Book Read Free

2007--2017

Page 5

by Iain S. Thomas


  Because you touch. But you do not feel.

  And they walk past you every day, one million stories, each waiting to be told. Waiting for you to ask.

  Because you live. But very few, love.

  The Ripple In The Clouds

  –

  Thursday, November 28, 2013

  The hardest thing to do when you go back underwater, is talk about what the sky was like.

  The Seraphim And The Pirate

  –

  Tuesday, June 15, 2010

  You were better to the ones that were worse for you. And worse to the one that was better for you.

  The Leaves As Ashes

  –

  Monday, July 14, 2014

  I used to think that when you got old, you envied the young. But now I see that you only ever envy yourself and who you used to be. You only ever look at young people and wonder how you survived all that.

  The Envy Of A Billion Little Unique Snowflakes

  –

  Tuesday, April 17, 2012

  I don’t care what people think. I fell in love with you. Not people.

  The Things I Have Felt Have Torn Me Apart

  –

  Wednesday, February 1, 2012

  Those who walk away from you in the dark should be forgotten in the light.

  The Time

  –

  Wednesday, July 11, 2007

  Times will be tough like old leather and gravel roads occasionally. Times will be easy, like Sunday morning, every now and then. What you do during these times will define you as a person and a human being. Your humanity towards others, your will to make the world a better place for you and those around you and your identity as a citizen of the world. All these things count.

  The Grinning Fool

  –

  Tuesday, February 21, 2012

  Each night, somewhere out there, people go to bed, petrified that I might be happy as I am.

  And I wake up each day and make their worst fears come true.

  P.S. I hope you’re happy.

  The Dream Of Trees

  –

  Thursday, April 14, 2016

  Everyone forgets how to fall asleep sometimes.

  You just put your head on the pillow, and breathe out like you’re giving up.

  The Day We Stopped Dying

  –

  Wednesday, May 2, 2012

  You’re wrong.

  The question is not,

  “How many times can your heart be broken?”

  The question is,

  “How many times can it heal?”

  The Life And Death Of Most Of Us

  –

  Thursday, February 26, 2015

  Most of us will settle for fine.

  Most of us will stream mp3s instead of asking a friend to play the guitar.

  Most of us will run on a treadmill at the gym instead of going to the park.

  Most of us will watch 10 second videos on a computer instead of going to a play.

  Most of us will eat something we can throw in the microwave instead of learning to cook.

  Most of us will aspire to being known, to being famous for just a little while.

  Most of us will be willing to be embarrassed, to hurt ourselves, if it means being known.

  Most of us will be more concerned with that, with being known, than being remembered by anyone special.

  Most of us will decide that it’s too soon or too late in life to go after what we really want.

  Most of us will never actually sit down and think about what we really want.

  Most of us will spend more time reading status updates than we spend reading books.

  Most of us will take pictures of ourselves instead of actually looking at the world around us.

  Most of us will take the one unique and precious life we’ve been given and spend it being, just ok.

  Most of us will make do.

  And you will meet most of us and when you do, remember this.

  Be the few.

  Be the few.

  The Atoms On The Edge

  –

  Thursday, September 8, 2016

  They asked me to point to where it hurt, and so I pointed at you.

  The Diaries Of Foreign Lovers

  –

  Friday, July 9, 2010

  You are so patriotic to your heart. It keeps the country together. But it tears the world apart.

  The Sins Of Stationery

  –

  Sunday, January 24, 2010

  To: You

  Every office memo dreamed of being a love letter. If only it had the words.

  The Memento Of Past Promises

  –

  Wednesday, February 10, 2010

  Hate doesn’t work like love.

  You have to remind yourself to love.

  The Science In The Sky

  –

  Tuesday, June 21, 2011

  I’ll hold your hand during the storm, if you promise to sit back and enjoy it.

  The Dark Words You Walk Down At Night

  –

  Tuesday, September 25, 2012

  This is why it hurts the way it hurts.

  You have too many words in your head. There are too many ways to describe the way you feel. You will never have the luxury of a dull ache.

  You must suffer through the intricacy of feeling too much.

