// vices & virtues //

the love child of last young renegade and dear blue eyes | love notes.

you can listen to panic! at the disco’s vices & virtues album while you read this, if you want.

i wrote this at 3 a.m., so it’s basically just me being really vulnerable!! please don’t use this as blackmail!!

the ballad of mona lisa | say what you mean, tell me i’m right, and let the sun rain down on me. give me a sign, i want to believe |

i only lied twice: when i said i was ok, and when i said that you had never hurt me.

i wonder if you know that i have nothing left to offer. i cannot give you hope, or an escape, or a smile that says “everything will be alright.” i cannot give you a love worthy of writing songs about.

i need to do something in order to be loved. that is how the world works. i have nothing to give, and i don’t think that i ever did. so why are you still here?

let’s kill tonight | fate will play us out with a song of pure romance |

i have been treated unfairly, and i am allowed to be angry about it. there’s something twisting and winding up in my chest that makes it hard to breathe, and it’s getting tighter, and it’s going to make me explode. i am allowed to sit here while my vision is stained with violent, hazy shades and do nothing about the tightening thing in my chest.

i would like to stand just out of reach and yell about how you put this thing inside me, and how you are acting like it is my fault. i would like to yell about how this is me and i know you hate it and that is why i am becoming someone who only feels in extremes.

hurricane | hey stranger, i want you to catch me like a cold |

i’ve been having that dream again. the one where you are on the sidewalk beneath the i just love . . . sign, and there is a fog over the world that matches my state of mind. i notice you from across the street, and i tell myself that i will know what to say this time. you see me, with eyes that are brown instead of blue, and that is somehow so much better. you walk away. i feel alone again, so alone. the word love is mocking me.

memories | oh memories, where’d you go? you’re all i’ve ever known. how i miss yesterday and how i’d let it fade away |

i am awake one morning when the birds are just beginning their this is a new day! song. pieces of light worm their way through the blinds and lie across the sheets; a drip of hope in this suburban tomb. you are suddenly all over my heart. it takes my breath away because i haven’t bloomed any roses in my soul for you in a long time. i had forgotten what this felt like. i can’t say that i’m glad to have remembered.

oh, blue eyes, don’t you see what you’re doing to me? i know i do not love you anymore. i can’t remember setting my heart on you so many years ago, and i can’t remember when i let you go, either. i had managed to forget that you are the definition of the word ethereal. i had forgotten that i was in love with you, and please, i wish i didn’t have to live with these memories.

trade mistakes | if i ever leave, i could learn to miss you |

you’ve probably forgotten. but believe me when i say that i never will. the room is filled with thick yellow light, the kind that makes you dizzy and only half there. i think i have been crying. i feel sick, like my head is packed with cotton balls, like if i move at all, i will slip away and disappear. i feel disconnected and like i am floating. i guess you were paying attention, because you put your arm around me and let my head rest against you chest.

“i love you,” you said to me.

i have been waiting my entire life to hear those words from you. i hope you can feel my smile against your shirt. i hope you know that you are filling me up with light and joy and the feeling of finally being safe and wanted. after making so many wrong turns in my life, you are the first thing to feel right.

ready to go (get me out of my mind) | i think i’m ready to leave. i’m ready to live |

this is why i lock the bedroom door at night. i feel something strange at five in the morning. the walls are whispering to me, leave, leave. run away, bird. fly. i think i will listen to them someday.

there used to be a bag in my closet, packed with everything i would need to survive, if the hushed words convinced me that i should go tonight. i was going to be a traveling street musician with a song of lament and the confessions i couldn’t say to you.

always | it was always you falling for me. now there’s always time, calling for me. i‘m the light blinking at the end of the road. blink back to let me know |

i’m sorry for never saying hello to you. i was sure that if i opened my mouth, the words i love you would escape instead. i came so close to telling you, my friend, every single time that we spoke.

i wish that one of us had been braver back then. what if we had said something when we still had time? you can spend your whole life dreaming and wishing and praying that you could go back and change one thing, one moment, one sentence. maybe if i had said yes instead of no when your friend asked if i liked you. maybe we would have had more time. maybe i am stuck with the future i have made for myself and there is nothing i can do.

the calendar | and i meant everything i said that night. i will come back to life, but only for you |

if you’re wondering if i miss you, if i still love you — the answer is yes. it is always yes.

my friends tell me about their dreams, when we’re wrapped in blankets and sleepover-induced joy. they say that you and i get a happy ending. i hope that means traveling the world with you and our cameras. you promised, remember?

it will be a happy ending as long as you’re still here, and not just in my poetry and memories.

sarah smiles | i really hoped that you would stay, but you left and went your own way, babe. i don’t mind, take your time, i got things to do besides sit around and way wait for you. oh, and i hope you do, too |

there was a summer that i spent trying to forget you. if you aren’t aware, attempting to forget someone ends up with them being on your mind even more. after all those nights i spent convincing myself that there was someone better out there (it was never the truth), after i could almost believe that i was over you, you turned up again and i was back where i started. i am trying to figure out whether your reappearance was a cruel joke or a spot of sunshine before the storm hit.

nearly witches (ever since we met . . .) | ever since we’ve met, i’ve got just one regret to live through. and i regret never letting you know | 

sometimes there’s a part of me that wonders if things would be easier if i had never met you. if i hadn’t skipped a grade, if you hadn’t been held back one, i never would have ended up sitting across from you during art and watching you draw. you make amazing art. you are amazing art.

but i don’t regret it. how could i? you are the best i’ve ever never had.

xo

loren