Hope surges upward from your core and to the heart. It warms your blood as your heart crushes into itself twice every second and unbelievably, your mind starts to think of a million and one possibilities. Your hand tingles and finally, after what seemed like eons, you think you are feeling hope again. You start suppressing it out of reflex- an unconscious, uncontrollable action. You push it down, right back to the void it came from but its too late and your lips are curving upwards into a gentle smile. You anticipate euphoria -almost can feel it at the top of your fingertips and you finally let yourself believe and hope.

It comes crashing down without warning. For a second, you still smile because your mind could not process the disappointment yet. Then - hurt, sadness, shock - flits through your mind. You still hold on to your hope like a child who refuses to let go of candy. Your smile wavers. But just like grabbing onto handfuls of sand, hope will fall out through your tightly clasped fingers. You realised that your hold on hope is no longer and instead, it is replaced by cold, unforgiving reality.

Like an icy slap to your face, like an unexpected kick to the stomach, like a bite from a dog you have always love- that is how disappointment feels like.

Snaking down my wrist, beside pulsing, blue-green veins
Were obnoxious scars that left their mark
As if I needed another reminder of how some wounds could never heal.

This wrist of mine weathered more harm
Than a house in the eye of a hurricane
It bore the brunt of raw, undiluted, out of control anger
And frustration that my reflection brings.
As I stare back at the mirror,
I try to decipher the meaning behind beauty
And wonder if I could ever be like her.

But as my reflection cries and I see the swollen, red-rimmed eyes
I know only that I am not attractive
Not enough for you to think of me as worthy.

The angry welts and slashes are not merely scars
But ashes of the remains of my feelings,
the aftermath third degree burns
After you were done with your self-justified critique.
After you took away my light and peace.

That day I did not lost only you
But pieces of me I thought was mine.
You burned everything I thought I knew;
In the flames of doubt and insecurity,
I lost my mind.

I lost my foothold and you let me fall down the darkest abyss
Into my own version of hell
Straight out of my worst nightmare

When I saw a glimmer of light again as a breathing corpse,
No more than a frankenstein fixed together with thread
I saw the masterpiece of red on my wrists
And I saw that I was no longer whole.

All I know now is that I am afraid
Of being left behind by my own shadow
In this darkness I know now.

If jealousy is a green eyed monster,
Anxiety will be a blued eyed monster
With thorns that you do not take notice of
Until its too late and you are trapped in its suffocating embrace.
Save me, please.

Anxiety will rob you of your breath
She leaves you gasping for air when everyone can breathe just fine.
I can't look around,
Or they will know there is no heart next to my failing lungs.
Save me, please.

Anxiety will steal your light away
She will leave you in darkness
When she knows your fear of the dark will **** you.
My eyes look around wildly
Seeing yet unseeing
I need to find my way out of this crowd.
There are too many eyes that can see through me
She keeps me blind.
Save me, please

Anxiety will take away your courage
I am not brave enough to be in a room full of people.
I am not brave enough to talk to the girl sitting beside me for the last six months
I am not brave enough to look into your eyes.
Anxiety is a blue-eyed monster that won't give me back my courage.
Please please please, give it back.

Lie to me.
Tell me that I am everything I never was.
Tell me that I am beautiful and watch me tremble and shake.
Look into my eyes and lie to my face, will you?

Why did I build my home on such
an unsteady foundation
of lies and insecurity?
Time and time again,
I swallow my grief
just to blink back tears and brush the truth away.
Stay where you are and do not come near.
Don't cause a land slide that will surely destroy me.
I will be crushed under the weight of so many lies
weakly supported by kind intentions.

Hide the truth for me if you love me truly.
Cover my eyes and whisper into my ears: you are beautiful.
Protect me with your lies.

When you tell a lie,
does it taste like cancer in your mouth?
Perhaps you felt the taste of sour milk assault your senses.
Or perhaps it tasted like cloyingly sweet honey that soothe your throat as the words went up in flames.

