u/SAHARASAVAGE

None of my dreams came true
And I waited in years
I can’t get back
In leaps of faith that let me go
And I thought we would meet
And dance out of sleep
I counted out days of my life
Waiting to hand-fast
To be your wife
I dreamed of Relic
And got on so many trains
And now we’re here
Trying so hard to find you, my dear
But we’re lost in the aesthetics
Where tenderness has been
Flattened into memes
I didn’t want endless scripture
Or upvotes for pleasure
I wanted actual emotional texture
I wanted to love
Your ghosts
Marble and stone
Myth or monster
Maybe I’m both
I waited too long with no answers
The sun has come and gone
So have the four horsemen of my
Apocalypse
I don’t want to dream of your hands
Or your kiss
I don’t want honey on whiskey
Antlers in the dark
Greek gods and their lovers
Your restraint on display
In biblical disasters
I waited until
Time lost meaning
I don’t want to wait
Any longer
The pedestals are all empty
And I have nothing left to give
And I’m finally okay
Without happy ever after

It’s time for me to get to know me
Not the girl that I was
Waiting on an Englishman
With an interesting style

None of my dreams came true
And I waited in years
I can’t get back
In leaps of faith that let me go
And I thought we would meet
And dance out of sleep
I counted out days of my life
Waiting to hand-fast
To be your wife
I dreamed of Relic
And got on so many trains
And now we’re here
Trying so hard to find you, my dear
But we’re lost in the aesthetics
Where tenderness has been
Flattened into memes
I didn’t want endless scripture
Or upvotes for pleasure
I wanted actual emotional texture
I wanted to love
Your ghosts
Marble and stone
Myth or monster
Maybe I’m both
I waited too long with no answers
The sun has come and gone
So have the four horsemen of my
Apocalypse
I don’t want to dream of your hands
Or your kiss
I don’t want honey on whiskey
Antlers in the dark
Greek gods and their lovers
Your restraint on display
In biblical disasters
I waited until
Time lost meaning
I don’t want to wait
Any longer
The pedestals are all empty
And I have nothing left to give
And I’m finally okay
Without happy ever after

It’s time for me to get to know me
Not the girl that I was
Waiting on an Englishman
With an interesting style

Beautiful porcelain
Cheeks
Rosy and sweet
I sigh at your
Sharp, carnivorous teeth
You’re the light
I’d stare at to go blind
I’d follow you
To the end of time
Your eyes cast depths
Deeper than the sea
Oh my, oh my
What do you do to me
What was myth and marble
Is now breath and man

I dreamed you were flesh and bone, covered in marble. A beautiful sculpture for all of time to wonder at in awe and delight.

Time chiseled on your chest, your hands, your crests.

I waited with bated breath and constellations painted on your chest. You spoke like sins should know your name, for holy sanctification and glory.

I woke weeping at your beauty. Not the aesthetic kind. The scale of your heart.

The purity of pain.

You were mythic in my memory.

Solitude in the frame.

A song I’ve never heard, but a melody far more ancient than rain. You were a flood of forgotten knowledge.
A fruit the world should know.

A story long forgotten, in the ebb and flow.

Too restrained beyond the sunlight, hand reaching to the sky, born from the world’s first lullaby.

A golden glow.

I longed to kiss your lips, to dine on your regrets.

I dreamed of you in fragments, heard your voice in ghosts.

Crimson red
Lips
Such as rubies
Dark velvet
Black widow
lace

Silent movies
Trees with green leaves
Cinematic overture
Touch like Orion
Heart of the Sun
Love of the lion
Parallel world
Dream of pearls
Ivory light
Lost in the horizon

Kiss like solar flares
But broken
Sculpted in marble
Traced like a prayer
Exposed and open
Beautifully bare

Clammy hands,
Tired eyes,
Throat choking on sand.

Grimoire composed,
Delicate feasts,
Her heart trills
While his violently beats,
Hands tighter still.

Dark composition,
Beauty, I’m sure,
It’s not plastic but real.

