Continuity

Superficial

The splendor of the night seems tainted 

with the truth of the day,

Where the rays of the sun shine brilliant, 

glistening over a million flaws.

The diamonds that glimmer at your neck 

under the city lights

Are drab in the daylight, covered with the ashes 

of last night's dreams.

There is a layer of grit that covers 

the silk cushions where you lay your head,

It smells like cigarette smoke, cheap hairspray, 

and last night's expectations.

Sunglasses can't hide the hangover in your eyes 

from too many shots of regret

and a few stale promises. 

There is no lipstick red enough to cover 

the pallor of long-dead smiles,

No corset tight enough to give shape 

to drooping potential.

The high heels you wear could reach 

all the way to the penthouse, 

and still do nothing to elongate your character. 

The bartender convinced you that 

an ounce of beauty, a smidgen of charm, 

well shaken and chilled with a little luck 

would transform you 

from cheap vodka into a luxury cocktail.

So you sipped away on lies and gambled 

the price of your happiness only to realize

that the audience watching you 

was both deaf and blind.

And now, standing here, seeing where your mascara 

has settled into your mistakes 

In the reflection of the taxi window 

that's already driving away,

The sun burns hot on your skin 

that's already scarlet with self-hate,

So you turn back to the shadows and hide 

with the beauty of something completely fake. 

The Elements of Love part 3- Earth

Have I ever told you you're my world?  Yeah, you're a little rough around the edges, but I love every mountain peak and canyon, proof of the changes that transformed you from the inside out.  

I love your opinion that pours forth like hot lava, recreating the earth as your thoughts harden and your dreams take shape.  The molten essence of you is raw and real and untempered, yet your will is strong. And like cold water to iron, it strengthens your resolve. 

I want to plant my feet in your soil and just grow into you.  I want to sprout roots so deep they touch your soul.  I want to be the leaves on your trees and feed you captured sunlight.  I want to blow you kisses on the evening breeze and shelter you from existential storms.

I want to paint our history and our future on cave walls and immortalize our love on stone.  I want to teach the rivers our story and collect our memories in the ocean.  I want to sing in the caverns of your darkest days and promise you a light at the end of the tunnel. 

I want to etch a lifetime into your sand dunes, shine on your deserts like the blazing sun, and run through your landscape like a gazelle.  I want to spread myself like a blanket of snow on your tundra and glow blue and green like an iceberg in the waves.  

I don't need a Ph.D. in topography, ecology, geology, or paleontology.  I'd rather just be an expert on you. 

Elements of Love- Water

The sky frowned and wept great tears, the condensation of heavy emotion. I realized that thunder is really the sound of a heart breaking somewhere, and lightening, lightning is the residual electricity left snapping between the ends of separated lovers.

I'm left wondering when this tension became magnetic, pulling us together and requiring a bipolar rejection at the same time.  I wonder when the meeting of these two friendly winds became a boxing ring, a circle of hot and cold that just brings both of us down.

Sometimes, words shoot from our mouths like tornadoes and destroy the bridges we built to cross over our differences.  And, it isn't just Zeus that fights with lighting bolts.  I've heard you say things that melt through my armor and scar my very being all for the sake of the shock factor. 

Our anger can swell so thick that we block out the rays of the sun.  And then, it's not just our own lives we are stealing.  The consequence of uncontrolled emotion stretches a long shadow.

All I can say is, I think we need to connect the circuit.  Passion and power are dangerous steeds to gallop without bridles.  So, meet me in the middle.  Drop your weapons and walk unarmed into the eye of the storm.  Because when we meet face to face as equals, we can give or take a few electrons. 

Elements of Love - Fire

Your possibilities are infinite. You are a single match, you are the flames that light my hearth, the fires that ravaged Chicago, and I hate to say it but you might be the very fires of hell. And I want to touch you without getting burnt. 

There is a corner of my soul that sustains no independent circulation, and I have found a warmth in you that brings that part of me to life.  I stand so close to your energy until I can't stand the friction and I step back.  But moving away from you is like facing the dark side of the moon.

I lie awake at night and wonder if there is a way to manage your power without stripping you of your strength.  Like If I were Delilah and you were Sampson, and I could cut only half your hair to keep you god enough to tempt me but man enough to love me. 

But you really can't win with fire.  If you smother it, it dies. If you free it, it destroys every good intention, strangling the future in thick smoke.  It will burn a hole in the earth all the way to Satan's footstool.  I took that journey with you and I saw fire afraid of its own fury.

I thought that I could pass through the flames and not get destroyed, but I'm made of flesh and bone not a precious metal to be refined by your critical heat.  I ended up a pile of ashes heaped on a heart of gold frozen with the cold of a wasted planet long after the fire has consumed it. 