Perhaps your words hold truth in them
but the world is twisted
and the promises you made were broken
even before it reached my ears.

this autumn
do not step on the dead leaves
to hear the satisfying crunch under your feet
for you have to respect
the things that mother nature could not save.

this autumn
do not open the windows
to catch the cold autumn breeze
the falling leaves might be blown in
and they will die and turn brown
right in front of you.

this autumn
darling, shut the door and hide in your sanctuary
everything is dying
you should not witness the destruction
and find any beauty in it.

this autumn
do not go to the cemetery
for the silence that you love.
for the next season
you might be under the snow.

Why do you fear the dead? They have only one face, albeit a decaying one.

When the sun rises,
the moon has no say but to leave the morning sky without a glance
Albeit sullenly, albeit unwillingly, he leaves the dark to turn into day again.

When the cold breeze turns
stronger, fiercer,
and the temperature starts falling,
autumn slips away imperceptibly,
in the dawn of winter.
Leaving behind dead leaves,
dead trees and death death death,
the sky will weep snowflakes.

When her tiger cubs mastered the art of hunting,
the tigress has to forsake her offsprings.
She abandons them in the dead of the night,
as they make their second ****.
There will be nothing but
indifference in those cold,
steely eyes.

Like the seasons, like nature itself, was it that natural for you to leave me? Were you the moon, autumn or tiger?

You walked past me without any flicker of recognition, and just like that, we were strangers again.

I have been so conflicted lately. Is it unwholesome not to wish, not to desire to place your trust in someone whom you lost faith in?
I feel like I have lost something very essential in this platonic relationship. I do not place my burdensome trust on a fragile shoulder easily and carelessly now. But then again, we are all just human, and my shoulders, like theirs, cannot bear a heavy pressure for long. Don't get me wrong, our friendship still holds true but I can no longer see the best in them.

I feel bad (by bad, i mean an undescribable whirlwind of feelings). I feel jaded, and sometimes I wonder why I cannot simply let go of the resentment and this sour, heart-wrenching feeling of betrayal. And I wonder ever harder why I do not want to mute out that voice in my mind that SCREAMS out : Alert! Alert! whenever I so much as glance at their passing shadows.

I ask myself why your name reminds me of open wounds and permanent scars. I ask myself why with every unnatural hesitation before a forced chuckle. I hate it. I abhor the grating-on-the-ears, awful imitation of genuine laughter. I ask myself why as I recognise our old photos, feeling like one half of a pair of heartbroken lovers, though between you and I, we have lost the title "soul sisters".

But, the answer is simple: We don't deserve it. They don't deserve my trust and I don't deserve to trust someone as easily again.

I wish I am sorry about this.

23.05.14.

The waves are crashing harder
than the sound of my pulse beating
The sea eagles flew ahead
Mighty and free, powerful with the gift of flight

A glimpse of a round, blue canvas above me is all I could see
as I lie down flat, on the sea bed.
The miniscule grains of sand are everywhere
on me, on my pale arms and down the curve of my spine

The mermaids tell me of the waves above me
and of the people that comes in floods of hundreds in the heat of summer
They invited me along to the swim to the top
but honey, I am tired and I do not try no more

Once I was from the land above
but slowly the currents drag me down
I tried to struggle but the waves didnt release its death-like grip on me.
It drowns me in a silence so deafening loud
Too tired to swim, too exhausted to care
I close my eyes and everything becomes pitch black
The sea swallowed me whole
I belonged to the sea now.

A long time ago, the people tried to save me
They came with a ladder to get me out
- the ladder that was the only chance I knew
I hesitated and I didnt know to reach out or not
then they were gone and I was alone again
After that for a longer time still
I wondered if I would have grabbed it with an intense fervor
or be deathly quiet and composed, sinking back into the darkness that hid everything the mermaids knew

Its dark down here in this abysm
I can hear the water pouring down
It hits my body without a warning
Its cold its freezing its numbing me
The damp sand is burying me and I can't scream out
The waves are threatening to fill this crevice

My anxiety is sky rocketing but my body is still
I will not leave this hole I am in after all.
This is the end I chose for me.

Emotions hit the hardest, at the things we keep hidden.

You snake around me.
I never see you coming.

Appearing in the tall grasses of people,
and disappearing like vapour,
You are not a rattlesnake, aren't you?
Your hushed strikes do not startle me anymore.
I am too numb by the hustle and bustle of the crowd.
I am too tired of this struggle to fade away.

