maybe, perhaps //

i lose myself in the ones i love.
i (still) lose myself in the ones i've lost,
only to find
(and lose)
 myself all over again.

i once thought this was a good thing.
a journey, a discovery, a series of realizations.

maybe once, it was - perhaps.

i have been hurt once to often
to think so anymore.

> > >

"you love with everything you are"
he told me, and lately,
i have realized that it's true.
i am an ocean of emotion; a
hurricane of the ones i love most,
a collage of those i wish
could learn to love me;
a broken mirror, reflecting their own
selfish understanding of love back
to them, while my own
burns and burns and burns,
a smoke screen,
a fire that smoulders,
crumbles,
and, eventually,
dies -

because even a forest fire fades
when there is nothing left to
keep it alive.

i am a hurricane of ice and fire;
a contradiction held together
with trembling fingers and
fragmented "somedays".

and maybe, perhaps
this is the problem;
i have always found myself
in the ones i love,
but i cannot keep from
getting lost there too.

(i have always found myself
in the ones i love, yes -
so why do they never
find anything in me?)


> > >

my love is a winter storm;
ferocious and deadly -
or so they say.
i have learned that the cold 
rarely kills anything
that love has touched;

winter, however, always dies;
a memory of ice that fades
with the fire of the awakening sun.

there are those, perhaps, who
love snow while it lingers --
but they always look past it,
eventually,
holding their breath,
waiting for spring.

i have grown used to it.
nobody longs for winter to stay.
it is simply the way
things
(people)
are.

> > >

they say soulmates are the ones
we simply fall in with.
elbows rubbing at the table,
conversations that hold
no spoken words.
the ones you feel at home with,
the people whose hearts you have come to
acknowledge as a place of safety,
the ones you can whisper your deepest
fears to, and expect them to care
enough to simply s t a y. 

(it's true: nothing frightens people
away more quickly than
the acknowledgement
of fear in another being that is
just as human as they are.)

> > >

i (am; have always been)
a second thought;
the one in the background,
loving and loving and loving,
yet unable to voice the words
that are tearing me apart.
i am vessel of emotion and love
and passion that even the bones
that form me cannot contain.

what i feel is too powerful for words,
and too fragile for anything else,
less i lose myself (again) in
the ones my heart has loved.

let me say this -
let me understand -

it is not enough to love someone.
it is not enough to love someone.
it is not enough to love someone. 

whether we know it or not,
despite the fears we hold onto,
we all desire to be loved in return.

they say that
those who are heartless once
cared too much -

but maybe, perhaps,
it is the other way around -

maybe, just maybe,
the ones they loved
simply cared too little.

--

it's strange how my own heart bleeds into fiction; sometimes i don't know if it's a character i've made up that i'm writing about - or myself. but then, i suppose every character we create is a part of us in some way, just as the ones we mold them after are. xx