Hello guys! I think i'll be spending time not writing for a while. It's gotten a bit hard and i need to figure things out and maybe learn to get better. I will still be on here to read your works from time to time, but my poetry will be sparse. I'll be back soon, though, and I will see you then!

"It feels like swallowing nails for saying this-- but for you, I wanted all that cliche, Valentine's day cheesiness. On any other day, for any other person, I would puke my guts out and rather **** myself than be a girl with hearts for eyes and roses for sleeves. I never thought I'd want what other couples had that I scoffed at, condemned, ridiculed and spited because for the longest time i thought I was too good for all of that... until i met you. Right then, I realized that the only thing worse than shaming people for what they had was falsely glorifying my own loneliness as something grand was that there  was nothing worse than loving without being loved back."

Today is the one day of the year when all your romantic notions come to die slow, brutal, merciless and ****** deaths and all one can do is stand by watching. On this day, each year, over the span of two decades, the hope and belief in such a holiday dwindles as time goes by. Bit by crumbling bit, the desires and the wishes of a hopeless romantic falls away into the abyss of nothingness and soon, I will be swallowed up by darkness— a skeptic, a cynic; bitter to my own lonely end.

I am also on tumblr at: paleredevil.tumblr.com

It’s strange. It’s so easy to be happy for someone else. Deep down, my senses grant well-wishes to every happy couple that roams the earth on this blessed day with the utmost sincerity one could muster. Today, I saw a man buying flowers, the expensive kind with the colorful textured wrapping. The petals looked vibrant, the leaves shone stiff and green when the sun peppered it with brightness. It was clean and beautiful, a stark contrast to the man who was holding them who was scruffy and had grime on his face. The clothes he wore had much wear on them and he was wearing a very old pair of slippers and yet, the smile he wore when the florist exchanged the goods with him was only full of happiness and pride. He held the bouquet close, and had to take a jeepney home from the spare change he counted in his hand. As a person who knew flowers on this day was a valuable commodity, that bouquet could not have been cheap and yet he took the time and money to buy it anyway. People milling about the flower shops were really an odd bunch. There were boys from high school, awkward and shy, buying roses. There were “bad boys” who chose the yellow chrysanthemums and hid their blushes when their friends teased them. The air was full of the scent of greenery and an optimism that no amount of car exhaust could overcome. Weather girlfriend, wife, mistress, or lover…. at least I knew these men remembered flowers.

I am also on tumblr at : paleredevil.tumblr.com

Today at the supermarket, I felt the first pang of jealousy and spite for this holiday. I’ve had no reason to feel this way before when I had not known the faces of love nor felt the need to recognize it. Around me, stores advertised shelves of red hearts and roses, to me as if colored by blood or red-lipped kisses. There were gift cards with the generic greetings and teddy bears that looked so cuddly, the tools of a capitalist trade that made me sick to my knees.

And yet I wanted it all. I wanted someone to give me flowers, I wanted the cheesy lines, the dreamy promises. I wanted cheap plastic hearts and scented letters and felt a loss and a longing for them I never knew I had. I felt hate the first time around and finally knew why women could be so cruel and so bitter. Right in front of me, sprawled on every empty surface, embodied in every molecule was a promise once made to every little girl and boy on this earth: that they would find love, they would find the one. How easily could some people take all of this for granted? After a week, they threw away the flowers. In a year, the letters would be forgotten, the boy gone and the love replaced. For once in my life I knew what it was like to love someone and to not be loved in return.

The fear crept from my stomach to my fingertips like wildfire and snuffed the passion that fueled the entities that grow inside me. I remember your face, so childlike and kind— then your back as you walked away from me. At home, I knew I wasn’t going to get flowers, i knew my bed was going to be cold. I knew you weren’t going to call or plan anything special. I knew what it was like to be lonely even if you said i was not alone. If you were under the presumption that since I was oh so smart and badass, liberated and nonchalant that I would not mind an absent holiday, you were wrong, my darling. You and me both. When you told me you were spending time at with your family up north tonight instead of Valentine’s day, I wondered — in my own delusions of the insecure— if that was fancy code and your way of explaining Your time with her, instead of a day of just you and me.

I am also on tumblr at: paleredevil.tumblr.com

I thought about him, about the one they called the ONE. I wondered once more where he was and what our valentine’s day would look like. Or how he would look like. I tried ignoring the nagging threat that maybe he wasn’t you and wasn’t ever going to be you no matter how much I wanted it to be you because you didn’t want it to be you.

Or you didn’t want me.

I’ll admit I had wished for a semblance of celebration, a hope that this was the year and this was the day when all that saints and sinners had vowed the forgiving God to do would be met and done without impunity. Yet, how could I expect you to understand when you did not know what it was like to be lonely? To have someone you loved with all your heart until every bone in your body ached so close and yet so out of reach?

You. You’re okay with your solitude, prefer it, crave it — whereas I, pitiful dreamer and hopeful me had so desperately clung to the hope that maybe you would change your mind. I’ll admit it. I’ll admit that for nights now I have been living in fear that one day you would leave me for someone better, for someone you loved long ago and have lost and I was just a temporary replacement. People leave, they always do… so why do I still have trouble accepting that? Alone on a day meant for hearts and lovers, I sit thinking about the man I dreamed you up to be and the man you are I love them both but something is stopping one from becoming the other and if there is one thing I can’t fix it’s you.

I am also on tumblr at : paleredevil.tumblr.com

I know I am intelligent enough to know better than to weigh my worth in plastic flowers, mass-produced teddy bears and balloon hearts but I can’t seem to shake the small bubbles of jealousy and desire — two dangerous devils of seductive temptation — that make me want those things too.

Are these supposed to make me feel more than worthy of love? Are these supposed to measure how much you love me, on a holiday where expressions of passion are mandated and required? I’d like to think that our love, the one we will have and share will be more than this. It will not be limited to one day of the year, but will be manifested in every single day, every small moment, every precious smile and meaningful look. Think of it. 365 days of being together; 365 mornings of waking up next to each other, of morning coffee and showers. Between us, the world will stand down and keep quiet, fall to its knees in sheer awe at the magnitude and intensity of the passion we share. What does one day out of a year have for our hundreds? Why should I stick to just one day when everyday I am free and oh so very willing to keep reminding you that… I love you.