Are you going to sink your fangs into me?
I should never have turn my back on a viper.
Your lethal venom surely brought on this illness that I am unable to heal.
This mental disease entered my bloodstream,
traveling so unobtrusively that I have not notice it take complete control over me.
You wreck me up inside
immobilising me in every conversation
every question that demands an answer I cannot give.
Is there an antidote to end this slow sweet torture?

Are you going to hide behind a corner?
Your forked tongue can sense my fear as i draw nearer.
I do not want to find myself falling into your embrace.
You will entwine me further into yourself,
Tangle me in your web of fear, anxiety and self destruction.
And even as you crush and constrict harder,
As I suffocate slowly and my lips turn blue,
I cannot find my voice.
I cannot ask for help.

Anxiety is like a python after all.
Its steals your breath and quietens your heart before swallowing you whole.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Soundlessly.

some days are so quiet
and the days go by peacefully without a word
these days are the best
believe me
i dont know whether i killed the voice in my mind
or the voice that is my own.
or is it the same?

some days are so quiet
you can hear the squeak of the mouse
that lives on the crumbs i drop on the floor,
when i am too bad to leave the bed,
or even this room that is my sanctuary.

some days are so quiet
i hear nothing
i dont hear any laughter.
maybe you think this is sad
but these days are my best.

Boy, don't tell me a lie.
Don't make me a promise you cannot keep.
I would rather live in the shadows,
then to be given light and to have the light taken away from me.
Don't write a poem for me.
I am not a girl who speaks and thinks about metaphors and the universe and love.

You talk about the seasons and you talk about our beginnings,
yet you cannot remember the trips you made to walk me home.
Now, would you believe me if i said i can tell you what month, day or hour it was?

So help me.
Don't talk to me because I have realised it was your words which hurt me most.
Don't promise me because I am always left with the shreds of your lies.
Don't write any more of your poems because I will keep them in my drawer but save it secretly in my heart.

Instead, cover my eyes and blind me.
Don't draw out this pain.
I have enough of your lies.
If you are going to try to give me a final promise,
Then the least you can do now
is to promise me
you will hurt me soon and break my heart swiftly.

I write this poem for my little sister
who still cries whenever an elderly
reminds her of her late grandmother
She cannot stop the tears long after the memories have assaulted her mind
It leaves her gasping for air and courage.

she knows that her loved ones
love her unconditionally
and she knows she love them back in the same way
even if they were in another realm that she would not enter,
not for a long time.

I write this poem for my baby brother
who has not seen reality for what it really is.
He still believes in the good in every person
and he does not understand the news
that tells him of deaths, murders and acts of terror

His friend's race or religion
or even their ****** orientation
don't matter to him as long as they are
funny, nice and friendly.
At the end of every arduous day,
it is the innocent spark in his eyes
that remind me that i was once naive about this world too.

I write this poem in the hopes that when they grow up
to be an angsty teenager or a bubbly youth
their hearts would stay pure and open
and not cracked like all of us.
I hope no girls will break my brother's unguarded heart
I hope my sister would still walk this earth, seeing with rose-tinted glasses.

I write this poem for these children
who were just like us,
before we became yet another cynical adult.

They say that " What doesn't **** you makes you stronger "
I would like to say you made me stronger
But I think you bored holes and dug crevices in my heart
And as I pump your presence throughout me
You rush into every tendon, every sinew, every fiber of me.
I guessed I became you.

I didn't want to be a monster initially
I had no idea that my pulse would weaken
With every smile i cracked, every word I exchanged with you.
I didn't know when I lost my pulse, the exact moment my heart gave up the struggle.
I thought you tasted like ambrosia
But you are toxic - deadly - to my soul.
I didn't want to admit it when you left my side,
But I guessed a small part of me knew that you had poisoned me with darkness.

When he took over your presence,
I didn't want to let him in.
I am afraid that when he take my hand in his,
He would find no pulse.
I can foresee his shock and his apprehension
How long can I hide that my heart no longer beats for anyone?

You left me, but you left parts of you with me.
Your coldness, your detachedness and your darkness.
I can't look into his eyes, can't look through those tinted hazel brown windows to discover more.
I am afraid that I will steal his soul
And like you, maybe I would not give it back.