  The Ghost Farm

  –

  Wednesday, June 9, 2010

  To you, it was just picking flowers.

  To them, it was a massacre.

  The Beautiful Mess We Could Be

  –

  Wednesday, April 1, 2009

  So may you find in each other what you came here for. And trust that this is love because it is (love is trust). And tangled lives you may lead but into each other, never apart, till you cannot distinguish between being and being together.

  The Seconds Can Be Days

  –

  Monday, February 28, 2011

  The moth lives for just one day, and yet, you will never see it fall to the ground and curse the futility of its existence. Nor flowers weep when winter comes. Nor the moon sigh when dawn approaches. We are only ever given just so much. But it is always, all we need.

  The Words You Could Say

  –

  Tuesday, February 21, 2017

  If you can do nothing else, tell the truth.

  Say, “I don’t know who I was before now, and I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow.”

  Say, “There are things about me you’ll never fix, and it’s not your job to fix me.”

  Say, “I feel things I don’t know how to feel.”

  Say, “We can be anything but we can’t be everything.”

  Say, “I can do nothing else, this is me and this is all there is.”

  If anyone stays with you after you’ve told them that, stay with them as long as they’ll have you.

  The First Time We Met

  –

  Tuesday, June 30, 2009

  It’s when you hold eye contact for that second too long or maybe the way you laugh. It sets off a flash and our memories take a picture of who we are at that point when we first know, “This is love.”

  And we clutch that picture to our hearts because we expect each other to always be the people in that picture. But people change. People aren’t pictures. And you can either take a new picture or throw the old one away.

  The Small

  –

  Monday, August 20, 2007

  Joy. Peace. Happiness. All these things are found in the tiniest of spaces. You just need to know where to look.

  The Leave Behind

  –

  Monday, April 12, 2010

  I don’t know who you’re kissing now. But I do know who you think about when you do.

  The Bandages Are Made Of Shadows

  –

  Tuesday, October 9, 2012

  You and I both know, the dark doesn’t make the bruises disappe
ar.

  It just makes them harder to see.

  The Repeat

  –

  Wednesday, December 31, 2008

  That song you keep playing is nothing but a photograph you look at with your ears.

  The Pain Unfelt

  –

  Monday, May 28, 2012

  I have told myself you are not allowed to hurt me anymore. That’s what hurts the most.

  The Twins

  –

  Tuesday, November 18, 2008

  I like to think that somewhere out there, on a planet exactly like ours, two people exactly like you and me made totally different choices and that, somewhere, we’re still together.

  That’s enough for me.

  The Crowded Life

  –

  Thursday, January 24, 2008

  You can have the entire world around you and yet still be completely alone.

  The Memory Of Beauty

  –

  Thursday, December 22, 2011

  I hope things are beautiful. And if they’re not, then I hope you remember this moment right now when they are. Because you’ve got to hold up each and every other moment to the moment when things are beautiful and say,

  “Look. I told you. Remember this.”

  The Distance Between Two Points

  –

  Friday, October 17, 2008

  I don’t miss you now. I miss you then.

  The Nature Starts To Turn

  –

  Friday, April 10, 2009

  You’re not lost. You are the sky. Your parts move and now, never rust. You are burning wheels and a turning world. You are the wind in silver hair. This is our road. I am a map to you.

  The City That Sleeps Where They Fell

  –

  Thursday, July 17, 2014

  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 Vow of Noise

  –

  Wednesday, October 7, 2009

  I’ll understand your silence.

  Because sometimes, you’ll have to understand mine.

  The Chest Cavity

  –

  Wednesday, November 30, 2011

  “It just creates and then fulfils a series of needs.”

  “That’s all it does?”

  “Yip.”

  “So why is it so sensitive? It’s not like it’s conscious.”

  “It has a degree of choice but not nearly to the same extent as a certain other machine.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It creates lists.”

  “Lists?”

  “Yes, lists. It orders the things it wants to do and then does them, in order of what it defines as most important to it.”

  “It doesn’t sound terribly impressive.”