See, I didn't just get burnt, I caught on fire with you.   We exploded with a brilliance that's still shooting through space a million light years away.  And in that moment, I lived.

Unequaled

Since "I love you" are words I said to someone else and since you are unlike anything I've ever seen I think it's time for a new spin on an old cliché.

If roses are red and violets are blue, then I'm nothing without you except for rooted in my past. You don't just complete my sentences you revise my future. You're not just my other half, you make my world three dimensional.

 I don't want to memorize every inch of your body, I want to be the blood pumping through your veins and the synopses in your brain so I can say that I know you from the inside out. 

You must be part Hercules because what we have together leaves me feeling more than human. I want to resurrect Salvador Dali so you can be his muse because you are the definition of surreal.  

God must had M.C. Escher create your mind, because i could get lost in your thoughts for infinity. You're so straightforward it's complex, so intimate it's external, so inside-out it's a whole new exterior, so upside-down it makes me question right-side-up. 

What I'm trying to say is if a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm gonna need a whole new language.

'Til Death Do Us Part

Slender fingers traced the delicate lace and foamy chiffon of the wedding gown, peeking out of the folds like hot chocolate beneath whipped cream.  She sat cross-legged on a heap of clothes that covered the closet floor—clothes that she had ripped off their hangers and tossed out of drawers in their last argument. 

His jeans mingled curiously with her snakeskin peeptoes and his crisp dress shirts swallowed up her crumpled cotton tops.  The shimmering wedding dress was the only thing still hanging in that closet, casting golden shadows as the light danced a waltz on its luxurious silk.

A sample invitation floated its way down from the top shelf like a black jet and settled itself perfectly on the textile mound.   She picked it up and mindlessly traced their names in the embossed gold ink. 

It was presently three o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, August 4^th in the year of our Lord two-thousand twelve, as announced in the invitation.  But she was not gliding down the aisle to “Here Comes the Bride.”  Instead, “Amazing Grace” was wafting through the speaker system in the newly purchased house where they had planned to build a home together. 

The closet was as far as they got, plus a few sparse odds and ends and two bowls and spoons that had been dug out for an initial bowl of ice cream.  Oddly enough, that half-full carton of ice cream bothered her more than the unworn wedding gown.  She would have those simple quiet memories more deeply engraved in her heart than any bustle of the wedding celebration that should have taken place.

She picked up a simple white undershirt that was peeping out of the mess and wrapped it around her wrists and through her fingers and nuzzled it next to her face, breathing in his scent.  Uncontrollable tears flooded her eyes.  As much as she tried not to blame herself, she couldn’t seem to make her heart believe what her mind told her. 

I’m sorry, ma’am.  There is nothing more I can do, the doctor apologized as she stood trembling before him in disbelief.  I’m sorry, miss. It was a crazy coincidence.  He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, the officer said as she knelt before the twisted metal that had once been his motorcycle.  I’m so sorry, sweetie, her mom said as she drove her home from the hospital.  But through it all, her own mind was drowning them out: I’m sorry too. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

A tear trickled down her cheek and off her chin and splashed onto the platinum band housing a single small black diamond.  She sniffled and lovingly grasped the ring that hung around her neck—the ring she should have been making her promise with right now. 

She gave a faint smile as she remembered that she had it engraved with the date of their wedding. Because now we have an anniversary, babe, and one of us has to remember, she told him, eyes twinkling. 

He laughed at her and teased her about her choice of jeweler.  Baby, you better make sure the diamond in my ring is the same one.  She could still hear Jeremy's voice emanating from behind glittering perfectly white teeth, imitating the jeweler: You gonna be bery bery happy you get message done here. I do it real nice for you.  Bery special ‘cause you beautiful couple.  

Yes, there was something strange about the old man with his black mustache and pale skin.  His yellow-rimmed eyes glinted at them as they walked out the door and he murmured something under his breath.

She wiped the tear off of the inscription with her finger and felt an indescribable burn.  She let out a faint cry right before everything went black. 

The smell of burnt flesh woke her up and made her want to vomit.  She raised her arm to her nose to shield herself from the smell and her eyes fluttered open.  She was lying on the floor of the closet, and all the clothes were in their proper places.  She reached for her cell phone and looked at the time.  5:00 p.m., August 1^st.  “Jeremy’s accident!” she breathed.

Urgency socked her in the stomach like a pro-pitched baseball and she leapt off the floor and tore down the stairs screaming at the top of her lungs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry she belted.  She threw open the door and tackled him in a hug just as he was picking up his helmet.  “Marry me on Saturday, love,” she said.  “The cake doesn’t matter.”