I see the deadlines in things.

I see it in our conversation at 2am in the morning
When you made me muffle my laughter under the sheets
Hoping that my parents would not open my bedroom door.
Even in the haze of my joy, I could see the deadline of us blinking red.
But I was foolish,
I had hoped this thing between us would not spoil,
Even as the red numbers start their countdown.
      
Tick Tock Tick Tock

I can feel it in between us,
As thick as a wall, a barrier between our bodies
My heart clenches and I hurt,
When you smiled angelically and told me that we can be forever.
As I burn your smile into my memory,
I shook my head slightly.
How can there be a forever
when we must die as long as the clock ticks?

Tick Tock Tick Tock

I can hear the deadline in my palpitating pulse
It beats harder as I anticipate a reply *any reply
My heart skips a beat when you said you had forgotten to reply
For maybe the fifth time this fortnight.
When you said good night a few minutes later
My heart threatens to free fall.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

I can taste the deadline when you chose to end what we started.
You said "Maybe this is when we start to expire"
Bile rises up my throat and I cannot hold it in anymore.
I throw up just then.
This is my fear - that I am living in my nightmare
I cannot hold back what I feel for you.

I know our deadline is here - this is our closure.
You said goodbye and I whispered my farewell.
My clock stops ticking.

Let Time be kind to us.
Let us have one more sunrise -
before the sun sets forever, under that last bright horizon,
and the lights dim in our clouding eyes.

Before my eyes shut,
let us capture every transient moment in between
all the blinks we take,
and let it remain in our memory, a permanent forever,
before Time washes all away.

Like the waves reducing the unyielding cliffs,
to giant piles of beaten rocks and fine black sand,
Time will steal faces and conversations
leaving us to be nothing else
but an empty, clean state.

As I know now, of how every moment lived,
of how every turn of the unchanging, never ending cycle,
means one tiny step further into the deep unknown.
I pray,
for Time to be kind to the young.

Because no one and no thing can stop a heart from breaking ;
Because once sorrow is unleashed from the deepest crevices in ourselves, the flood and waves of hurt cannot be halted by even the strongest of all breakwaters ;
Because humans are social creatures and though the loneliest of us deny this, we cannot help but want love when there is no love to receive, want to hope though we know it is hopeless, want to believe though we know it is not to be or perhaps, never to be ;
That is why when the tears flow, I cannot just stop them.

We are everything and yet, only a number.

We are the beauty of the white lies we utter to keep our loved ones' minds at peace. We are the rainy afternoons with latte, a good novel and cafe music. We are the undying spirit, even when the earth shakes and crush us under destroyed buildings, we live on, we build homes again - we forget our pain.

We are the hope we give ourseleves, the rescue of broken hearts and the blind love we thought we knew everything about. We are a war within ourselves, the conflict between our heart and mind, with no one to triumph.

And yet we are a statistic
a "1 in 100 of us will die prematurely because of cancer"
We are a weight, a number on the scales
that haunts young girls till adulthood.
We are an age,
when youth means nothing because to live to old age is itself, nothing but an achievement as suicide rates continue to soar.
We are an exam grade,
when we know that school is simply a race for the stronger to rise over the weak, and friends are only for pretense.

We are everything. And yet, we continue to define ourselves as just a number.

No more swirling violent waters to drown in.
No longer will there be nothing but air beneath the soles of my feet.
Being fifteen made a fool out of me,
It felt like every person was in the right direction,
armed with the courage and faith
to seek the dream they are so sure of.
While they knew so fully well what was ahead of them,
I was without a map, searching for a compass desperately trying to find North and South.

It was scary, it was beautiful, it was emotional.
How do I describe youth in its purest, rawest form?
Do I call it a thunderstorm or a spring shower?
Was it an avalanche or were the snow flakes descending around me, landing ever so gently?

Fear is synonymous with youth, yet a year later,
I realised my fears are now unfounded.
No more fears to live with,
No more nightmares to dream alone in the night.
When I feel terror again, lost and without the briefest sense of direction,
I have learned to build bridges.
Never will I fall again
To the violent waters that threatened to engulf those who are young and careless.

