I've had it for so long,
this sadness,
that it almost feels like
a second skin.
Some days it speaks like me,
it acts like me,
it becomes me,
it is me.
But, I am not my sadness,
although it dwells on,
unyielding.
I am not what happened to me.
I am not my hurt.
I am still becoming.
Sep 10, 2020
Sep 10, 2020 at 9:02 PM UTC
At my worst, you taught me
how to feel again,
brought me places I thought
had already ceased to exist,
now I miss them.
I miss them all the time.
Without my compass, my guide
all I have are these thoughts.
Eyes aimlessly searching for trails
in undergrown forests,
hopelessly lost.
You could have left me
the way you found me:
a screen door that only knows how to open,
a playground swing causing accidents,
a walking precaution,
a sink hole trying to grow a heart,
something inherently broken,
something with missing parts.
But, you didn't.
You mended the hinges,
you took down the warning signs,
grew an entire meadow of wildflowers—
you patched me up with your love.
My cup is brimming,
and I no longer know
where else to pour.
Mar 29, 2020
Mar 29, 2020 at 10:29 PM UTC
Absence is a strange occurrence,
a shapeshifter manifesting
in the most trivial things.
A presence where there is none.
Something never entirely gone.
Nov 20, 2019
Nov 20, 2019 at 10:21 AM UTC
You were wrong about me.
I am no halcyon,
no summer song,
but a wilted rose you picked
with its sharp thorns.
I wasn't a catch.
I am a fire hydrant's glass.
Something constantly left shattered
when it all goes up in smoke.
Oct 30, 2019
Oct 30, 2019 at 6:52 AM UTC
There were warning signs to beware,
great walls you had to climb,
more parcels inside,
sealed with labeled reminders
to handle with care.
That a wrong cut of a wire
could trigger explosives,
that the place wasn't just fragile,
it was also volatile.
There's a reason why
from miles away you'd been told
to keep your own distance.
Why this wasn't just something
you could happen to stumble upon,
but a shipwreck, a paper town,
a lost city you needed to find.
When it dawned upon you
that this was not paradise,
but a haunted cemetery of some kind,
you snuck your way back
to the hole you fell into;
burning the place to the ground,
like the ones who came before you.
Oct 8, 2019
Oct 8, 2019 at 8:59 AM UTC
To think that the planets might have been misguided
when they let your star sign almost be my rise;
they would never have guessed
how in twenty years my sockets would confine
sullen, sunken eyes
surrounded by darker spaces,
recurring insomnia I try to hide.
Worn-out clothes now, twice my size.
You gave me the longest summer of my life.
I hate my voice booming static
on the other end of the line.
I miss all my old friends,
and I can't figure out why
I wait in my tower for a knight,
but when at long last he comes
I'd throw him out the window
expecting him to survive.
Sep 1, 2019
Sep 1, 2019 at 7:49 AM UTC
Store me in a foreign wooden house,
but please
let me out.
Daylight seething through skin
and bones I don't have.
Rain wiping hand-painted
stage pearl-white smiles.
Make me walk
and then run on my own
without strings holding up
my wrists and calves.
I hope by then a mile
knocks the wind out of my lungs
and while I pause for breath,
lay rest, look up
may it remind
me of the crown I wear,
the color of the sky.
Tear up scripts
made for me to recite,
and let me write
all the stories
I'd rather hear,
not just act out
with my time.
I'm not cut out for a role
I never auditioned for
or this life.
Aug 31, 2019
Aug 31, 2019 at 10:44 PM UTC
I do come back
in dreams, lies
and broken down deja vu,
only I can't
find my way back to you.
I can't sneak out the old window,
I can't wait for the bus.
I can't write you letters.
I can't keep thinking of us.
How are you doing today?
I miss hearing your stories.
I miss hearing your laugh.
I miss being Eleanor.
Aug 24, 2019
Aug 24, 2019 at 1:41 AM UTC
I let down my walls for you—
a complete stranger with sad eyes,
hunched figure, face down,
back plastered in dimly lit corners.
We held hands as we toured through galleries,
artificial sceneries, and slopes overlooking the city.
I let you sit beside me in craters other people dug up
just to see if you could fill in the spaces they left.
But you dug your own,
left me wondering how you could
claim love, promise me new planets
and then leave
just as they did.
I let down my walls for you—
even when I knew I'd risk drowning
for people whose words slowly turned into lies
once they decide to abandon ship.
I let down myself,
in hopes that maybe you wouldn't.
But you did,
the worst part was all of you did.
Now my walls aren't the only ones left crumbling
but my deteriorating furnished interiors
barely holding up the framework
of what the people I love keep tearing down.
Aug 23, 2019
Aug 23, 2019 at 10:43 PM UTC
You found me
stuck staring
at rearview mirror reflections
of wintry, dusk intersections
of everything leaving me
all at once.
A forced exhale
of asphyxia caged
in collapsing lungs;
my mouth,
a fountain spring,
that coughed out
pools of blood.
I wish I saw myself
the way you saw me;
not a red traffic light
wounding speeding cars
on winding streets,
but an antique heirloom
priceless enough
you'd only wish
you could keep
in a heart-shaped box
you saw in dreams.
But, I'd cut my tongue,
paint my lips cherry shades
to blend with cells that'd stain
handkerchiefs you'd offer.
Make you believe
this isn't going to foster
because you are indecision,
unfinished watercolor landscapes
of summer forest fire skies,
a sun-kissed Pacific wanderer.
And I am true crime
untouched evidence of break-ins,
remains of faulty locks and lights.
I am mosaics misaligned;
static, seabed cracks
from forgotten fault lines.
Gaping fissures of sand,
and salt that won't let me stitch
frayed skin-deep fibres
barely holding me in.
Oceans would have to empty themselves
into whirring cyclones and high tides
for our selfish sense of touch to collide.
Ice caps would have to sink
deep enough to even bruise my skin.
And I wouldn't want to watch
more Shakespeare end
before it begins.
*See, I am the one
with sharp edges,
but why
did you have to be the one
to clip my wings?*
There is only an abyss
without a trampoline,
a safety net,
a bed of waterlilies,
I could fall in.
And I am so tired
of paradoxes
and ironies;
of always being wanted
by someone who doesn't even
want to be kept,
of always being mended
and then left
with more dislocations,
and fractures,
one after another
each taking longer to fix.
Now, in shapeless parcels,
without return addresses
sent out into the void
these words will echo
of love
I never intended to borrow,
and shadows
of false hope
you never thought yourself
capable of
giving away.
Jul 26, 2019
Jul 26, 2019 at 6:02 AM UTC