you're a haze of ninety-nine cents dreams,
naivety bottled in your distressed jeans
and your ******-inspired bambi teardrop eyes;
and i'm the devil behind why you've cried

your mouth chokes with fury and rage
'so why are you still here?' i ask again
but secretly, i know you and your obsession
-the glory tales of getting heartbroken

you know i'm pure poison flowing in your veins,
a disaster functioning on self-hatred and novacane,
but you're wild violet and champagne in a sweet kiss,
desperate to be inundated into my abyss.

i can’t remember a time before i wasn’t caught
in the pearly whites of your canines, or an era
when i wasn’t perforated apart by your cannonballs,
shot down by the bullets of the glistening emeralds
you call your eyes.

i can’t remember a time when my poems
wasn't dedicated to memorising every detail
of your raven eyelashes curving to the sky,
or how the warmth of your palms transcend
the coldness i tolerated in my heart.

i can’t remember a time when i didn’t
have something to lose, and i think that started
when your honey-lidded gaze fall on me in the
middle of a crowded room with too much sound,
but i can still hear the ‘i love you’.

i can’t remember a time when you used to be static
-pure background noise, irrelevant, unnoticed
after all, doesn’t it drive you crazy how much
someone could mean to you?
at first, they’re a whisper in the dark and suddenly-

(boom!)

you awaken galaxies in me
within the first conversation,
and we're fluorescent in this
cold grey world we're born in

coffee on the roof of your mouth,
your eyes wide and kaleidoscopic,
my dress is suffocating me by my waist,
and yet i'm still dancing to every beat with you

but then we fell apart in your usual way-
we didn't crash or burn, we just ran out
but i still see your face in every single crowd
because you're forever stitched on my sleeves

we didn't go down in a spectacular explosion,
it was more of a worn out melody tuning down,
and it's funny how i think about the past now
because back then i used to think my future was you.

with you-
there's always a taste of danger in the sky
and our skins will be set ablaze, sunset-flushed,
under the horizon of peach-coloured clouds,
the wind in my hair, sun in your eyes
and the world right underneath us.

with you-
i feel like a sinner and a saint all at once,
we're flashes of vibrant pomegranate and fireflies
exploding with a firecracker passion romance books envy,
you can baptise me with your thighs,
and i'll worship you almost every night.

with you-
i transform, no longer the cautious observer,
treading around the eggshells of my emotions,
too scared to venture into the hurricane they call your name,
and i'm the willing sacrifice,
ready to spill across the altar.

without you-
i'm a collapse of a soul, a collection of
salted wounds, burning cheeks and stammering hearts,
and i'm perpetually craving what was once mine,
the heated embraces, the chaotic romances of
fire and brimstone.

without you, i'm simply nothing.

i'm your black slash of paint
in the middle of your blank canvas
you're a sultry indian summer
in the midst of my siberian nights

you're a firework quietly going off
inside the isolation in my head,
and i'm your hearth, your home
in a crowd choked with strangers

my fingers dance across the ballroom
of your freckles and craters of skin,
and i'm perforating every curve of you,
from your liquid chocolate eyes to your lips.

i calculate every manoeuvre made,
but no one ever counted on you-
and you crash in, guns glazing,
and i was never the same.

there are many stories of how humankind
came to be,
and i'm not exactly sure how many of them
i like to believe.
are we here pre-destined for a great adventure
or rather yet, we're just here because we're here

i don't really like the ones that tells us about fate,
how we're meant to love somebody and all that-
i don't think anybody is born to love anybody
except themselves,
and even then sometimes i struggle with that too.

i don't think we're souls carved out on the plane of time
and i don't think we're beacons that were planned to collide,
i don't think we're a star-crossed fairytale on a dusty page,
and i don't think the air was waiting for silhouettes to fill the empty space.

i don't think i look to the future searching for your face,
and i don't think you shout across the void for my name,
i don't think we're planets intended to orbit around each other
and i don't think we're the seams of this quilted universe
that stitched itself just for us.

i just think we're us,
and that is all we have to be.

i'm here for your body,
not you,
and you're here for my lips,
not me,
there's no dishonesty in
this sanctuary,
there is only breath and release,
kisses and heartbroken dreams.

i'll pretend to care about you
for the night,
and you'll pretend to hold me,
to ride the tide;
there's no genuine emotions in
this space,
there is only give and push,
pull and take.

i know everything from the soft spot
on your neck,
to how you lose your mind over
every arch of my back
but nothing about your favourite colour,
or if you've ever been hurt.

(but i'm good with not knowing).

the heat of your mouth
tastes like a thunderstorm
brewing from a distance away-
i'm so good at being careful but
i find myself getting caught in the storm
again and again and again.

there is nothing more devastating
than the slow burn of a flame
that used to go off like a firework.

we're not a trainwreck waiting to happen,
or an explosion at the end of a tunnel-
we're more of a light losing it's spark.

and somehow, i feel that's sadder almost-
it didn't happen so abruptly that it felt
like i'm ripping off a bandaid

we're movie that started out beautiful,
but as the end looms closer, you can sense
the ending stained with tear-tracks on cheeks.

after all, i prefer you screaming and shouting
like a thunderstorm fighting through,
than to be a breeze passing me by and letting me go.