these games we play.

Aanika,

[you]

You are stronger than you think. I know this because I have read your fears and inhaled your words like self-medication because they heal me. They let me know that someone, somewhere reads newspapers in red and continues counting stars even though they lose count every time. That I'm not alone, peering into dreamlands and imagining a world where pain is not the sole driver of art.

To be honest I think of you in black and white, a collection of stoplights and constellations tied together with star struck conclusions and intricate thought lines I never would have followed. You are travel warn tennis shoes that are strangely beautiful in there war-torn glory, not because they are shiny and perfect but because their flaws tell stories, beautiful stories.

You are strong because you are tossed from side to side in houses full of mirrors and you can still create sense of nonsense. You have been battered, broken and twisted but you pulled through.

You could have surrendered to the highway but you hitchhiked home.
am I making any sense?

It's also that your emotions have taught me so much and your symbols have influenced my crossroads. Did you know that you're the reason my favorite animal is the chameleon? You taught me that even blind ones can adapt to their surroundings and I've been obsessed with the concept ever since.

I feel cliché comparing you to a car crash but that is how I see you. A beautiful car crash, shaking to world with your collision and perception of pain.

[me]

When I write I wonder what its like to read, when I read I wonder what its like to write. I suppose I am never satisfied with the end of the rope I was given or perhaps I am sick of playing tug of war.

I try too hard to pull nails out of my feet only to find that they have spread to the tips of fingers and the input of my vocal chords. You've possibly noticed that I dwell on things. I have over fifty poems about the same dead boy and over one hundred about my perception of myself.

It seems so simple to move on but somehow even the thought of the process sends me spiraling back into the core of my memories and I am lost again. I suppose things are much easier in concept than in actuality.

But then again, reality has never given the illusion of being kind-hearted.

You've also probably noticed how everything seems to u-turn in my direction as far as I'm concerned. I'm writing to you but somehow I've turned it back to me. I'm sick. I believe myself to be the giving victim but in reality much of this pain is self-manipulated because I have some twisted connotation between pain and beauty.

I am the car that hit a pole, drunken on its own horsepower. There were no magnificent fireworks.

[reality]

I suppose if I were to follow up on my string of metaphors I would call him the road.

but I can't help but believe in alternative pathways that weave through both dandelions and storm clouds. And It hurts, its hurts to reach for something so high that you must break your ribcage just to see it. I can't help but believe someday this pain will scar over to become something worth it.

I may just be a snow-blinded madman
but I can't help but believe,

you hurt too.