And She Said

And she said
kiss me like you mean it
hold me like you'll stay
Don't make me a promise
that you'll only break
Kiss me like you mean it
hold me like you'll stay
Cos I am mostly tired
of trying
to keep myself safe

Stories whispered against your skin
and I love yous that bruise your arms
The pretties pictures drawn in the sand
and letters you send to the stars

Now I know dreams are just for dreaming
We forget the tunes to the songs
we wrote
Pictures weren't always meant for keeping
and there's a cold you can feel
in your bones

And she said
kiss me like you mean it
hold me like you'll stay
Don't make me a promise
that you'll only break
Kiss me like you mean it
hold me like you'll stay
Cos I am mostly tired
of trying
to keep myself safe

Quiet secrets beside still waters
Boxes we thought we had closed
tear-stained pages, in empty chapels
but with the knowing you're not on your own

Now I know dreams are just for dreaming
But don't let me forget
all the songs I will write
Leave me pictures good for framing
and at the end of the day
come back home

And she said
kiss me like you mean it
hold me like you'll stay
Don't make me a promise
that you'll only break
Kiss me like you mean it
hold me like you'll stay
Cos I am mostly tired
of trying
to keep myself safe

(C) May 2013

_______________________________________________________________________

You can write things a long time ago and then come back to it months, even years after to find that they still hold true. That there are some things that you still feel the same way about, even if they're slightly different things from an experience prior.
Just that maybe, the difference is that one is a little better equipped to deal with how one feels.
And that always helps.

Or.
You can write things that start off being about one person and then it turns out to be about another.
In fact, it's almost like, as you write, you realise you've discovered more about people you didn't even know you were writing about.

And then, sometimes, it's a mixture of all those things.
Sometimes it's about you, sometimes about her, and sometimes it's about someone completely outside of your own world.
Maybe that's the draw of writing- that lines of songs fleshed out with tunes can mean different things to (or for) different people, and that you can keep coming back to it and find something new.
For yourself, or y'know, someone else.

_________________________________________________________________________

now,

Don't make her a promise
that you'll only break

Are partings better when they're sweet, because you left bitter
Or bitter, because you left sweet?

I've run out

There are things I will learn to get used to.
That I will have to get used to.

Like on nights like these, for instance-
That when duty calls then,
Well, duty calls.

But there are parts of you I hope for, wish for...
That I hate myself for waiting for.
Because i have learnt that hoping will always leave you just that little bit sadder than you can brace yourself.


And i chide myself, bring myself back to how it's not your fault, not your doing.
And it isn't.

So all I'm left with is the job of packing our blanks into boxes.


And missing you.

Now look what you've done

Wait,
Hold up.

Did I just wait months for you to come back, only to have you leave?





Smart move Charis. Smart move.
Your brilliance is absolutely astounding.

On the other side of the glass

It's funny.

I had only just started relearning what us being okay felt like.

Only just.


______________________________

So then, where do I stand?

And we packed all our blanks into boxes

"Tell me about your day- your classes, the singing, the musical. That girl- what was her name?- tell me about her!"

"They were brilliant! They were beautiful! No. Not really, not always. Sometimes I wish they were more focused, and I often think they could do with a whole lot more discipline. But today...
Today I realized just how far they have come. How much more they're using breath to support their voice.
Baby... I'm so, so proud of them. And I'm so lucky I get to be a teacher.

That I get to be their teacher."



1) There are conversations I've wanted to have with you that have started with other people.
2) There are days filled with so much frustration, that have lasted too long, that have made me grateful for how I'll get to fall in your arms at the end of it all.
3) it is more more painful when I get to the end of that day and realize that will not happen.
3) the more you feel for someone is almost always directly related to how much they affect you.

4) you break me.



5) So easily.

Spent

Because I'm all yours anyway. 

_____________________________

You don't have to say you love me

Just be close at hand

You don't have to stay forever

I will understand

Believe me,

Believe me

I love you but I'll never tie you down

_______________________________

There should be fewer Fridays that leave you in tearful messes by noon. 

_______________________________

Here's a possibility:

What if...

I've just been needing someone too?

I was fading and chipped like rust

There are questions I have. 

Some for specific people and others, for no one in particular. 

There are a lot of whys, a lot of then-what-ifs.

 I've been reading a lot. And I've been getting caught in the torrent of memories. I haven't been writing. I don't know how. Or I'm a little bit afraid. I don't know. 

