My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.

I wonderif you ever read my poemsand wish they were writtenfor you.

Somehow everything always came down to time, she realized with perfect lucidity. There was either too much or too little. It either passed too quickly or too slowly. It didn’t belong to anyone—it was simply a gift, bestowed by God, and yet eternally taken for granted. She closed her eyes for a moment, wishing Time could be tamed—reigned in—and tethered, synchronized with human needs and wants. But that wasn’t the case, was it?

All love is bittersweet. Love is inexplicable; it is part poetry and part masochism. Part of love is the loss of self-control because one must openly surrender their sense of an exclusive self to the manic powers of love. The personal act of surrender to a lover leaves one vulnerable to entanglement in a maze of emotions. When we fall in love, our lover’s happiness and well-being assumes the primary role in our mind, they become copilots of our souls. When we are in love for the first time, we feel what it means to become a complete person; we identify who we are by seeing our reflection in our lover’s eye; and we sense what we might become when infused with love. When our lover leaves us, we feel vexed and vacant because we recognize that they took up such a large part of what made us feel intoxicated with life. When our lover abandons us, we lose our sense of self; we temporarily cease to exist as a whole person, and we must reconstruct the shattered remnants of oneself in the wake of a love lost.

No one can claim they are mature until they experience the hallucinogenic ramifications of being in love, and undertaken an urgent personal assessment and soul-searching discernment that is mandated after experiencing the bitterness of losing in the love game.

I got nervous at bulls and eagles,Trying to figure what shape Zeus might take f

Laney, why do I believe you transcend the ordinary? Why do I look at you, and expect to see a façade fall away, revealing something much more than even the extraordinary? Tell me."Elaine flushed, her knees wobbling. “I…don’t…know. But thank you—for the kind words. I’m flattered.” She closed her eyes wanting to hide. He was too close…too beautiful…too fervid.And she was too vulnerable, too exposed.“Look at me.”She hesitantly met his unwavering gaze.“No more hiding in your shadows,” he whispered, “because I will find you. And I will drag you kicking and screaming back into the light, where you belong. Do you understand?”“Yes."“Good.” He took her hand and guided her forward.

The day arrived,when myriad teary rivers flow and the muted wind faintly died in his tears—an altar for the beloved one's departure,for sister-hood is no more,for her to adore!while pangs the beating world in a lamenting voice;their remembering loss of the 'one' they embrace most and when the crepuscule came like a phantom,the mournful,gathered birds swiftly flew in gloom.

Years of love, followed by heartache. Those are the years that define me.Those are the years that know– love’s eternity is you.

A faerie heart is different from a human heart. Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again. Faerie hearts are evolutionarily less sophisticated. They are small and hard, like tiny grains of sand. Our hearts are too small to love more than one person in a lifetime...I tried to talk sense into my hard little heart. But it had landed on Peter, a creature two hundred times my size and barely aware of me, and there was no prying it loose.

Did she make you laugh? Did she love you as much as you loved her? Did she protect you and warm you and keep you from suffering? Valentine turned her eyes away from him, unable to face the empty answer in his face but not wanting to stop saying what she had thought for so long. "I saw how fascinating her mystery was to you. For my part, I think that the mystery is always greatest where there is the most-emptiness. A person full of life is never mysterious, on the contrary.

I have, he went on, betrayed myself withbelief, deluded myself with lovetricked myself with sex.the bottle is damned faithful, he said,the bottle will not lie

...come lie beside me again and understand - the others can show by actions, but I alone will immortalize you in words...

But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.

I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now.' These messages and orders brought to you by my father, a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee.

...I will find once again the light of your beauty - your colored windows in the night...

Death had marked his family with unbreakable black halos, until only two remained.

The things you let go will someday teach you how to fly.

You're gone and you left me. My heart has dissipated. The only thing I can feel is the blood rushing through my veins and the strings that hold my fragile heart together.

You've left me with a kaleidoscope of broken smiles and shattered dreams.

You said this was only the beginning, I didn't realize that meant starting a new chapter without you as part of my story.

She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.

The cloudless day is richer at its close;A golden glory settles on the lea;Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool reposeTo mellowing landscape, and to calming sea.And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light,The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines;Freed form the noonday glare, the favour’d sightIncreasing grace in earth and sky divines.But ere the purest radiance crowns the green,Or fairest lustre fills th’ expectant grove,The twilight thickens, and the fleeting sceneLeaves but a hallow’d memory of love!

Out of the starless night that covers me, (O tribulation of the wind that rolls!) Black as the cloud of some tremendous spell, The susurration of the sighing sea Sounds like the sobbing whisper of two souls That tremble in a passion of farewell.To the desires that trebled life in me, (O melancholy of the wind that rolls!) The dreams that seemed the future to foretell, The hopes that mounted herward like the sea, To all the sweet things sent on happy souls, I cannot choose but bid a mute farewell.And to the girl who was so much to me (O lamentation of this wind that rolls!) Since I may not the life of her compel, Out of the night, beside the sounding sea, Full of the love that might have blent our souls, A sad, a last, a long, supreme farewell.

I always knew death of this relation would beat the death out of my life.

I need to say something. Take it anyway you like,” Ian stated, his eyes boring into hers with a fervor that left her holding her breath.Elaine started to shake her head. “Look, we just met…you don’t need to say…”His deep, cultured voice interrupted her. “Everything you are, Laney, resides in your eyes. I need to see you—all of you. Don’t take that from me while I’m still here. Please.”Tears welled. “You don’t even know me,” she whispered. “How can you say that?”“Because I think I do know you—I just haven’t figured out how.

