"High hopes... I guess"
she mumbled whilst licking the jay to seal it,
not breaking eye contact for a second.
Truth is, I felt myself doing backstrokes in the ambiguity of her eye contact because I had no idea whether or not she was talking about us, or the 420.

Oh please,
Describing yourself as art is an insult.
The greatest art works in the world are complete,
hanging in gallaries,
hidden behind bullet proof glass.
But look at you miraculous human.
Breathing life into a world that is all too often considered cold.
No- art is an insult.
You are a cosmic evolution like no other.
You are both art and artist.
Writer and every single memory echoed onto page.
Oh my beautiful friend,
You are so much more profound than an artwork.
You are a display of nature at it's finest.

You broke me...
& I allowed it because I so loved the moment before you uttered how I meant nothing. The moment when you could be redeemed.
The moment in which my breathe would catch in my throat.
The moment in which I desperately wanted to be inlove with you again. The moment in which I wanted to delude myself just one more time into believing you might love me.
Believing that you could value me in my human form.
The form in which my exhale became reminiscent of your name.
You were absorbed into the essence of my very being.
You were everything. & now you are nothing.
This is neither good nor bad.
It simply is.
Because you were poisonous and I loved every second of it ; basking in your presence.
I was a wilting flower and oh how your kiss felt so much like rain.
You were incomparably beautiful to me, but beautiful in the destructive sense.
Beautiful like a forest fire.
But you are not a forest fire.
You were the moon- deeply inconsistent.
You could not be redeemed.
Not by your smile or the way my name tasted leaving your lips or by the rare tears you would spill whispering a belated apology.

You were lost to me.
in all your cruelty- completely lost.

Except for when i would stand lonely in a crowded room- your voice sounding like the insecurities in my mind.
In those moments I'd choked back tears and pretended that the ***** was to blame and not you.
I'd Spend the night hurling insults at the stars whose usually beautiful form seemed a grotesque witness to my aching heart.
And then I'd want to hurt you how you hurt me,
scar your soul repeatedly but then I realised you don't have one.
You never did.

Your lips tasted like Winters kiss to me- you were chilling and enthralling.
This much I remember.
So as I stand and watch you kiss her- breathe life into her bones, I can't help but wonder if all of man kind got it wrong- believing that only women give life?

Perhaps men give it too- this much has to be true because how else can I feel the sting of your lips against mine standing a room across from you. In the taste of your lips and pressure of your hips I lost myself and is that not life in itself? or have all of our age old ideals confined that feeling of infinity into lust?

I used to stare at the leaves on trees- watching as they blew in the wind kissing each other ceaselessly- and envy that level of intimacy, until your lips gave beauty meaning , i understood it for the first time ever on the couch when my parents finally left us alone.

So now as I stand and watch. Watch as you kiss her lips-as if wishing to find the flavour of mine somewhere in that feigned passion and despite all these years having passed I can't help but feel my heart ache in my chest. I can't help but wish you were breathing life into my now dormant bones.

Your lips were a pssing season, one unlike any other and just a little bit of magic. Just enough to breathe life into me when I used to believe life was breathing and now I believe it means loving.

Your love was cancerous
and now I'm in remission.

It is a privlige to love someone.
Whether it works or not.
Whether it's reciprocated or not.
It is a devine privlige to inhabit someones soul.
It is a privlige to strike up a conversation between your finger tips and their body.
It is a privlige for their name to be enscipted on your broken heart not because they were worthy but because loving someone is evidence - that you're innately capable of living boldly.
That you are not oblivious to one of the greatest gifts that life has to offer - love.

I had never cared much for astrology
Until she asked me
"which star is the brightest?"
And I realised I'd been staring into the sun.