Magazines pile
Under sharp bones
And teeth.

A creature born
From pestilence.

Oh, how they love
Rhyme over reason,
Aesthetic over raw.

She opens the maw,
The ice begins to thaw.

She loves how they strangle
In-between her jaw.

The soft wind in the trees.
The far off roaring of the ocean sea.
I dot the I’s and cross the t’s.
Sign here, won’t you please?
Think about England,
Scroll some more.
Tea and biscuits,
Liverpool, Lore.

Memories flood
Walks through rolling hills,
Twisting trees.
I hold the blanket close,
Go back to sleep.

My body has become
A hollow tree,
I’m on the offense
With no defense
Trying to blend in
For free.

Carpenter ant,
Blind army,
Death mill,
Taking me under.

Three years ago today, I travelled in the car with my brother for four hours to get to the nearest airport. Your birthday was at the end of the month, so I was going to stay with you.

We got in a fight the day before and I asked, “Do you want me to change my flight? I don’t have to come.”

And you said, “I want to give you a hug and tell you everything is alright.”

On that ten-hour flight, I didn’t know about in-service internet yet, so I slept and talked to the gentleman next to me, who said you were a lucky man and that I must really be in love. Truly.

You charmed me, drew my name in a heart in the snow, told me you couldn’t wait to marry me. That I was your angel.

I missed the first train waiting in the ticket line after the cab ride from Paddington Station. You got upset at me for that. In forty minutes, a new one was departing.

I got a coffee at Starbucks and the barista drew a heart on the cup. You hated that. I told him I was going to see the love of my life. My one true love. My twin flame. God, how f*cking embarrassing.

I sat in a cabin with no air conditioning and wrote in my Notes app. I still have the note available. I don’t know if I want to look at it.

I remember screeching into Liverpool Lime Street and the train driver joking in a demonic voice about our arrival. I remember thinking: this is not a good way to start a trip.

It was a three-hour journey. By then, I was exhausted.

With my luggage in hand I went to the hotel to check in. The woman at the desk remembered me from the month before, when I came to see you during Easter weekend. She was excited for us. Excited for me. She wished me good luck as I freshened up and went to meet you. You came down the stairs like you did the other time, and I knew it was you immediately.

We hugged. We got snacks because I was tired. Then we sat at the bar while you ordered drinks.

We talked for a little while, and then, out of nowhere, you told me to go home and forget about you. To move on with my life. You told me I would be fine without you. That I could meet another man, have a child with him, and that it would be enough.

I laid my head in the crook of your neck while you threaded your fingers through my hair. I couldn’t cry then. I just froze.

I kept insisting I wouldn’t be okay.

I had knitted you a red scarf and beaded you a bracelet.

You hugged me and told me you loved me, your hand delicate in my hair. I kept the tears from falling and said, “I love you too.”

My heart broke.

Afterwards, I freshened up, gave you space, and went out into Liverpool alone. I went to see the gentleman at Costa who had given me the bean-pin before. He remembered me.

I wandered Albert Dock. Sat on the Liverpool One steps. A friend took me to dinner and told me it was cruel what you had done to me. He tried to convince me it would be okay. That he understood what it felt like to be thousands of miles from home in a another country without your family.

I went to a club and got drunk afterwards. I wandered museums, libraries, and buses for days because I couldn’t leave without paying more for my flight. I bought a bow. I stared at the lovelocks. I walked the dock at night. I rode the Liverpool Wheel.

I got ice cream one afternoon and silently cried beside the River Mersey. I helped two lovers find their lovelock. I took myself out to dinner.

I sat outside the hotel where we had fought the month before. You in that black fuzzy jacket. Hobnobs between us. You kissed me and whispered:

“Where are my morals?”

I should have known then. A kiss, but you were probably married.

A few weeks ago, you told me I was the hardest no you’d ever had to say in your life, and that if we crossed paths again, you wouldn’t make the same choice twice.

