Some wonder what’s behind the bars you see caging my restless eyes. You see, it’s a wall carefully designed by the chipped pieces of my broken heart, and the debris of lingering touches left behind by almost-lovers, like melancholic art. ~N.V.

The moment you walked away, you turned our story into my greatest legacy. ~N.V.

I stood under the moonlight trying to figure out when the memories of you became my shadow. ~N.V.

I watch the wisps of my cigarette smoke intertwine together and fade away, like an illusion you have to be lucky enough to catch. And in that moment I realized why my favorite vice always reminded me of you. ~N.V.

I allowed hope to make people my greatest catastrophes. ~N.V.

My mother always told me to be what I’d want to see staring back at me in a reflection. Maybe that’s why when I look into my eyes in a mirror, I see a heart of the broken and the smile of a warrior. ~N.V.

You say it’s a cry of the weak. But I call it my roar of victory. Because it took what feels like a lifetime to accept that it takes strength to need a helping hand. ~N.V.

When did owning the world start feeling like a weight on my shoulders? ~N.V.

Like a lone flower swaying in the breeze of your breath on my neck, I feel my hope slowly fall to the floor like petals. Because I know that in the ray of tomorrow’s light, you’ll look at me and see everything you never wanted. ~N.V.

Designed by the scars on my heart is a maze I can’t escape. ~N.V.

I look back at the trail left behind by every heartbreak. Footprints that tell stories of lingering touches & forgotten lovers. And for this I thank you. Because the greatest gift you ever gave me was the power to walk away. ~N.V.

All around me are the scurrying feet of people running in this rat race to make ends meet. But as I stand in the middle of this moving crowd, I know now why I’m unable to find that finish line. It’s because in a world full of people with eyes on the last stop, I’m always looking for the next mountain to climb. ~N.V.

This is where I went wrong. You see, I never realized that within all the time I spent trying to save you, I forgot to rescue me. ~N.V.

I found myself in that lip lock, losing track of the time -tick tock, as I fell off my rocker and wound up in your arms; in a fuzzy state of mind, not so calm. Tick tock, I pull back from this lip lock to ask you where you’d been all my life, to ask you that question through my eyes -you know, the one you’ve been avoiding, - “So, are we going to try?” You push me away to look up at that hanging clock, say you got somewhere to be, chop chop. And I look into the scars of your

For a mind as fickle as mine, you were the easiest decision I ever made. ~N.V.

And in those moments I spend away from your maddening touch, I make sense of the insanity at the bottom of my whiskey glass. ~N.V.

As the last whisper of my words leave the safety of my lips, I look up to the thunder of clapping hands. But in the comfort of my home, I spill, through the tip of my pen, alphabets that are strung together with the need for just one “thank you”. ~N.V.

You wanted to know why I allowed myself to destroy the label we called ‘friends’. Well, darling, it’s because I lost sight of it at the crash of our lips. ~N.V.

You point out the ripple of my thighs like it's a flaw I have to hide. But little do you realize that at their meeting is where thunder & woman collide. ~N.V.

As I looked on into the havoc of this concrete jungle, I felt your eyes watching me like I was the only chaos you saw. I looked at you, a question in my eyes, and you answered “Your silence is proof that there’s so much to hear in the unsaid.” ~N.V.