my days with you

by kathrianna

Her past and present had collided once again. She looks at him and she sees her future.

2. Chapter 2

My Days with You

Acknowledgment
To everyone who has called my writing holy;

To you who had swallowed a falling star; with your childlike eyes and your distant smile;
the fire of my blood.
the air in my lungs;
you, only you.
the ocean to my sky,
the sun to my moon
my everything.
my light, my downfall

Forest

One day, our love will be enough to grow trees that will loom over citadels and pariahs, and in their barks, we will carve in the names that ever hurt us.

Envy

Envy had nothing;
so she killed a woman who had everything.

Envy was envious.

untitled

my biggest fear
is becoming like you
and I pray to God
every single day of my life
that it will never happen
you forced dirt down my throat
and now I am trying to grow irises
where you planted weeds.

Love

Our love was the kind that stretched out to the boundaries of the earth and came back with a heart-wrenching and resounding crash.

- Everything has its limits.

Patron

You are my days, my months, and my years. They will find traces of it, in the little vehicle of the piers, of kids scampering through the staircases, in red vests. In punches through envy, through the scattered needles of embroidery. I am beguiled that I never got to say goodbye.

November 12

I leaned into your hand and I felt warmth, I felt your fingers threaded to mine and I knew it was going to hurt having to let it go. And it did, it really did. One day, just one day I wish I could've held them a little longer, a little stronger.

My Dearest

Those days were so long ago
when each touch felt so clumsy and new
we've gone so far from where we have been
the pain we feel now is a scar that's fading.

Farce

May the gods forgive the blood on the hands of our fathers, thinking that one divine person must be glorified.

Creation

You made me into a poet that spoke with the fervent language of the multitudes.

Achilles and Briseis

The last thought of your lover would be the flaxen hair that rests upon your shoulder; the last thing you kiss is her lips hand served by the sun god himself.

Dear You

The great future in front of my eyes

is the happiness within your own

For it to stay like this forever

I will always offer a prayer.

Argentum - Salvaging Euphoria

I still can't write as well as he plays the piano - but it has always been like this I write and it's about the sun Icarus loved so much, a diminuendo of serotonin, puffy eyelids and leftover coffee, how it spills on your blistering heart.

But he plays and it's spring: the language of Aphrodite. Nervous hands and midnight longings, of that one time your heartbeat with the speed of something you know you can catch but don't want to. It leaves bruises on your thighs and colors in your eyes.

I write and it's bitten fingernails, blood that binds, of volcanic ash on your tongue, it's in the way he locks the door, looks at me in the eyes and his bed dips, it's in the way you want something you can never have. It is the warnings, premonitions and conjectures you tune out.

But he plays and it's the hues of blues, fingers tracing bodies like perfect stencils. And he keeps playing and playing, his keys ring with zeal while I keep writing and writing this stupid fucking poem and I still -

I can't write as well he plays the piano.

Stamp

I've reached my destination but my address is different.

Verb

Hate is a verb. Hate is an action word.

Golden Boy of the Capitalized World

Ask her if she loves him, the golden boy who left silver scars on her back. She has burned for him, drowned for him and she fell for him. Fell from the heavens themselves. So ask her if she loves him, and when this mortal ichor flows from the raw wounds at her shoulders, do not be surprised. Ask her if she loves him, so when this saltwater tears cascade and her lungs fill with something, not air, let these burns remind you of how much she craves his touch.

Storm

You said you like storms, so I let your tousled curls and tired eyes in. Turns out you can only handle a little rain and I was a typhoon.

Lessons in Discontent

He didn't really want to end this. He wanted to give everything.

She laughed and said "Push me higher!" so he did... but she shook her head.

"No. Push me higher,"

Abuse

Just because you are damaged does not mean you have the right to damage other people.

Lily of the Valley

You fell in love with sunlight, so when night came you didn't know what to do.

Double-edged

If anything, you have to say sorry for making me happy. That's what made me, me. You made me so happy.

Apraxia

I keep reaching towards something impossible; I keep reaching towards you.

Names and Letters

Names have savage power. Words as fickle or as measly as they are having the ability to change, to create, to define and limit and negate.

A single letter is stronger than all the swords that are polished and cut to perfection in the world, mightier than even the most powerful of kings and tyrants, as great as the Divine themselves. A letter shapes and brings the unsaid into creation. A letter erases the wondrous world, it is merciless. It is violent. It reduces the blue planet to nothing, rendering once-vibrant plains grey as ash and cinders that are blown away by the wind and the sun the epitome of warmth into a lusterless, pallid thing.

And yet a single letter is enough to also tame a sinner whose heart has been tainted with anger, sadness and grief, it changes his beliefs which turns him into someone good, appreciated, and pure. A letter is capable of giving happiness and love. It is forgiving. Benevolent. It gives a child born out of hate and lust, a home in which she grows up to be needed and cared for, it gives even the most broken heart to learn how to trust and let go again.

Which reigns triumphant? The power to capitalize and make or the power to write only in lowercase and destroy?

Passion

I don't write to you anymore nor do I write for you but I still write – I still do, and every word aches for you.

Octaves

And I think I wanted to touch your hands more than the keys on the piano.

Stratum

My body didn't feel anything with him, my heart felt it first.

Rendezvous

"There are boys who make you carve their names on the tops of your thighs and the collars of your bones, but there are the special ones who imprint their musky smell into the pads of your thumbs and their heat onto the fragments of your skin like he was meant to be there because he was supposed to be there. Your heart knows it so as the bundle of nerves between your legs, yet the world did not dare acknowledge it. So you are left with a boy who keeps one piece of yourself because what else could he take? Certainly not your innocence but something deeper. You and only you,"

Purpose

You are a crayon, get out of the toolbox.

Deaf

I wish my mother could hear it, our love was my song.

Kiss

He kissed her as a warrior, then as a lover and then as broken man. Finally, all three at once.

Human

Contrary to popular belief it's unwise to temper creatures of flesh and bone and mason it to steel.

Taciturn

1. We meet and it's in the hallowed halls of blue and white, little pudgy fingers opening a pack of 64-crayons. Two ribbons in my hair and a blue watch on your wrist. We meet and for the first time. There is a beat. There is a melody.

2. Two little pinky fingers, entwined. Years of promises that was never meant to be. Years of waiting and waiting and waiting. There it is. The hate, the guilt, the pain. Everything you are not supposed to feel. Everything he promised you not to feel.

3. This is what first love truly means. You did not break my heart. You merely set the expectations for everyone else that will surpass you. You did not break my heart. You merely took my voice, which spoke of fire and rain, of Venus and Mars. This is what first love truly means.

4. Time has scratched away everything else, the scars on my wrists and the medals on your neck. Did you cherish yours like I did mine? I clearly hear your voice like you're still singing our song, of a little green notebook, a silent goodbye, a kiss that had never happened.

5. This is our fate so no one is to blame. Though many years have come and have passed me by; if you're able to truly be content, will you please remember that day once again? To the little boy who had stolen my voice, may you always be smiled upon.

Letter Song

Going back to that place hurts painfully
And I'll cry because of the words you told me
So I'll ask you to change gently
These tears into a new memory.

Partner

Whenever I see you smiling at me, smiling because of me; I feel that we are so much more.

Blessing

You were my blessing disguised in equations and opinions and I was your sin disguised in heartbreak and uncertainty.

Him

You see the notes on the score and you think of him, you see the lines of your notebook and you think of him, you see lilacs and you think of him, you see the word "what if" and you think of him.

Universe

Calling you my lover would always be an understatement, calling you my world was barely scratching the surface. You are my universe. You are my everything.

Hyperopia

We are all farsighted. We give importance to those things that are far from us while we neglect things that are near to us; only to realize their value when they are out of reach later on.

April

I can't imagine who

Or what I would be right now

If you have never found me.

Loving you saved me

And I'm still utterly amazed

That I got lucky enough to meet you.

Inhale/Exhale

Sometimes on the days you apply lipstick on your chapped lips and open wide, you let out a giggle. A memory as clear as day. That one time of fervent pressing to the door, on soft sheets that smell of his musk. Your heart spilled on the covers of his hands. Inhale. And his hands guide yours to the waistband of his boxers. Exhale. And you know this is how it starts. Inhale and his fingers thread through your newly cut hair. Exhale. And you look at him and suck.

Waiting

I hate waiting and you know that…but if being with you means waiting…then I'll wait as long as forever.

Inheritance

My mother tells me, "If you're depressed then stay depressed," and I fall silent because those words have been etched into my adulthood after slaps that left welts on the side of my cheek and a scream in my ears that has never stopped ringing and

I have my mother's talents, I have her hair, her eyes and I have her love for writing and every time I lose control of my temper I am afraid of who I will grow up to be because what if one day my child will scream out in her room, mouthing words that don't have any sounds but will never stop and

Your father has a breathtaking smile and you're twice as handsome but he made you feel so lost, so angry, so pained, I was sixteen the first time I met him, he presses the back of his hand to my cheek, and he looks at you with such hatred, such spite, such envy, and he has the same smile and curly hair as you, he leaves the same way you tried to leave me and you can see other people's weaknesses with the same sniper-like accuracy and you once cried into my school blouse because you hated being able to hurt people the way he's hurt you.

why do we carry

nothing but the skeletons

our parents buried?

Habit

As of now it has been looking at you without anyone noticing.

Our Little Lives

He told her he was the best of women, but she was not.

Unseen

I wanted to kill myself and you were yelling about my grades.

Baggage

If we couldn't carry our dead inside us; we would be so empty.

Words

I said I love you forever…and I really meant it that time. Now I realize, that was my downfall, a figment of my imagination.

Needs

You want closure, he doesn't.

What if

"You are the boy they have warned me about, not the little snip of a little man who took away my voice, or the my first love who had kissed me by the hanging gardens of the centuries, no it is not my golden boy either, it is you. You and I, and no one else,"

Little Sister

You are the little beat of my heart, broken down ruined empty but still resounding, you are the color of my writings, holding innocence and simple things I do not possess anymore, you are the hand that I hold through all this pain and happiness, you are my solution.

Nostalgia

Of childlike eyes and fair lips, she is the reminder of your true innocence, before the world was too harsh, too firm and too overbearing for the both of you. You see her smile and the winds of nostalgia bring you back. In her beauty and divinity, you see fortitude.

Wish

I wish

I can only see you

As a human

Made of flesh and bone.

I wish

When I look at you

I don't see proses

Made of words and feelings.

Decisions

There are two types of passion. One is the desire of being something humongous that the world wouldn't fit you in its drifting continental plates and the other would be the silent underwater troves that dare rip apart the world's core and extinguish its flame.

You don't know what to choose anymore.

Delusion

All you can write is a litany of I know it was real, I know it was real. I know it was. I know it was. I know. I know.

My Days with You

Her past and present had collided once again. She looks at him and she sees her future.

Patria

The flames of revolution will forever lick the wounds the world has inflicted.

Comfort

I wanted to comfort you while you were crying but the arm I reached out was trembling.

Regret

He's someone who can give you feelings that can consume you I guess. The passion, desire, all the greatest things in the world; the heartbreak, the lust and the danger, all the worst things in the world.

But upon realization, he wasn't really consuming, I just got consumed.

Story

I can only write tragedy stuck into the tresses of your name; darling, our story is not about candies, kisses and all the sweet things you have come to hold, our story is about hiding, pain and longing.

Feelings

you fell in love with the person

and he fell in love with the feeling,

there is a huge divination across both.

Hero

Lips ripe as the berries in June, red the rose, skin pale as the light of the moon, gently as she goes. His heart burns as much as his smile. It burns you, it burns them, and it has burned horizons. His voice, lit up a flame that you thought disappeared, he is assurance.

2013

Deep inside of me, I fear

Life was never crystal clear

I said "I love you"

But you never had a clue.

I guess I try to move on

But that battle wasn't won

Love wasn't fair

It was too much for me to bear.

2018

There is this feeling of anxiety running through my veins and it has become my blood; for life is a crossroads of destiny, even the steadiest of waters have ripples if you look closer, if you look deeper. Three words lost on my lips, eight letters your eyes could not see. Three words, eight letters you could not feel.

I wanted to walk away, like your footprints on the sand now washed away, but my feelings are a torrent of "what if's" and "maybe's" and I fear they will be blood on the field now fading away. Love is still too much for me to bear.

Renewal

But yes I will heal, for these cracks you have made against the many that I already own will be soon filled with love, maybe not the one like yours, a love enough to drown me till no bubbles come up, of a love that scorched my soul till no end. Not yours but still love.

Acceptance

There's only one thing I know about this love that is pure and true. It is wrong.

This love is only meant for broken souls.

It is for the lowest.

Eclipse

His love roared louder than her demons.

Icarus

There is an Icarus that has flown too close to the sun; it was you. You, the harp bringer of words, clean and objective, details besmirched of pure technique. You, who have hidden so much pain and hurt, are still ready to give. One day those wings won't melt anymore.

War

Her hair smells like jasmine and love and peace and he reeks of blood and tears and pain.

Thoughts on a moonlit night

There are problems ahead
Love, grades, money and it's all in your head
there is coffee on your table
your mind, your mind and your heart are unable.

To cope with a failing test, red marks on papers
curls and thoughts scattered with twists and letters.

your hands are nervous, gripping and shifting
your proses are stripped, devoid of any biting
the air around you is cold and uninviting
the notes scattered; messy, plain, lack of understanding.

The narrative ready to break
this is all a trifling act. A capricious affair
these are not your thoughts on a moonlit night.

Your thoughts are heavy, laced with thoughts of heartbreak, failure and it scares you,

You have to stop
You have to
You have to.

Stop.

Remove all that. The notes, the feelings, darling you know the rules and strictures. Before it consumes you. Remove it.

These are not your thoughts on a moonlit night.

Silence

I'll keep loving you.

Because it's not a sin to love you.

Because I will keep loving you in silence

There is nothing wrong with that I hope.

Satisfied

They could've had it all. They could have sailed the seas and ruled the world.

But they didn't.

Writers

Writers are terrible people.

Break us and you will forever be immortalized on paper. How your touches meant the world and more. How your kisses meant we are almost home. How your arms have been our strength and shelter. But once you tear our hearts in half. There is only fire.

Lessons in Serendipity

1. Know my face even in a crowd, remember me. Even if I would be parted from you, know my voice that had removed your torment, your pain. Know my arms that had held you, that have given you warmth through cold deserts. Know my heart, for it has loved you.