In the middle of the route, under a building still being constructed, I thought I saw the boy from my dreams appear beside me and say:

“My name is Relic, Mum. Please believe in me.”

Now look at me. I should have gotten off at more stops. I would next time.

I gave you the scarf later, and a tablet for your children filled with movies.

“You’re the purest soul,” he said, “You saved my life.” He admits, but love, you broke my heart. I go back to that small train station and cry. I mourn myself. I mourn the girl who believed in true love, destiny, and twin flames. The one with the sparkle in her eye. The girl who had a glow.

Today, I mourn Relic.

That was the trip where I bought my London Fog suitcase. I am looking at it now and I curl beneath my blankets wishing I was back there: walking those streets, touching those red brick walls, sitting on the fake grass at Liverpool One,
wandering Waterstones imagining myself as an author on display.

Would the barista remember me?

I didn’t go last year.
I went to London instead.
To Hever Castle.
To Canterbury.

Maybe I was searching for the Holy Grail.

I am the girl who sits on British trains, heartbroken and searching, in love with an English rose with no name.

Ever wondering… if I am worth the same…

Red-bricks and granite
A small hedgerow
The sound of rushing water
A bell on a bike
The smell of fresh sweets
From the bakery
Blades of grass
Blow in the wind
Birds chirp and trill
Earth between fingertips
Leaves and branches
Coat the sky
A dirt path
A name I ought to know
Overhead announcements
An empty platform
A cat maybe Cheshire
Brown and fluffy
Deep inhales
Then sharp and unsure
A hand over heart
The throat to be sure
Head to the sky
As if to ask God,
Why oh why
Eyes I have not seen
But can never forget
Juliet Green in color
Brows furred together
A darkened stage
Philomena sung
My beloved
Heart of a swallow
Flight of the red
A quiet music box
I wind with my hand
A waltz I should know
But I’m here instead
A white carnation
Eternal love
I’ll almost forget
when I wake
From my bed

Loving Veronica
Is hard
She’s trying to
Soften in a
World of meat cutters
Grinding against
Velvet pleats

Veronica
Presses mute
It’s easy that way
Create
Delete
It’s always the same

She’s at war
With the mirror
The sand in her clothes
The mirages
That bend her will
To water
Enclosed
Imposed
On
Wire
Sheets of brass

Veronica is
An empty frame
In a museum
With no name
Click of a button
Instant and over
Let’s splash
Abstract expressionism
In hues
And call it art

Veronica
Sleeps with sheep
While the wolf
Eats her heart

Veronica
Painted in black
Veronica
Painted in dark
Veronica
Smears
Tears into
The start

Veronica ends
Disjointed
And possessed
A little obsessed
With light she
Can’t see

Oh Veronica
I wish she loved me

Enemies
To lovers
On display
That’s a
Trope

It is what it is
How cliché

The neighbor
The rebel
The mentor
The hero
Archetypes
Stacked
How universal
Ideal
To play

She turns
To the
Mechanisms
Of an
Observed
Engine
Running on
Cold fumes

She looks
At the construction
Of limitation
And holds
It in her hand

Perseus she sighs
As the world demands
A story
While she falls
Through load-bearing weights

She observes
The caretaker criminal
The stupid old man
The neglectful mother
The empty explorer

Laziness breeds
Stereotypes brew
She doesn’t connect
To one-dimensional stew

She reads another post.

Huh?

“My God, not again.”

She looks at the comments.
Then the upvotes.

She has no visual imagination…
black as the sea…
so she cannot see the post,
only words on the screen.

She reads it once more
just to be sure.

There’s no emotion there.
Only aesthetic.
Pretty words wearing borrowed grief.

She sighs softly
as trains become popular
and wonders:

What is this all for?

Should I stay?
Should I go?
Should I leave?

As I stare at the sting of Union Jacks, I am taken back to the first time I went to England.

Recently, my ex’s mother died. I think about how she wanted us to get married and how wrong that would have been. I think about how I got Covid and he took care of me. I think of Brum. The first time I tried gulab jamun, a saveloy, mushy peas. He picked me up at the airport and I was so full of anxiety. I panicked a lot back then over things that didn’t even matter.