“Decolonize your mind before you become a new black slave.” He whispered to me before pushing one of his dreads behind his ear and grinning wildly at my perplexed expression. I lowered the straightener and stared at him for a while – I had loved him because of the way he was self-assured, it never faltered and I knew an explanation would follow as I leaned forward, raising an eyebrow, questioning him.
“You know you’re a queen right?” He continued, interrupting my train of thought, while turning off the straightener at the plug point.
“Ja, I know.” I answered blatantly.  
“ Then decolonize your mind.” He shouted before thrusting his hands into the sky and exiting my room. I think he knew I would figure it out for myself because as I stared at the straightener on my desk- it clicked. The statement vibrated in the very depths of my soul and an untapped reserve of energy was suddenly channelled into my aura. I could feel my ancestors, I could hear their cries, I could feel the weight of shackles, I could feel a whip, I could feel resentment, I could feel hatred, I could feel the power of a God who didn’t look like me, I could feel my peoples names that were written out of history books, I could taste blood in my mouth, I could feel blood on the cotton, I could feel what it meant to be black.
It was an epiphany, induced both by drink as well as the stench of my burnt hair. The epiphany spoke to me, reminding me that who I am was holy. That black was undeniably beautiful and not in the clichéd way that I learnt of in history when people averted their eyes, avoiding discomfort presented in an unacknowledged truth. It was in earnest, that I realised that my melanin was paramount to a glorious dynasty that I was privileged enough to be a part of. I would wear my ancestry daily and no longer shy away from the truth of my being. I am sun kissed, I am regal, I am Cleopatra, I am King Shaka, I am the soil and the trees and everything that matters in this universe, I am a closed fist lifted in a rally where mercy has intersected rage, resulting in non-violence.
The only violence that is accepted is that which vehemently opposes the status quo that my people are not good enough. That is what was meant when he told me to decolonize my mind.
“ You will be villianized in your pursuit for emancipation because the margin of melanin present in our people will always render you a slave so choose now what you will subscribe to. “ and I made a decision, standing upon the raw backs of my ancestors- I chose a discarded truth and the truth is this-  I am art. We, are art and art cannot be subjugated or castrated by a close minded agenda, set by people who have never bothered to understand you nor will they ever begin to.
I am  a poem that breathes and speaks and therefor has no choice but to be remembered. I will be etched into the minds of people who would rather forget me. I will be written down in history books next to men who would rather deny my existence.
In that moment, in my epiphany, I began to wade barefoot through my soul. I began to find pieces of myself I didn’t know where lost – and is that not courage in itself? Finding the corpse of your soul, buried beneath a cruel, mercilessly pale agenda?
          
Is speaking the truth not brave?
So I set down the straightener, and began to live.

Why don’t you just lay me down, how about  that?                           
Why don’t you just lay me down on this same back that I’m used to lying on when I day dream about  you at 2AM when you’ve long since forgotten our last conversation or the way our laughter sounds.                                                          ­                                                     How about you let me teach you what love really tastes like- like the flavour of my lower lip caught between your teeth. How about that?                                    
How about you let me call out your name in a way that keeps you present with me before you slip into a well intended ecstacy, how about that?                      
How about you allow me the liberty of breaking the confines of who you believe me to be, a good girl -How about you let me show you that  I’m not just good, that I am great.  

How about I destroy your preconceived notions of me , or better yet let me destroy them between sheets that can be perfumed with the scent of your sweat.  
How about this, How about I kiss you in a way that will teach you to crave my flesh and leave you restless, hungry for my touch once more. How about that?                  

How about you learn that a women can be more than flesh and bones,            
That she can be a metaphysical constellation capable of absorbing you entirely,                                                        ­                                                         That nature is called a mother because she birthed a raw infinity of a women which you could be blessed enough to hold in your arms.                            
That drowning can be beautiful because my love will come for you in ceaseless   waves.                                                           ­                                                  That I am a sacred vessel, that my entire body is holy and with each time you lay your hands upon me you will learn to praise a creator so devine that your soul will sing in your ears in the form of your heartbeat. How about that?

How about I teach you what love means with my body because words cannot adequately express the sentiment that I feel towards you.

How about that?

That’s what I wanted to say.

Instead I said “Yeah sure, I don’t mind” and watched as you walked over to her, kissing her in a way that caused me to choke back tears, cough in a crowded room and pretend that the ***** was to blame and not you.

You are no longer a hurricane wild and free- at least not to me.

I am no longer in the eye of a storm

and I now smile each time the wind blows,
a light breeze on the rare occasions I clamp eyes on you,
the hair of my memory ruffled, tenderly,
I recount how I used to gasp for air in your presence,
how the storm that was you snatched all the air from my lungs
and
oh
the unnatrual silence that would fall upon me in your presence,
unable to articulate the intensity of my desire to love you,
unaware of the fact that a birds song would never be able to hold a candle against the broken howling of the wind that was you.

I don't think that a bird whose wings almost tore at the ligaments, fighting so hard to keep up,
can claim that a storm of that magnitude was of any good to their ability to believe that they were capable of flight-
so I cannot say I miss you.

But I will say this,
there is no part of me that
will ever forget the violence of the storm that was you.
There is no part of me that now takes the gentle breeze for granted
and there is no part of me that doubts my ability to heal, fully, because a restoration has taken place in the parts of me that were left destroyed in your wake.

So I will say that there are very rare and fleeting moments in which the wind picks up unexpectedly,
and I run into you old friend,
you absent hurricane you
and I hope that the winds of your soul have settled into a song that heals your brokenness,
and I smile with an unshaken joy in my heart
now knowing that there is nothing romantic about a hurricane
but my soul smiles still
and occassionally when the winds blow
fiercely in the depths of your soul
re-read the songs of a little bird that loved a hurricane
and know that the songs are no longer sung
but the words have not been forgotten.

