this one is for you
this is my apology
it's not a haiku

and i could never understand
why i loved you more,
or why i loved you at all,
because you left bruises on my heart
and bruises on my skin and i forgot
the taste of your lips because i was
drowning in my tears
and love is supposed to be drowning in a
good way, not drowning in a
“oh my god there’s so much
blood” kind of way.

and i have yet to understand why
you loved her more
or why you loved her at all
because saying her name burned your throat
worse than alcohol did and she left you
with a smile on her face and
her knife in your chest but you
still crawled after her.

   -*but maybe it’s human nature to want what makes our insides turn

i do not enjoy having a collection of sticky notes
covered in conversation topics
because you never held up your end
it is true that one person always loves more
but the other side needs to give something
you knew this would happen when i have to go for my own self respect
i should have known when you stopped sending good morning texts
or when your texts didn't come at all until late at night

maybe i should've turned my phone off or leave you on read
when you told me about the first girl, or the second, or the third
but i always thought you were worth it
you always listened, you respected my boundaries
it's probably easy when you have six other girls who will give you what  i protect
you killed me over and over again
and you know it

unless you can write a story about someone from omniscient point of view, without skewed romanticism and self-centered mystification, you don't know the person. love is never a first person narrative. you can't just say you don't remember. no, i won't let you have that postmodern indulgence, you can't be unreliable narrator.

but what are you then? the almighty author? god? those boys been long dead and gone, and i just don't know anymore where i stand, or where you stood. do you think about me ever? do you sometimes write about me? am i perfect in your memory? do you remember the smell of my perfume? will you be able to write about me, trying to pick the right shade of lipstick to wear?

dua jiwa, berdiri di tepi bukit
kehidupan tidak pernah menyatukan mereka
bukan, bukan masalah cinta
hanya kenangan itu egois,
kenangan tidak mau hilang ingatan

bagaimana kau masih bisa percaya
waktu itu berjalan maju
jika engkau dapat dengan mudah mematahkan detik-detiknya
dan kenangan adalah salah satu kemunduran
yang kita percayai sebagai sebuah kemajuan?

hey
let's catch up
on things
on life
on our feelings

"percayalah kita hanya ujian bagi diri masing-masing. tuhan hanya ingin tahu kita lebih mencintai penciptanya atau ciptaannya"

"hanya ujian?  sekali pun aku tidak pernah melihatmu sebagai ujian"

"... maaf"

okay, so i was the other woman.

okay, so i can’t call it that. so we were never a thing, never a label, never announced. so she was the pretty one and i was the *******. so i was never your first choice but i was, for a minute, your second.

okay, so maybe it started as cheap entertainment on the nights beer and phone calls weren’t enough and distance got the best of you. maybe i loved you then but i think i hate you now.

okay, so maybe i don’t hate you. maybe i’m just trying to pretend we never happened because maybe if it was all in my head i’d be over it by now. maybe i’m just tired, okay? of being the back-up girl. of being the one who stays, who breaks, who sits in the basement of a burning house just to feel the carpet one more time.
i just don’t want to burn anymore.

this is the part of the story
where i think of
all the erased words and all
of the things i haven't said
and the fairest thing i can think to do
is to always let you know
where my heart is

   -*you, you, you

are you more barbed wire or picket fence?
because lately i've been feeling like you're a wall and
you used to be a door so don't mind the knocking
but i swear i've been allowed in before
and it's just a little confusing when you won't look me in the eyes or sit anywhere near me and
i understand this is like chugging a cup of broken nails
but i just want to know how your day was

so when i tell you my tarot deck
keeps screaming LACK OF CLOSURE,
i don't mean it as a metaphor.
i mean that i might hide inside my poems,
but you always knew where to find me.

cara tuhan menguji ciptaannya memang ada saja
harta
takhta
kuasa
dan aku; kamu

i look at myself from distance and
i look like a stranger.
i am nothing like
i imagine myself to be.
i am not special.
i hurt people

I start to regret everything that happened in March. I don’t want them anymore. You can keep all the memories, if it were even worth remembering for you—but do me a favor and please please please don’t get them mixed up with your other girls’.