2. Don't ask me to promise not to leave, because I would never, but I couldn't stay. I love you. But I have never known love to be selfless, I cannot love you and you alone.

3. It was so selfish of me, asking you to stay, when I cannot live an eternity.

4. When I bleed, and I will, when you stand by and find my knees bared and naked, crusted with blood and the thorns of the roses they threw at you: don't venerate me, for those who care, my blood isn't wine, for those who care, my body is not bread. But I am a man. I am just a man.

Blue

How will you describe the color blue to a blind person?

It is the color of the ocean of happiness that we all cannot baptize ourselves in. it is the color longing, of sadness, of calmness. A myriad of blessings and sins to be. How we begin and end our day. Alpha and omega.

Sins

It will start over again. All those longing glances, those quiet tugs of clothing in the dark. Bedrooms of soft mattresses. We are their young Gods. Their young fallen angels.

Time

I wonder what our life would have been if we had more time.

What would be our verses and what would be our rhymes?

Transcendence

That voice sounds nothing like Marius', but it was also soothing and warm; like a hymn, something that strikes into her very heart and the marrow of her bones, that voice set something in her, something that wants to take flight.

Answer

But isn't it sad how we've moved on from all that we had?

Sometimes I still miss it, all of the good and bad.

Martial Law

We are the aftershocks of an earthquake that happened years ago.

To the one person I call home

You are not one and twenty yet

That time will come.

When we don't have to hide

Our feet under the tables

Our hands firmly on our sides

That time will come. Surely

Indefinitely. Maybe not or maybe.

Country

There is no more hope for the Pearl of The Orient, how justice and education are now only reserved for the privileged, how a paragon university of Catholicism has become a husk of its former self. Of how democracy has failed the demos; the blood of our martyrs wasted.

Assassins

The first thing he sees is a little girl, with long brown hair, with cold eyes and yet has a charming smile.

"You are a fool to feel something, Moratsu, straighten your face."

Kayanu was always right, Nether gate raised broken children, psychopaths and stillborn, never fools.

Rosary

A mother receives a bouquet of 53 roses, although some wilted, some missing its petals. There is a taciturn feeling of regret and regret and regret. A mother receives a bouquet of 53 roses after years of not. A mother loves.

Egea

Your faint and tortured screams were not heard by your daughter grazing the woods with pure love in her eyes.

Name

You are not the oldest and the wittiest but you have tenacity in your voice and self-hatred in your hands.

Assumption

My body is sacred, made by our Divine, Himself. It is pure, holy and unscathed like how Daniel survived with roaring lions whose manes reek of hunger and bloodlust. My mind is empowered by an unwavering spirit who is a paragon of wisdom and bears great blessings, found and has yet to find. My soul is a server, devoted to blessed Sabbaths; it sings of praises and fiddles with treble sufferings. My heart is filled and satisfied, full of love to receive and to give. Love is not a finite source.

Love is that special little thing, for you find it in the little nooks and crannies of me.

You see it in my eyes, how the eternal refuge is there residing across the streaks of them. They soften, they cry and they plead. You see it in my lips, how it speaks of reverence of our most holy, it speaks of gratification of the people around me. They quiver, they tremble and they support you will see it across my hands, made to serve, to pat back on, to wipe tears away. They graze, they comfort and they had roughened.

I am created for love because I am created by love. I have all the remnants of God. How He loved so hard, He gave up His only Son; how He freed the people of the weariness of their chains, how He gave us the messiah.

I am the proof of his love. I have parts of Jesus. How He had suffered, how He smiled through all his premonitions, of judgement. How he was willing to go through these ordeals by far, to save you, to save us, to save me.

I am the proof of his love I have the pieces of the Holy Spirit. Guiding and embedded throughout the darkest periods of the mortals, a signal of the rebirth of a once broken world, and may it's light bless us forevermore in our endeavors. I am proof of its love.

Assumption

My body is not a temple of holiness; it has been bruised enough for scars that never fully heal; flesh pulled apart at the seams, a mouth that still bleeds blood, fingertips that have known too much.

My mind is a feeble thing, it does not represent a kaleidoscope of symbols, and it is not as vast as the stars of the Milky Way. Only of scorching coffee down my throat, and harsh strokes. It cannot endure.

My soul has been broken, once, tenths, dozens, how does it manage to not leave is a miracle yet to be unraveled, maybe it did already.

My heart is not finished; there are only remnants of spoiled sheets, the musk of his skin. Love is a finite source.

I lost

May you forever be smiled upon, dear child of wisdom, for you belong to that Angel of Music.

Solitude

At the end of the day, shrapnel is shrapnel, and I am alone with the things I have done.

The Doomed Lovers of the Wings of Freedom

He can still feel her fingers; warm, dainty and soft, with the scent of faint strawberries and fucking sunshine.

Anatomy of Magic

1. I can count on my two hands the stories that have not impact other people's lives, my stories that do not imprint on their skin, a trance of writing my words on scraps. I can count them all and still have fingers.

2. This is how I write. A tapestry of alchemy transmuted unto paper. Like a seraph in the wind. A pattern of deceit and blessings.

3. I still have nine fingers left.

4. Writing started with a silver razor that changed into a silver nib: this is how catharsis started and built. A foundation for its stratum, created neither by my hands nor my mouth, just my heart that has ink for blood and metal as arteries.

5. I still have nine fingers left.

6. This is how I want to be remembered, with a warrior that will surpass my buried body laid six feet under, or with pages that will be left untouched, salvaged and full of prose on its corners. Yes. This is how I want to be, an afterthought of the things that will surpass me. A legacy. Trying to make something out of nothing, making everything out of something.

7. We are nearing the end and I still have nine fingers left.

8. Everything is sacred and untouchable to a writer but at the same thing it isn't, there are times I wonder if it will ever be enough. My works are the purest form of self – taught: archaic and glorified.

9. I count one finger.

10. It is reality, the story each of us has. You strip down my works, remove its embellishments and beauty and you are left with simple words that fade into simple letters. You are left with the truth. You are left with something plain and hard-hitting. A story I have been ashamed for years.

Expectations

You were only six when tremendous amounts of pressure were put on your trembling shoulders that weren't ready to hold them.

Nine years later you are exhausted.

.you are always exhausted.

Bones

Loneliness was a fracture that never healed quite right.

Smile

She saw his smile and there was nothing to do but fall in love.

Speechless

I am a writer but when it comes to you I run out of words to say.

Writer's Block

There are times when the tapestry of magic I possess shatters
there are times the fine-spun thread unravels and they are, are just scattered pieces of yarn
they don't sound lovely nor do they look lovely.

/ this is how you break a soul that slept on rusted metals.

There are times where I cannot write anymore
I don't feel anymore
Those are the times where I don't know where to start
And my chest tightens and my heart wants to stop.

A true writer cannot not write
I am not a true writer.

Soul

God has given you thirty-six souls to treasure, to cherish, to love, and to hold. God was not greedy this time and you thank Him.

September 3

I know that in time, I will find a way to ease the pain

I hope that I'll be able to sing with you again.

Parseltongue

You are nothing special - a lanky boy with pale skin and glasses, but I know I loved you. The "you" in my proses.

You do not remember me the way I remember you, but we were only kids with scarring hearts and wrists against timeless expectations that still proceed to swallow us whole.

You are a language I am not fluent in anymore but I still know how to read.

I don't know why you smile anymore but I do know you are happy by the way your grin is written in your eyes and you ramble on and on. I don't know why you laugh anymore but I do know how deep your voice was, I still know that faint music in my ears, it was the most beautiful that I heard.

I don't know why you hurt anymore but I do know how you punch walls and the way I kissed your cracked knuckles. I still remember how you screamed at the top of your lungs in the quadrangle.

I don't know your life anymore, if you still scream at night, the razors you have rusted, or the way you dumbly smile at an online game or the way you sleep, but I do know, somehow. Somehow I was there.

- No closure is closure, 111214

Broken

In his years to come, he thinks he deserved better. But a millennium without her, makes him realize they both deserved better than this.

First Love

Before I fell in love
with flaxen hair
or slipper of glass
or wings dusted with glitter
with hair to the floor
twelve dancing shoes
amethysts that shimmer.

I fell in love with you.

Before I fell in love
with pressed flowers
the stage of the theater
with every twist of every letter
statues of a marble man
and the notes of the piano.

I fell in love with you.

Wordplay

It wasn't meant to be you and me.

It wasn't meant to be you.

It wasn't meant to be.

It wasn't meant to.

It wasn't.

Sissi

Empress of the centre and the stars, that is what they call you, tendrils of hair to your back, a corseted waist, and lost things; death lays you down to sleep with a kiss on the lips, a promise of everlasting.

Why

Why
regret
regret
regret?

Because
yesterday
yesterday
yesterday.

Fingerprints

If you dust my stack of papers for your fingerprints the only ones you will find will be someone else's.

Seven (a tribute to Ibong Adarna)

You have waited for this day
to be free from your confines
you have waited for this day
for a man to call you "mine".

And he did, but he did not
he kissed you and held your hand
he promised you his kingdom
and he did, but he did not.

You have waited seven years
for his return in your arms
in these castle walls, you yearn
for his voice and for his smile.

Wedding bells ring in your ears
another girl in your place
you have wasted for this day
for that prince to call you "mine".

Ropes (a tribute to Florante and Laura)

Have you shouted from that tree, oh dear sweet lover?
Why are you there? Why are you there? Why are you there?
You see your mother's greying hair and her small smile
You see your father's head across a thousand miles
You are hungry, so are the lions around you
you utter a litany and think of her love.

History books forgot about us (a tribute to Noli Me Tangere)

Crisostomo
Have you fallen to the mercy of your father?
Believed to drown in the same lake
Where are you now? The sparks in your eyes?
A knife and an awning book
Ideals, bravery, and sacrifice. A foregone conclusion.

Maria Clara
Two letters exchanged for your beloved's
your beautiful face is a façade
Death or the monastery? Both will be paid by blood
a nun screams in the night
Auburn hair and small lips. She is gone.

Elias
Gunshots through your hardened chest
Will you ever see the sun again?
No, you entrust it to a child of tomorrow
May you rest, May these old sins too
The dawn, a rosary, the water. The greatest loss.

Salome
You are not his revolution, dear
And your last look of him is his ashes
You have hardened palms and pink lips
Will you ever live for the daylight again?
Sampaguitas, flowers, and rough kisses. Eternal.

The Jeweler (a tribute to El Filibusterismo)

Blue glasses. White Streaks, Tired Eyes
Have you been visited by a noble soul or your father?

If you do not stand for anything
then what do you fall for?
Why are you back?
Why? Are you running out of time?

You are a God, aren't you? (Does He even exist for you?)
Hovering over people
Chess master of both sides.

If you came back for love, for revenge
you are thirteen years too late
If you came back for love, for revenge
you are under a cruel fate.

This is how you end. Black cardinal.

a dead nun, a doused lamp
bloodshot eyes and poison in your veins
Was it enough? Will it ever be enough?

Kokoronashi

You are a kindred soul, with stars in your eyes.

You give and you give and you give
you give your heart, your love, your bones and why not everything
till there's nothing left of you.

When will you receive anything back?

Jealous

How can I not be insecure? When he deserves sunlight and I can only give him the ashes of my marrows.

- But dear, he wants you even if you are demolition dust.

Colors

So this how it feels like, how people beyond their years see, it's like a new drabble, a whole new scenery, a new heart and a mouth forms these little words.

"Do you see it?"

And this was its harsh reply.

"See what?"

Bystander

At the end of the day, he loves you and not me.

You were the one
You were always the one
You were the light in his life.

Coffee

Tell: Levi drank the hot coffee as he wrote Petra's name in the report

Show: Levi drank coffee as his quill flowed with the loops of two A's. It's black and hot. As he sipped the liquid, it scorches the roof of his mouth but he paid no heed and gulped it down.

Empire

One day we will build an empire of our own
Among a city of glass and towns of pedestals
One day the world
It will burn
One day the world
It will freeze
One day we will build an empire of our own
Among our downtrodden feelings and our unforgivable sins.

Apologies

My body is a garden uprooted in sadness

"I'm sorry" is the biggest prose that I can offer.

How

How do you say sorry to a person you've tried destroying ever since? How do you say sorry to a little girl who "accidentally" cut her wrists with a broken bottle? How do you say sorry to yourself?

Dementia

Since there is so much pain and sadness...you tend to forget there was anything good.

Black Sun and White Moon

Have you seen the way he looks at her?

Like she dried up the pouring rain

Like she is his moon

Like he can't keep up with it, the speed of the world without her in it.

I will repeat the question. Have you seen the way he looks at her?

"Ichigo...why do you still look at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you still love me,"

Skies

We only ever have one umbrella, so...we hold it together, and it's fine if we get a little wet, because...it'll soon be sunny again.

Question

"Does he make you happy?"

"Inexplicably so."

Strength

Whenever I want to give up I think of a little girl whose legs scorched with red angry marks; she never gave up.

- I have no right to.

Pry

I'm afraid someone might pry open my heart and all they could see is hate and envy.

Self-inflicted

How do I say thank you for the people who pick up the pieces of something never broken but hurt themselves in the process?

Pleasure

May all your lovers forget their names as they scream out yours.

Decisions

How foolish of you, to pick lust, adventure and danger over home, safety and compassion.

Fault lines

We were built across the fault lines

We were so fragile underneath

With no solid rock beneath the ground

We just had to break eventually.

Resurrection

She watched the Romans kill him slowly, and she wept, and she ached, and she spent two nights sitting in the dirt outside the tomb, whispering prayers to the stars like it might be worth something, anything, and everything. And it was.

Hole

I've never felt so empty and I wonder if you ache like I ache.

Archaic

Orpheus' last cry into the underworld is heart-wrenching,
and Eurydice in all her faithful glory wants to say:
'the fear was not your fault, my love',
but then she's trapped again.

It's the fifteenth year, or maybe the sixteenth,
and Odysseus wonders if this truly matters.
He's covered by blood, far away from Ithaca,
and his journey never ends.

Paris tries to recall all the dead, soldiers, fathers, brothers
but they are infinite, a legion of blurred and blotchy faces.
Sometimes, he looks at Helen and thinks:
'what have we done to this world?'

Theseus went away without a word,
and she wonders if he hated her so much,
to leave so mercilessly, knowing that
Ariadne trusted him with her heart.