Oh when the winds pick up,
there is a bird who remembers the natural disaster of that human hurricane,
Oh when the winds pick up,
that same bird may sing a song of what was,
Oh when the winds pick up,
I pray that a song of joy and restoration reaches your ears.

Oh when the winds pick up,
know I am no longer afraid of hurricanes at all
because after you, I realized that I was never a bird to begin with,
I was never a natural disaster,
but instead
I was mother nature herself-
entertaining a love of a different humor
for but a season.

I don't understand why we're all so young and afraid of getting hurt.
Like **** that fam, we're resilient, we'll heal.
I have no doubt about it- because I've survived so much more than I thought I possible.
You see to me, a young heartbreak is an irrisitible temptation.
Almost as tempting as kissing your lips when you lie next to me,
at night,
smelling of cheap cigarettes and *****.
During the afternoon, when the sun floods my room the way your presence floods into the essence of my being- with no remorse.  
During the times we've choosen not to tell anyone about,
because we're just friends.

I'm not about this thing of loving people with half my heart though -which is why being your friend feels like torture.
You see, I cant love anyone with half my heart,
take the whole danm thing and break it.

Please, I beg this much of you,
because I can handle it,
I can handle so much more than you give me credit for.
I can handle the curve of your naked back
and I know this, not because you've given me the chance to do so,
but because I can handle you when you're fully clothed yelling at me.
And its like you yell louder with each fight, because there's an undercurrent in your voice I've come to recognize as fear,
because I've begun to get too close
and even though you seem strong you're probably more fragile than the bottle of gin that chills on your desk that you emptied a week ago during our last fight.
And it's like you yell louder with each fight because you can't understand why I haven't left yet and in truth I can't understand it either.
I can't articulate it properly but I have a feeling it has to do with the way that you begged me not to leave once,
begged me to stay at 3AM.
Begged me in the most raw way-
I think it was birthed then, my desire not to leave.

See my friend,
I've come to understand your silence more than your words
because you are so ******* choosy when it comes to your words,
and so calculated in your actions,
that your silence speaks to me the loudest.
Your yelling doesn't scare me anymore and neither does your silence.

You were silent that night after our last fight you know,
once you'd calmed down and collapsed into the bed next to me.
You were silent as you pulled me closer,
silent when you choked back tears that night that you thought I didn't see.
I can handle it,
I can handle you
the bird sang to the hurricane.

You see, your silence speaks to me right?
and in your silence you've already left finger prints on my heart ,
so why leave my body untouched?

So I won't be silent around you like I normally am, hear me now babe- take my heart and break it,
break it without fear,
because I don't expect you not to.
What I do expect is for you to understand the fact that I can handle heartbreak
because I'm volunteering myself for the renewal which will come in your wake.

I anticipate you littering your love on the landscape of my heart.
I anticipate the death of our love at your hands,
because I was dead to the idea of loving again before you,
I closed my eyes when I noticed that you'd resurrected empires in the darkest parts of me.
I closed my eyes when you started to breathe life into my brokenness.
I closed my eyes when you started to plant flowers in the rough terrain left by those before you.
I closed my eyes to all your love because you speak to me in ways that I don't quite understand
and have satisfied me in ways I didn't know I craved.

And I crave you in your absence,
not the flesh that you've withheld from me- not for a second.
No,
rather your naked spirit.
Snippets of which you've revealed in moments that you're too drunk to remember.
I crave the love that you're too scared to show me.
Show me your scars
and I'll show you the gruesome ones I've gotten from people I've long since forgotten.
Show me your nature
the winter howled to the heart of summer.

Because you see my love I can't live in fear,
I cant live for the "if only"'s
because they will devour me in a way far more vicious than your love ever could.

So come my love,
come before the Summer ends.
Come teach me a new language of love that only you and I will understand.
Come teach me a new dialect that will die with you and I alone.
Come teach me your ways...
the light whispered to the darkness.

Do me this one favour, destroy me for my art.
Be the hurricane that we both know you are.

And in return I'll do you a favour,
I'll be wildfire,
I'll be a tornado,
I'll be a tsunami,
I'll be a natural disaster,
And my love will speak to you in a way that only you could understand.

I want a reason to write again,
A way to compile my thoughts like letters and slot them, neatly folded into envelopes and store them as keepsakes in my mind.

I want a reason to grip my life with both hands I guess but then again perhaps it's time I let life take me for a ride.
Hop into the passenger seat, shot gun, grinning wildly as the whole thing takes off with me.

And it is taking off with me - my life that is.
At 257 kilometers per hour, per day and for once I'm flinging up my arms, touching the sky, screaming "THANK YOU GOD" for this trip each time I manage catch my breath. Because the whole world is spinning and I don't want it to stop.