Then I pull a book off the shelf- one I've written in years before and I understand myself a little better. I understand why certain things make me so sad sometimes now, but render me incapable of responding. And so I press down on a familiar ache and excuse myself to the toilet instead. 

As it's been happening, I haven't understood. I haven't been able to say why I back away, or back down or shirk when your voice hardens or there's a sharpness to your tone. 

I freeze up. And against my will (much to my frustration), my eyes fill and all I need is to get out of there for a second or two. 

But then i tell you nothing's wrong.

Why do I do that? Maybe because when I remember having a voice, I was always wrong. I was always, always wrong. 

I've been a little bit sad of late. In ways that just makes me want to sit by myself in little corners, or parks. Sip on wine. 

I'd say write. I always do, and a part of me wants to but, like I said, I've been a little bit afraid. 

But oh, maybe hearts always break themselves again along the lines of an old scar. 

___________________________________________

And that star-flung sky hanging heavy above

Was the only witness as I whispered words you would not trust

What I said was,

Say to me, all the things that you think I could never handle

I could be the anthem you sing to yourself, 

When you're slipping away into sleep when the lights are so low
it goes
oh

two drifters, off to see the world

It's this,

this numb, floaty, slightly disconnected feeling you get

when you've stuck a needle in your vein and you're staring at it.

Except you're not quite disconnected.

The one thing you're connected by is this tiny twitch of a pain.

It's that moment somewhere between vague discomfort and pain etched in the anticipation of pulling the needle out when you're done feeling all the things you think you needed to feel.

Or at least it is sometimes.

Only during the best of it.

Most times it's the aching absence of weight that you didn't even know you could miss.

The fullness of your name sits heavily, so heavily on my tongue,

behind my teeth,

like something I would bite into to tell myself that it's real.

That you are.

I went running. And I thought I would scream, because I kept running up against myself. I couldn't breathe, kept tripping and kept coming too damn close to screaming your name. The name my breath could spell out in the dark.

Instead,

my body's been folding.

Folding inwards, around the cold space that you have left such a long, long time ago.

Has it really been that long now, how did those years pass me by?

And if it's not one name, it's another.

Circles, I'm always going in circles and that fucking tape plays on a loop and my voice cracks at dinner and it's just a note too high or three or four, I don't even know anymore.

I want to tell you.

I want to tell you how sometimes you can't be hurt enough physically for the world to know what's been done to you.

You didn't, after all.

(But that's not your fault. Really, I'm just saying.)

I want to tell you how, believe it or not, you don't have to have drank at all to blank out.

To find that you are floating overhead,

watching the whole thing happen.

To feel the time crawl by

as you count the distance between you and the blade by your bedside table.

The one that sits atop your leather-bound bible;

full of promises that you will cling to all your life afterward.

I want to tell you how the worst pain you can feel is sometimes,

most times,

not even physical.

And it sits with you and burns the inside of your skin,

its laughter snaking along the walls of your inner ear.

I want to tell you how that pain brings me full circle to a different sort of pain that happened too soon after that.

And how my breath catches again with a name I can't say aloud,

and an ache I'm not supposed to feel anymore.

And how, some days, I feel like I want to disappear.

And how, I reach for a book on my shelf

that hits too close too home.

And how I run and run and run and even when it's gotten darker I can still

see my shadow and it weighs me down with the knowledge of all the things

all the things I cannot outrun,

even if I tried.

I want to tell you that the whine and whirr,

or the ringing or the sound of merciless hacking that fills my ears just before I fall asleep is sometimes

the only thing I can hold on tight to as I drift off.

I want to tell you that I could do with someone saving me.

But I don't know where to start.

we were after the same rainbow's end

Best before:

I feel like I might end up on some crazy, mad rampage. That I'll start flipping tables, breaking glass and hacking away at the walls of my room with the wrong end of a hammer.
And then I'll crawl into bed crying because I don't know what's happening but mostly because i really like the walls of my room and i'll be upset that i've ruined it.

I am sick of being so polite and so considerate and not thinking about the things I want. Or asking for the things I want.
Because you're raised on fairytales where if two people love each other a whole lot, then they can read each other's minds. And they will know exactly when to come over in the middle of the day and pull you into a cuddle and say, "You're not wrong. I love you. I love how lilies are your favorite flower because of the smell but you don't keep them in the room because I'm allergic. Secretly I also love how you honestly don't need anyone getting you flowers, much less the person you're with. I like your hair whichever colour it is, although maybe a whole head of green might make me feel like I'm smelling grass sometimes."

