Didn't you know I kept a few smiles in my pockets?
Lined against tissues with lipstick prints on them.

(Thank you)
For giving people the strange,
seemingly entitled right to hurt me.
Truth is, the difference between you and I is that:
Yes, I hurt you.
At least I can be the only one to blame.
And it is only me that can stitch sorry
into wounds if needed.
But you let them say all the ***** words for my ears.
And that's the one of the saddest realizations.
You let them, with ease & sweet sympathy.

Giving up:

It is when you look at the chef's knife at a strange hour wondering if it is sharp enough to draw blood. You already know it is, but the white lies beg to stay within your skin.

Don't you dare say I gave up, or I am giving up.

1. Especially when I cry with anger glassing over my eyes.
Bleeding out all the bad truths & rusty faults, for a better day.
I have not given up if I look for truth over sweet fiction.

2. How ferociously warm and red my cheeks are. The kind of red reminicent of berry stains in tumbled laundry. Truth is they were slapped by a ghost's hands.

Or when I found out that hot tears and hot showers feel the same.

Do not say I lack the strength to stay here, when my veins dance to a heartbeat; loud & defiant.

Don't ever say to someone: 'You gave up easily' unless you know the exact & imperfectly precise way their thoughts align into dizzy constellations.
Like the way you know the back of your hand.

*Don't.

A stomach full of disappointment.

Price: Lips stiched by all words I wished to say.
*Discount: If you have the kind of bitterness found in burnt toast.

I'll burst into a slow bloom
from
the tongues & flickers
of
fire
itself.

For I have cut through spidery wisps of white lies.
We have both lived through pin-****** of pain
and
see, I told you there would be smudges of sunshine again.

Once I saw an x-ray of a heart and I was alarmed by its smallness, its translucence.
A thing we ask entirely too much of.

Blame is a highly, highly strange thing.
Latching onto anything, it sews itself into the weak, the strong, the inbetweeners.

{Like fire-flies to light. Vice-versa. }

Simply because the world needs a bad guy.

In the same way, we need good hearts.

There was a time I hadn't met eyes with you.

Starry it was before and simply galaxies after.

You begin to realize love is a home, no longer a word or two syllables.

The shy kiss, the blurting of I love you.

Being the voice when the other cannot speak.

Tears & sobs catching at the hinges of swollen throats when you both know it is time to let go.

And let go as we may, but I'll hold on to what we have made.

Remember, we are the grand-daughters of the witches they couldn't *burn.

What if flowers bloom in fire & glass-jars?

Perhaps, in muted sunshine, melding with peaks of incandescence & fire-flies, something indestructible will be left.

I write to breathe a l i t t le easier.

Black ink adorns the nook and cranny of my fingertips, hugging even harder upon once-blank pages.

I try to exhale out the thoughts of meaness, madness and spice from this warm body.

To keep a smidgin, a flutter of innocence from a different time & place.

Most importantly, those 10:51pm, 3:22am thoughts written onto paper is a nudge of a reminder: Sleep. Sleep better.

You forgot to pull out the blunt knife you put in her left shoulder-blade.

She's not all sharp edges, rusted metal & stale blood that you hoped for.
She's all more than that.
She is *alive.

You absolutely do not get the honor of burning a numerical value on her self-worth.

You certainly do not get to measure that assumption from the hem-line tailored on her thighs. Or the daring dresses she wore because it made her feel a different kind of beautiful.

She is not asking for it. What she will demand for is neither your attention nor stares. She wants respect.
Can you do that?

Oh, and when you are emboldened by your 'witty' validation that she  is a ‘****’ or of promiscuous nature, all down to the clothes she wears on her back.

Don’t.

Cotton stitches against warm skin. (She was enjoying a walk.)

Silk swathes on slightly chilled bones. (She forgot her jacket on a Wednesday night out with friends.)

Thick knits adorn even more layers of cotton. (It was a winter night.)

Their cold lips pursed by the late hour, scream silence.

With that validation, you normalise and excuse the acts of ****, soul-destructing ****** offences.
For you have blamed the victim.

You excuse a depraved psychological state.

The veins that choked from ice and no’s. You have forgotten.

Rapists and ****** offenders do not get the luxury of being excused.

Neither do you, ****.

And his kisses on her skin felt like wisps of butterfly wings,
then to a slow inferno.

One of the bitter-as-burnt-toast kind of things in the world is when a writer's (1) book remains empty for a time where even their clock ceased
ticking."

{She used to write in the way flowers needed a cold snap before they could bloom.}

We cry, in hope and in vain, that
all the inky blues, fiery reds, deep bruises of purples will weep out.

What is gold cannot stay.

Not fully or whole-heartedly anyway.