You see there hasn't been any time to pick up a pen and jott this all down.
Half the time the moments are so good I don't even want to take a picture because I'm etching the memory into my mind, the sounds of my own laughter ringing in my cells when I collapse into my bed late at night. That's what reminds me that it's been a good day.

It's been months now and there hasn't been a day that's gone past where I haven't laughed and not the shallow kind that we all do where we see a meme or our friend cracks a joke. No I mean REALLY laugh and I guess I forgot what that felt like or perhaps I never really knew.

I never really knew what it felt like to love myself like this because I was always too busy to savour the curves of my body, melt at the sound of my laughter like really fall in love with myself and I think I've finally started to slow down even though everything is speeding up.

I've gotten fatter and I still love myself just the same, I'm just wearing looser jeans and going on more runs and it's all for me.
For once.
Not because I'm worried what people will think but because I want to be healthy and I want to be comfortable when I study till 3AM.

See life is dragging me by my hand full steam ahead and for once I don't feel like I'm walking some tortured path.
See I don't walk anymore, I sprint
and I don't giggle, I actually laugh till I ache.
And I wear my hair naturally
and I wear blue lipstick
and black clothes
and I don't feel the need to apologize for a danm thing because I actually like myself.

So maybe I don't need to write it all down because living is enough.
This sheer bliss- oh it's more than enough and I'm more than okay - even on my bad days.

And my wish is simple.
I hope you learn to love yourself as fiercely as you loved that girl who never deserved you.
I hope you learn to really smile again and I hope one day the sound of your laugh no longer sounds foreign to you.
I hope you're happy.

I’ve done it since I was a child,
Collapse onto your lap as if the world was a little too heavy and somehow your body moulds to my form, weight. Accommodating every sigh, listening to the symphony that is the sound of your tummy gurgling late at night.
I can no longer fit into your arms, I am no longer your tiny footed photocopy. I have now grown strong, powerful- forged from the flesh of a titan.
Somehow, I always want the world to meet you but I know I don’t talk about you nearly enough.
It’s because no words could ever accurately capture the nuance of mother nature that is you.
And you are my mother, the force of nature from which my biological cloth is cut.
You are home in the most primal sense and I am in love. In love with the way you carry yourself, soft hands, kindness rubbing rythnmic circles on my back when I feel sick.
You are the foundations of my soul on two legs and I will always be thankful for the nature of your love, firm but constant, like a waterfall.
In a constant stream your love has broken rock, moved mountains and convinced me I can do the same.
You are a force of nature, powerful beyond belief.
You are my mother, and I will always be your child.
Standing in the sand storm of life my feet will always remain firmly planted on the ground, well aware of the roots from whence I came. You are the freshest breath of life that I have been lucky enough to be nurtured by.
You are my mother, warrior, laughter in inappropriate moments.
You are my healer, you are the wind that blows the sea that is me , onto the shore- further each time. Destined to achieve more.
You are an ambitious icon.
You are the love that vibrates in each of my cells, you are the boldness in each step I take- affirmed and aware that rejection has no claim to me, pales in comparison to the great love I have received.
You are my mother,
Four words which will never begin to capture the power of who you are and what you mean to me.

I interrogate art,
It's just my nature
And you are art,
So inhale deeply on those cigarettes that you love so much because I always quietly imagine what it must be like to be nestled so tenderly between your full lips.
Inhale my love,
because I love how calm you become when you strike a match against the Lions match box as if this is the 80's and you're
Kurt Cobain because I know his songs don't quite capture the angst that rests just below the surface of your grin.
And God when you grin it's like watching a ******* make love to a client,
It's like breaking all my own rules
I feel like I'm watching something I shouldn't but I can't walk away because I am the client and when you look at me like that it's like I'm set ablaze.
And I haven't even described your touch
and in all honesty I can't
because who would be bold enough to claim that they have wrapped their hands firmly around the wind.
How could I begin to describe the way it feels when you touch me because something about your presence alone
is intimate even if we're standing next to each other in a packed room.
Your touch is like a scalpel against treated flesh, precise, intense, purposeful but most importantly healing.
You hurt
almost with the intent of healing
because how else do I describe the fact that I am a woven tapestry and with one tug of my thread you have me unravelled.
I still haven't figured it out,
when it was that you figured out how I worked.
Perhaps it was in the moments where I was so engrossed in studying your every action you realized that you had created your own personal anthropologist but that implies that I had the upper hand
and we both know that isn't the case.

You are my muse and even your lipstain left on an empty glass of lager is enough to keep me occupied.

You are my muse and every emotional outbreak fuels my desire to document all your actions even faster, like a deranged professor I detail your actions trying to calculate when exactly it is that I became engrossed within the art work that is you.

You are my muse and every utter of your lips is like you wrapping your hand around mine and running the pen along the page.