I don't need to be swept off my feet, I don't need super special things to be done for me. I want to talk and be able to talk honestly. I miss the way you read me so easily but never assumed to know me. (not that you make assumptions about me now)

I don't want to feel like us meeting up or hanging out is just another thing we should do in the week atop responsibilities and commitments to the things that go on around us. And I don't want to numb myself to the ache of feeling like you don't really need me to be there. Because I have done that before and for too long and it's not a very nice feeling. I don't want to emotionally check-out of being with you, ever, just to keep myself safe. Because then what's the point?

Sometimes I think that I'm pushing this, forcing us when actually, there's an expiry date and we're pretty much getting there. But then I break it all down and look at the places my mind wanders to when I'm alone, the pictures I see in my head and the lines that I read; it's always about you.
And not because I 'happen' to be with you or that there are cardboard cut-outs and wooden theatre sets that create scenes and I'm just mentally photoshopping you in because you're the person-of-the-moment. It's not like that at all, because I can see you in a whole lot of things even when it's not in direct relation to me.
And I re-realize, that maybe you mean a lot to me.


But then again that's not saying anything about expiry dates or how you may or may not still feel about me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's okay to not want me around or to not want to be here. It's okay if somehow we've ended up on different pages. Just maybe, there could be a way such that I won't find myself feeling like things will crumble when I touch it. That I won't just feel like i'm the one who's always ruining it all or making it difficult.
That I won't wake up one morning to find that I've slipped away so much that I've ceased to exist.
And that so have we.

p.s. So, I love you too.

My dose of family this weekend

The most beautiful thing in the world happened this evening.

After I ended my call, I lean across the table,
"Erika says Happy Birthday, daddy."
"Erika's birthday?" My four year old baby sister asks.
"No, Jiejie Erika was saying Happy Birthday to daddy. Do you remember Jiejie Erika? The one with short hair?"
She takes a moment to consider this, and then looks up at me.

"Oh, your friend?"
"Mmmhmm, you remember her?"
She beams at me.
"Why do you love her?" She asks. I notice how her mom glances up to see how I'm reacting to this. I smile widely and let out a short laugh.
"Hmmm, becauseeee, she's a really nice person. Really nice."
She doesn't look at me like I'm wrong, or that it's different that we're not talking about a boy. In fact, she looks most interested and shifts between clutching the white tablecloth shyly and excitedly asking me questions.

"Are you going to marry her?"
And I laugh and say,
"Hmm, that's a really good question baby, but I don't really know yet. That depends."

I've never seen eyes like my baby sister's in relation to my relationship. Not because I've been getting frowned at, but because, whether or not people are accepting, we're all just fully aware of being in a world where we're a minority.
I've never had someone ask me if I'll marry my girlfriend, as if the entire world was alright with it.

I know what this feels like

I wanted to tell you about an uncomfortable spot I found myself in while acting.

But more than that I've been wanting to just..

Can cold nights make you fall in love
Promises be wrote in the sand
Fingerprints left on your skin
By an imaginary hand

And toilet paper love letters weren't meant to be sent

But it's always getting late

Didn't we say we never wanted to go to bed mad at the other?

Fear tastes like the iron in blood you're not drawing from yourself

"Oh yes, yes I know. And you know, you just gotta let go."
No, I want to say, no you don't know. I'm trying with all that I am and I'm not using this as any kind of excuse, but you don't know.
And to continually come at me, even after, with the full force that your ignorance is weighed with-
No, it's not your fault. You don't know, and that's okay. But it just got more difficult when you wanted to insist on your advice that clearly wasn't pushing me into a place I was comfortable in.

"Okay guys, no matter what, you have to go in now-"
"Okay, okay we're just-"
"No." She says, and her voice is quiet but so, so firm. "No, sometimes we just can't. We are not machines. And I have heard something that just, that just goes beyond all of any of this. So."
And in that instance, I am so grateful, so grateful for her.

"Hey, so how're you? Y'know with-"
"Yeh well, c'est la vie right?"
"It'll pass man, it'll pass."
Yeah, I think. What doesn't, after all? And that's what I did too-
I lay there, and just waited for it to pass.

I always do, don't I?

Still a little bit of your taste, in my mouth

It's still a little hard to say,

what's going on.