I took walks and cleaned the house, and maybe a part of me fell in love with not belonging to timecards, to the corporate world. I remember how effeminate he was. I think about why I fail relationships.

The first store I went into was an Aldi. I went into shock at the price differences. In three months, I spent less than a month back home.

The rain tasted different in England.

I forgot the ocean. I forgot the sound of waves and birds nesting in the tree outside my window. I remember the mail coming through the slot, the sound of the ice cream truck, the neighbors constantly shouting, and how the bathroom was above the bedroom and even though I never met the man, I could hear him pissing for two minutes at 2 a.m. She would cry in the hallway.

I think of the first English breakfast, the first castle. The rolling hills and sheep, the lamb kofta with yogurt dressing. I always think of that train passing by and that foreboding déjà vu feeling that one day I would be on one.

I had no plans, no itinerary, no bookings, no idea there would be train strikes or how busy Good Friday truly is.

I think about how I shared a room with my mom in Kensington. How I wanted to share a place I loved with her. How my DNA test came back 40% British Isles. How I feel a pull I can’t name. A future I can taste. A son I only see in dreams, champagne glasses on the table, a lover’s hand on my waist I do not know.

But fate or inevitability has me grounded in a town I don’t like, stuck again, looking at those strings of Union Jacks and out the window.

It’s funny, we imagine our lives have purpose.

I think of the wind at midnight on the beach, the waves clashing, reaching my hand into the sky to paint my desires in the stars.

I am ordinary. There is no divine scheme, no Englishman with an interesting style. I am bound to no one, like the seasons. I am just a girl, one of millions.

Relic was a beautiful dream, but eventually you wake up. The images fade and disappear and I stop dreaming about Relic and make room in daylight for new dreams.

Quieter, smaller, just getting through the weeks.

The soft rain reminds me of Liverpool. I keep expecting the little black cat to be outside my window. But he isn’t there, and he isn’t coming back.

It’s dumping down buckets. I am caught in a torrential rain. Cars go by and hurl more water at me. I walk down the hallway and my shoes are squishing, leaving behind a trail of pooled water. I use a hairdryer to dry my shoes.

You kiss me like you were trying to reverse engineer the Big Bang Theory and looking for something astronomical in ordinary life. You cover my head, pretend the paparazzi are taking my unwanted photograph. “I can’t bear to say goodbye,” you settle on, “I love you, goodnight.”

You leave me in that hotel bar, my head cradled in your neck, convincing me I’ll be fine with you and I’ll be married soon. You tell me to just pick a bloke and have kids and it’s a wonderful distraction. But distraction isn’t why I’ve waited so long for Lore.

I smile, put on a good face. Then mythically black out the room and heave into the hotel bed. The sheets smell clean and unfamiliar. I silently puke my heartstrings out and dry my tears, put on a black dress, and go out.

I weave through crowds of people, accents thick and obscure. I get myself a coffee to give myself a caffeine rush on top of an adrenaline rush. I go up into the Wheel of Liverpool for the third time, even though I’m mortified of heights. I am at the top. Last time I thought: is this the biggest mistake of my life?

This time I think, quietly, “Lore? Are you there?”

I look down the River Mersey, down the Albert Dock. I wander aimlessly. Go into the Beatles attraction, stand at their statues, and think again, “Lore?”

I go back again, to the lovelocks. I help two lovers find theirs, and they tell me not to give up on love. They tell me their love story. How they left everything to be together despite their families telling them they’re completely mad. They say the best love is, and it’s worth it. I look at the hundreds of lovelocks. Stories and dreams of hearts I’ll never know.

“I only wish I could leave a lovelock here with you,” I whisper in the wind and leave my kangaroo bracelet and walk back to my room.