There are faults along this desolate landscape. The concrete is falling away and stones litter the wide road.

Slowly, the rain starts. First with a light pitter patter and then later with hard knocks that dont let up. Slowly, the birds stop singing. They fly away. To the north, to the south or east or west, I do not know. I hardly felt their absence. It was the silence that made me lift up my head.

And what I see was the aftermath of an earthquake. The ancient colossal trees were snapped cleanly into half. The torrential rain was disappearing into enormous sinkholes. The collapsed buildings were ghosts watching over the dead city. The crowd has gone, so has the lights.

This destroyed land mirrors my destroyed mind. The birds have stopped singing. Everything is silent. And all I see when I open my eyes, is despondence.

*fault   (fôlt)
n.

1.
a. A character weakness, especially a minor one.

b. Something that impairs or detracts from physical perfection; a defect.

c. A mistake; an error.

2. Responsibility for a mistake or an offense; culpability.

3. Geology A fracture in the continuity of a rock formation caused by a shifting or dislodging of the earth's crust, in which adjacent surfaces are displaced relative to one another and parallel to the plane of fracture. 

There is poetry in each and everyone of us.

There is poetry in every rise and fall of our chests, when we take in oxygen that had given life to a tyrannasaurus rex before, just as they give us now.
There is poetry in every overwhelming emotion threatening to drown us at midnight. For without this sadness or bliss, our journey to the grave will be a drag.
There is poetry in every adventure we choose to begin. It could be a new, longer route to school or a new park to explore when it is twilight and the children leave the park for home.
There is poetry in the beginning of a sweet puppy love or a bad break up.

I can't call myself a poet yet, after all I do not deserve that title. But can't you see, the poetry we all are?

You used to matter so much to me.
I will breathe you in and refuse to let you out.
I keep our memories so tightly in my grasp,
nothing escapes from the past.
I will beat the love through out veins,
even when our hearts told us to give up.
I made sure that nothing could ever go wrong.
But when it did,
I could not change a thing.

Don't you see?
The things that matter so much to me in the past
no longer matters anymore.
The people who were my entire world-
Suddenly, I do not orbit around them like a lonesome dawrf planet.
When you wrench our relationship apart,
I had let everything go.
I had let everything that was in my grip,
fell out of my hands.
I saw them fall into a deeper part of my brain and although it seems like I still harbour them,
It's irrevocably gone now.

Nothing matters anymore.
I live in the shadows and the sun no longer shines on me.
But that is okay, because nothing matters.

its time to open the windows
and get some air into your lungs
to inhale and exhale deeply without thinking and thinking and thinking
they say that the eyes are the windows to your soul.
so its time you open the windows
and finally start seeing
without grey smog fogging over your eyes.

open the windows to your soul.

open the door and breathe
locking yourself in your room will give you
cobwebs and dust in the hidden corners of your heart,
the parts which you no longer seem to remember.
your ears no longer listen
your eyes no longer see
and i wonder if your heart still beat
as i see the unmoving lump under the sheets.

open the door to your heart.

its time to relax your tight vise on the dying lungs
if you hold on so tightly to your lungs,
just like how you held your loved ones so close to you
and wouldn't let them leave until you had to open your eyes to the truth
slowly, you cannot breathe
slowly, your heart cannot beat.

open the fist that is not letting go easily.

Our wings were clipped.
We never stood a chance.

They said take heart and what we seek will come,
So as they cover our eyes and blind us with promises
I dream of a better day with better dreams
But slowly my heart sinks
My hopes are anchored to a rock
And all the dreams have been dreamt.
In this tomb,
The same darkness welcomes me when I open my eyes.

We thought we could change our destiny
We didn't know they cast our future in stone
And as the grains of sands in this hourglass of time slipped away,
I knew that we were running out of seconds,
They didn't spare us dreams anyway.

I thought that I can metamorphose
And that this is only a stage that shall pass.
But the lies that I pull out of thin air
Isn't enough to convince myself.
I turn to them once more.
I couldn't see the sun but they said "Have hope."
And so I did.

In this darkness,
I hope they cannot hear my cries.
I learned the truth and everything they hid from us.
Our wings were clipped,
We never stood a chance.

I am not lonely, just alone.