a-r-leah

[a-r-leah]

picspams:  Elemental (2023)

I had regrets when my dad died, but because of you, I've learned that you don't have forever to say what you need to say. I love you, Ember Lumen. And I'm pretty sure you love me, too.

[a-r-leah]

STAR WARS: EPISODE III – REVENGE OF THE SITH — 2005, dir. George Lucas THE FALLEN ANGEL (1847), by Alexandre Cabanel

[a-r-leah]

When the silence got too loud

(a piece for the girl who almost forgot it was real)

There were nights

I thought I made it all up.

The love.

The meaning.

The look in Your eyes

like I was something worthy.

I told myself,

That maybe I read too deeply

Too deeply into something,

meant to stay buried in teenage years—

just infatuation,

just childlike obsession,

just a story I kept replaying

because it was easier than healing.

My trauma had erased almost everything.

My anxiety twisted what was left.

Were it not for the feelings I kept in a box—

Your drawings,

Your words,

the pieces of Us You left behind

when You didn’t even know You were

leaving them—

I would have crumbled under the weight

of my own self-doubt.

Still wondering

if I had created you into existence.

Because for so long,

minimizing myself

was the only air I breathed.

So when You went silent,

the noise in my head

nearly buried me alive.

And the only thing louder

was the ache

of not knowing

if I still mattered to You

the way you once made me believe I did.

[a-r-leah]

Houdini

There’s a kind of magic
 in how the smallest actions—
 or the absence of them—
 can make you feel everything.
 overflowing with meaning
 in one moment,
 then gone


like you never existed at all.


How easy it is
 for Someone to vanish
 after They’ve filled your hands
 with something too big to hold.
 how easily
 They leave you holding the trick
 and wondering
 if you imagined the whole show.


Love and fear, protection and avoidance.
 the line is thinner than thread.

 And somewhere
 between what wasn’t said
 and what was never meant,
 i became the one in shackles—
 stuck in a trick,
 You pulled without warning.


You vanished clean.
 no trace, no visible mess,
 just silence.


but You’re no Houdini.
 this wasn’t magic.
 it certainly wasn’t clever.
 it was just
 a quiet

kind of unintentional cruelty—


to disappear


from someone,

who wanted to stay.


Excerpt from - “Touchy-Feely”

[a-r-leah]

Nowhere or Here

Sometimes i don't know
 if i want to drop everything and move somewhere else
 somewhere Your eyes can't find me
 somewhere Your name feels unknown


Or 


If i want to wake up every single day
 in a space where the very air that i breathe
 carries Your laughter like a lifeline.

- Excerpts from “Touchy-Feely”

[a-r-leah]

Summer rains. You can never predict them.

[a-r-leah]

I tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy.

"Forgive me, Peter, my lost fearless leader

In closets like cedar, preserved from when we were just kids."

Even now, after all this time, you remain. Not just in memory but in the shadows of my present, woven into the threads of my existence. You exist not as a ghost but as something more profound—an ache that reverberates in my chest, soft but insistent. You are still here, where you’ve always been, perhaps even before we met.

My mind wanders, inevitably, to where it all began— a decade ago in second period English class. The moment feels eternal, suspended in time. I remember the rush of entering the room, breathless and frazzled, only to see you sitting there, utterly calm. You, with your pale skin and ash-brown hair, looked as if you’d emerged from freshly pressed linen sheets. You were so familiar it was unsettling, like meeting someone I hadn’t realized I’d forgotten.

There was a pull, deep and inexplicable, that lodged itself in my ribs. It was suffocating yet oddly freeing, a burn that both consumed and breathed life into me. For days, I tried to resist it, stealing glances across the room, my heart racing every time your green eyes caught mine. There was something about you—an unspoken familiarity, an invisible thread binding us together even before we spoke.

When I finally did, my words betrayed me. They fell apart the moment they left my mouth, a nervous, incoherent mess. You tilted your head, confused but patient, and said you didn’t understand. I froze in that mortifying silence, wishing I could disappear.

But then you smiled. Soft, kind, and effortless. You reached into your pocket, pulled out a Tic Tac, and handed it to me. Then you told me your name, your voice steady and reassuring, as if to tell me that I hadn’t made a complete fool of myself.

"Is it something I did?"

That small act unlocked something in me I didn’t know was closed. From that moment, we were inseparable. Every conversation with you felt like a thread weaving a tapestry, intricate and endless. You had a way of making the world feel lighter, as though the air itself was easier to breathe when you were near.

But even then, there was fragility between us, that same delicate thread stretched too tight, trembling under the weight of its own tension.

"The goddess of timing once found us beguiling

She said she was trying, Peter, was she lying?"

Our first kiss remains etched in my memory, sharper than anything else. It was during a viewing of Dumb and Dumber Too, a film neither of us cared for but chose because it was safe, unassuming. You wore that same plaid green shirt you always loved- except except this time it was neatly buttoned for once, and your red Converse - oh those red converse, were tied the first time. You were nervous—I could tell.