This is all the goodbye I should’ve meant. The jealously are worth nothing. Go ahead and love her and watch me watch you unflinching. Let’s just highlight the whole pages and marked them nonsense. I had to admit I still try to find us sometimes in the ripped papers. [noted that it is ripped. noted that I shoved it down the fire now]

I won’t let you ruin my favorite song. I won’t let you ruin this safe heaven. This is where I learn to put myself above the idea of you / of letting you go / of wishing you would just ******* come back. This where I stop romanticizing pain. This is where I stop scrubbing my skin with glass to dug you up. This to say: I let you hurt me—that shouldn’t have happened. I start to be honest to myself: you don’t love me. you left. that isn’t really the end of the world.

i feel like a train station and what i mean is, i am something liminal. what i mean is, everyone is always leaving. it is always getting dark and everything is always too loud. there is ruin where ruin shouldn't be. there is stench of bad decisions in the dirt. what i mean is, i am always halfway to a beautiful place. i have only seen heaven from the postcards
   -*my heaven would be a love without betrayal

May, we meet again
with the cold air starts to creep in
and familiar feelings tried to settle in
i told him
"don't make me fall if you don't plan on catching me,
i may not survive the fall this time"
i get scared and this time it's contagious
something in me is breathless, a little lost, a little more alive than i was before
May,
may we meet again

his hand on my hips
my fingers stroking his hair
i dare you not to call that poetry

i am broken in all the ways you cannnot love
   -*ten words poem

so you didn't hit the gas
so there's no runaway story here
so we didn’t call ourselves Bonnie and Clyde
i never cut my hair, yours never turned blue
in this city, i don’t even recall your name,
and i’m better for it.

tell me about the night
you wanted to burn the dictionary
when you couldn't find a word
that fit what it felt like the day he left

i know,
i know,
lets just stay here
if we keep playing with matches
there's a good chance
we'll turn to ashes

I love cool colours and warm feelings.
What he gave me was
the exact opposite; he was cold most of the time
and he took me places under the sunshine
just a little bit too much.
I rarely hold his hands
but at least they’re warm.
What I didn’t know was
his hands are warm from holding
many other girls' hands
just a little bit too tight.

He was always full of uncertainty.
I was never sure what is coming next,
like it could be winning a lottery
or a car crash
and there was no in between
when it comes to him.

and that’s how it always goes.
he shatters not only your heart but also your soul and mind
and abandons you in the most awful way,
and you’re the one who goes crawling back to him
with what’s left of your broken body,
but his door is locked.

that’s how it always goes; you send him three messages in a row
and they remain unanswered,
as if you were the heartless ***** who did something terrible
when in reality he should be the one filling your inbox
with apologies and saturating your answerphone
with desperate pleas.

that’s how it always goes; he’s the one who mistreated you
and he won’t say a word to you again as if he was the victim,
and you, who should be happy he’s gone
and cursing him with all you’ve got,
gently stroke the bruises he left on your soul,
and you ask for more, and you beg him to take you back.
but that’s how it always goes; now  you know what stockholm syndrome is all about.

whatever we have done, love
i think we should
do it all over again
until we can't tell
which is the sin
which is the absolution

if they ask you about me,
tell them
"she was the only one
who loved me with honesty
and i broke her"

do you believe him again
when he crawls through your phone
tries to convince you so bad
that he needs you

do you believe him again
open up your heart
scoop out the pain
carve him deep into you

and when you believe him again
how much are you lying to yourself
when you know what he'll do
but you do believe him
because he means everything to you

breathe, baby
breathe,
the world is not ending
and neither are we
no matter how much
it feels like it is

if you ever wonder
if it hurts to have to let you go
just remember that
i had to cut off my fingers
to **** the part of me
that was still holding on to you

you shouldn't have asked me how i felt
or i shouldn't have lied and said "this isn't the right time"
i know i shouldn't
and now i'm thinking about it
about how i'm pushing everyone out of my life
because you broke my heart into a hundred pieces
and it took me decade to fix every slab into the other
i shouldn't have made you leave
i know i shouldn't
i heard things about bad endings
and to me it always looked like you leaving

he said he never stopped loving me
but she was better at making you happy
and i was better at pretending
i didn't want to chug down
bottles of liquor
every time i look through your phone

heart pumping
sinful daydreams
you are the danger i'm getting into
to dive in
head first

look,
if your dream girl is her
then sorry to bother you, sorry to stay for so long.
sorry i was the one door that wouldn't shut
sorry  i was the one street that didn't end,
sorry i ******* loved you enough to take whatever ******* you pulled,
sorry for the time you said "i only feel better when i'm with you",
sorry for telling you it was okay,
sorry for believing you were something gold not something dead inside.
sorry for the names i've called you and the times i've called you.