I cry at that train station. I buy myself flowers and tell myself, as that lady told me, “We’re never really on the wrong train, are we, love? Because there is always another one. Either taking us forward or bringing us back.” It’s her first time on a train. Her son is getting married. She was buying shoes for the wedding.

Liverpool and London, England — it calls, someone is waiting there for you. I pop in my headphones, listen to the announcements, and get on the next train.

I don’t believe in that, but I wish it were true.

I read an upvoted letter to an ex: You Are Dead to Me.

I sat in shock, staring at the upvotes. At the moral elevation, the declarations of the other person spiritually bankrupt.

I start crying.

Drenched in contempt and retroactive devaluation. ‘You are dull to me now.’ I think of the humanity of nature and love.

I watch as they paint their ex black, and the internet erupts into union, jabs in the dark, colossal statements of betrayal, and I wish to go home because I can’t relate. Will you take me home? The violence of the war of love, of give and take against each other, is so loud.

Do we even fundamentally understand love?

I have never hated an ex, even being left halfway across the world the hour I arrived, left on my own while he did the white powder and helped put me in debt I’m still paying off now. I never once hated him.

Sure, my heart ached. Never dead to me. Not even now.

Sure, I didn’t deserve it. We don’t deserve a lot of things. People get cut in half by tractors or are here one moment and gone the next.

But I loved every ex for a reason, and that was my own choice. I illuminated them. I didn’t want their perfection, just their humanity… raw and visceral.

I chose to love them. The way I tenderly hold them in my heart now.

Yes, my heart hurts at the cheating, the lying, and the games. Whose wouldn’t?

But I’m only as good as the next right thing.

I’m not into scorekeeping, moral hierarchy, punishment, cursing, retroactive erasure, or proving who was morally ‘better.’

I am a human.
You are a human.
We are human.

I’m only here for a fraction of a moment in the eye of infinity.

So instead, just as I chose them, I’ll choose to remember the good, even if I’m still hurting now.

You are not dead to me. I only wish you well. I hope whoever you are with loves you in all the ways you desire and I hope you love yourself and are happy.

I don’t owe the world more pain just because I am in it.

Oh, the way men have promised the world. Held me delicately, sculpted me to let me fall like glass. Given their word, only to take it back.

Oh, how men have said,
“I’ve got you.”

But it always comes down to me taking care of myself. Picking up the pieces as I reshape myself.

Why do I keep believing?

This is why I continue to love myself. I can’t let myself down. I don’t and I won’t. I build my own empires and independence year after year.

I wonder if one of them paused, followed through on their end…
Would I be softer still?

No wonder I can’t ask for help.

Sometimes, I stare at her. He pays the bill and she brags, nags, and doesn’t even say thank you…and I cry when I get home.

He buys her a choker, new clothes, a bag, pays her rent, and three more line up in a row.

My body freezes, my shoulders tense. I swallow my pride and stare at the reflection.

What is that like?
I wonder.

I feel shame.

I lock the door. I listen to the silence. It’s always the same.

Years I’ve relied on myself.

“You don’t love me because you don’t fight me,” one says.

Am I supposed to abuse? Yell? Scream? Demand money?

That one girl does and he worships her. Puts her on a pedestal and bends over backwards.

My brows furrow together. I blush. I can’t even think of asking.

I eat on the couch, the lights off. It’s cold.

“How was your day?”
I ask out loud to the room.

I let the eerie mute answer me back.

I scroll through the marriages, the mothers.

I look at my body in the mirror and compare.

I see all their friends, their lovers, and I scroll through years of selfies.

I curl up in the tub, watch the water hit the porcelain.

I sing a song no one will know.

I check the door is locked.

The door is locked.