You are my muse and I enjoy watching you smoke because I always wonder if I'll savour the taste of your lips the way you do those cigarettes. Somehow I'm sure I will.
It's an addiction really, to the way you occupy space,
like a curator in a gallery with one artwork alone -
I am completely absorbed.
I feel like an artist charged with restoration of something magnificent except I donno where the restoration is taking place, within You or I.

You are my muse and God I wonder why no one warned me that art speaks back.

I imagine that if my mother’s prayers had hands, they would reach out for me everyday of my life. Her prayers and the prayers of my father would reach out for me, covering me - in the same way that the sun inevitably bathed the world in light each morning. Relentless. Unyielding. Unchanging. An act of nature. An act of nurture.

"Tell me you want me" the words just sort of slipped out...
and the small chasm of air between your lips and his suddenly felt vast.
The words that had fallen out your mouth suddenly found themselves standing upright , on two feet. Staring him in the face. You watched as his eyebrows knitted, suddenly confronted by your 3AM thoughts for the last few weeks.
The aftermath of your honesty just hung between the two of you...

"Tell me you want me" you whispered again scared to lose him, scared to see him walk away like everyone else. You weren't an eloquent girl, or a girl well versed in getting the guy. You were an honest girl and maybe for once it would count for something.

You see you weren't begging or pining or even pleaing with him to want you..  you just wanted words to bear testament to the truth of what you had experienced with him thus far. And the truth was this - to you he was completely and utterly beautiful and not just because of the way  he could make you laugh or miss him without trying. He was beautiful because when you were with him you felt free to be exactly who you are and isn't that in itself ridiculously profound?. You felt like yourself and when you were comfortable with yourself you became at home and somehow he became a part of that home.

A home which you'd currently struck a match to if he didnt feel the same way
because you weren't good with 21st century dating games.
You weren't good with flirting
but you were good with him.
So in a horribly passionate way you just needed to know that you weren't alone in feeling overwhelmed,  suffocated by desire to just be together.

By now his eyes had glazed over and you knew your legs would only hold you upright for a few moments longer. Pulling away you inhaled the hot air that had become stagnated between the two of you.

But then your arm was grasped and your face was turned by long fingers you knew all too well..

" I want you. " he whispered back and that was enough. It was more than enough to just know that you weren't alone.

I hope the energy you spend on trying to destroy me brings you peace.
Peace of mind - a kind of calm that will wash over you if you realize that you're breaking me down.
I know first hand destruction can be beautiful,
the tearing down of a statue,
the breaking of a wall,
smashing a glass against a wall.

Destroy to create I guess...
I guess I just always thought destroying a human was a little bit messier because we don't break with one definitive sound, we kind of shatter. Our smiles falter,
we choke back tears till our throats burn,
we bite our nails till we bleed,
we bleed so that we can keep feeling.
Breaking a human is a process that I guess you're skilled in my friend.
And it's kind of a Godless business.
To destroy to create
but I find God in my tears and you in my memories
and happiness in the day time and laughter in my mind.
So please- keep destroying me because you're helping me grow even though it's painful and in return I pray it brings you peace - hurting me. I pray you find peace
because God knows you've become restless,
absorbed entirely by vengeance,
an emotion I'm too exhausted to entertain.

I hope you're happy my friend.

Beautiful boy,
you never did quite understand the meaning of "I love you".
Not for lack of trying... no never.
Rather because "I love you"' has always had an undercurrent of vulnerability that frightened you, demanded too much of your marred soul, your scarred soul that you spend so much time trying to cleanse..
Like paint brushes in turps I watch you try wash out the essence of your soul in alcohol, you drown your soul in Hennessy, as if speaking those words out loud would be too much for both you and me.
See I love you... to you has always looked like closed doors
and somehow sitting on your lap that night one was re-opened.
re-awakened, somehow I felt your soul bleed into mine and I haven't been able to cleanse myself of you just yet.

You cried that night in my arms, disintegrated a little and I think you thought that I was seeing you at your weakest, but babe...
oh love I had never been quite as enamored as I was watching you disintegrate because in that moment I was granted citizenship into the state of your soul.

War-torn,
in upheaval over a failed love.
The state of the nation that is you was under siege, from a mighty enemy named depression.
Aware of all your weaknesses, the enemy had laid siege to the mainland of your heart.
Crippled by sorrow, the soldiers of your soul lay down arms- unable to put up a fight.
Unable to produce fire rounds any longer.
Unable to move in time to the war torn anthem of late night binge drinking, your soldiers lay down their arms at my feet.
And while your sorrow had decided to reign sovereign- enjoying short-lived spotlight- supreme,
I caught a glimpse of the little left of your heart.
Barely beating,
God barely breathing your chest heaved up and down-  
the sound of your breath the only thing reminding you that you were still breathing and though the war ravaged on... you had called a truce.
You had waved the white flag... meekly before laying it over the bodies of broken promises and late nights that haunt you still.
And I know you're haunted... by what could have been.
Should have been.