Briseis, with her golden curls and brown eyes
buries Achilles, with her slaved hands
and his ashes mingles with Patroclus
she is left alone in this world.

Nyx

She laughs like a goddess in summer, for she is one.

Euphemism

And in the end, who the hell would date a girl with anxiety in her eyes, depression in her lungs and sadness in her mind? Who would even try to notice someone like her?

Writing

Writing has become a safe zone. Catharsis. Something I cling to every single day that I have forgotten what it felt like to roll my eyes at a formal theme or even an essay. Writing also led me to something absolutely changing. Potential. I have a little talent I can share with the world. Little scraps of paper that can be read by anyone since they scatter most of the time on my classroom's floors. I have written about a warrior and his heart's wife of five years, or a boy in front of a grand piano getting another invisible wound of his soulmate. The list goes on and on; two girls at a crossroads of destiny or a villain and hero talking about the same person as they bleed out.

Juxtapose

You felt too much. He did not.

Average

Average is the meeting point of less and more, making it more interesting to look at.

Mistake

They said that love was never wrong, it is purity, it is a gift, but why are you treating me like a mistake that you want to erase so much?

Together

Both of them were strong with all the baggage they carry, but they manage to carry more together.

Cliché

He kisses her fervently, as he puts her coffee down; he feels her smile as they hear the pitter-patter of the cold rain near their window.

Despite

Despite only seeing the world, he has the universe in his eyes.

Hate

Do you hate people because they are terrible or they just seem terrible because you hate them?

Some Days

On some days I am the mess

On some days I am the broom

On the worst of days I am both the mess and the broom.

Unlove

How to unlove someone who has been through your worst episodes? When you nearly cut yourself to death and he held love. When you thought no one will look at you and think "beautiful" but he tucks your hair in and he says "home".

Places

"Do you think...we can leave this entire world behind us, Hector? I-I mean…together, leave all of this. The walls, the army, the prophecies behind us."

"Where shall we go?"

"Anywhere with you is fine...home."

Ink

I want to write, not about fire

of how it imposes great desire

I want to write, not about fire

not about a warrior and a broken lyre.

Texts

You are the hidden texts underneath my pillow. You and your words and your thoughts on my skin, you and every fantasy you bring to life, every ghostly caress, every filthy, dirty, desperate and glorious conversation we've ever had, imprinted on my body like plain black text.

Beauty

She is light pressed against shadows, and the bards and poets will sing of her curled lashes and long hair for centuries to come.

Woman

She is not meant to be romanticized. She is meant to be humanized.

Jielle

You are the first drop of snow in winter; pure. As innocent as a changeling's smooth skin.

Summer Nights

When I came with you that first time on the soft bed of your dormitory in España, the clean and fluffy sheets under my back, the heel of one foot propped on your shoulder, I went ahead and screamed, gasped and moaned as loud and as long as my body demanded I should, because somewhere, in the back of my cloudy mind, packed in the smallest neurons still capable of some thought, I have forgotten that there were students nearby, there was the arc of the centuries looming over.

Afterwards, when I would let go of the soft velvet and open my eyes, I looked up; hesitantly and scared.

You were on your knees; your hands combing my hair, gently, in soothing motions – the open lights sculpting each lift and delicate twist, the lax muscles, the lines of your jaw. I saw the sweat forming at your brows and your eyes, heavy-lidded, with so much divine passion and the world opened wide, and the world was inside of me.

It was my first time with you, it was my first time unraveling to such heights, I would recall stories of this first plight, little death they would name it, how women came and it was a war cry, an empress pursuing possession.

So I looked at you again and it felt true, your whole body seemed defeated, owned, there are scratches at your back and hips, there are nips on your neck and chests. You pressed your head into my shoulders, breathing slightly fast and you just groaned my name into my ear.

I knew right there and then, in the next summer nights, I need to be more gentle, and so impossibly kind.

Dependent

I desperately wanted to fly but my god I craved your wings so much.

Art

Make art

In the space between my thighs

And paint me with your burning tongue

And your deft fingers.

Orgasm

And I'll think of you

Of your wonderful laugh

And the crows of your eyes

As my body

Explodes into a canvas of stars

I'll think of you

As you sing Sunday Glory

And your breath-taking smile.

Unsent Letters

yours as long as life permits it.

Into the Woods

Why do I get the feeling that you know what you've been doing to me? That you know about my shortened breaths when you come near me. That you know about all the dreams I've had with your eyes in them. That you know how I blush when you put your hands on my shoulders. That when you look at me you can read my every thought, every single one of my wildest fantasies I've had about you. That when you read my words you know, for sure, that they're about you. About how I feel about you. Why do I feel like you know everything?

Dawn and Fireflies

If I were to paint the sky of that summer which never came

You would laugh at me just like back in those old days.

Nights

I'm afraid if you open your heart to me, I'll keep the lock to myself.

- You don't own people you love, and my God I'm starting to love you.

French Vanilla, Two packs of Sweetener and Creamer

I laugh
as you get
your coffee
and I saw your
eyes and I saw your
smile, and my God
it's so damn beautiful.
And I get why, why you drink your coffee like that, I
get why you prefer to wake up with a prayer and a smile. And
jI know you love smiles and laughter; how your eyes dis appear your teeth in all their skewness, renew my own like a resur recttion. Hands raised in surrender. I know why you drink your cof fee like that. A man like you is not meant for bitter coffee gourds and swift scalding pain. A man like you is not made for suffering You look sat me and at my black coffee and said, "You are not made for asuffering as well," and you laugh heartily as you put sugar in it.
There it is. The crows of your eyes and your reverent voice
the next day, I am holding a cup in one hand, books in the others it ssmells like French vanilla, two packs of sweetener and creamer.

Wax, Sun and Seas

I get the whole "He's the only guy I've ever really been in love with" part. The whole "He saved me and got all my insecurities" part. The "He's the one I'll wait for" part. I really do. It's hard to let go, hard to move on to someone else and think you'll never find anyone with such characteristics; the same curls, the big laughs, the enormous appetite or chemistry, walking hand in hand and back hugs and cuddles like you two had, But I promise you, once you let go and move on, you'll find out that, deep down, the only feelings you have for him might be just the fact that you'll always love him. You might just be scared to move on without him.

Parallel lines

far away beyond this cold universe

we have convened in parallel lines.

Boundaries

I want to overturn the accepted layout of this solar system and touch you.

Composition

It's almost as if calling him the sun was an understatement. He is the universe. He's so vast and it's terrifying. He makes me feel so small. And yet I want to know and know and know.

What are the stars that make up his constellations; the planets he had brought forth through his destructions?

All the things he had loved

All the things he loves

All the things he will love

And if...I could ever be one of them

Did He?

Did he ever promise you the world too? That how he will kiss your forehead on the 3rd floor of the highest building.

Did he ever promise you that he will fill the crack in your soul? On how you think he will be the greatest mistake of your life?

Eyes

Look into his eyes, they'll answer everything. They're so deep, filled to the brim with endless dreams, you could drown in them, get lost in them, build an entirely new world in them.

Scars

I have loved since you but when the new paint gets scratched, there you are underneath.

Proxemics

When you're near, the creatures inside me cower and keep quiet, watching you with their eyes.

- I've never seen them so afraid before.

Spring

I love him

I love him

I love him so so so much

And every time I see him there's this weird and amazing feeling in my chest that I can't really explain. It's like when you're on a roller coaster and the ride suddenly goes so fast and down that you feel like there's this tickle to your heart and that it's about to explode.

When I hear his steps, when I see him, when I hear his voice. His reverent voice. It's as if I'm lying in a garden full of flowers, of so many different kinds of colorful and beautiful flowers with the bright and hot sun shining on my face, with the birds singing, with the cicada's chirping and clicking noises.

Fairytales

I used to believe in fairytales.

I don't know if they had abandoned me or if I had abandoned them.

Come in

Even monsters are welcome, when you feel so empty.

Avian

You weren't made of magic, and you didn't have galaxies in your eyes. You were just a boy with broken glasses who told me I was beautiful. Now, you're a fleeting memory–nothing but a name in my proses.

Visitor

Depression visits you, and you are eight. Hiding in the warmth of a cold bed. It did not look anything strange, just a looming figure, completely forgettable, there is nothing to remember (and you thought this will be your last meeting)

You don't know that it would also be in the form of a bloodied handkerchief, of ripped pages of an upside notebook, as a little piece of glass you hide within your magnificent stack of proses. Yes, you don't know it will be the remains of a broken cellphone, of fingers hitting the piano recklessly, in the form of how the keys ring without such dissonance. Of your eyes head-on, crossing the road, no commitment to side glances.

Depression appeared again. When your pillows had tears blotted on to their casings, where scarves would hide your scars, which reek of rust; a little girl clutching a broken rosary like broken petals left to decay at the altar.

You told it to leave, your voice shaking and your body trembling, bags in your eyes, hair up in a mess. Hoping your pleas would reach and depression shifts ever so slightly and for the first time in years it has spoken.

"Everyone has left...but I will not"

Your visitor kept true to their words.

Eine Kleine

From the moment I was born, I couldn't stop screaming, saying that "I wanted to fade away and disappear." Ever since the day I stopped I had always been searching, for the one I'd someday meet; for the "you" that has to leave.

Idolatry

I wish I could believe that our love could save us.

Rust

Time heals all wounds, and sometimes I wonder why mine rust like old knives.

Bodies

Some bodies are temples but all are ruins at your feet.

Patience

Maybe you are destined to meet a man in his late 30's with graying hair, his smile lines and stubble evident, he sings songs of Sabbath and he calls your writing holy.

Until then keep writing.

Ethereal

Sometimes you speak stars into being (they are very small but very bright) and other times the words that fall out take root and grow into briar roses and morning glories.

Sometimes you drag yourself out of bed or into bed and leave bloody footprints in your wake and if you listen clearly you can hear Troy falling and Achilles roaring but other times it's only the hush of rain welling in the imprints of toes, arch, heel.

Sometimes you laugh and smile and dance and drink and I think, Dionysus has returned but other times I see you limp, and I think of Hephaestus, who works wonders even so.

Sometimes I see too many things when I look at you or think of you but sometimes I look at you and see flesh and blood and labyrinth and melted wings.

and its cliché, I think, to see you and think Icarus and Icarus' wings and Icarus' sun, but you're not falling all the time, sometimes your diving, sometimes your swimming, sometimes you just want that bright shining glory freedom space and.

there's nothing just about it, you want it, you fly toward it, and you don't care that the wax holding your wings together will melt, you don't hear the voice crying 'beware, beware'.

No that's not right, you do, but also you see gold where others see fire, and you think, it's worth it, it's worth it, I will crash and be subsumed by something larger and greater than flesh and blood and labyrinth.

Well, this is only what I think, and what is true is much greater, because you are you and I can only guess at what that might mean.

Tale

Our story has been called dead and yet people speak of it a thousand years later.

Closure

I know it ended, but it never really began, but in my heart, it was so real.

Blame

You will always blame the people who have hurt you; even if they didn't mean to.

1 A.M. Thoughts

Sometimes we admit to ourselves that love isn't always enough, not when all of this had happened.

Lessons in Loving a Prophet

One.
You are made for this, you the chalice, the royal blood, the fleur-de-lis, you who made history.

Two.
You know how this ends. There is nothing you can do to change this fate; so make amends with this now. Ready your hands for that wooden cross, shred the cloth for bandages. Prepare the rosaries.

Three.
When you meet Him, outside the groceries, along the shorelines you have called your home, against the summer solstice. You will not know what He is. He will neither be too charming nor too handsome, not thunder or even polish. An invisible crown of thorns.

Four.
The day you fall in love, His mouth will spill your name. He will repeat and repeat. He will not touch you. He will watch your hips, study whatever ample you have, will ask to watch you dance. When you turn to leave, He will use your name like a magnet drunk on gold.

Five.

He will call you a miracle. Your face will unravel. For this is His magic. When He begs, when the water of the lakes baptizes you, when He implores, say yes.

Six.
When He offers His lips, take them. Take His arms, His throat, take His hands. Take His whole life too. Gorge. Swallow everything whole. Gag. Vomit. Swallow more. Do not hesitate. No time for politeness, or coyness. Take. Take till you cannot take anymore. Until He cannot give anymore.

Seven.
When the sinuous men call you whore, nod.

Eight.
He will tell you of the others. Others who came before you. Known before you. Knelt and served before you. How they went crazy in their sleep awaiting His return. His resurrection. Do not flinch. Do not doubt your thickened fingertips. Stand upright. You promised.

Nine.
When you find Him in his room, thrashing the sheets, pressing His palms into the walls, howling, His face a river...like a scourging, like an agony. Close the door. Shut it down. Firmly. Steadily. Close it. This is how He makes wine. Leave Him in His sorcery.

Ten.
When He explains that He cannot love you. He does; oh He does. But He can't. He will never be yours alone. When He tells how the meek, the envious, the tempted, the proud are His angels, do not mourn. Smile, feed Him, and wash His feet with your hair.

Eleven.
He is king among thieves, but you know better. He is king among kings. The plague will hollow His skin. The crows will reduce His soul into bones. His own sacred heart will empty Himself. Allow for the bleed. Be ready for prayers. When the clock strikes three; be ready at Calvary.

Twelve.
In these lost skies, after the last of the burning lashes, the thorn and the spittle when His body is laid limp at your feet. Remember the night He made love to you, the smoldering embers in His eyes, His words are a hymn to the North.

Thirteen.
You who made history. The fleur-de-lis, the royal blood, you the chalice. You are made for this.

Serendipity

You were the best mistake I ever made, or anyways you weren't the worst.

Karma

A melody that always knew beauty and regret

Has destroyed my heart and body that yearns for renewal

All the sins we've done will be paid eventually

You and I await, for the call of the holy.

Samsara

How the sun and moon have suddenly both aligned

As if held in place by the passion in this still heart of mine

Time and time we'd miss as life would cycle and rise

You and I both crossed paths here in this paradise.

Moksha

Suddenly a melody I faintly recall

Trembles through my heart and memories the ones I forgot

Sometime long ago, before this chaos and fear

I think you and I were somehow standing right here.

Difference

He's Prince Charming and you're just Little Red Riding Hood.

Consume

He makes sure that I wouldn't swallow him, but I just find it funny because it's so easy for the sun to be consumed by the moon.

