I'm ready to part with this piece of you I've hold onto so tight

Imprints on my hand that have comforted and held me for years

Deep etchings carved over time, where once sat care, now filled with scars

You were carved so deep, I thought you'd remain

I loved you as much as I could

As much as I could carry and was capable of

As much as my cold hands could keep the warmth between them

I thought I knew you when we cried between the sheets

Two lonely halves, somehow forming a whole

A love, I had not felt before

I thought I knew you

You and I, I and you

We came together, I thought I knew...

You used to feel like home

Like a soft bed, I could sink into, without remorse

But now, I know, there's no other way

I cannot cling nor stay,

For two lonely parts, never make a whole

And two lonely parts, fail to make a home

You and I, I and you

Forever, we remain, separate, just as we met

Strangers, torn into two

Still lonely, and lost, unknowing, and new.

I don’t know you yet,
But my hands grasps yours,
And my heart sits,
In silent knowing of your embrace.

I don’t know you yet,
But I imagine you in bed;
Arms folded over against me;
A warm caress to soothe my soul.

I don’t know you yet; my friend,
My lover,
So I lie here lonely,
Trying to sit in comfort with my aloneness.

I don’t know you yet,
And you don’t know of me,
But surely, we know each other,
Somewhere in the dreams of our unconscious.

The hopes of our future.
The unmet needs of our past.  
The paths of our present.

I don’t know you yet,
Yet, I wish you knew of me.

I wish you knew how much it hurts to not have you here sometimes; all the sorrow that I hold.

I wish you knew of my past; of all I’ve lived and endured and be in awe.

I wish for your stories; a life lived before me and what you came to know.

I wish for your heart, as it unfolds; throughout the ups and downs of this life, till death brings us apart.

I wish, I wish so much; you were here sometimes.

I try to be strong on my own; but deep down, there’s always a yearning,
for another, to love and hold.

For connection and kinship.

A solace, a home.

For poetry, life, laughs, aliveness.

Love.

When he left,
All I thought of was you.

My past has paved a way to you.

I know I don’t know you yet,
But deep down, I feel, I already do.

I stay alive in thoughts of you.

Let the suffering grow your heart.

Let it grow your compassion.

Let it help you understand.

Let it help you forgive.

Let it help you to see the circumstances of the unfortunate,

and to feel their sadnesses deep within.

Let it help you to cry, wholeheartedly.

Let it give you depth.

Let it give you meaning; purpose.

Let it roll over you like a welcome wave;

A shower that cleanses you; inside, out.

Let it make you feel.

Let it make you sensitive.

Let it allow you to listen.

Let it teach;

find parts of yourself you once lost, now known;

A coming back to self.

Let it refine you.

Evolve you.

Let it give you poetry,

A heart,

Art.

Let it be,

Let it be.

The sun is slowly starting to seep into my hardened veins

Bringing with it a message of hope;

Of life, arising from the once hopelessly dead.

I hear the tides whisper of change;

Washing the old and known, and carrying the new.

I feel a new warmth caress my impoverished skin;

The real home of the child I once knew.

I’m starting to hear the songs of the birds outside,

Feel my own embrace,

See the beauty of each bloom;

A space for gratitude, where once was despair.

I’m starting to feel an eternal value;

Something not said, but felt;

Of being wanted, of being loved, supported although lost.

A sense of safety once unknown.

The sun it seeps;

And I allow it.

Existence comes calling;

And I embrace it.

A self once lost;

Now somehow returning.

I don’t know if I’ve really let all the sadness seep through my pores;

Every inch,

Till

it

cascades

down

in

all

its

wept

glory.

Lately the poetry is not coming to me,

I feel pain too intensely.

I feel myself enclosed within tight spaces,

I can hardly feel a flow of words, spill out, unwaveringly.

Lately, I’ve been too lost in thought,

I am too much in rumination to get a burst of feeling,

So intense, I resort to written expression.

Lately, I’ve been scared of many things;

Of living and of death;

Of my own and my only friend.

Lately, lately, I await, until the words come again…

I saw myself sitting on my knees, hunched over, clinging to a pile of rugs beneath me. Precisely three. Each rug was much like the other; slightly different in shape, but all of the same tone and texture. 


One by one, each was pulled away from underneath me…


My dad came and stole the first rug. I hardly expected it to have been snatched away. In my innocence, I thought I could somehow seek comfort there. Somehow I thought, I could feel it’s warmth for the remainder of my life not knowing much of the past, nor the future. With its displacement soon arose great fear. My mind started to alarmingly ring. What if all my other rugs are taken too? What if I have nothing soft left to lie on anymore? And what if all I feel is the bare emptiness of the ground below me? An emptiness, in which I am nothing? Inherently nothing…?

I clung to each rug that followed in dire fear of unanswered questions. In dire fear of all unknown. 


A few years thereafter, another rug I had grasped was snatched from underneath my base by T–. He did so in such an insidious way, I hardly expected it to have happened either. He had such invisibly cold hands that he told me were warm – a series of lies masquerading as truth. When T—’s rug went missing, I fell in much the same way as when my first rug was taken. Except this time, I fell to a position I had already felt so keenly, and so now, fell much more intensely. Doubly hunched over and in pain. A feeling of dejection and despair so intense from having already carried a previous stain; a previous memory. 


The next rug I encountered, I thought to be real. Actually, I thought it to be the most genuine I had ever encountered in the universe. It had seemingly inexhaustible warmth. I could hardly help but cling in ecstasy, though also in hidden agony, in cognizance of how transient all my other rugs had been. Finally, perhaps I had a home for me to lay my head upon? A home which would grant me stable rest? But here too, I was mistaken. Like each rug that came before, this rug was indeed transitory and full of uncertainty. Perhaps more soft, perhaps more real, perhaps more warm and embracing – but he too had to go. After all, he was another rug I had clung to; an attachment like all the rest.

–

When this particular rug was pulled, I was so terrified of soon touching the ground below me, that my body contracted in a frenzied, desperate agony. I tried so hard to make whatever warmth remain; strenuously clenching with all my might to staple it down in place. However, as hard as I did pull to hang on, an unknown force pulled away at a greater intensity. I found myself in a tug of war I could not win and sooner or later, the weight of my frustrations gave in. Mournfully, I failed to control its inevitable movement. My last remaining rug, yes, he too, went away.

And so I had nothing left beneath me… 


The cold floor exposed bare was the hard reality with which existence presented me. In the past, I had tried to search for other rugs to hide in. I thought to myself that other rugs would do, that perhaps I just needed a different few. I clung to some alternate variations; some made of others’ skin; half-hearted relations or validations, some of money, others of drugs or work or pastimes and pleasure. Despite all my attempts however, I could not evade the emptiness of the floor beneath me. I had felt it repeatedly with my own body. Its coldness had visibly scraped and scarred me. And I knew; each rug I had clung to was a cover-up so transient. Despite their initial warmth; each stood porous now – exposing the cold, and digging holes in any of my attempts not to feel what lied beneath.

Upon these realisations, the floor which held me and my previous rugs soon started collapsing. With its fall, I was taken into an empty, dark abyss; seemingly endless and all-enclosing. Seemingly perpetual.

Mid-fall I was so catastrophically uncertain, I wanted to close my eyes and no longer wake. I berated myself for continuing to be conscious and pleaded for existence to **** me in my sleep. How dare I still be alive while falling in such suffering and sadness, I lamented.


I lacked the courage to feel the thud of my final landing and its location.

From past experience, I was almost certain that what lied beneath was infinite pain; dark abandonment of course, for miles without end.


–

To be continued (as I learn how)…