I Wrote This for You and Only You
I WROTE THIS FOR YOU
AND ONLY YOU
pleasefindthis
2015
CENTRAL AVENUE PUBLISHING EDITION
Copyright © 2015 Central Avenue Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author and photographer except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This edition is published by arrangement with the author and photographer, contact at pleasefindthis@gmail.com
Central Avenue Publishing - www.centralavenuepublishing.com
First printing published by Central Avenue Publishing,
a division of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.
I WROTE THIS FOR YOU AND ONLY YOU
ISBN 978-1-77168-027-1 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-77168-028-8 (ebk)
1. POETRY / Subjects & Themes - General 2. PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes - General
Published in Canada. Printed in the United States of America.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Photography: Copyright © Jon Ellis
Also available from Central Avenue Publishing
in the I Wrote This For You Series:
I Wrote This For You
The first collection of photography and prose
from I Wrote This For You.
I Wrote This For You: Just The Words
An expanded collection of the prose and poetry
from I Wrote This For You.
Dear You,
Thank you for finding this book, I assure you it has been lost, and looking for you, for far too long.
As you hold it now, is how I held it before it left my hands.
All I’m trying to say still echoes through these pages.
Thank you for reading and for hearing.
Wherever this finds you, I hope it finds you well.
- Me
THE STARS LOOK LIKE DROPS OF WHITE PAINT
I know you might think that you’re just sitting there, looking at some random book, reading some stupid words and maybe the world has told you who you are for so long that you’ve started to believe it. But, please, remember that you’re so much more than this.
Remember who you really are.
THE TIME YOU NEARLY DIED WHEN YOU WERE STILL OLDER
As you fell, you begged the air for just a little more time, for a second chance to do all the things you’d always meant to do.
So here it is.
You’ll remember nothing of what happened.
You’ll feel exactly the same.
You’ll find yourself back in front of this book, reading the same words on the same page that started it all so many years ago.
And only the words in this sentence have changed.
And this is a little more time.
And this is your second chance.
And it starts: Now.
THE SILVER ASTROLABE
Remember,
There’s a map beneath your skin and all your veins are rivers, there’s directions and instructions written in secret on your bones, there’s a star you can’t see that shines in a North you’ll never know.
And a secret current, beneath the waves, that carries you to the end of you.
THE ILLUSION OF THINGS NEVER CHANGING
You think, “This is life, this is just how it is and how it’ll always be.” But you are living through something. And while, logically, you must know that there was a time before now, when things were different, and that there will be a time after now, and things will change, it’s so hard to remember right now: Everything will change.
You are alive in a memory.
You, are once upon a time.
THE DREAMS ON THE LINE
I chased my dreams until I caught them.
I chased my thoughts until I stopped thinking.
And I chased my heart until I found you.
THE ANXIETY INHERENT IN AIR
If you must know, this is what I’m scared of. I’m scared that everyone else is more who they are than I am who I am. I think everyone else just looks at the things they feel or think and says, “Of course this is what I feel or think, this is who I am.”
But I am never sure of what I feel or think.
And I’m scared because I’m holding all the things I could feel or think on a boat that the slightest breeze could tip over and if that happens, I will fall with all of it into the water. I am scared I will be left with nothing and no idea who I am.
I am scared of the wind.
THE NATURE OF SCIENCE
I have theories about what it takes to talk to you again.
I have theories about what normal is supposed to feel like.
I have theories about how many times a heart can be heard.
Just theories.
THE REMINDER OF THE THING YOU SAID YOU’D DO
Try and remember what you said you’d do and why you said you’d do it.
Forget what you think other people want the thing you said you’d do to be.
The thing you said you’d do should only be what you want the thing you said you’d do to be.
If the thing you said you’d do makes other people happy, that’s great but don’t say things or do things just to make them happy.
Find new ways to do the thing you said you’d do that don’t change the meaning of what you said you’d do.
Have the purest of intentions for what you said you’d do and do it bravely.
If the thing you said you’d do becomes successful, continue to act and think like it is unsuccessful, otherwise you’ll spend your time worrying that it might become unsuccessful.
If you said you’d involve people in the thing you said you’d do, listen to them when they say what they think you should do.