Language

My heart is a dead language but you pronounce each word perfectly.

Open Waters

I can feel your eyes flood with desire
And fear that you might capsize
I can feel your heart burn with fire
And fear that it won't suffice.

Hanahaki

As if she was being punished by some cruel goddess watching her struggle to come up with an answer, three more petals have fallen to the sink. As she tried to clear her throat, she splashed her face and groaned; she gave in, unable to deny it any longer.

She liked him.

No, "like" doesn't even begin to describe the weight of her emotions. It's love. Pathetic; considering how hard she tried to protect her heart. Pathetic, considering there was another before that reverent man, a boy with tired eyes and unruly curls, that boy who made her spit out thorns, that poked through her jugular artery ruining her neck, and not soft velvet petals. A pitiful sound escapes her, a burst of weak laughter as her whole body slumped and she held her head in her hands.

It's like she hasn't learned anything from the people who hurt her. Friends and family coming and going, taking and taking, never looking back to see what they did to her. How many holes and bruises they left for her to quietly patch up, all by herself. How many scars she has inflicted to herself. And now he's about to take what's left, her very life and remaining feelings.

Maybe she was bound to fall for him from the moment they met? The moment he stepped into the classroom, like fate or destiny or the alignment of stars or whatever.

As hot tears start to pool in her hands, and she began to shake, all she can think about now are his kind words, his gentle voice, the time they've spent together. As if on cue, more petals come along with stomach acid and she bolted into one of the stalls, clutching the toilet bowl. It'd be one thing if the vomiting was the result of her not eating right, but the sickly sweet taste of the petals make her feel even worse.

The burns subsided after a while and she wiped her wet clammy hands to her skirt, fixed her blouse and wiped her glasses clean, she needed to look fine when she goes in the classroom and she lifted her chin a little higher as she heard the click of her heels.

There's a tickling in the back of her throat.

She coughs and coughs but it never goes away, and it's really starting to irritate her, She hasn't taken no more than ten steps away and suddenly there is no air in her lungs, she takes a deep breath that rattles in her throat, and she still can't breathe-

She stumbles out of the stairs and falls to her knees, still coughing and trying to get the petals out, and-

Little specks of blood stains her tinted lips, it's the familiar metallic taste and more petals drift to the ground, stained and delicate, and she grabs one, holds it up to her eyes with a trembling hand, and the tears she repressed dropped as soon as the petal fell.

She just thanks the heavens it's Tuesday today.

Path

I know he is a beautiful flower, my love, but he is so far from your path.

Home

he made me feel like home

he is my home

and pretty soon I'm going to be homeless.

Constellations

The human soul is made of little stars.

An infinite number of them stretching across vast galaxies, filling the universe of the human body with pinpricks of light. Each shines brightly maybe some brighter than most or worse dimmer, but a scattering of stars is nothing, not until a constellation is formed.

That is when the true beauty of the soul manifests itself—two sets of stars, perfectly conjoined in a blazing image of strength and beauty and passion, the everlasting nature of two souls made into one. Nothing can touch them but the other, and only when every last star is gone can the constellation die out.

It is the gift of God, they say. Humans have overcome other species, the earth, each other, and even their own nature, but one thing that will always bring them down is loneliness. God arranged this, to allow everyone to live and die with the very person who will understand them the most. It is a blessing.

(No one mentions how the stars can darken, how half of them can turn on the other, smothering its own life, on purpose or not; how the remaining constellation will become an entirely new, untouchable one of its own. Invincible. Alone. No one thinks of these old souls, forever young, watching the rest of the world through eyes weathered by ages of solitude, and no one sees the eternal regret that inevitably haunts those faces.)

Silence

Writing isn't just words and paint; it's breaking glass and not realizing the sound and music we make.

Secret

I think up ciphers to trace onto your skin, because it doesn't feel safe to just say I love you.

Worship

How do you deal being worshipped by a man who is supposed to be worshipped himself?

Touch

When you touch me, my mind is gone. The only words I know now are lost in your body.

The Sun

I am not the first person you loved. Your old eyes have seen more than mine, your strong arms have held more things than mine. Your clear ears have heard more laughter than mine.

You are not the first person I had loved. There are songs I loved but you have never heard, there are airs I have breathed but you have never breathed, there are punctuations I have dotted but you have never written.

We have both known loss the way we dare the world to look at our smiles and see that we are okay. We have both tried to live with intelligence for hair and tolerance for teeth and the world knows we have failed.

Our love came unprepared in the middle of the day. Our love came when we'd given up and we just wanted to continue to walk through these halls. I think that has to be part of its miracle.

This is how we try to heal. I will hold your fingers like a strength that has tried to leave you. You will look at me and I find the hope that I thought was gone. Our hands will nurture and salvage and as the sun and moon collide rarely, we collide as well, rarely.

I will dance simply to the veins of your hands. I will sing songs to the crookedness of your teeth. I will write a thesaurus of all the words I have used trying to describe the way it feels to have finally, finally, finally found you.

And I will not be afraid of your scars; those scars you cannot open up to anyone. I don't think I will ever be afraid of the things I own too.

I know sometimes it's still hard for you to let me in, to let me know the lines of your palms, I know it's still so hard for me to be worshipped by someone meant to be worshipped himself. but please know: whether it's the days you burn more brilliant than the bright sun or the nights you collapse into your bed wondering if your choices throughout the day were right,

You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I will love you when your sun is setting.

I will love you when you are now dusk.

The End of the World

This is how the world ends, not with a bang but only because explosions don't make a sound in space.

Death

Death is not the end. Death is the rolling credits and the movie has long been since over.

Potential

Remember how her potential was a promise? And not a regret?

Existence

I know you are out there right now, forgetting I exist, like a village that once resided on the slopes of the volcano in my heart.

Deep Waters

I might tire myself out from struggling, and I might drown but I will never sink.

Sometimes

Sometimes I am okay knowing that you don't love me. Sometimes I can look at you and just be happy with your presence. But then there are the times when I look at you and I feel the ache. I feel the ache of longing, wishing that you were looking back at me. But you never are.

Reciprocation

He loves you, oh God, he loves you, in the way you two talk about the sun and moon and the stars, in the way he pours himself over your words and letters, in the way he says your name like a prayer, he may not love you in the way you want, but he loves you in everything he does.

Finished

A million questions that will never be answered
A thousand movies that we will never watch together
A hundred books we will never get to read over coffee
A couple of songs that we will never sing together
A few words that we will never say to each other.

A boy that I will miss forever.

Confession

I have told everyone that I love you.
Sorry if they knew even before you.
To be fair,
I think everyone else knew
Before I did.

Tragedy

I always loved reading tragedies; I just didn't expect us to become one of them.

Chrysalis

I built a cocoon from the proses I have made for you
It is warm, and I feel so loved.
I intend to stay there.

I built a cocoon from the proses I have made for you
but in order for me to grow
I have to get out.

Identity

I used to thank you
for making me know I am beautiful
And you always assure me
I am.

Since you left me,
All I've felt is that I am not worthy
And I'm so scared that you realized
I am.

A Gaze into Sunlight (a short story)

What makes his chest burn is her smile.

The girl has other male friends, in their own division and outside of it – and, he has made sure that the most dangerous ones are also the ones farthest away – but she is never that comfortable in her own skin around them, never so relaxed and content. When with them, she keeps trying to hide her fiery personality away, unwilling to let anyone know she does not master her emotions with all the deftness expected of a responsible and capable assistant, and won't they be surprised at her ferocity when she finally explodes?

But this, this is different.

He has already warned himself it might be; he has been aware of the boy's origins the moment he stepped in the building of Sol-Libra, shocking and scaring his peers with his level of raw wit. It wasn't hard to find out the boy's identity – not when his assistant used to make a point of checking on his studies abroad, it does not help either that he was the son of the esteemed owner of the corporation, Xiang Mendoza.

She has never had that much to say to him about someone else, and he has been filing all the information carefully, telling himself he should be thankful for her show of trust for the opportunity to revise his plans. Telling himself that feeling irritated by her willing exposition is illogical and unworthy of his time.

And he tries to remember that, tries to crush the weakness before it forms, but, when his eyes happen on her arms around the younger man, Tristan brushes the back of his hand against Hannah's cheek.

It must be one of his characteristic reactions, one of the things the young man's usual gestures with his young assistant. These thoughts are subdued by something more primal, something more exposed. Angry and vulnerable.

She smiles at him and congratulates him for his first day in the 10th Division, his instantaneous promotion to Division manager – only to be expected; he thinks the young man will soon surpass Assistant and Event coordinator Raina Manalo maybe even Manager Sayo – and takes a step back, takes his hands in hers. Her true smile, which he had never seen directed at someone other than him, flashes in the already dimming afternoon light; and his sharp eyes do not miss the flush on the young man's cheeks, the look of want in his eyes.

The moment is destroyed by the boy's immaturity, as he is unable to cope with the proximity. He turns away from her and asks her not to call him by a nickname Adrian can't quite catch, tells her he is "Sir Mendoza" now and needs everyone else to respect him – and the Manager of the 5th division feels his throat sour with contempt for that boy who is unable to appreciate and savor her affection, or even to deal with it in a mature way. Ordinarily, such a demonstration of ungratefulness would rile her up; she would press her hands tight against herself, bite on her lower lip, and go on with a slightly clipped voice, the true smile fading onto a doll's artificiality – and he, he thinks himself victorious.

Yet her smile does not disappear – in fact, her smile only grows larger and gentler, as if she is endeared by the man's words. Which, he realizes, she is; he surmises that make him, him. At last, her smile infects the scion– and his smile is a bit unlike hers, more secretive and pleased, but intimate, all the same. Like they know each other inside and out, and can look past their superficial banter and treasure each other for what they are – defects and all.

He looks at their smiles and thinks Tristan Mendoza might know parts of her he himself has never even glimpsed, that thought caused him to narrow his eyes slightly, his hands slowly curling into fists.

"Ya'll right, Sir Santos?"

He turns to the voice as if whipped – and of course, it had to be Gabriel, coming up the hallway with his meek assistant, holding the creepiest of his knowing smirks. Sniffing for his weaknesses.

He disguises the irritation behind a calm expression, but he knows very well what this scene tells about him. "Why do you ask, Gabriel?"

"I dunno, ya looked like ya ate something mighty bitter." And in their unacknowledged little game, he retreats with every step Gabriel advances; and he loses when the other manager sees the two figures standing in front of the 10th Division's office.

Gabriel moves forward eagerly, snatches what little territory he has given with savage pleasure. "Ah, that's the new division manager? I didn't know he was acquainted with Hannah."

He sees Kyle move his lips – probably to tell his manager of the relationship between Tristan Mendoza and Hannah Manuel– but he does not listen; he can only see Gabriel's smile, see the promise of death in his closed eyes. A taunt.

An unspoken idea that, if he has such weaknesses, maybe he can be defeated after all.

The anger burns stronger.

He has been long setting things so Hannah would function as a distraction when he eventually makes his escape from the Sol-Libra's functions; right now, however, he decides he will not stop there – he cannot afford to stop there, cannot suffer her to live. He will not stop until he sees that weakness in him gone – not until he destroys everything that ever made him feel vulnerable and exposed, everything that has ever been out of his reach, everything that made Gabriel smile like he, Adrian Santos, was only human.

After all, she is his and his alone; he will one day be more powerful than a God in their eyes, and if that doesn't make her his, what could?

Silently, he decides he won't even leave a hollow shell behind for the boy, and smiles a true smile.

Awanggan

She wants to flaunt you to the world
The feel of your lips, the feel of your hands
Hers, all hers
She will tell the world everything
Yes, she will flaunt you to the world.

The sunrise meekly watches on
The thumps of a ball or the skip of a jump rope
On how she infuses mint in you water
On how she wipes the sweat off your face
Or the way she smiles at your praises
The sunrise is young and delighted.

The seas and the sky are jealous
For your infinite support and patience
The comfort of the cheesecakes that you always buy
The dresses and the books that make her smile
For your calm demeanor and stubbornness
The seas are trembling and the skies are fainting.

The stars and the moon are witnesses
To the moans and sighs, you elicit from her dainty mouth
To the warmth and pleasure that emits from your room
They know the marks that you leave on her neck
They know the scratches that adorn your back
The stars and the moon are eavesdroppers that feel everything.

The rain is happy for their daughter
The way he holds the umbrella up high, shielding the tears and pain
The way she hums a tune as you bring her coffee
Giving her jackets and coats whenever your arms aren't around her
The way you laugh as she dares and breathes in the bad weather
The rain entrusts her to you

Five things my mother never taught me

i. when even the sick wolves dare not to look at you, as though you are not worthy to even be devoured.

Smile. Consider yourself blessed.

ii. The universe is forever expanding
don't let anyone say to you, there is no room for your high wit and the passion through your veins.

iii. The past you leave behind, will never ruin you.

iv. It is okay to want.

You have lived all your life eating crumbs under the table.

It is okay to want.

v. He is not Midas, no matter how flaxen his hair is.
You have always been golden.

Shipwreck

There is a shipwreck between the junctions of my ribs and it took you years to understand how I found it so hard to breathe through all this drowning. There are people like me who cannot be held quietly; how my screams can never be internalized. If you looked through our photo albums, all you would find are the razors I have hidden from you and the smell of liquor pressed to its corners. There is a shipwreck between the junctions of my ribs. I am a box labeled with the word fragile on it and so many people have stopped handling me with care. And for the first time, you have realized, and you have understood that you will never know how to apologize for being one of them.

Four Types of Love

(Storge) I love you, the way you keep my tired eyes open and you help me make peanut butter sandwiches.

(Eros) I love you, against your sheets, your fingers gently tracing my thighs, my fingers tugging at the waistband of your boxers.

(Philia) I love you at four A.M. when I praise a God I tried so hard to believe in, a thousand times.

(Agape) I love you, from the depths of my heart, unconditionally; the way an echo beats into an empty abyss; always enduring despite its hardships.

About the Author

I love writing in the middle of dawn, when there is quiet and all I can hear is the sound of the keyboard, the way my hair is pulled into crown braids, the veins on his hands. Jackets sprayed with Old Spice.

My real name is something cold and unpronounceable.

Sometimes my heart feels like a tiled floor and everyone comes in wearing shoes.

I cry at the movies, and I go alone in the movies.

I have dreams where I try to persuade someone to love me.