So come on, courage

teach me to be shy

cos it's not hard to fall

when you float like a cannonball

I wish I knew this earlier

And the thing is,

it always was supposed to have been about the trying and less about the romanticism.

shift.

Green Pens

So then, if you do, love me.

Sink with the tide, rescue me, if you like

Maybe I'm doing this, I'm hanging on,

just for the day you might look at me the way you used to.

Like, like you want to know more.

Like, you're not tired.

Like, I might just keep your attention.

Like you look at me and you see the trainwreck but it's okay.

Actually,

that you'll look at me at all.

Think how we tried,

it's okay to be lied to

as long as it's only by you

Empty Chairs

I've never needed an audience to speak, never needed readers to write. I've done whichever I feel like, when I feel like it. Honestly, I don't see why one should bother speaking if no one's listening (that is of course, not to say that you shouldn't speak just because no one's listening.) I think of recent, I've just found myself more inclined to sit outside an office that's holding a debrief I should be involved in. Or excusing myself to cuddle up with Wallaby Joe. Or even just sitting quietly behind the rows and rows of stables where no one can find me.

I feel like sitting by myself for a bit.

My point?
I've always felt most comfortable in empty dance studios, with the curtains drawn and empty theatres with the lights down.
I've always written, where I couldn't speak, and written, so that I could.
I was once told last year that it felt like I was exclusive- like I wrote so much that I didn't talk about these things that mattered.
But let's face it, people have lives to live and other things to talk about. Things they'd like opinions on, or a listening ear for. Things that matter.

"Are you going to be okay?" You asked. Well I wasn't really not okay. But to honestly answer your question, yes. Yes I'll be okay, and I wanted to say that.
Yes, I'll be okay, because when I'm not, I'll get over it or around it or sit in it until I am okay.
Yes, I'll be okay, because I can still hold on to my writings, and me.

I don't need to talk out loud about mindless things like how my nightmare stayed inside my bones even after I woke up, rattling about inside me as I walked about from place to place. And how it hurt as it rattled about, come to think of it. How I was scared, and am still scared to fall asleep again and find myself back there. How I cried so much in that nightmare that I'm sure I woke up to find my eyes brimming, but that despite having been bawling, my pillow wasn't soaked yet.
Or how I woke up dreaming I was falling into space and how I was sure it was a ride, but it wasn't, but maybe it was. And what I was most concerned about was if I'd left anything behind in the seats.

Or how today, something happened with one of the boys that stilled my insides and made me draw in a huge breath. That made me cry at dinner as I talked about it. That's left me thinking about it all day, making me more frustrated at the environment around it- because no one caught that or could hold onto that, in that moment. And I am wrapping myself around it, keeping it here and trying to hold on to it with the weight of me.
How I thought it was one of the most beautiful moments I'd ever found myself in. And how it rang with such truth that it felt like silver falling to sand and still making a sound.

Because here I am, with my words. And all my sappy little feelings. And my soul, here. And it's okay that I am here, with my words. In this space and/or spaces of the like- physical and non-physical pages.

I used to be quite silly. I used to go on and on and on about the most weightless things that my significant others cared nought for. And then I stopped and wrote more.
And then, there was you.
And often times I am confused- because, to be quite frank, there's hardly time these days to talk about, well, all these little things that like to find themselves fluttering about in my head. There's a lot of other things that are going on.
It's not that I wouldn't like to talk to you love, on the contrary, I'd very much love to, on days you felt like listening to my incessant ramblings.
I love talking with you. I'd love to talk with you.

But those days that I get to, until they come back, yes ma chérie, yes I'll be okay.
Because I've got pen and paper.
And I've got these empty chairs.

Wreck of the Day

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And the light's always red in the rear-view
Desperately close to a coffin of hope
I'd cheat destiny just to be near you
If this is giving up, then I'm giving up
If this is giving up, then I'm giving up, giving up
On love, On love

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And I'm thinking 'bout calling on Jesus
'Cause love doesn't hurt so I know I'm not falling in love
I'm just falling to pieces

And if this is giving up then I'm giving up
If this is giving up then I'm giving up, giving up
On love, On love

And maybe I'm not up for being a victim of love
When all my resistance will never be distance enough

Driving away from the wreck of the day
And it's finally quiet in my head
Driving alone, finally on my way home to the comfort of my bed
And if this is giving up, then I'm giving up
If this is giving up, then I'm giving up, giving up
On love, On love