.

When sleepless evenings

endlessly gather in lonely hours
keeping you from your dreams

I feel bad because I love you,

but wonder if this is the reason
that every night

you are in mine

I wake up this morning, it's been thirty days since we last spoke. My heart has aged more than that.

I turn to my right, sighing out slowly, feeling my ligaments creak and my bones moan, put on my glasses, and have to push away the thought of you a hundred times in those few seconds. I get up and wear something you'd hate. I cry in a way you'd hate. I love you in a way you'd hate.

I wonder where you are right now and if you care about where I am.

(In case you're wondering, I'm lost in the sea of you. I'm lost in every memory. I'm lost in laying by the gazebo, I'm lost in counting stars, I'm lost in paying for ice cream, I'm lost in now-burnt-down favorite pizza places. I'm lost in sunglasses. I'm lost in sweatshirts. I'm lost in it all.)

Maybe, we're only pretty in context. Maybe this isn't what love is supposed to be. Maybe we were always all wrong.

But I don't care, I want your homemade haircuts and messed up spine and bony fingers, delicate like bluebird legs, and the way your eyes light up when you see me. I want to be where you are again, feel your arm around my shoulder again, feel your cheek pressed to mine again, feel your laughter shake me like a tiny animal in the jaws of you. I miss your chaos and disaster and starving and boy crying. I can't sleep at night knowing that you're not still wrapped in the letters you wrote me.

I'm trying to get over it, but I'm buried under the weight of it all.

love
is not a cake
with only so many pieces

it is a force
ever replenishing
bursting forth
from your innermost

it is what you
can give to others

and yet
your self is only
its temporary vessel

however much it may be based
   on individual biochemical reactions
love is the cosmic power
that holds together
our universe

it can
   lift you sky high
   flatten you against a wall
   take your breath away
   leave you wordless
   throw you
      into a dreadful abyss
   misle your senses
   make you talk gibberish now
   beautiful words then

it devastates you
   one moment
and give you unspeakable happiness
   right after

it makes you care
   for your progeny
   as well as for your elders
it makes you do strange things
   in daylight
   and in the dark
it makes you walk for miles
    to see the one

it makes you
   help a blind woman across a busy street
   throw money into a beggar’s cap
  donate to charity

it makes you burn with desire
   to share your utmost self
   with an other
   illuminating the few days of your life
   with the hope of eternal brilliance

it can do all that
because it is
   not a cake
   but an ever-replenishing force

yours
as long as you live

and the cosmos’
as long as it exists

I love you
not because
you're good looking

I love you
not because
you're caring

I love you
not because
you dote on me

I love you
not because
your smiles are sweet

I love you
not in lust
of your crevice
or orifice
or skin

I love you
because
without you
I feel

incomplete within.

you feel like the light
In the morning
when you just know snow has fallen
and the golden hour of dawn
Is a bit more golden
and the air smells like frozen blueberries
something like the pale blue of your eyes
and you can hear
the fireplace in the next room crackle
and there is hot chocolate on the stove.
something like the warmth in your smile.
Thats something of how you feel
like warm winter blankets
holding me snugly in the sheets.
and a gust of cold
that steals my breath
through the thrown open window.
is something like being with you.

Trust me
Please take my hand

I'll take you to another land

Where birds still sing
And flowers grow

Mountains spring
And rivers flow

With so much love
To fill the sea

Please accept
This gift from me

Trust me
Please take my hand

I'll take you to a better land

Shadows moving down
these empty, vacant halls
playing with our memories
and dancing on the walls
their voices echo moments
that we painted with our love
as my sadness still recalls
that your in the sky above
as melancholy is drifting
in intoxicating wafts
a time when you were here
when we all felt so safe

this time a slow reminder
to live within today
to be careful who you know
and be gentle what you say
as I reach out for you
the shadows slip away
and knowing in that second
I can't buy back yesterday

I can only remember
how wonderful it all was
and be ever grateful
for the ...time
that we all shared down here.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

Love is so crazy let my love beauty agree
Love and beauty are not in direct conflict
beauty is so charming and love is so frenzy
Beauty is to submit this is the love verdict

Love takes beauty to go just hand in hand  
At times rivals make them to be head to head
Love is of its  kind and beauty is of its brand
Beauty is real the target and love is spearhead

Let my love just submit let us burn in the fire
Let us be at the top to find just eternal fountain
Like a true lover of beauty allow me to admire
My love is golden and your beauty is crimson

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2016 Golden Glow

I found you 
Found your arms in the secrecy of an encroaching dusk 
In the shade of trees 
The coveted corners of quiet  
I found the hidden pieces of your soul 
As they sat beside mine 
In the comfort of silence 
Whispering through the air promises of belonging  
Of two broken pieces becoming a whole 
Two unknowns becoming the known 
Two wrongs finally becoming one right 

You found me 
As your delicate fingers ran across my skin 
Laced through the curls of my hair 
Carefully stitching the gaping caverns of suspicion in a doubtful heart 
Placing together shattered confidences with a tender touch 
Holding them firmly with the power of your affection. 
We built each other as reflections of ourselves 
As better forms of the shadows we'd learned to become 

We found each other 
With skin upon skin  
Fingers entwined 
A world away from the troubled minds we used to live in  
We found each other 
Together 
We found peace 
We discovered love.