[T]his jealousy gave him, if anything, an agreeable chill, as, to the sad Parisian who is leaving Venice behind him to return to France, a last mosquito proves that Italy and summer are still not too remote. But, as a rule, with this particular period of his life from which he was emerging, when he made an effort, if not to remain in it, at least to obtain a clear view of it while he still could, he discovered that already it was too late; he would have liked to glimpse, as though it were a landscape that was about to disappear, that love from which he had departed; but it was so difficult to enter into a state of duality and to present to oneself the lifelike spectacle of a feeling one has ceased to possess, that very soon, the clouds gathering in his brain, he could see nothing at all, abandoned the attempt, took the glasses from his nose and wiped them; and he told himself that he would do better to rest for a little, that there would be time enough later on, and settled back into his corner with the incuriosity, the torpor of the drowsy sleeper in the railway-carriage that is drawing him, he feels, faster and faster out of the country in which he has lived for so long and which he had vowed not to allow to slip away from him without looking out to bid it a last farewell.

There's so much I should say, so many things I should tell him, but in the end I tell him nothing.I cut a line and my losses, and I light a cigarette.

What we share between us is powerful. It consumes and burns brightly, love. When we—if we—consummate this relationship, I want us to be thinking clearly. Most importantly, I want you to be strong. Healthy. I want you to be whole. I wish that for you—in every second of your life—whether you choose to stay or go—that you be you again…that your heart…and your body heal. You’ve survived much, Laney. Let us not forget your journey leading to this place in time.

When she had died, his anchor was gone and the world had burned from his untethered insanity.

Closed eyescan't sacrifice a third timei may never knowA dreamer's dreammy stars are onlymade of goldCame into this life holding onWas it a dream Or life lived beforeAlien genetics Formed on the 7thToo late So i was turned awayToo lateBut i seen those gatesIt’s just latelyi’ve forgot the wayWhat am i saying?somewhere out there is a starCovered in goldlaugh, its okayit's just best i wait this time can't sacrifice a third timehow will i knowfeverish devils place their bets the abyss or the flameBut at the edgei stop & look to the skytonight I find the stars are covered in gold so right here i will just stayHere i’ll just remain in a place where time and space does not existbut a gateway to Sarin does covered in golddeep in the chest you appearjust like I always knewa distant star

...my father, [was] a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room ... I'm sure he told himself: 'I never hit her'. I'm sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun.

love needs too much help, he said.hate takes care of itself.

...And on my fourth morning in Naples, I woke up alone. There was a note on the table with the breakfast that Cinzia had quietly prepared for me. It read, "It could never be. But that's why it will always be - perfectly divine. Cinzia" City Solipsism: A Short Story

...everything is gone except traces of you inside me - and the years like the wind are sweeping those away ...

Loving you has been worse than an addiction to drugs. At least I don't have the drugs c r a w l i n g into my bed at night.

I see your face, your smile and poetry comes flooding out of a heart that can't love you anymore...

Someone asked me the other day if I missed my ex? I didn't understand the question, because what's there to miss.. He lost someone who could have loved him forever, but I lost someone who never did... So the only thing I miss, was the part of me I changed ; in order, for him to love more. How was I so blinded back then... I don't miss him, I missed me.

To know true love, even though it was impossible to keep, had finally cracked her heart open enough to let someone else in.

Like a white knight in a station wagon, he drove out of her life.

She wanted to freeze the hands of time. Wanted to revisit, revise and rewrite the past…edit out the monsters hell-bent on taking the lives of everyone she loved.

You are not going to be the girl I’m going to marry are you? You are going to be the girl that got away.

Love … It’s a nice little trick if you can find it.We had found it.But now I knew finding love and holding on to it were not the same thing.

I knew from the start we were nothing like "forever". Maybe because forever is such a scary place.

i have loved and i have lost and im starting to believe; its ok. Sometimes what we "think" is best for us, is only the beginning of what is truly "meant" for us. And if i have loved, so deeply the wrong heart; i am content in knowing the greatest love i will ever experience, hasnt even begun yet.

Fuck 'em. Call it whatever you want. Maybe it's just two people clinging to each other to stay alive. Maybe sometimes that's all love gets to be. And, maybe, if they hold onto each other long enough . . . maybe something good finally happens.

...you betrayed me, but after all those years I discover, my tears have wiped the slate clean...

I love a man who tickles me awake with reality, and kisses me goodnight with fictionBraids my hair with simplicity to compliment my contradiction And calms the waging wars inside with a simple boyish lookFor he is as much a mystery as he is an open book When I am at my worst, I am beautiful by his sideHe draws me in yet keeps me free, the moon to my tideHe relishes my quirks and antics just as much I love to keep him franticAnd if I ever fall, he doesn’t catch me right awayBecause he knows I’ll glideAnd even more so, knows how much I enjoy the ride…With the strength I lack, he holds my insecurity safe in-between his fingersAnd if there is ever a doubt while I am out running aboutHis steady grip lingersHe drives me crazy just as much as he keeps me saneAnd has the wisdom to keep me wild knowing I’ll die if ever tameSo when I am far, he frets not, because he knows he’s my favorite destination If ever I am down, he joins me on the ground and points out my favorite constellationsHe catches my sighs and lackluster repliesWith ageless humor and tenacity I draw blanks at his capacity And challenge his audacity But He wins because despite my stubbornness he is persistentYet forever fails because he belongs to nonexistent

Shakespeare had it right all along: Love will kill you in the end.