On some days, the sky is greyier as if it is shaded in by a 6B pencil.

Black as charcoal with a very shaky weak wrist.

Everything that passes through chapped & soured bitten-back lips tastes like weak tea.

(I think sugar cubes were all eaten.)

Oh, your head hurts, aches, like bad bruises from hitting the sharp edge of the table.
Cotton bandages and one light kiss above the left eyebrow helps.

And your chest is too tight, the kind of feeling from shoelaces knotted hard against your ankles.

*Use safety scissors.

And so, they ran as far as 7 year old muscles would let.

Cutting across the softened hues of green and pinks on the end of a day.

Where skinned knees were kissed with the warm promise that the smarting pain would be gone.

Pinkys said shy hellos under bed-sheet tents,
their hair haloed by the sunshine
Eyes brighter, and cheeks crimson and freckled,

all ready to take on the
great big world.

In these writings, we lie.

A smidgen of red, black, navy-blue ink over truth.  

Cross outs over uglier words, dotted full stops to string the infinite memories.

To make broken glass and porcelein cups whole again.

The kind of facts we did not wish to know, the kind that numbed your veins even in the summer.
We paint them white.

We are liars.
But you were my first *truth.

My words fall out

bolder {bigger and bubbled as if bee-stung},

then I meant.

Perhaps, that is why promises get broken.

Pinky finger bones crinkle and crumble like egg tarts and raw sugar.

The words, the lies, the truth are all bigger than my hands, heart can give you.

You make me feel pretty,

delicate as fairies, a bit cheekier than usual

in an old faded grey -stretched by the tumbles of the washing machine and dulled by the sunshine- t-shirt and old boxer shorts.

The scary, bold whisper of a truth is that pinning blame is careless.

You feel the slow *****; a smart of pain.

A sweet sting.

Just enough to draw blood to the surface, but not enough for a bandage.

Hold on a little longer.

Your veins need a pinch of time + a few more starry nights to become a little more impervious.

Oh, you are still fragile, but the kind of soft and all raw edges.

A bruise of a reminder that you have waltzed on broken fractures & bones of wishes hollowed out too soon.

And you are still here,

blood burnt out into alchemy.

You are quite like magic.

*We all are.

Slowly but surely, you crept into my dreams by the dusty backdoor.

(Situated 10 fingersteps down my left collarbone + blush of shyness, your lips pressed against flesh, blood & heartbeat.)

The husky catch in his words sinks, dapples and brushes your skin.

(And his hands are still in his pockets.)

Without any more words, I liked my body; the skin, the rusted edges, the ribboned ends of veins and blood more than I ever did in that moment.

And he held her hand so tight, she could feel how hard bones are. Even against flesh and blood.

She thought her bones may crack.

But it never quite occurred to her, he had been broken and is still *breaking.

Mirrors hold both truth and lies.

*Which one do you believe in?

Sentimental tugs of the sunshine plays on my bare skin and white sheets,

wake up.

Today, the next and the very next will be richer than dreams.

"Stay a little longer," he said.

The wink of urge, the want she felt in her chest was sharp and careful.

Mirroring the tendency to stir up the settled sugar at the bottom of a stained coffee mugs and tea-cups.

I imagined the cutting words that escaped from my lips, multiplied it by 1,
(I remembered the first time I smiled because of you.)
it stung very sweetly.

Then, x2, guilt heavy and dense pillowing under the guise of comfort.

x3 I still remember how my voice sounded when I said Yes,
it's still the truth.

Another time, just for good measure.

A single eyelash, one orchird petal and a flannel shirt button.

She kept them in an old shoebox sandwiched against old sneakers with laces knotted like lovers, old yellowing papers and letters. All of which had dated back 5, seven, 11, twenty-1, 29 years ago.

All of them incongruous objects, but they all belong in the past.
I outgrew them, my mind memorized all the words on those pages.
Once from a person I knew.

I don't love him.
Lie

I loved him.
past tense

I had loved him.
still past-tense

I love him.
*Present tense. It's now.

We cannot only think of the pretty things in life,
then where would we find ourselves?

Should there ever be a backward twirling of the clock gears, a paisley maze of metal and magic to occur,

every tear will trace back to its watery scars.
Even the ropes shackling hearts will fray,
shackles broken.
Bits and crumbs of dim memories become whole again.
Just as sweet.
And perhaps, the bad will seep back in.
The dead will open their eyes again.
Roughly stiched in wounds so long ago, where even the owner has forgotten to hem back up the stiches to the surface.
The white cotton thread would have never met the needle's eye.
A baby's nursery room may gather more dust than expected.

On some days, I write bolder, thicker & harder, just to prove not everything is empty and blank.

And that my words are just as heavy and all raw edges like *yours.