And while I was granted citizenship into your soul, there is no road-map because the roads are laden with skeletons that I carelessly yanked out of the cupboard of your heart trying to make sense of the little you have left to give.
I know you watch me trip and fall on gravestones in conversation, secrets buried so deep that I get caught off guard eveytime one yanks on my heart strings in the rare moments that you slip up.
In the moments when your pain isn't buried quite deep enough and this girl with eyes a little too brown has managed to exhume the past... pieces of it.

Emotional labour on the landscape of your heart has left me tired.
Exhausted.
Recently I found a river of peacefulness which we call friendship. Still waters, rippling in the moments I remember how badly I wanted to believe you when you said you loved me.
How badly I wished you'd meant it.  
Quiet waters of friendship, and while petals of of broken promises of an unrequited love skim the surface, it was more than satisfactory.
Recently, I've been surprised at how much comfort I draw from this stream, bathing in it...
I began to float... Comfortable.
Unaware of what was to come.
Love, why wouldn't you warn me that a tsunami was on it's way?
Because baby I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning in you.
In your ambiguity.
In your empty promises.
In your beauty.
I thought I was drinking you in but somewhere along the way I began to drown...
I'm drowning...

One of your soldiers heard my cries.
His name was a drunken "I love you."
And I clutched onto his slippery hand as he pulled me,
exhausted onto the shore named 'I'm sorry'.
I have been lying ashore for a week now,
and while I finger the citizenship of your souls ID card called a whatsapp profile, with an barcode of an archived chat-
I've begun to wonder about intimacy, our safe space...
about us because there is so much u in us right now that somehow the sound of my sorrow has begun to be drowned out by the overflowing stream of forgiveness that I have baptized you in weekly as of late.
My cries have been drowned out as I took you to heavenly heights, hand holding, bible-open.
Eyes closed in reverence.

The same way that your eyes were shut the first night we spent together.
Weighed down by the spirit of a praying womxn you unraveled before me.
Every stitch of your being ceremoniously unraveled with each tear.
Each fear launched with each tear,
like a heat seeking missile into the very core of my being-
received loud and clear.

Unraveled.
The cosmic galaxy that is you enveloped me,
stardust dancing beneath my fingertips as I pulled you closer,
stardust- fragmented and utterly beautiful.

Beautiful,
there is nothing despicable about your brokenness for you are forged from Holy Spirit Fire and an undying love.
Those blue veins that I know you've been tempted to slit open house iron which is literally only found in stardust.
Millenniums worth of beauty flows through your body.
Millennia worth of beauty- locked in each one of your cells.
You are the living breath of Israelite slaves- son of a Lion.
You are the living breath of your ancestors.

You are a glorious, inhaling abyss
and while there are valleys of sorrow housed in your soul,
I have also seen Himilayian-like mountain peaks of your joy,
I have also caught glimpses of the road-map you plan to use to unlock the dreams locked inside your mind,
I have laid eager eyes on the valleys of wild roses that you have planted and watered named 'try again'.

Oh beautiful boy, you are so much more than the rocky hills of anxiety and pitfalls of 'failure' that you think has colored in all of who you are.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
Oh ------- ------- you are more than your mistakes.

So with this last exhausted exhale I hand back the membership to the nation state of your beautiful soul.
I realized that it was a visa, perhaps a mere day pass for your season of need.
Perhaps I was just a visitor, enamored by both the light and darkness housed in your beautiful bones.

But it's time for me to return to my home state,
Called Corinthians 13.
Don't be too afraid stop by.

"But God... they're all I've ever dreamed of?"

" My child, why do you dream so little for yourself?"

I always believed scars were so beautiful,
until I became one.
A walking, breathing, talking scar - an unchanging reminder of what was and what shall never be again.

I became the scar reminiscent of our love- or rather my love because you were the definition of unrequited
and I used to like that about you - your unwaveringly selfish nature, I used to accredit it to your self belief but then I realised you got that from stripping away mine.
Bit by bit you became who you were by chipping away at pieces of my soul.
Catching the dust of all my dreams and beliefs in your hands and then sifting through it to get what you needed.

Some days you needed a lover.
You needed the heat of my hands raw against the planes of your back- which I had studied in such a neurotically engrossed manner-that surprised even you.
Other days you needed a slave, bent upon raw knees to serve your every whim
and not in a ****** sense because you made it clear that I was repulsive to you most of the time.
No,
you needed someone to serve you and worship at the temple that was your being. You needed a women to be enslaved to your love. You needed to be served and ushered and elevated with no emotional connection. You needed an unchanging commitment that only served you.  