“My ribs, get the feeling she did”

Midway through the movie, you turned to me, your turquoise eyes meeting mine. “Do you want a kiss?” you asked. My heart leapt, and before I could think, I leaned in.

The kiss was soft, tentative, like something sacred. It quickly deepened, becoming more than I expected, more than I thought I could handle. The world stood still in that moment. And when we pulled away, you smiled, pulling a Hershey’s Kiss from your pocket. “I meant this,” you said, laughing, “but that was way better.”

For the rest of the movie, we held hands. Your thumb traced small circles on my skin, and I wanted to believe we could stretch that moment into forever. But we didn’t. My insecurities gnawed at me, pulling me away from you even as my heart longed to stay.

“And I didn’t wanna come down

Said it was just goodbye for now”

We never became a thing, you and I. The thread knotted, twisted, tangled, each time more complicated than the last. Yet the connection lingered, and though my love remained, i wasn’t sure if yours did..not for certain at least.

“Said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me”

Before our teen years nearly over, you said you wanted to keep things casual for now, that chasing me had left you broken in a way you weren’t sure you could glue back together. At this point in time, I was broken myself as well however, I would never let you know just how shattered my own pieces were. Even I amidst all this.. you never stopped letting me know what I meant to you even after the fact. To you, my eyes were the very stars that illuminated the night sky. But I never told you – never let you know – that with every glance you cast my way, with every breath you took within my reach, love unraveled in quiet corners of my soul, attaching itself into the rhythm of my being, until all I knew was you.

Years passed. Life took its inevitable turns, as life does. I watched you from a distance, close enough to speak but too far to reach. The few times we reunited, the love I had buried surged forward, clashing with the guilt I also carried. I questioned your feelings, your words, your intentions. Maybe you did the same with me.

"And sometimes it gets me, when crossing your jet stream

We both did the best we could do underneath the same moon”

I saw so many versions of myself in our time apart yet you remained the same, in a sense. With the passage of time I became more me, yet saw less of you. It was only then i tried to make peace with you being gone from my life in that same old familiar way.

I thought I had let you go. I really did.

“In different galaxies."

I was two-thirds sure, until one night when I wasn't anymore.

You showed up in those old red Converse—the ones I used to draw you in. The same red Converse that were a staple of your identity all those years ago - of the green-eyed boy I fell in love with. “I haven’t worn these in years,” you said, “but tonight felt appropriate.” That small revelation pierced through me like a shard of light.

We spent hours talking, laughing, teasing. You made it feel effortless again, as though the years hadn’t carved a chasm between us. And then, as the night carried on, you kissed me.

It was tentative at first, then slower, deeper, more certain. I whispered what I had held in my chest for years: “I missed you.” You didn’t respond immediately, not that i expected you to respond at all but later, you looked at me, your voice soft and steady: “I missed you too.”

“And I didn’t wanna hang around”

When it was time to leave, you hesitated. “How long do you want me to stay?” you asked. My heart screamed, Don’t go, but the moment slipped away. After much hesitation on both parts, I was broken for the second time around.

You left.

“We said it was just goodbye for now."

But it wasn’t.

Your silence came like a tidal wave, erasing the hope I had held so tightly. And then, briefly, you came back, assuring everything was fine and you would not leave again. Then one night, I poured everything into a collection of drawings of our story, my heart laid bare, and sent it to you. When you replied, your words were careful, hesitant, like something too fragile to touch, but too complicated to express even halfway. It was inconclusive, though. And there i found myself waiting, praying that this could finally be our time.

"And I won’t confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn

As the men masqueraded, I hoped you’d return."

Months have passed. Your absence has hollowed out the spaces you once filled. I see you in fleeting signs, in songs, in every 11:11 wish, in moments where you should be but aren’t. I see you in places you are not,searching for the words you never said, wrapped in the feelings that perhaps never faded and the weight of everything we left unsaid.

“With your feet on the ground tell me, all that you’ve learned

Cause love’s never lost when perspective is earned”

But alas I was left fighting a war within myself. I knew not what happened, or how it all came tumbling down seemingly from one day to the next. Yet I was still clinging on to your promise, the one where you would “sleep on it”, the one where you just needed time.

"You said you’d come and get me, but you were 25

And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired."

I’ve come to understand that love isn’t just about holding on. It’s also about learning when to let go, even when it feels like you’re losing a part of yourself in the process. But then again, this is not solely about me. You seem to need the time, and the inevitable punches life throws our way.

"Lost to the Lost Boys, chapter of your life”

If you find your way back to me, I’ll be here. But if you don’t, I’ll carry you with me, as i am a mosaic of everyone I have ever loved - and you my friend, have been my greatest love of all. Oh how I waited and waited - how I still do.. just less expectantly now. Perhaps you will come back and perhaps,

It won’t be too late.

For now I will hold the version of you I fell in love with all those years ago, close to my heart and forever etched in every crevice of my mind. I will hold on to you Always.

"Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried

To hold on, to the days, when you were mine

But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light."

I thought it was just goodbye for now. Maybe it was goodbye all along.

I couldn't change the ending, I guess one way or another, Peter always loses Wendy.