Poems inspired by Taylor Swifts' Red album

All too well

I remember it all too well

The twinkle light trees

The constant lingering

Never having to second guess

Never having to force a thing

The long nights that never seemed long enough

And the permanent dark eyes we wore in exchange for time

The way your hair felt between my fingers

And your unshaven face along my fingertips

I remember the moment I knew I was in trouble

As I remember the last time I saw you

All too well.

“I’ll see you next week,” you said.

But I knew it was the end

And perhaps you did too.

~

I almost do

“It would have been good to run into you”

Now I’m playing out the scene in my mind.

Would I hug you hello? Would you be kind?

Would I say something that wouldn’t make sense, be uncomfortable as if I didn’t know you?

As if I didn’t know all your greatest fears and what keeps you up every single night?

Would you still be a stranger, still distant and out of sight?

Or maybe I’d say that I missed you, and you’d say it to.

I’d have the opportunity to say all the things I never said.

Everything that keeps me up every single night

Letters I’ve written but never sent.

Maybe. What if.

But I didn’t run into you, the scene did not show.

So tell me,

How do you get over someone who you never had?

How do you forget things that never happened?

Do you ever stop loving someone who never knew how you felt?

Do you ever learn to forgive yourself for never telling them?

~

State of grace

Wine held delicately in my hand,

your electric fingers igniting the current of my own skin

Can we stay like this forever?

With honey dripping from our essence,

while the moon shines the only light, illuminating in fluorescence

I make a wish for eternity

I have only experienced love to be tragic

Never quite declared an epic love affair

Nevertheless, always magic

Somehow, I think you and I will mirror a dramatic classic

The tornado inspiring fusion of both

Rising and falling all at once

I pause there, midway thought

Curled up in your lap

Our bodies remain tangled atoms dancing,

and our souls?

They are nostalgic for the now

The present moment portal

~

Treacherous

No one ever talks about breaking your own heart.

It’s self-sabotage in the simplest definition

It’s envisioning a future that was not promised

It’s being too sure, misplacing your trust and hope in another who never planned to hold it.

Its assumptions, exaggerations

misconceptions

Until the other tears it all down and you see it for what it really is.

What it had been all along,

A wishful illusion

~

Better man

The art of begging someone to care

The destruction of one’s self when doing so

You were not worth my shards

That lay beneath your feet

Begging to be resurrected by you

It’s clear you will not give your time

To safeguard, my child-like heart

So, it’s my time

To sweep up the remnants, collect my dignity

To promise myself,

Never will I ever lay broken below another’s grasp

A real lover will not need to be begged for

~

Everything has changed

“Please tell me if I’m crushing you”

He kindly pleads as the weight of his head sits on my right thigh.

I watch mesmerized as he continues to trace lines with his fingertips along my Goosebumps.

Amused, I soothe,

“Shh, you’re not”

His long caramel hair sliding between my fingers a small smile enters my lips.

My ears perk up to murmured conversations humming beyond the walls, but we sit in silence, simply indulging in each other.

You’re not on my mind. Shockingly.

No, as he lays on my lap, I do not reminisce about how you also did the same, all those months ago.

When he calls me perfect, the memory of the first time you told me that briefly arises, I allow it, I acknowledge it, but it does not affect me.

I am not crippled when he tells me my skin is so beautiful & soft, as you have repeated.

No, I am completely & utterly present with him, the past of you does not belong here.

I am ready to love again.

~

Begin again

Hopeless love shadowing the delight of Milan

In the same room, our hearts live nations apart

And I am sure, this is it

The beginning, the end

There will never be another

Anyone like him

Time feels as though it freezes

Moving on seems unthinkable

Be honest, you don’t want to

You keep him alive on your pages,

as you drift further from his thoughts

One year later,

I’m on the phone with a new man

One I love so deeply

Yet not hopelessly

Because one year later,

I have been gifted with being loved in return

He calls to tell me

I am the best thing to happen to him

And I realize now,

Love will never leave my life

Yet I wish this one to stay for a while longer

So much can change in a year

Healing has been in the works

Life has turned a new leaf and its crystal green

although I know, change is bound to happen

I catch myself thinking

I am sure,

This is it