If you said you’d do the thing you said you’d do alone, then go boldly into the wilderness and may your own soul be company enough, while you do the thing you said you’d do.
Do right by the thing you said you’d do. Tend to it and love it.
By trying to remember what you said you’d do and the reason why you said you’d do it.
THE REFLECTION IN SHOP WINDOWS
If you live in your head for too long, you run the risk of becoming your own secret.
THE SOFT CRACKLE
Yet love’s like a needle on a record, taking parts of you away as it draws sharply and constantly across the heart, in slow descending circles, just to hear a song hidden in the scratches one more time.
THE FELLOW PASSENGER ON A CRASHING TRAIN
Even though I’ve just met you, I believe we will be friends.
First, I will tell you something about me, then you can tell me something about you, as that, I believe, is how friendship works.
Here is something I believe: I believe that people don’t know how people work when they’re young and maybe that’s why we’re so reckless with each other when we’re young.
I think people think that people come and go, in and out of life and I think that school teaches them that, that life changes in big annual movements, that one year you’re this and the next, you’re that. But life blends into itself as you get older and you realise, you will watch a few, if not many, of your friends get old.
You will watch them lose their minds and their hair. You will watch them get sick and get better. You will watch them succeed and fail. You will watch them get married, get divorced, get pregnant a
nd yes, eventually, you will watch them die. Or they will watch you die.
So this is what I believe friendship means. And I’m sorry to have to put such a heavy burden on you. But you have put the same burden on me.
Now you can tell me something you believe, as it is your turn, and this is how friendship works.
THE PICTURES FROM THE CAMERA WE THREW AWAY
Everyone wants to show you pictures of the things you used to do together but all you can do, is wonder why no one’s taking new ones.
THE FUTURE IS MADE OF STONES
Don’t be angry and make art often. For those of you who do not make art, will make war. And those of you who do not make war, will be left to make art from what remains.
THE WEIGHT OF STONE
If you tie every word you’ve ever heard about yourself on a string around your head, one day you won’t be able to lift it anymore.
THE MAP OF SHADOWS
Sometimes I want to ask complete strangers who have never even met me or had any interaction with me, who have done nothing to influence my experience of the world in any respect whatsoever,
“How can you hate me as much as you do?”
And other days, I know they don’t even know me. And maybe they would be ok with me, if they did.
THE COMPLICATIONS START WITH YOU
Here is the simple truth about people: Love the ones you want to keep.
THE OBJECTION YOUR HONOUR
Just then, right in the middle of the brilliant monologue your defence attorney is delivering about all the things you’ve done and all the people who love you, the prosecution slides a note over to you, “Don’t ever forget, everybody hates you.”
You add it to the pile of notes he’s already given you, which read:
“No one will ever understand you in the way that you desperately want them to understand you.”
“You will watch all your favourite musicians kill themselves and all your movie stars will grow old.”
“Everything you’ve ever made has been trite and cliche and horrible. In fact anyone who’s ever said they’ve liked anything of yours has done so out of pity.”
“One day you and someone you love will find yourself in a room and one of you will be dead and the other will wish they were.”
All of which he will later enter as Exhibit B in the long, drawn out court case to convict you of being simply pathetic and sad and useless at everything, really.
And yet your defence attorney carries on. And you know that sometimes, he’s fighting for your life.
THE PROTECTIVE NATURE OF GLASS
I sometimes wonder what you’re thinking of me, then I remember that you’re probably wondering what I think of you, which makes me wonder if any of us ever think of ourselves.
Or if we think of nothing else.
THE VIEW FROM THE HOSPITAL
If you can’t let go, you can’t put your heart back in your chest.
THE BRIEFEST RESPITE
If all you do is make something beautiful for someone else, even if it’s only for a moment, with a single word or small action, you have done a great service.
Because life can be ugly and frustrating and for so many, it is.
THE OCEANIC FEELINGS
The scariest thing you can think of, is giving up the thing that kills you. The thing you can’t live without.
THE JACKET WEATHER
Loneliness is a kind of winter. And you drag me, kicking and screaming, into some kind of bright summer.
THE LOVE LIKE SUNLIGHT
I hope one day you get to love someone like you love breathing air or drinking water. Like they are fundamental to your existence, needed and necessary.
I hope you get to love like gravity loves, like the sun loves the earth.