I bite the skin around my nails and pluck out my hair.

Sometimes I look at the mirror and see the acne, the pollution, the leftover scars and I cry.

Sunlight

His hands tangled with sun and he leaves you with burn marks where his fingertips and his eyes linger. And sometimes when you look back, when you touch back, your bones know you won't come out of this whole.

Weapon

They molded you into a weapon and shouted at you to find peace.

Holy

I called you holy and you put it back to my mouth, I called you holy and you tried so hard to hide the halo behind your back, plucked the wings off your shoulders as I took my communion from your lips. You are my holy water, my wine and my altar.

I called you an angel and kissed soft prayers up your spine. I called you an angel and recited a litany in the cradle of your arms, led my hands across your back as some form of devotion – worship; you, my seraph, the fallen.

I tried to write you poems, but my ink is filled with hymns.

Holy

The first time he calls me holy, I laugh so childishly my sides hurt. The second time, I moan gospels around his fingers around my mouth. God, he fucks like a seraph and there are no scriptures that ever prepared me for his hands; that mapped out the sides of my hips. Lips that kiss hymns upon my neck.

He confesses how long he has yearned for a place to worship. He says his prayers between my thighs.

In this story

In this story, your mother is not the villain.

In this story, she helps find a way to pick the lock, to wake up, to climb out of the tower yourself.

In this story, she lets you be angry.

In this story, you meet a dragon and it is afraid of you.

In this story, you don't need to be saved.

In this story, your mother raised you to recognize a prison from a home, she understood you.

In this story, they don't fall in love with you before they know you.

In this story, they aren't better than you.

In this story, you have talons.

In this story, happily ever after has bites and scratches.

In this story, you are free and terrifying.

In this story, you get away.

In this story, you bleed.

In this story, you survive.

In this story, you smile.

Narcissism

Don't be so vain to think that you ruined me,

That your voice wrecked me,

Your deep talks destroyed me.

I am the only one who has the power to do that.

I loved you, and I ruined myself,

I wrecked myself,

I destroyed myself.

You did not consume me. I got consumed.

And I will keep doing so for as long as I am breathing.

Self-love

Stop.

You do not love him.

You merely love the idea of him,

The concept of someone

Who will graze your cheeks gently

And kiss your tears back into your skin.

You crave and savor salvation,

I cannot blame you for that.

But you won't find it in his empty words,

Rehearsed, repeated and abused on his

Silver tongue.

No, no.

Your saving grace is somewhere

inside that scar tissue

you're so desperate to

tear away from your body.

Want

I have written so much about someone's eyes filling with want and need. That quiet afternoon, I saw your eyes. That was the moment I didn't want to write about it; I wanted to see it.

- I wanted to see it in your eyes.

Graphesthesia

Have you considered that maybe I am not pleasant?
maybe I wear that lipstick so that
you will see my pretty red mouth
wrapping around a milk box straw or ice cream stick
and be distracted enough not to notice
that I am more than intelligent and power hungry;
a little threat.

Maybe I do wear flowy skirts and put cheek tint on
so you will look at my unimpressed eyelashes
and overlook my spiteful glare
as a trick of my silly, girlish routine.

Maybe I wear my heels so high and thin
So that I grasp your attention with the sway of my hips
As I listen to them click against the floor
And know that if you should try to overpower me
I have and kept on walking on razors.

Maybe when I laugh at your silly jokes
I am really baring my hidden fangs
waiting patiently for the day
that I sink them into your pale neck.

I am not made of porcelain pleasantries;
you will find that these things are just my armor
to keep you at a distance
so you do not step on me and shatter
my perfect and flaccid control.

I am not a husk — I will never be one.
I am turning my head
So that the forest fire blazing through my eyes
Does not catch on the accelerant of your sweaty palms
And burn your bones to dust.

I am not just a pretty girl:
I am a fury, a siren, a phoenix —
An ocean of werewolves and wendigoes
That will carve out your strong chest
So that the next time I paint my pretty red lips
I will taste the copper tang of yours.

Herstory

I stole an apple sometime shortly after I was born.
Do you think of me whenever you eat crumble?
I think God probably does.
It's quite funny, to be honest. He had the perfect world
and He let me and a slithering snake and a perfect red apple
uproot it in one short day.

I opened a box they'd told me not to.
It's quite funny, to be honest, they should have finished what they started
To be fair to myself, they gave me to a man
I'd never met. I'd never really met myself.
My lungs and blood and hair were clay, once.
Sometimes I think that's all I ever was.
That box was the only sort of history I had.
Wouldn't you want to know your own story too?

I abandoned a daughter, a ruler and a kingdom
and ran away with a Trojan man.
It's been said and decided that I wanted to go.
It's quite funny to be honest, even I'm not sure if I did anymore.
They have forgotten my blood is two parts ichor
They sent a thousand ships and said they were for me.
Troy was the only woman they wanted.

The moral they intend is to take away is that
women are responsible for all the evils in the world.
Fuck them.
I'd suggest you make your own moral instead.

Mine is that a single woman can uproot
an entire world of men with the simple act
of eating an apple, opening a box, loving a prince.

It is no wonder they try everything to make us pliant and vulnerable.

Blue and White

You walk past him in the corridor and you've got to pretend you aren't affected. Because he isn't. You were just twelve and he was just thirteen, after all, both too young to know about love or even speak of it. Because he swore to you it was only a mistake. So you hold your head a little higher. And you make your walk a little faster. And you don't let your gaze fall on him for even a second. Because once you do, the tears fall.

He was crying too.

Recognition

His palms are warm because he fills them with etchings of dates and numbers, like you, like the way the world leaves grass stains on your laundry, like words on paper, like scars on people.

He says his dreams are bigger than yours, and you listen to him wanting a perfect family, a life in education, a girl he thought he loved in the ninth grade, you just dream of soft sheets and no more blood, his dreams are definitely bigger than yours but not bigger than you.

His words have always been a canvas of colors, dimensions of the flesh ripped apart from the seams, he sees those colors too, leaving ink stains on your kitchen floor you open your hands and he gets angry and irritated when you only catch red.

His heart is beating gold, contained by his fists and what he thinks is the truth so the next time he tells you he cares watches the corners of his mouth rise, in attempt
to fit compassion into his mouth.

Weary (a haiku)

You are so tired
Is the sun still shining, love?
please rest on my lap.

Silver Girl of the Lowercased World

Ask me if I still love him, the golden boy who left ashes in my weakening heart, I have burned for him, I have drowned for him and I have fallen for him, from the heaven themselves. Ask me if I love him, so when he is nothing more than an ash boy, look at the trail of light and love he has left in for me in his wake. Ask me if I love him, for when he is nothing more than dust and I am nothing more than the marrow of my bones, let the people know that finally, finally, he craves my touches too.

Crowns of Catharsis

I want you to tell me about every person you've ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, and then tell me why they loved you; because of your face, your smile and your laugh.

Tell me about the nights in your life you didn't think you'd live it through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I'll know your older brother never tells you but he loves you so.

See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. If you can ever forgive your father.

Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bask in the warmth of sunlight? And if you were to pick between a suit and long sleeves for formal occasions, you would wear both.

Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?

See, I want to know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your grandmother's joy when she spoke it for the very first time.

I want you to tell me all the ways you've been unkind. Tell me all the ways you've been cruel. Please tell me the times the vein on your neck pulsated because of loud voices and unruly behavior.

Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin?

Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea?

And if you don't believe in miracles, tell me —

How would you explain the miracle of you entering my life?

There's something holy about the way you spill your soul to me; how it dares to mingle with mine.

See, I want to know if you truly believe in any God or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. See I want to know if you separate yourself and religion. And for all the times that you've knelt before the altar of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true yet? And if they didn't, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by whom?

I want to know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you're feeling good. I want to know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you're feeling bad. I want to know the first person who taught you, your beauty could ever be reflected on a mirror; the first person to tell you it is not.

If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? To sing? To mourn?

Have you ever been a song?

Would you think less of me if I told you I've lived my entire life and perform on the stage a little off-key? And I'm not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me, those without the courage to unfeel or to unsee. Would you think less of me because I think so much of you?

See, I want to know more than what you do for education. I want to know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive some things back.

I want to know if you bleed sometimes from other people's wounds, and if you sometimes feel that the students you have encountered bleed and cry and drink more than you ever had had.

And lastly, let me ask you this:

If you were born a little later would you accept it?

If I was born a bit earlier would you accept it?

No, wait.

That's asking too much —

after all,

this is only the second floor of the building

after all,

this is our first time talking

.

Poetry

Is he poetry to you?

How he takes your broken remnants, healing you piece by piece. The way he holds your quarters and halves making you whole again. Or how he unwraps each layer of your soul witnessing parts of you that no one has seen. Reading the stories of your struggles that stay tucked away in the drawers of your silence that you have never quite opened anymore. The resilience that remains unspoken.

Traveling the map and stars of your body, reaching roads of ruination and homes of obliteration. Because he noticed the walls inside of you crumbling and your morals stumbling. But he stepped on those broken pieces and with each step he destroyed the damage and the heartache. He picked up the wreckage of your life and built a home.

Is he poetry to you?

The way he traces your feelings with his fingertips. Filling all your empty frames with such lovely art. How he wraps you with his words.

Is he poetry to you?

The man who stops time just to hear you. The man who kills himself just to keep you alive. The man who looks past your skin and bones so he can witness the inconceivable, the irrecoverable parts of you.

My love, have you ever thought that you might be poetry to him?

Bedtime

I'm exhausted. I just want to put my childhood to bed and let it sleep. My younger me is still awake inside me; She is so tired - Of all the neglect; All this abuse is draining. She just wants to sleep

Present me is tired of pretending everything is okay. When it's fucking not. It's not okay. I am not okay.

Mama, I'm tired of smiling at you. I'm tired of pretending you were there for me when you weren't.

Mama, I'm tired of making excuses for your controlling demeanor.

Mama, I'm tired of walking on eggshells when you're around.

Mama, I'm done acting I can't keep laughing at funny memories I don't have.

I'm ready for some sleep but the heart-crushing anxiety It is a heavy snorer. It's so damn loud in my head.

Papa, Your voice loves to echo and bounce offs the walls of my bedroom.

Papa, please let me rest.

Papa, let me go.

I'm so weary

Talking, swallowing, breathing and eating on a choked neck are difficult.

Papa, the cigarettes you smoke have stayed in my lungs, Papa the smell of alcohol, papa you were so drunk that time…and I can never sleep in the same room as you anymore.

I'm so exhausted

The panic

The fear

The anger -

It's exhausting.

This mask of a happy girl is heavy and I can't keep wearing it.

The child inside me, She is weeping from delirium. She is begging to be tucked in. She has spent so much pleading for anyone, anyone to take her away. And dammit do I want to let her but the way the past hangs off me like heavy chains and the way the past pushes and pulls at me.

It just won't let me let her go,

Not without giving her a real home not until she is pressed against warm blankets. Not until she is safe. Not until the monsters under bed will always be under, and never with her, sleeping.

-Some bedtime stories are not to be told.

To the girl who has the man I love in her arms, (To Justine)

Please try and stay with him, and his messy morning hair.

Please love him truthfully and wholeheartedly.

Take care of him.

Always give him kisses; I never got the chance to so you're the lucky one.

Give him lots of hugs, he loves the affection. He loves it from behind the most.

Laugh at his corny jokes even if they aren't funny, he's trying and he just wants to make you smile.

Make sure he's always okay, please.

He's not good when it comes to feelings especially expressing them.

Please please please stop using him; it kills me to know that you do.

That boy is so delicate so don't ever try and do anything you know you shouldn't.

You know, he's been through a lot…a lot that no one knows.

Please tell him you love him often, he loves that.

Get him Mcdo fries and burgers from time to time, those are his favorite.

Get him coffee sometimes, those make him sleepy. He doesn't like sugar or milk, just pure black coffee.

Complement him too; his reaction is always so cute and priceless.

Make sure he's always smiling. That boy is golden.

Listen to him playing the piano, love the way his fingers that touch the piano like the way he touches you.

Give him time alone to play video games, he loves playing. He loves playing Naruto, he loves Naruto period.

Let him have daily naps, he needs it and he loves it too.

Stop messaging him and let him spend time with his mom, he's a momma's boy. Video calls happen at 8 am in the morning.

Please take care of that sweet boy; he loves so hard and purely.

I don't want him hurt.

Love him that was my world in your arms okay?

Fraction

Every time I fall apart, take my quarters and halves and make me whole again.

Parts

You see, I'm just the bridge of a sad song while he is the chorus of an anthem.

Puzzle

At one point, you gave me a piece of your heart and I gave you one of mine, and we found that we fit better with each other's puzzle pieces than with our own. Now I cannot remember which ones were mine and which were yours.

Art

Making love is an art. It does not require clay or paint or eraser shavings. I gave you pieces of me I thought I surrendered long ago: the bend of my knee, my eyelashes, and the back of my neck.

You whisper sweet nothings, soft and low in my ear and my spine shakes and skin quivers. There is nothing but the heat between our bodies.

Your bedroom is an art gallery we display these bodies, our bodies, like acrylic on canvas. Sweat runs and drips and we call it abstract. The lights are on, like a spotlight, it is loud with the music of our voices that linger through the midnight moon shadows. At this moment, there is no such thing as flaws. We are surrounded by so much art.

And who needs sleep when you can make art? Sweaty, messy, in-the-moment art. I dig my fingers so far into the mattress, I can remember this moment just as well as the last. Your fingers in my hair, and your lips on my neck, your face glistens and I breathe deep. This will always be our way of showing each other's love. Because I am finally the one being art and not the artist.

Talent

I have a talent, born from the gods themselves, and it so loud it has made me deaf.

Road

The road to you was full of carnations, and when I say full of carnations, I mean those with thorns bursting out of their stems, thorns that would leave marks all over my body leaving a trail of blood right on the edges.

The road to you was full of rainbows, and when I say full of rainbows, I mean those that are higher than mountains, taking me days, and sometimes months just to reach the top with mud and sweat covering my entire body.

The road to you was a journey full of beauty, and when I speak of beauty I don't necessarily mean it was easy to obtain or get through, but as hard as it was, I'd do it all over again to get to you. And now that I am here, standing by your doorstep, covered in the vibrant red color of carnations and the beautiful reflection of the rainbow, I catch my breath and I forget what I'm about to say, so I say Hi, and think it's a good start.