Slap on another
Invisible downvote
I’m already past
The choke
I’ve had hands
On my throat
Bricks to my head
Punches to the gut
The jaw
Uncivil death threats
I’ve been bullied
Through threads
My entire life
I’ve been cheated
More times
Then digits on my hands
I learned very young
Adults aren’t always friends
I’ve been called C*nt, b*tch
Egged and grop*d
I’ve faced slander
Plagerisms and ghosts
I’ve had letters burned
From my sister
Right in front of my face
Slammed and locked
In a bathroom
While they fu*ked
on the other side
Thrown pinecones at
When I was just small
I’ve always been different
Not well received
So come on now
Show me
How much I seethe
Under your skin
I wont be quiet
Not again

Darling,

I’ll notice the small things about you. While the world is busy chasing fame, fortune, material wealth, and success, I’ll be fluid, I’ll be slow motion. I’ll notice the way you restrain yourself, the way your eyebrow naturally raises and you could say something, but you don’t. I’ll notice the way you do set boundaries for yourself when they’ve been crossed. Moreover, I’ll listen to the things you don’t say, because they’re equally as powerful and just as insightful.

I don’t want to just be colliding forces, I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what makes you laugh, the parts where you cried alone, the fear that settles on your bones. I want to know you. Remembering the small details of how your eyes wrinkle, how you age like a fine wine or whiskey, the thoughts you think aren’t worth sharing.

I’m not going to hold your past lovers against you, how could I? It brings tears to my eyes to think of someone denying another their past. I want to sit with your past because it’s a part of your story. The trials, the tribulations, the memories that you hold dear to your heart. They helped shape you.

I want to buy you flowers and massage your neck. A god with no eyes? It’s not as mythic as I make it sound. Do you feel everything so deeply first? Do you feel the light? Do you know why I touch the sun?

You’re terribly beautiful to me in this world, and seeing your presence, it truly reminds me of all the things I love in this world: reverence, restraint, creativity, dry humor, intellectual wit, slowness, endings, kindness, honey on steel, whiskey, Liverpool, London, trains.

I wish I knew you. Not to have you. Just to hold you for a moment to feel alive. You remind me of the quiet promise I made to grow my hair long and wild for the love I am seeking, and one day someone’s hand will brush each strand and know how long I have waited.

Thank you for reminding me of my humanity.

I’ll tell myself it’s coincidence. I can’t afford to think otherwise, although my heartstrings will want to weave together all the overlapping patterns. It’s no wonder I made a myth from my dreams. People in the spiritual community love to overuse tapestry.

But not me. I’ll paint constellations, small lights in the dark on the canvas of my night.

I’ll gather statistics and feed myself the results to ground myself into reality. I’ll flash back to Lore and sigh heavily. What I thought I was building in myth, in reality, is so much more.

I’ll lay my head on the pillow and think about quantum entanglement some more. In the silence I’ll think about hands on my waist that aren’t there, and the dreams I collect in my pocket. I’ll try to touch the sun again. I’ll wonder if that is a sign too.

I’ll gaslight myself to death. Surely that’s a coincidence too.

I’ll ignore the messages of people claiming I’m Anna, Bella, Cathy, Emily. I’ll ignore the pictures of women they text me, telling me I’m them, when I am so clearly not.

I hope with my heart this resonance is not like them. I’ll tell myself it is anyway.

Our cat died.
That’s three now in a year.
We’re lying at the bottom of the barrel.
We wish people didn’t copy.

We will think about London and Liverpool. We will wonder if it’s true what they say: if a city or place attracts you, it is because someone is waiting for you there.

But, I don’t believe in any of that anymore.

Do I?

The world broke my heart. Not once or twice, my darling. Over and over again. It showed me that integrity and authenticity are held in high regard, but flattened by imitation and lack of respect for others. Over the years, I tried to prove myself while being myself. The praises came from the same people who turned their backs on me and closed the door. I wondered, what have I done to deserve this?

I yell at an apple to see what it’s like to be so vulgar and cruel to another.

Sometimes, much like today, I want the wounds to fester. I wish I could lay victim to the pain. But, I am not built that way. I become softer still. Where I should be sour from the sting, I find a quiet ache that pleads to my inner voice for witnesses, not flattened, not copied, not toyed with or played with through the games they all play.

Because amongst it, there are constellations, twinkling softly, emitting their own light in the dark.