I'm catching moonbeams, tonight.

I pace the gardens, plucking them from their airy refuge like bars of gold. Perhaps I'll send you a pair, in thickest sackcloth to contain their riches untold.

I'll give you a pair of moonbeams, gleaming sickly white in their own pallid illumination. It is the waning glimmer of dying hope, of fading conviction, gone awry are your nightly incantations. Their waning light accentuating the dark scars of our follies jointly committed. You brandish the staffs of moonshine against the tendrils of ebony but they shimmer, gutter and fade - we are holding candles up to the merciless draught, dashing our dreams against deepest twilight's implacable advance. I would gasp in retrospect at the waste of it all but the nightmare isn't ended. We're still attempting to fade into the woodwork, crashing against its unyielding exterior - we are, in a sense, seeking anonymity in self-destruction.

That night I couldn't sleep. I closed my eyes and saw only you, in the streets I would pace all alone, my own mobile chrysalis of morbid self-denial and corrosive frustration. You cocooned in a heavy down jacket, a chilly autumn evening.

I gave it to you, when I left. Walked away leaving behind a brown paper parcel from Savile Row and nothing else. I needed you to insulate yourself from me so I could leave right then and never sway. So. Why couldn't you stay away?

I close the distance and you whip around, eyes accusing. The wind picks up; all around us, the maple leaves're falling. It's a blood-red rain, a deluge of crimson leaves - the trees of my world bleeding themselves bare. You have cut your way back into my heart and the wound is open, raw, mortal. Explaining will get us nowhere. I fall to my knees at your feet, my femme fatale, my heartbeat, my deadly enigma. The irony is that I wanted you to be mine, I wanted to pour my heart out to you and here I am, doing just that.

Why? you ask. I have no answers. I want to slump forward, join the maple leaves in peaceful repose, stain the ground with the last of my life-force but you won't let me. 'It won't be that easy,' you say. It never has been. Not with you, not with me at odds with myself.

A covenant sealed upon death's threshold. A vial of my lifeblood upon your shelf.

~David out

I'm staring out the window.

It's a lovely Monday morning - oh, look, an oxymoron - and I am sitting at the window, staring out.

I'm searching for you.

I'm in the study staring out the french windows - vista of placid fronds, quiet lanes, pliant skies. I don't - no, I fail - to take it in, I lance my gaze through it all like an errant javelin, a blue-on-blue bullet, that emissary of collateral damage. Vision penetrating the immediate to what lies beyond and I am searching, demanding that my burning focus display a scorched entity for my pains.

But there is nothing to show. I am in a void, an infinite vista of inky black, frigid emptiness, an epitome of nonexistence.

The truth is, I'm searching for you when I don't know what I'm searching for.

Last night I dreamt. I was running on the blacked-out streets where we can see nothing. Not a tear, a bead of sweat, a dollop of emotions past. And I heard footsteps. I waited for you to catch up and we paced each other all night through the dark streets, running like there wouldn't be a dawn because perhaps there isn't, perhaps twilight is all we've got left and so we run like hell, shrouded acceleration into the murk, footfall after footfall our only rhythm of normalcy because it's all we have left. There will be no sunrise, no actinic blast of illumination, just the steady pace of our footsteps striking in tandem. We're always running on, running away, on the move because we're not going back, none of us is. A dark past to leave behind remains our only association.

There is nothing left but the darkness of nonexistent prospects, not even a moonbeam to pierce through the murk, no stardust to fall upon the crimson, shattered globes of stars gone supernova. Nothing but dust and ashes - the light has faded, the passion is tempered, our hearts are jaded.

No more vindictive spears of vision. Sight's an encumberance, a kettle-bell hidden, our self-concocted obfuscation. We run blind - there is nothing left to stop us in the irrelevancy of time.

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Grind them into the veins of gold I've laid

For an eternal summer that will not fade.

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~David out

I ran into a familiar face this afternoon and, well, you made my day.

I came to school seeing frowns of anxiety, lips pursed in contemplation of tragedy. And upon departure I strode past scenes of tears being shed and the venting of angst inbred.

Yours was the first genuine smile this day, perhaps the most genuine I've seen in a while. So thank you.

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Of late my 'emo-ness' has diminished, according to some. I'm not sure I noticed, oddly enough.

Maybe it's because my feelings're gradually draining outta me - or perhaps I've frozen them so deep that you can't even see the tinge within the impervious crystalline walls.

Or it could be the fact that I've moved on. Purged the last of this debilitating matter from my system. Given myself some room to think, to interact with people without having it weigh down my afflicted decisions.

It strikes me that I gave myself tunnel vision at the precise moment when the possibilities were infinite.

So don't. Don't discuss emotions because I won't understand. Avoid the topic of involvement, attachment because it's psychological Greek to me and I won't feign understanding. Flippancy's the name of the game - this casual outlook's gonna keep me sane.

But I'll be serious about going the distance. We poke fun, we jibe, we sneer but we're still running, we keep the pace they're pushing and we don't ever stop, won't ever glance back to notice those whose hearts aren't in the pacing. Facades decapitated by fatigue's guillotine - scattering those oft-concealed blastments for all to find.

Whittle down your bodkin's edge so the carbonized blade'll shine.

~David out