13 Reasons

When asked how much you mean to me

I am suddenly at a loss for words

How am I supposed to phrase?

All the love

The caring

Sleepless nights talking until 5 am

Trying to figure out the definition of "us"

I don't think I can quite put that into words

But if I was asked

1. I love your eyebrows, kind of messy, like you, but still very well-shaped.

2. Your hands are strong, yet gentle, outlining the tiniest detail of a drawing, but still able to hold mine with the intention of never letting go.

3. I could drown in your eyes forever and never be bored. The darkness reminds me that there is still room for the light to shine through.

4. Your mind is endlessly fascinating. If I could, I would dissect every last thought so I could learn more about you

5. You have the most massive heart. Caring for others is something you do without a single question or hesitation.

6. I do not love your demons. Some of them I share with you and some of them I have no clue who they are, but I will never hesitate to fight them beside you.

7. I love your smile, in its crookedness and genuine purity. Seeing you happy will always be the best sight ever

8. Your stubbornness is something I will always be fighting but never in an angry way because I am too stubborn to let that happen.

9. Sometimes, I want to bottle up your laughter because it's dark and throaty and breathy and I don't think I will ever get enough of it.

10. I say you are beautiful, and you never do believe me and, I fear the moment you do, may be the moment you leave.

11. When you are excited it is the most adorable thing ever. You do this little bounce and you look so content, like nothing in the world can stop you.

12. I admire your will to live. I know some days it seems like you can't go on, and trust me I know the feeling but I won't let you because we have adventures to go on and I won't do them alone.

13. I love you for many things, but most of all, I love you for you. You have picked me up and carried me during times of darkness, you have never given up on me, you always see the best in everyone, you never judge or hate or give up too easily. Yes, you may have flaws, but loves, we all do and that's okay.

When I am asked

Just exactly how much you mean to me

I can never find the right words

But I will never stop trying.

He tastes like you, only sweeter

He's sending me flowers and I'm thinking of you choking my neck. He's helping me bake by stirring the batter and I miss you helping me have a panic attack because I broke a bottle. He's stroking my face and I'm remembering you bruising my wrists in public because you were holding on them too tight. He's kissed me so many times and I just miss you yelling at me. He safeguards my boundaries like they're made out of myrrh and I wish you'd come back and overstep all of them. You used to full-force, fool-proof, fracture all of my faith so I can't feel him when he follows the feathers of my laugh lines and I can't recognize what it's like to not be on edge all of the time so I miss teetering back and forth because wondering if I'd fall was so much more fantastic than knowing I won't.

Seventeen Things in Seventeen Years

1. Life will try and break you down until you're crawling on your hands and knees, until you feel like you are Atlas holding the weight of the world upon your shoulders, until you feel like the raging hellfire inside of your chest is going to combust. These are the moments that will forge you in a fire and make you more unbreakable than diamonds.

2. We are made of stars and we write that idea till the day we die. At night I stare at my hands and wonder when I will erupt. At night I imagine myself completing another's constellations when we already finished.

3. You will fall in love, and that is okay. Sometimes we need to fall in love to remember that there is good out there. Fall in love with the boy who sang songs with you, fall in love with your teacher who works too hard, fall in love with that golden boy.

4. Close your eyes, count to ten, and open them again. You are not alone. I know it may feel like you are the only one suffering, but believe me when I say that you aren't. I was where you are, and now I have talked to more people that have been through much worse than I would like to admit to. You are never alone, not really. You will always be found.

5. Music can save. Play it as loud as you can and belt songs that defy gravity or not needing his love. Play it while you are on the way to school and while you are in the shower and play it when you want to give up in the middle of the day and when you want to give up in the middle of the night. Just play the music that tugs at your heartstrings, it has saved us.

6. Nothing in life is easy, not really. You will catch a few breaks here and there, but the rest of the time you will find yourself fighting tooth and nail to make it back to the top. Don't give up, I almost did when we were 10 and if I had I wouldn't be able to witness what the sun looks like shining in his eyes.

7. You will have scars, on your wrists and on your thighs, and they never fade and that's completely fine. We have won battles that take both of our breaths away, cried more tears than we ever had had and that's completely fine. We are a little girl who grew up too fast and it is completely fine.

8. We watch the sunrise and watch the sunset. There is something about the sun that screams life; let the light bleed into you and consume you until you shine with it. Sometimes it's the simple things we are missing in life that we need the most.

9. They will say they love you and then they will turn around and break your heart. You cannot compare your life's worth to the empty spaces that were once filled around you. People will leave (willing or not) and life will go on. Let life go on.

10. If you are under the impression we are broken, then it is up to you to decide if you are or not. It took me years to admit that I was never quite whole, but when I did it was the most freeing feeling ever. Brokenness does not take away from perfection, and you are the very definition of perfect. Some people think you are the worst but I love you so much even through the rumors and the parts they thought they've seen.

11. It's okay to let people in, you don't need to cage yourself away from the rest of the world, don't forget to live your life while you pursue safeness.

12. Theatre will save you when all else fails you, when the world feels all too loud, this is something can make you go deaf. Theatre is home. Theatre is escape.

13. They are gone, she took her own life and she died in a car crash and he died from cancer and he left. You cannot live your life counting how many people that held a piece of your heart vanished, I'm not saying to forget about them I'm just saying that it's okay to say goodbye; there are people who didn't have a chance to say hello.

14. It's okay to cry; cry in the shower and in bed and in the train, being sad is okay as long as you don't let it consume you.

15. Smile, I love our smile when we were 3, toothy and starting to grow; I love it when we were 8 and we lost our first baby teeth. I love our smile when we were 10 and we begged ourselves to live, and I love our smile when we see the paper and the stage. I love our smile when we see him.

16. For God's sake, don't let them ruin you. You are so strong, you've made it this far and that means you can make it another day. If you can get through today you can get through tomorrow and every day that follows. If you feel like you can't get through the day then sit down and don't move until the light is peaking in through your window.

17. Never say never. If you think you can't do something try anyway, this is your life, you are the main character of your own story, but you are also the author of your story. Write it however you want, but don't give up halfway through.

A six word story

Let me be your home again.

Thorns

I wish I can cut away the thorns of my carnations before handing it to you

For I plucked them for you but my hands are bleeding too.

Response

I know World War I and II by heart but I short-circuit when asked

"How are you?"

I don't know. I don't know. That wasn't in my reviewers.

I usually know the answer, but I rarely know myself.

Suffering

"You are not made for suffering,"

"You are not made for it as well,"

Vow

Fragments of time that we have lost long ago,
they will all link us back no matter what our love foregoes

Found

And if there is an end to eternity, I still hope to find you there.

Guide

You always told me stars would guide me back home, but they only show up at night.

Wounds

Old wounds still cut deep even when they look like they've healed. The worst pain is when you're screaming out for everyone to see you bleeding out, only for them to tell you that they can only see the old scars. The phantom wounds will kill you, because no one else believes that they are still there.

Brown Eyed Seraph

In the end, she's just a little girl writing a bad story, where everything is lowercase and unfulfilled. Empty lust for empty hearts.

Ink splatters onto her hands like blood.

Golden Aphrodite (for Reign Arroyo)

Golden Aphrodite, with sun-kissed skin and brown hairs, golden Aphrodite that is ethereal in the sun, golden Aphrodite that has love and lost; who mourns and regains. Golden Aphrodite who knows her worth and kneels before God for guidance.

Pandora

Pandora never meant to open such a box, Pandora only ever had childlike eyes and a face that brings out the gifts of the gods and goddesses. Pandora is sincere and warm and is young. Pandora never meant to break hearts or drink alcohol. Pandora is always eternal.

We

We are not a love story, two children bathed in gold, in silver on top of pedestals, at least not yet.

Winter

Everyone tells me that seasons come and go, but why is winter always wrapping the inside my bones? It always feels like the blood inside my veins is frozen, and maybe that's why I always feel like I'm half dead because it won't make me function properly.

Unaccustomed

He still isn't used to her hair though, brown and gold in some lights, black in others; her eyes, sparkling with a kaleidoscope of stars; her voice, words so soft that he can only imagine what his name must sound like.

Book Ends

I can't forget the first poem I wrote about you and I have yet to write my last.

Perspective

If you could one day hear every song that I've heard
Breathe everything I breathed, feel everything I felt
If you could be my eyes and see the world as I did
Then maybe you could've loved me
The way you always wanted to.

Trace

Some days I imagine you lying right next to me, not touching my body, but touching my soul but... you never needed to be close to me to do that, you have always touched my soul even by being just on the stage, or just across me, and I think I'll always carry the weight of your fingerprints on me, even when you have never touched me.

Planets

MERCURY. Don't worry if it feels like you could go up in flames. To move a few inches from the light is always a risk, but look at that star, burning gold, reaching out through chaos and silence wanting and yearning to touch you; and your fierce spirit and your deepest urges of passion.

VENUS. You don't have to sing along with everyone else's orbital path. Sing your own song. You are a guiding glow in the dawn. Dance with brightness and love will come running, swifter than tides to shore and twice as full, a thousand times more tender; a thousand times hotter.

EARTH. Yes, love resides here. Say it again. Love, the blackbird with a beak full of honeycomb. Love, the painting of the cathedrals he built. Love, how his words paint such sweetness in you that you soar and take flight. All of this, here, alive and sun-kissed. Yes, life resides here.

MARS. It's okay to blush bright red. You've seen his shadows and he's seen your dust storms. Laugh with him, make love, and yell. The battle was victorious like there was never any battle in the first place. Speak unarmored. Speak unprotected.

JUPITER. What is love if not unmistakable, so large only a sky could contain it. He takes your hands in his and the gravity of it makes every moon ache with want. You are aching, you are aching and you are aching. But he can't see others are aching for him as well. (He aches for you only)

SATURN. Hold him close, closer than soil holds wheat, closer than how the waves cradle the loose sand, closer than wedding bands hold their shine, closer than clouds hold clouds. Closer and closer and closer, until there are no more rings.

URANUS. When you lie on your side next to him at night, does the frost just outside your windows melt away? Does the cold you have endured for years melt? Does night glisten with how perfectly slow it moves? Is his smile its own small heaven?

NEPTUNE. Love has been here since the beginning, even when no one else saw it. And love will be here with its swirling blue mouth long after we ourselves become unseen. What you make with each other is a freshwater spring blooming in a forest, crisp and glittering in the light. Abundant enough for the drought in your lungs, to fill the well of your heart. Go on. Drink

PLUTO. When you think you are forgotten, when you think you are just the pieces of dust, and the little nuances of graphite, history has made it known that he has tried his best in finding you. You are terribly small in his arms, but to be honest, he did not find you. You found him.

Counting

Twenty-four hours is too many without you.

Twenty-three messages with your apologies.

Twenty-two damning excuses but I'll still forgive you.

At Twenty-one years old…and I still feel like a child around you.

Twenty broken promises but I will still believe you when you whisper sweet nothings in my ear.

Nineteen reasons to run away from this absurd relationship.

Eighteen quotes about toxic people and self-respect that I willingly ignore.

Seventeen kisses after I let you back in.

Sixteen candles you lit to make me giggle and put on lipstick.

Fifteen glances at your smiling face to make me believe my own lies.

Fourteen songs that we danced to that night.

Thirteen I love you's we exchanged before we slept.

Twelve alarm rings that woke us up the next morning.

Eleven seconds it took me to guess who it was.

Ten thousand times I've heard why she needs you again. (I need you too...)

Nine deep breaths to not lose my patient soul.

Eight minutes before you rush out, leaving me in the sheets and my hair ribbons to the floor.

Seven things I break and, push and tug on before I leave your place.

Six of them were my gifts to you; your dress shirt, the glass bottle where I put our initials, the book about medicine, the cologne you wear, the stopwatch I bought in Hongkong, my heart, yes I broke my heart again.

Five times I look around before I leave and feel emptier than your empty dormitory…

Four months later I see you at a cafe.

Three times I look away before I decided to walk up to you.

Two words you whisper as my consolation prize.

One long hug before I walk out and that's our happily ever after - a life without each other.

Graveyard

There's a graveyard inside my mouth because I bury words before they even have a chance to leave my lips, and I promise I've tried to dig them out, but skeletons don't make sounds.

Beliefs

Kyle is not a religious man; he rarely goes to church on Sundays or even on holidays. He did not believe in fate, or destiny or even karma, not even in samsara. He did not bow his proud head to any establishment or beg forgiveness for the sins he had committed.

What he believed in was so much more powerful than that.

He believed in love. Absolute, complete and total love. That much was truly certain. He believed in it so much that each day he would wake up and look at the picture of Myra sitting near his bed, and her face etched into his sketchbooks, and he would smile. He believed that once you loved and that a love as strong as his, could overpower anything.

Even in death.

Let Me Write

Let me write about all the things I couldn't fix. Time and time I can't find good bricks.

My habit of biting my fingernails
The one toy that I had broken apart that had a sail
My relationship with my parents
The burned letter that I have never sent.

The way alcohol burns in my mouth
how it brings out such wretched drought
The way that silver pour blood to the south
How I thought life never had a chance to shout.

The way we met and there were yells and teasing
the way we hold our hands and tried so hard to hold on
The way we ended, there were shouts and crying
the way, I still say your name, like a battle, never won.

Let me write about all the things I couldn't fix anymore starting with us.

Although wait, there is nothing more to discuss.

Like to Like

How many times have I seen that same sky?

I'm haunted by the repeating dream of an ambiguous you and I.

Photosynthesis

Is that all I am, then? A flower trying too hard to reach out for the sun's rays. I know Carnations better than myself; I know Bellflowers closer than my heart dares to. I love flowers ever since I was a child. So describe me as flowers.

Describe me with velutinous leaves that shake and tremble, maybe I have none at all, maybe I am those little blossoms that have ruined the chances and affairs of Apollo and Aphrodite.

Tell me my pollens has scattered throughout your heart and seeded themselves into your future. Even if this makes you feel like we're romance in cold winter, because flowers are not meant to last forever.

I am a flower – a striped carnation –yet I have loved you. - And I thought no flower has ever loved anything else – yet I remember sunflowers always reach too close to the sun,

Learn

Learn how to walk away. Do it with tears streaming down your face and your heart in your throat. Do it silently, or do it and gasps and screams to the earth; learn how to walk away with your head held high and your feet on the ground. It will take time. It will break your heart. It will hurt and yet we still have to learn it. Because one day we meet someone and know that we can find home within each other. And we will learn how to stay - for them and for us.

