run
          there's still time to run
                  there's still time
                            just move your feet,
                                       don't look back
                                                 and run
                                                         as fast as you can."

gd

Let me tell you something about falling in lust before falling in love:
They say the first cut cuts the deepest,
the first kiss lasts the longest and
the first goodbye will always be the hardest.

But only now do I realize we were never really in love,
but rather in great—crazy great—unmistakeable lust.

Lust: hands in your hair, and yours travelling downwards
leaving a trail of fire in your path as it runs down my spine
and seeps through my skin to poison my heart.

By the end of it all my heart sat frozen in place,
unable to beat to anyone except you,
leaving it feeling cold and still
like the bottom of the ocean.

But if I was ice, Love, you were nothing but flames,
engulfing and suffocating.
Lust, sweet lust,
like a never-ending dream, so real but so temporary.

And when the sun is hidden by the clouds
and when the rain starts to pour
and when the wind picks up to the rhythm of our paces in sync
and so intertwined, well, there's nothing left but a catastrophe—
a sweet ephemeral tragedy.

See, Love, we may have been great
and crazy and frozen and burned
but rain washes that all away,
not even nice enough to leave any evidence behind.

The first lust doesn't cut . . . it stabs,
and it has just forced me to spill new blood on old pieces of paper.

gd

Is this how a first love is supposed to be?
Indestructible and Irrevocable? Hanging
over your head even 10 months after and
counting cautiously? Carrying this dark
heavy cloud beyond the border of sanity?
Pacing and passing by all your positivity,
creating colossal chromatic colours of blacks
and greys up and down the edges of your
spine?

Following you? Never ever leaving you?
Watching over you in that devil-on-your-
shoulder-conscience kind of way? Restricting
and retreating the surface of your sentiments
until they've all been turned to ash and embers
of doubts and lost longings?

Preparing you for disappointment, always & forever?
Like that first time you locked lips and left the key at
the bottom of the ocean? Like that last time you laced
ligaments between the sheets of some paperweight
comforter?

Under all that dust and debris, does it bury deeper
in the cracks between your heart—or solely in the
space where it's supposed to be? Does it feed on
your sorrows and make homes out of the abandoned
buildings of your bones? It does, doesn't it? This is
how a first love is supposed to be? That even when
a second walks your way, you can't help but flinch?

gd