sorry for the poems i used to write about you when i felt desperate,
sorry for the times i opened up to you when you were screaming at me to stop,
sorry for thinking you could save me,
sorry for thinking i could save you.

so look,
if your dream girl is her
don't wake up from it.
i won't be here when you do.

i found heaven;
between the pauses of his drunk voice at 1 AM
and when his finger travel down my spine
i found hell in the morning;
he’s only ever mine when his other girls are asleep
i found hell in his wandering eyes in other girls’ lips, neck, eyes
i found hell in boundaries,
i found hell in convincing myself he never love me.

i found heaven in loving him
i found hell in having to leave first

so take that, Cupid
i stitched the wound
your stupid arrow left in me
with my own hands
yes, they are shaking
but they did the job

and i pray to God
that my marriage
doesn't poison my children one day
like my mother's and father's
did to me
   -*i fear it will

i slowly lose you
like the love we used to have

i slowly lose you
like the sanity i used to have

i slowly lose you
i had you by a thread

i slowly lose you
you've always had me by my neck

so in love, you're so in love with him
you think he must be some kind of saint,
and angel sent from heaven who tucks you in at night

you think "this is fairy tale love",
this is "there will be ballads written after us" love,
this is "there's fire in the attic and flood in the basement but i don't care because i'm with you" love

and i guess that's the problem
this is unconditional in the way
that he doesn't even need to love you back
in the same way

but you still love him, anyway,
this is still fairy tale love,
it's just the kind that ends with sleeping beauty sleeping forever
because eventually the prince does sneak out the window
eventually he stops coming back
eventually he stops trying

   -*watch out for warning signs before you run out of road

it's not that i meant to break your heart
it's just that some days i wake up and i can't feel anything
towards anything nor anyone
and i promise that hurts me too

the angel got a knife and i've got skin to spare
so we find a way to god's attention and he doesn't see
i don't understand:
who couldn't notice so much blood?
who could watch this mess and still say nothing?

love laugh in our faces
when we say we know what we are doing
as if we aren't children but with longer limbs
and longer list of things we didn't get to achieve

this will always be a sin
and you've never been good with confessions
every word i said is a punchline because
you're always laughing in the face of forgiveness
all i ever did was trying to fall in love
in a way that doesn't leave my fist through the wall

i don't want magic if it's tragic
but here's another metaphor for you
i am the little match girl
and you are my every delusion
i don't like the story
but i like the way you sound over the phone
and i like to remember you in the dark
without the light to highlight the pain
just playlist full of sad songs all over again
cliche
but i want to write about our conversation
about the way you laughed
about when we stayed
before the fire unlit, before the final match burnt
remember all the things you said to me?
i stop searching where they went long time ago
because they're just reminder of how mundane you turn things into
i ran out of matches and i don't know what to do

you say "i love you"
but i can hear your lies through the cracks in your voice
lights always find it's way through things that are broken
but this doesn't make me feel warm
it makes me feel cold
like a breeze is blowing through a hole in my chest
where my heart supposed to be
i see how your eyes wander
and how you won't meet my gaze anymore
i see how you don't love me
i'm not sure how to put us back together
when we're in this many pieces
but in complete honesty
i don't think i want to

when you said "i love you" was it a lie or a wish?

i guess it's much more easier
for me to let you go
if i was being selfish
i'd tell you the truth
all of them
the night feelings,
the secret poetry,
the late night imagination,
the silence prayers

but i realize how selfish it would be
and the destruction it would make
so let me just continue what i do best
to love you in silence,
in everything i see,
in everything i hear,
in everything i touch,
in everything i feel
   -*secretly

setanmu itu,

ia masih menghampiriku
duduk di ujung kuku kakiku
bersabda sepanjang malam
agar aku tidak pernah lupa
pada satu pertanyaannya:

mengapa
aku sampai membakar diri
untuk menjual jiwa
pada nyala sepercik
padahal lamanya
tak akan lebih dari sedetik

kenapa, tanyanya,
aku bersikap tak acuh
padahal hati ingin bertaruh
tetapi malah memilih menjauh
dengan terseok-seok pula lumpuh

kenapa,
balik kutanya,
kenapa
kamu masih di sini?

i'm sorry i turned you into monster in my writings
    -*ten words poem

i still got your love bite but not your love
   -*ten words poetry

i woke up missing you today
i know i shouldn't
loving you is much like addiction i'm trying to quit
but always fail miserably