Damage

He has always loved her in the way a broken man loves broken things; not knowing how to fix them except in his image; he loves her but that love is fucking terrifying and twisted...but that is the only way he ever knew to love, that's the only love he knows how to give.

Hurricane

I am a hurricane of a girl, not drops of rain, and I will never apologize if I do not fit on the palm of your hand; I am savagely relentless and power-hungry. If you cannot handle me, leave. I have no time for you.

Stranger

On some days I feel like I know everything about you, but really I don't. On some days I feel like I'm returning home but really I am not.

For Sale

This night made me realize how much I have come to hate myself. And I would return

My intelligence, no matter how much I know and the knowledge and wisdom have been translated into medals, awards and contests, I would give it away; I'm sure someone else can use what I know and have manners laced with it.

My hands, these cold hands that can write, can only do so much. My words can only be appreciated if they are for the world. I would give it away; I'm sure someone else can write with these cold hands.

And my voice, that has lilted over the stage with fire and fire and fire. The way the spotlight aims at my neck like a sniper's range. I would give it away, my voice is too scathing and unprepared slides, I'm sure someone else can use it with rain and not thunder.

To make me unhate myself.

I hate myself so much and it hurts.

Omission

I feel like I could live and cried into your arms tonight.
I like you.
I c night.
I feel like I could live tonight.
I li ve in you.
I fe l l and cried.
I li ed to night.
I feel co ld tonight.
I could d ie in your arms
I feel l o ve in you tonight.
your s.
I feel like your s tonight,

Mosaic

I did everything I said I was going to do. I left. I moved on. I tried. I picked up all the pieces of my life and mosaicked them back together. I took all the ugly greys, the harshest blacks and the lovely pinks and the brilliant silvers. I took every memory and moment that broke me or built me and saved me; stacked them into a picture that people will look at awe, into a puzzle that no one will ever dare to ruin; because they cannot arrange or fix it as well as I did.

After all the blood, sweat, and tears; I don't know. I just thought the stained glass would be clearer.

Mourning

Forgive me, for I am in mourning.

I am mourning everything we could have been.

I'm mourning all the futures we planned together:

I'm mourning the little house across the beach, and a little adopted boy.

I am mourning the 2 A.M messages and the midnight phone calls.

I'm mourning the way the world lights up along with my phone screen when you message me.

I'm mourning the way your hair looks after the shower.

I'm mourning the way you say my name and how your lips look when you smile at me.

I'm mourning the way you bite your straw.

I'm mourning the way it feels to hold your hand and have you rest your head on my shoulder.

Yes, I am mourning, the tears down my face are unstoppable and my chest, it burns and it burns and it burns.

I'm mourning the way you always say my eyes look pretty in the night light.

I'm mourning the chance that we never got.

I'm mourning the fact I see you in every face despite even in my dreams, you're still miles away.

I'm mourning the way your hair feels in my fingers and how you close your eyes.

And I'm mourning the fact I haven't felt this way in years and for the first time I had hope.

I'm mourning the happiness I have lost.

I'm mourning the grief I've given you.

I'm mourning every ounce of pain I have brought on you.

I'm mourning the fact I cannot take it all on myself.

I'm mourning that I cannot fight the demons inside your head.

I'm mourning that I cannot stitch myself onto your heart.

I'm mourning all the chances I could have taken but was too scared.

I'm mourning, and my hand clutches my chest, and my fingernails dug too deep and all the wrong decisions I have made.

I'm mourning the thousands of words I have written for you.

I'm mourning the days I've spent crying over you.

I'm mourning the hours I couldn't sleep over you.

I'm mourning the songs I've sung for you.

And I'm mourning you.

I'm morning how you roll your eyes after my jokes but love them nonetheless.

I'm mourning all of the moments I just wanted to tell you you're the most beautiful thing in the entire universe but I was too scared to.

I'm mourning the way you look at me.

I'm mourning all the letters I have written to you but cannot bring myself to send.

I'm mourning the way you smile after we kiss.

I'm mourning that you took me the way I am.

I'm mourning the way we made love.

I'm mourning your "how would you like to wake up to this every day next year?"

I'm mourning how despite all your darkness you were always like sunshine to me.

Forgive me, but I am in mourning for all the futures I dreamt up and all the words I over-thought.

Forgive me; for I am mourning the most beautiful dream, I had in this hellish nightmare.

Stars

In the beginning, God invented helium and hydrogen then came oceans, fur and limestones, blood and teeth. In between all of this burning, burning, burning, all of this death, celebrations and war –We tilt our heads back to look at the sky, and there is history, reflections of the past, already dead. Reflections of great kings and damned tyrants.

When God drafted our atoms from river clay and sculpted us, He knew we would all end up like those stars someday; we were created from the same things after all, (the same iron, the same oxygen, the same fate, the same death,)

Mind Reader

If you could read my mind, you'd see a thousand papers scattered around, filled with broken poetries and senseless proses, full of woeful verses with mournful pieces of unfinished stories; those are yet to be written and failed to be spoken.

If you could read my mind, you'd hear tortured screams and unmuffled and angry weeps, from shattered dreams; kept in a myriad of notebooks, scribbled on a razor of bloodstained words, slicing and slicing, and slicing - in my head.

If you could read my mind, you'd see the shadows that have stayed within me; you'd hear the bellows, screeching the words:

"I'm tired,"

"I'm a failure,"

"I'm stupid –"

I know it sounds absurd, it's pathetically foolish and seems too rubbish; more and more people call me, golden.

If you could read my mind, you'd feel the tears I had always failed to cry; the repression of the burdens placed upon me. You'd see the people that make the weak weaker; you'd see the monsters that consume my head; you'd hear the howls that failed to be freed; you'd see the heart that still bleeds and bleeds. Sometimes I think it won't ever stop.

If you could read my mind, you'd see the face I've failed to show back then, the face I've faked back then. If you could read my mind, you'd see a character I had ever failed to become.

If you could read my mind, you'd be able to read a book you never wished to touch and read,

But sometimes I still wish

Someone could read my mind

Apple

If I were to compare myself to something; I would be an apple. Sweet and brittle; a poisonous thing.

Rain

I want to write

nothing but the rain.

I want to write

everything but the rain.

Memories

As I stood alone in the rain
I smiled, I never minded the pain
I still remember that wretched day
when you started to walk the other way

It was sad, you didn't say goodbye
they said you didn't want to see me cry
But I know it wasn't the reason why
It was nothing but a bitter lie

I remember that day, November 11
I smiled for real that time
I felt the touch of heaven
I felt like it wasn't a crime

Some day after that simple kiss
I was stuck in such bliss
for I was special again
you dried up the pouring rain

Then… you stopped seeing me
In your heart, I was never there
I drifted far out to the sea
The loneliness too much to bear

I tried everything to get you back
I didn't know what to do
Slowly but surely I started to crack
I was so lost without you

As I stood alone in the rain
I cried, I always hate the pain
You forgot that wretched day
Acting like you didn't go away

Conversations with the Sky

I. This never ending rain

Hides my broken tears

It freezes all my pain

Exposes all my fears

VI. Now the rain doesn't feel so cold again

Let it cleanse the memory you have stained

I can feel it wash away all the guilty all the shame

Things will never ever be the same

Companion

We always tend to see our Shepherd, our messiah, our home and our lover as someone strong, handsome and he guides your hips to fit his, he kisses the back of your hand gently, and the way he ushers you back to his heart, with sweet, sweet apologies, and the way he combs through your hair and tell you, "Come back, come back home, come back to me,"

We always tend to forget that, he is restless and the bags under his eyes have darkened over time, that his lips tremble when you graze them and how loud his chest is when he breathes harshly.

You see sometimes, your Shepherd is just like you. Broken, tired but still, still undeniably happy that he finds you.

Song

You were once my favorite song, that I know every lyric to, I used to sing every day, in hallowed corridors, in my room, the crook of your glasses, your boyish smile and your warm hands, a song that my heart knows inside out, but I do not sing anymore because someone else is.

A Lesson in Breathing

All that hatred didn't look good on you before, what makes you think it'll look better now? Breathe, let go and forgive. Understanding will always be your jewelry.

Depression

It did stay; it has known the darkest cesspool of your mind. The first time you cut and the blood dripped on your skirt. It stayed on the nights you would cry yourself to sleep and wake up even more tired in the morning.

You used to stand still in the coldest of showers to remind yourself that you are still alive, barely fighting but alive. You would stay there long enough for someone to notice.

You used to pray to God. Pray that you'd die already. So it won't hurt anymore, so you won't cry anymore.

Actuality

I will always try to be in the quiet corners of everyone else's life; the girl who talks too much, a writer who felt too much, a student who knows too much, I tried to be so quiet, but your heart…it heard me anyway.

- but your heart doesn't want to hear me anymore.

Hypocrite

You wield your sword as if it were a beacon of justice and hide your cruelty under a robe of might,

Fuel

I've spent months trying to find love that will never come close to yours. Not one soul can probably compare. I've never had anyone write about me before until tonight. You compared me to a raging forest fire and that of a shooting star in the same stanza. You call me a calming breeze in the summer but truthfully, I am a rock band; shaking in this body, fearful of another dead-end lover. You made those words come to life for a girl who needed a little fuel to ignite the fire.

Kindness

I have spent years knowing how men aren't supposed to be nice. But you came, with a soft celestial air that came in waves of trust, and warmth and the depth in your eyes; you held your tongue to the rumors and the way people whisper my name that slid with yours, you held back your fists and shrug it off with laughter and laughter and laughter.

The day you lost a bit of yourself, the day you shouted curses and the way the silence was too thick and your voice too cold, the way I couldn't breathe.

It is also the day you apologize and told me it will never happen again. Let the water flow under the closed bridge.

You showed me that some men are nothing but kind.

Revolution

You are my revolution.

Macrocosm

He wanted the world to burn, and he succeeds with a trail of cigarette burns and his wits and he wonders why it does not ignite her. Soon enough she will, she will, she will. She does not.

She already has lit paths ablaze already, hands thickened with work and a smile to turn men's' head around with the confidence she has.

They meet and collide as a lighted candle, illuminating pathways of darkness and as a raging torrent of fire ready to devour.

Endless Wedge

And what you have given to me were times spent like a dream, and what you have given to me was the brightest smile that gleam and what you have given to me is a past I'll always love,

But what you could not give to me is a future with both of us

But what I have given to you was a life held by lace, but what I have given to you were the tears that fell down my face, but what I have given to you was just my foolishness

And what I could not give to you was a moment for you and me.

Angry

I had been angry for years. I had it all planned out, what I would say to him when I finally have the chance to ran into him…It would have been better if he has remembered me.

Mercy

You are too pure for me or for anyone my body, my heart and my mind, hurt you as the world hurts God.

Lifetime

"You may not be my first, but you can be my last,"

"I will, if you'll be mine,"

Urgent Whispers

"What did you say to me all those years, when you'd make love to me and I was almost near...?"

"You're almost home."

Wish

I would want to create a world where no one can destroy by understanding it.

Gone

Our time came and went by so fast
I now look back and make it last

Gratitude

I thank the heavens that I do not look like what I've been through.

I do not look like the scars that just do not fade away from my skin. I do not look like the tears I cried every single night, looking at the altar. I do not look like the burned pages of an upside-down notebook. I do not look like the distorted song I used to sing years ago.

I thank the heavens that I do not look like what I've been through.

I thank the heavens, I thank, I thank and I thank.

Firsts on a Staircase

My parents told me my first steps were at the bottom steps of our staircase, two little wobbly legs daring to go further down, two little wobbly arms clinging to the ledges of a staircase.

I remember the first scars on my whole body, knees stubbed with blotches of red, soaking through my pajamas; I remember the tears and the pain, and the coldness of the wood.

I remember the place where my best friend, my forever constant, that's where the magic started, we would eat snacks, or we would say the secrets, fears, love, hope and passions.

I received my first kiss, on the staircase of the school; between the third and fourth floor. From a boy, who came and left too fast, and his eyes encased with the glasses I still have today. I gave him my heart that day too, and I hope to get it back someday.

Alcohol

I hate it. I always hate the scent of alcohol. I remember when I was young my mother would never talk to my father after he's gone drinking. To this day, whenever he does she would sleep next to me. I hate it. Even though I drink, I drown myself in water the day after.

I learned to stay away from my father when he gets to drink too much, because he might hit me or get too close. I sleep in my brothers' room trembling. I wake up leaving a glass of juice and biogesic on the safe table my father sleeps near to.

The first time you drank alcohol, you messed up my bridesmaid dress and I had to clean you up at the bay, your forehead hot and your words slurred. Your palms trembling and you wanted to jokingly die.

I hate it when you drink. Because I know what happens. How many girls would look at you at the bar. How they are amazed and enticed by your ever-growing tolerance. How they want to bring you in their own dorms. I hate it. I hate the scent of alcohol.

When the day is over, and you come back to my arms, a sloppy kiss to a forehead and heavy sigh, I get up. Sleep on the couch and return to your side with orange juice.

Audacity

Strength is not measured on the audacity to hate but is measured by your audacity is to smile.

False Premonition

I thought the way he smiled for me, the smile that was genuine, the smile where you can see the spark in his eyes, his eyes aren't just tired was love

Dream

Love is a dream someone else had last night.

- No I don't want to hear about your dream.

Evident

And you know this, always knew this. That if you love him, he too will suffer.

- Blood is what binds you both first and foremost, but you wonder if it will ever be enough

Definition

You will always be my definition of love, on how I will always value someone else's achievements before my own. On how I value every time we spend every summer and every touch and every caress. On how much I value you as a person and not everyone's golden boy.

Conviction

I was never meant for the stage or poetry or even medals but I'm sure, I was so sure that I was meant for you.

Counterpoint

You asked for intimacy; in how the moon filled with night as it flowed through your heart. You asked for secrets, the points in my life where I retched myself, or how much hate I hold for my mother, and how stupid I am to have faith in your security.

When you begged for my blood, I didn't hesitate, I took out a knife, but you took out a gun. You asked for my life and then dared to call it love.

Lessons on being loved by a Prophet

They try so hard to walk away from you; you are their desert; their devil. You are the only thing that ever came close in tempting them from their divinity. The only thing that ever made him questions his journey for salvation.