You see, I was forever trying to be what you needed and in that attempt-that feigned attempt at what I used to believe was love, I lost myself. Wading through parts of you that you didn't even care to understand I lost myself.
Raw on my knees.
Wading barefoot through your soul.
Between the sheets- crawling towards you milimeter by milimeter only for you to move further each time.
Tracing the planes of your burning back.
That's when I lost myself,and became a scar. Evidence of all the times you hurt me in a marvelously unflinching and unforgiving way...

All of which I realised when I was destitute.
You see you used to be my home but then the season of our love expired and you threw me out and as I walked the streets of my new life, navigating what it meant to exist without you, I had an earth shatteringly glorious ephiphany - that loving you and being destitute were the same thing.

So here I am. A scar that walks and talks and breathes and the great thing about this scar is that I'm evidence of a healed wound. I am no longer raw from loving you and I am no longer lost. I'm a *** who smiles with no teeth.

Smile.
even when it doesn't quite reach your eyes or touch the surface of your soul; smile.
Because a little brokenness goes a long way and somewhere in the depths of my broken soul I hope one day a smile saves me.
Even if he doesn't mean it- maybe it will be the stepping stone to us falling in love or the motivation not to put my right foot in front of my left and fall into the depths of those train tracks.
Smile because even if you're not saving yourself maybe you'll save someone else and perhaps that will be enough.
Perhaps in this world where everything is turning a little too fast and I keep getting whiplash as I try differentiate between what was and what is and which deadline I should meet next maybe I'll smile.

I'll smile because the sun is still shinning and the leaves kiss each other with an intimacy I cant help but envy and maybe I'll smile.
And maybe one day my smile might just reach my eyes again and maybe one day I'll be as happy as I pretend to be and one day it will all be enough.

So today I'll smile.

Ran into the wind again today,
And somehow there was romance in the way the wind smiled at me or perhaps my heart was coloured in with joy by that ******* nostalgia.
I couldn't quite figure it out.
Either way,
There's no longer anything seductive about hurricanes and it will never again be monsoon season on the tropical island that is me.

"He whispers your name in his sleep." she mumbled-hicupped, wiping the back of her hand roughly against cheeks stained with misplaced mascara, ***** sloshing in hand. The bottle was rimmed with most of her lipstick now, the parts that you hadn't kissed off in all your negligence earlier.

"Your name- that's what he whisperes" she hissed across the bathroom floor- laden with her *****.

I had excused myself only moments earlier to to get away from you. I had even looked forward to the unoccupied seat that the toilet lid would inevitably offer up. I had even resolved to endure flipping through the aged magazines that people invariably place in their bathroom- to get away from you, that was my plan.

What I had not bargained for, was her-
your wonderwall,
your idealized teenage fantasy breathed into existence,
your walking *******,
your girlfriend-clutching the edge of the bathtub with a wild drunken determination.

Looking at me instead of through me-
as if to figure out how my name could have lay so heavy, body indented between the two of you the first time you breathed my name at night.
It was more than once, this much I knew -
not because of the way your finger tips had once burned my bare back or the way that some of your clothes still smelt of my perfume or the fact that you'd almost moaned my name against her flesh before slipping into ecstacy,
but by the look on her face,
the determined urgency with which she sought resolution at the bottom of that bottle.

“Why. Huh?! Why?...” she asked herself, more than me before kicking off one of her shoes, I watched it clatter against the wall, the last sound before a heavy silence fell between us, interrupted only by the hum of music which now seemed far away.

Why?...
Why would I have the answer to that question?
How was he, or anyone really- supposed to have an answer to that question.
How, how was he supposed to suppress his souls true desire?  
How was he supposed to mold the shape of her body to fit his arms the way I once had,
how was he supposed to learn a new language of love  of love that no longer answered to my name ?
How was he supposed to forget all the letters I’d written him or the fact that she don’t quite call for him at night,
the fact that he doesn’t find himself choking in a face full of hair at 3AM because your subconscious doesn’t crave his body in your sleep. 
How was he supposed to forget all that?
How was he supposed to forget that in spite of that he never once told me he loved me.

I looked towards you, a women I thought I knew and realised now, only one thing-
you could not be angry at him for breathing the past into existence once more, as his sleeping mind mulled over the way my shoes clicked against the tiles we’d picked out together, roller bag following quickly after or the way I’d choked out his name when I read the messages you'd sent him.
You could not be angry at him for exploring his soul in his sleep, a soul that I’d once fully inhabited- that now somehow seemed hollow.
You had no right to be mad at a man who only managed to say 
‘I love you’
to me in his sleep.
You had no right to be angry because the way he loved you suddenly didn’t feel earth-shattering after you noticed the way his smile faltered when I walked into a room.
You cannot be angry at him for breathing the past into the present because we  both know he still carries me around in his spirit,
still carries around my picture- folded now, in his wallet.
We both know that at least it was only my name that lay between the two
of
you.
Unlike
you.
Your sordid body lay between my freshly ironed sheets when I left the apartment for more than two hours.
We both know the evidence of your existence did not inhabit him, it only inhabited the sheets which did not smell quite like his sweat only.