Like warm sunlight upon soil that makes plants grow.
I hope one day you get to love like that.
THE IRON ON THESE TRACKS
Never stop and never settle but settle down for the one who lets you draw cities on their skin with the tips of your fingers.
Never stop and never settle but settle down for the one who knows that some people were taught to ask for help but never who to ask.
Never stop and never settle but settle down for the one who makes you want to be better.
And settle down.
THE STONES FROM OTHER HOUSES
I wonder if houses miss each other.
I wonder if you can hear them creaking at night, in pain for some other structure they once knew.
A view from a window changed forever by a wrecking ball, a storm or a fire. A place where things used to live.
Why would the universe be so cruel, to build two so close to each other, only to take one away?
And what of the house you build, in the ruins?
THE CITY THAT SLEEPS WHERE THEY FELL
I know you move your fingers when you sleep because I have felt them move and I know I must do the same.
And I must wonder how many times we have unconsciously, in dreams or nightmares, reached for each other’s hands and never even known.
THE THINGS I COULD DO
At some point in winter, you’ll tell yourself a lie.
You’ll say that you aren’t as good at anything as you once were.
And even though you know it’s a lie, it’s hard not to believe yourself, when the only thing you’ve gotten better at, is telling the time between then and now.
THE BLURRED PALACE
I hope you fail often so that you often have things worth learning.
THE MOMENTS DIRECTLY BEFORE AND AFTER
There are so many moments in life and each one must serve a purpose, to connect us from then, to there. So how couldn’t you have known, that this would be one of them?
THE WALLS ARE MADE OF LISTS
I hope one day you meet someone who can write a list of ways you’re supposed to feel, and that you like every feeling on that list.
THE MOUTH MOVES BUT NO SOUND COMES OUT
“You know I’m not really here, right?”
“Can I talk to you anyway?”
THE TRAVELLER
I am just the hand you touch when you reach for the air, I am just the nerve signal, moving along the wires in your body, I am just trying to reach your heart to make it beat, one more time.
THE WORLD IS NOT AS DARK AS IT SEEMS
You can’t hate everyone. You haven’t even met most of them.
THE BLUE BLOOD
You were born royalty to those who made you.
They took their crowns and placed them at your feet.
They swapped their robes for working clothes and went to till the fields.
So that one day, you might take off the crown they’d given you and you might give it to someone, new.
And then go and work the fields.
THE COLDNESS OF STONE
It’s not the things you don’t want that drag you under.
It’s the things you think you want.
Those, are the killers.
THE WORDS THAT LEAVE ON LAST BREATHS
Sometimes I wonder if you’ve only got a certain number of words and sentences in your head and if you use them all up, you get quiet.
Maybe that’s why the young have so much to say, while the old hold what little words they have left so close and so tightly in their hearts.
THE LIGHT AND SHADE
The darkness is hidden from you, only by the light.
THE COLD REFLECTION
Never complain that you haven’t been given things to say.
One day the world will destroy itself, and you will drown in the words you didn’t think you had.
THE WORLD WHISPERS SONGS SOFTLY
At the end of everything, they’ll pull you up and whisper in your ear,
“Could you hear the music?”
And so many of us will have no idea what they mean.
THE AMBASSADOR OF BAD THINGS
When something really, really bad happens to you, people
will say to you, “I am sorry,” even if they had nothing to do with what happened.
And it’s because sometimes things happen that are so bad that what they really mean is, “I am acting as an ambassador and on behalf of everything that must hurt so much right now, I say sorry.”
Because sometimes things are so bad, someone just has to say it.
THE HANDS YOU GAVE ME
Everything started when my hands touched yours.
And I’ve done such sad things with my hands since then and I know you have too.
And I know we’ll find light in smaller hands than ours one day soon.
And I hope our hands grow old in each other’s.
If not, then why have hands, at all.
THE ANGLE AT WHICH WE ARE ALL JUDGED
If you mean it, say it. If you say it, do it. If you don’t, then leave it.
THE HEART OUTGROWS THE CHEST
The further inside you hide the hurt, the more it hurts inside.
All wounds need air to heal.
THE IMAGE REPEATED OVER AND OVER
When you let go, it wasn’t a rock falling to the ground.