You never even got that close, not by a hair's breadth, not even touching his hand, not even kissing them.

You are loved by a prophet, and nothing is crueler than that; his eyes watch the way you move and reality shivers.

Occultation

Did you hear the story about the sun who loved the moon so much, that he died every night just to let her breathe?

Yes, I did, about how the sun with his impassioned mind dared to keep her soft tears abound, how the sun in his blazing glory basked in her quiet eyes. But you don't hear about the moon, how it is ready, to let him show off his light to everyone else, that he cannot love her alone, that his light is needed by everyone else. She breathes and then she waits.

Beguilement

You once told me, the most sinful thing you can ever do is to forget. You raped someone because you forgot their rights to their body. You stole something because you forgot that it was not yours. You got angry and hurt someone because you forgot how to be patient and hold your tongue.

You are the kindest man I ever met and you wear forgiveness like a crown.

Would you ever forgive me if I soon forget the way the sun shines in your eyes? If I forget the many afternoons we spent talking about the things that scare us? If I forget the way we would walk in early mornings; towards another day? If I forget the way you made feel me so happy and loved? Will God ever forgive me for forgetting you?

I like to think I cannot forgive easily, I can't even forgive myself.

Do you ever wonder if I can forgive the way you forgot to reply to a letter I wrote for you? If I can forgive the way you forgot Wednesdays matter so much to me? If I can forgive you for the way you forgot to lay down our boundaries? If I can forgive the way you forgot that you would stay despite everything? If I can ever forgive you for forgetting to say goodbye?

You told me once, the most sinful thing you can ever do is to forget.

Will God ever forgive you for forgetting me?

Aftermath

Everyone has warned me about your reverent voice and kind eyes, but this was exactly what drew me in. Your passion. The fire that sparked underneath your pale skin when you talked about the things you loved; the things you worshipped. Your desire to explore, to find yourself in streets and temples, to be free, in a way. To escape. It was contagious and intoxicating.

I got high on your view of the world and drunk on your stories.

But I'd known what you were all along. You were a liar, just like me. It takes one to know one. But what has knowing a punch was about to be thrown ever done to soften the blow? It doesn't make goodbye any easier to bear. I saw it coming from miles away and it still, still, still, hurt.

It's funny, isn't it? How we're told some things aren't good for us and we still give them a go because sometimes our hope and our wish to prove everyone wrong outweigh caution. And sometimes going the wrong way is the right thing to do, because we learn to open our eyes to what we could not see before.

Secret

You never were his dirty little secret; you are the reason why he is ashamed of himself.

Reunion

I have never felt so at peace unless I am standing next to him, despite the humid, the afternoon sun and the buzzing chatters of people. His presence makes me feel like it's warning me that I am corrupting something so divine. Every heated glance I steal from him, his educated eyes still tell me that he is a journey I will likely happen to stumble and scrape my knees on. My soul has tried so hard not to mix with his. This broken and yearning soul is waiting for this reverent man, to be at peace with his cheeky smile and kind eyes.

Tainted

Some nights, I realize the gravity of our actions. I become more aware, even if only temporary; of how detrimentally you affected my mind and my young existence. Sometimes it seems like you shouldn't have been a big deal -like what you did, what you exposed me to, should not matter- but some nights, when I am alone and capable of being honest with myself, I know the truth.

Maybe if I had spoken up, you wouldn't still have a hold on me. Perhaps it is not even the visual memories- perhaps it is the memory of the heaviness that had set in my stomach, the confusion that had swarmed in my mind, the still, uncertain fear and love that had manifested my heart. Maybe what still holds me back is the fact that now -only now- do I know what you did to me.

Tell me, when I one day come to trust someone enough to hold me, to explore my body, to look me in the eyes and move their body close to mine, will you enter my mind? Will that dark, confusing night of stripped will taint my mind forever? Will it taint experiences of loving, pure intention? Will it taint my future, just as it has tainted my past and my present? Will my body ever forgive me for letting you touch it, my mind ever forgive me for letting you invade it? You do not even know that you still have this suffocating, blinding hold over me, and yet somehow I still allow myself to ask, will you ever let me go?

Echoes

My voice is not music to my ears.
This record player is broken,
trapped in a loop,
repeating the same sounds
over and over and over and over and—

Everyone tells me, my voice is crisp and well enunciated

I don't.
it falls
it crashes
it burns.

I can feel it coming which is worse.
I know, as I raise my hand in religion class
that my mouth is always going to betray me
and this record player is going to skip
and I'm going to fall and crash and burn over

For ten seconds of agony,
knowing everyone is looking at me
because they expect the poise and the simple glide my
mouth masters

Of course, there is no logic to this music

Because in biohchem class I can say "phenylthiocarbamide"

But in the next sentence I can't say "epitome"

And no, slowing down and taking a deep breath

And thinking about what I want to say

Does not help.

I am known to be raw and firm and eloquent

I think it just sounds condescending as hell.

The only reason I'm not stuttering in this spotlight everyone has on me is because I have a paper in front of me. a poem written word for word, letter for letter, and yet I still forget the words my heart remembers,

I know I am smart and I am clever

But sometimes I think people pay more attention

to the fact that I am not stuttering

Instead of what I'm trying to say.

All I ask of you is to listen to my record scratch voice. Listen to the music that isn't perfect and the notes are off-key but the message is there.

Don't try to sing over me.

Just listen

And wait for me

To use my voice.

Let me be, let me go

I'm willing to ask you about your deepest fears and greatest love, but I tell myself I wasn't going to have feelings this time; (please no not this time, god please, please)

So I'm trying not to understand. I'm trying not to ask questions. I'm trying to run from the conversation.

I don't think it's working.

Stop holding my heart in your hands.

Mountains

There are some mountains that we have carried, that we were only supposed to climb.

Fabrication

Tell him that you want to write him poetry, he'll laugh good-naturally, but god he'll look endeared.

My dear, he won't lie, won't say he didn't love you,

Didn't love this,

Didn't love hearing his name in between the lines of every prose you have read aloud to a room full of people that will never know him,

Only this version of him that you have created,

Only this metaphor he has become, this simile he has been, this story on the edge of your tongue, unraveling from your mouth in tangled balls of afternoons and oh-so-funny memories.

Hey, remember the time-

Remember how-

Remember when-

Remember the day he left?

Because you will never forget.

He did not warn you he was leaving.

You came home to an empty cubicle

And when the echoes came back,

Holding hands with the silence he left behind,

It was your fault for pretending this home was anything but occupied.

You love writing him poetry; you just weren't his favorite poet.

- When he asks what inspires you.

Conquer

"The galaxy, a thousand suns; All there ever will be," he said. When I asked him what he thought was his to conquer, "I want what all men want, I just want it more."

I laugh into my handkerchief "What if all men want me?"

"Exactly,"

Bourgeoisie Boy

Before you realize you
cannot conquer the sun
I think, my love,
you will set and douse yourself into flames

revolution sits well on you
a red coat, which bleeds martyrdom
the flag you hold in your left hand
the gun in your right
the golden glint in your eyes

But…I am begging you; please think old age sits well on you too…

Parable

I didn't read this far into our story only to slam the cover close and stop loving you. You could try tearing out a number of pages, but I would still recite Crowns of Catharsis in poetry night sometime when I'm older. If you tossed our story into a river, I would create bubbles that would carry the tune of our song to be heard. If our book were to be burned by the flames of passion then the smoke would dance in the light. I know not if we'll be together till the end of our days, or fizzle out like stars in the night.

Motherland

A government without its people has no power, but the people without its government will be lost as well

Safe Word

"Hiyas give me a color,"

red

The way he hovers above you and you feel the harsh bites on your shoulder and the way he roughly binds your hands to the bedpost, you see the savage lust in his eyes and you shiver a bit in the black velvet sheets. His calloused fingers playing you the way you like it, fast and hard. His other hand wraps around your neck and the blood rushes out.

yellow

He teases you slowly, the way he slides in and out of you at his own pace and not yours, the way you feel his breath on your skin, and how he whispers such dirty words, that you feel another build up in the threshold of your heart.

green

After both of you had spent this night well, he kisses your forehead softly, gingerly caress your red wrists and lays you to rest, as he maps out the hickeys he left on your bodies, a constellation of the love between you two.

Result

In the end,

If all else fails and I can't give

you what you need,

I hope I'll still be remembered,

not as the one who stole the Galaxy from under your feet,

but the one who helped you

stick glow-in-the-dark star stickers

all over your bedroom ceiling."

Lost

If I were, to be honest, I never wanted to be lost.

I am at loss on what to pursue; I can help people with being a lawyer or a psychologist, I have the mind and the will to help and be selfless, but I want to write first and foremost, and I want to be on the stage, I have the passion, the charisma, I want to help myself and be selfish.

I have always been a road between fixing the painting and the puzzle pieces my mother has left for me or go and create my own.

If I were, to be honest, I am always lost.

I am at lost at trying to be this student who speaks on the stages with the confidence of the blaring spotlight, to be the smart brainchild of numerous teachers who told me I was lucky to be their student, to stay focused and be on time, always, always, always the perfect child.

I look to the only place I have been found; the place where I can I can decipher codes and also crack jokes at my faulty writing, the place where I can have a perfect score on an exam and also the child who struggles with not breathing right.

I just want to be lost in his eyes.

Kathmandu

You tell me I am too much (always a lot to handle) and I laugh like breaking waves, like shattering glass, like crumbling cities. I am only too much for you because you cannot stand freedom: when I ride with car windows down, when I laugh too loud in the middle of a quiet room. When I am overdressed and I don't care how people look at me. You are an iron bar and I am the ivy around it: bending, growing, and overtaking you. You want to make me stone but I am too light to keep a hold of and trying to strangle conformity into me is killing you. You just can't stand the wind in your hair.

Death as a person

Death as a person is the professor you fantasize about so much that he becomes a totally different person in your head. You write nostalgic poems about his appealing and alluring beauty and how his smile lights up your world but in reality, he is nothing but a facade that secretly creates darkness in the world. Most days you look up to the sky and you remember him as your bright star but the sad reality is that he is a black hole that has heartlessly sucked the life out of you.

He is so perfect and angelic in your mind that you romanticize his cruelty and his anger. In the end, you cry yourself to sleep because this time he really tore you apart along with the perfect image of him that you carefully cradle in your delusional head. You end up wishing that he remained a flawless picture in your head but the reality is he takes, destroys and smiles just like the Devil himself.

Repetition

I would do it again, and again and again. Ask me – what is my name.

Kath, Kath, Kath.

I would do it again and again and again. Ask you – if whatever we're doing is okay.

It is, it is, it is.

I would do it again and again and again. Ask ourselves – what day it is.

Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday.

For all that it's worth, I'd never, I'd never; I'd never give away the privilege of having met you.

But He Did

He was so strong; you could always feel it emanating from him. Parts of it, made you giddy, to feel that strength and power above you. The other part of you was fearful because he could do anything he wanted from you. Fuck you, hurt you, and leave you

He won't, you know he won't.

Sunlight

Maybe I was holding onto you

Because you felt like sunshine

And all my life I had simply been in darkness

Waiting for the sun to pour through.

Notice of Eviction

Child, I could understand why you have fallen in love with him. You have fallen in love with his hearty laugh, turned his aged eyes into astronomy. Recall how much you crave his devout touch and voice; the way his roughened hands brush your hands.

But child, I have been in here longer, I am the one who gets to put my hands into his hair and massage his scalp; I am the one, who folds his clothes, cooks for him, mixes his coffee on cold mornings. The one whom he whispers sweet nothings to; how the back of his hand brushes my cheek gingerly.

My child, tear out your poetry; wipe the tears in your eyes and fix your hair. He is my home; first and foremost. I want you to leave my home.

Keys

I want to come back to him again, see the way he likes to feel the smooth surface of the staircase, to see the way the afternoon sun in his eyes, to talk to him, even for just an hour; and we'll laugh about everything and anything.

I want to stop crying in my home.

After that, I'll show him the lasts of my poetry that have his name hidden in the letters; try and finally hold his hand, and hug him, the way I try to hold the world.

I'll see to it that, his arms still have warmth; for they have comforted me in times when I thought that breathing (the easiest thing for a human being) was hard.

I'll see to it that, his eyes that know when I was pained or refuse to look into his, still have that depth and passion in them.

After checking everything and anything…after I see it is fit for me to leave.

I'll close the door to that home.

And maybe, just maybe, I will have the courage to give the keys back to the woman who has the real rights to his home; because the keys I have are only the duplicates and she has the real ones.

Thoughts in Warm Sheets

How long has it been since the last time I have lain with you? Since I felt your calloused hands on me and the way you kiss my lips ever so softly. Since the last time, I felt like I belonged to someone and someone belonged to me. It has been so long.

Falling in Love

I do not want to fall madly in love again, I do not want to turn his eyes into astronomy, or mason his hands into steel, I do not want to turn his words into hymns, and I do not want to turn his mind into a treasure that I thought I was lucky to find; please never again.

I want to fall peacefully in love instead, I just want to see his kind eyes, and hold his hands, I just want to be touched by his heart and be in awe of his mind. Just those please, please, please.

I do not want to fall madly in love again. I do not want to lose myself again.

Lines

I always thought we were parallel lines; never touching but always seeing each other from afar. It's heart-shattering to know that we are actually tangents, bound to touch each other once and forever be parted.

Infatuation

I fell in love with a young god once but I have forgotten I was only human.

Goodbye

It's difficult to say goodbye to the one person I only ever wanted to say hello to.

Dictionary

I have always tried to make a dictionary about the words I can use to finally describe him to describe the way I finally met him.

Love (n) – Wednesday.

Naiveté (v) – the act of looking into his eyes and trying to decipher the words he tries so hard to protect.

Passion (v) – he reads all my poetry, forwards, backward and sideways, the only person to ever do that.

Wonder (v) – the way his smile lights up my dull days.

But to be honest all I can ever make is a dictionary of the words I can use to describe the way I finally lost him.

Destroyed (v) – I want to write about the world, I want to write about a home, but that only means writing about him.

Betrayed (v) – someone else was in his home.

Hurt (v) – news broke up due to the silence he left and can never take back.

Lost (n) – Wednesday.

Never Forget

As weeks go by, no matter how draining life may be, or how heart breaking events have been; never ever forget to create art

End

It'd be nice if I could keep on writing till the end of time

It'd be nice if I could keep making poems until the end of time.