  “It is the most important machine here. In fact, it creates importance. It decides whether or not you consider the taste of something more important than the effect of it or whether the feeling of a song is more important than how tired your legs are. It decides whether or not it’s more important to you to spend time with the ones you love or at work. It decides whether or not it’s more important to you to pay your bills or do the things you’d rather be doing.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “You know what the worst part is?”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve been called down here to fix it.”

  “It breaks often?”

  “Not often. But it does break. I’ve seen ones that have broken too often or too much. Held together with bits of tape and string. A great sheet of nothing wrapped around, just so they can hold it together.”

  “Could that happen to this one?”

  “It has the words ‘Anything Can And Quite Often Does Happen.’ inscribed across the front. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s insane.”

  “Correct.”

  The Princess Is In Another Castle

  –

  Sunday, July 26, 2009

  You cannot go back in time, even if you wish it with every fibre of your being, your heart and soul, even if you think about it every day. Trust me. I know.

  The Bleach

  –

  Friday, August 6, 2010

  You are your hair and your eyes and your thoughts. You are what you look at and what you feel and what you do about it. The light from the sun is still a part of the sun. My thoughts of you are as real as any part of you, and that is the only comfort I have.

  The Long Hard Road

  –

  Friday, February 13, 2009

  If nothing else, one day you can look someone straight in the eyes and say,

  “But I lived through it. And it made me who I am today.”

  The Audience Of One

  –

  Monday, July 12, 2010

  You’re too pretty to be weird and too weird to be pretty.

  And you feel strange when people try to talk to you. So get a job, it’s safer than art. Maybe people won’t point and stare so much. Even if they’re only in your head. Especially if they’re only in your head.

  The Shedding Of Skin

  –

  Friday, January 9, 2015

  If you’re not who you used to be, you still have time to become who you could be.

  The Light Of All Stars

  –

  Monday, November 21, 2016

  Follow your star.

  Because yours is the only star that you can follow.

  Everyone else’s stars might shine brighter or sit higher in the sky.

  But do not get distracted or try to follow stars that aren’t your own.

  They will lead you places but they will not be the places you’re meant to go.

  Only your star will take you where you’re meant to go.

  If your star takes you through a storm, then go through the storm.

  If your star takes you into the deepest ocean - then swim.

  Because only your star knows where it must go.

  And how it must get there.

  The night is long and sometimes, your star will be hard to see.

  Be patient and close your eyes.

  It is always there.

  It is waiting for you to follow it.

  The Heart Outgrows The Chest

  –

  Wednesday, February 12, 2014

  The further inside you hide the hurt, the more it hurts inside.

  All wounds need air to heal.

  The Soul Of Glass

  –

  Wednesday, April 28, 2010

  That’s what you never got. It takes an entire lifetime to write the words, “And they lived happily ever after.”

  The Metal VS Time

  –

  Tuesday, July 7, 2009

  When you feel like it’ll take everything you have and you think that it’ll take a lifetime to accomplish, you need to remember that that’s exactly what you have.

  The Worth

  –

  Tuesday, August 28, 2007

  All your work. All your play. None of it compares to one night spent next to the warm body of someone you love.

  You need to learn this sooner rather than later.

  The Perfect Apathy

  –

  Friday, August 7, 2009

  You remember and dwell on all the things you’ve lost and ignore all the things you haven’t. Because your scars are like stars. Yet the night stays perfectly black.

  The Horrible Thing That Happens

  –

  Thursday, May 28, 2015

  If you’re lucky, the horrible thing that happens gives you some distance from the world and it lets you to look at it in a way no one else does.

  If you’re lucky, the horrible thing that happens makes you move closer to everyone aro
und you because you understand how bad the horrible thing can be, and you know there’s a chance someone else might have felt something as horrible as you have.

  So you are not careless with others.

  You try and make sure the horrible thing doesn’t happen to them.

  Because you’re the lucky one.

  The Colours Run

  –

  Monday, October 12, 2009

  Because you’re looking for a date, not love. Because you’re more interested in who you go to bed with than who you wake up next to. Because you tick boxes in your head instead of crossing lines in your heart.

  The To Not Do List

  –

  Tuesday, October 20, 2009

  There are a million important things to do. But none as important as lying here next to you.

  The Dearly Discarded

 

‹ Prev