I looked at you now, reflections of us in the mirror. 
Mine, surprisingly poised and exhaled.
I exhaled all the notions I’d had of you, being more beautiful or funny or perhaps more ****** than me.
I exhaled the way I’d clutched myself crying, desperately trying to pull my life together, wishing I’d never read the text you’d sent him. Wishing I could stomach the thought of his arms around me once more. I exhaled all the memories of him and I.
All the wasted thoughts of the two of you because I realised now that you were now both just living in your brokenness.

I realised now it was not my place to tell you any of this.

"Why?" You slurred, lazily throwing the now empty bottle across the room towards me.

Because he used to whisper yours,
is what I had wanted to say instead:

“Probably just a bad dream.”

I turned, leaving the room knowing  I couldn’t bear witness to her pain in earnest. Not in true communion the way women ought to.
I grabbed your arm, more forcefully than I once had when touching you was habit.
Your eyes widened, studying my now unfamiliar face.

" She's in the bathroom now,she needs you" was all I said.
"Oh, umh thanks, hey I jus-" I could feel you were about to backslide, blurt out those late night whisperings which had so upset your girlfriend.
So I cut you off before it all began.

"Please just love her properly"
I hoped my absence had taught you at least that much.

There’s this girl.
The girl of your dreams I imagine,
A girl who is a dream I imagine.

Wrapped in skin the shade of your perfect daydream,  
perfectly moulded by the palm of your hand.

There’s this girl I imagine,
wrapped around your waist,
exploring the taste of your mouth which used to utter my name.
Not late at night because that was a tired cliché,
no during the day, when the fantasies die and the sun was always a little too truthful.
You used to whisper my name during the day,
during a time which still belong to you and I,                                               during a time in which I was still beautiful to you.

There’s this girl I imagine,
who doesn’t raise her voice when she’s angry,
who doesn’t swear,
who doesn’t dare to break your fragile perception of what a girl is suppossed to be.
You see,
I was all to violent a women for you.
Trying to confine and define me was like trying to wrap your hands around the wind, clutch it to your chest- it was just never meant to be.   I was always too talkative,
too vicacious,
I had too much of a personality.
I was art in the beginning, beautiful to look at and nothing more, but when that art became etched into your memories, and roamed your naked soul, I became all too much.

There’s this girl,
who you can wrap your imagination around,
who is comfortable with living in the confines of what you’d like her to be.

There's this girl you see, wrapped in a fantasy, a girl who isn't me.

There’s this girl you see,
who doesn’t question your silences,
who isn’t interested in your mind,
who praises the land you walk on comfortable walking in the cold of your shadow.

There’s this girl who doesn’t value her power and doesn’t expect you to either. There’s this girl who is an echo of who I used to be.

There's this girl you see,
who just isn't me.

Lately you've been hurtling stones- full force at my glass house,
little did you know that this is bulletproof glass.

" You were cold and needed light. So for you my love I set myself alight"

I wrote that a few years ago about a boy that wanted to keep warm until the winter ended not understanding that I am a fire breathing star called the sun.
Nurture yourself in your light.

and I wish the sound of my heart breaking wasn't so familiar.

Sunday, 10:30AM

I'm trying to resurrect my peace that now looks like a love deformed by your empty promises.

"I kissed a feminist once",
he says, face flushed blotchy, something heavy resting on his shoulders
maybe
“I kissed a feminist once,”
and everybody laughs
“she was cold as ice,” he says
and he doesn’t mention how I turned
warm beneath his fingers,
heated up like embers
and reduced his bed to flame and ashes
“God was she mean,” he says
but he hasn’t forgotten the time
I told him to be kind to himself, to
purge the poison from his veins and
scrape the smoke from his lungs
“I love you I love you I love you”
I said,
“please love yourself too”
“I kissed a feminist once,”
he says, to loud guffaws,
an elbow in his side
and he doesn’t say “her lips
were the softest thing to ever brush
my collar bone”
he doesn’t say “she made playlists in my mind”
or “she covered me like a blanket”
or “her teeth on my earlobe ripped me open and scattered me across the sheets of her twin bed”
he doesn’t say “I loved that
storm of a girl,
I loved her heavy at 4am I loved
her like pennies
at the bottom of a fountain
like memorized freckles
I loved her like depth perception
like opposable thumbs
I loved her I loved her I loved her”
and instead he shrugs
that heavy thing off his shoulders
and shrugs the feel of my lips
off his chest and he says,
“she was a crazy ***** anyway”
- Lily Cigale