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

i knew rejection,
not from a boy
but from my family
from the people on television
from dresses that refused to sit calmly on my body
i knew loss, not from death
but from my friend who drifted away
from the collars i had to pull up
and the skirts i had to tug down,
from the hunched shoulders and buttoned coats
to hide the body people don’t want to see

i've been taught that love is beautiful and kind
but it isn't like that at all
it is beautiful,
but it is a terrible beauty,
a ruthless one,
and you fall-
y o u   f a l l
and the thing is: you want to
you don't care what's coming next
you just want who your heart beats for

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.

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.

katakanlah, aku celaka
tersandung ke dalam lumbung asmara.
celaka kah aku
mengendap-endap di sekitar pintu hati-mu?
katakanlah, aku terkutuk
seorang yang tak diundang
tak semestinya duduk di ruang tamu.
terkutuk kah aku
menaruh asa di atas hampa?

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 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

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.

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

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.

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

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

i wish you knew how to stay
and i wish i knew how to ask

im the one who usually held on tighter instead of letting go
so i water this love knowing very well your thorns are going to make me bleed
and sometimes it was red
sometimes it was poetry
sometimes it was hide and seek with your “i love you”s
but im the one who chose to let go now
and i still bleed occasionally
sometimes it was regret
sometimes it was the way you used to sound over the phone
and sometimes its nothing
and nothing is the worst way to bleed

i know you loved me
the same way you tried not to cry
singing your saddest song
and i wish i can say i see the regret in your eyes
when you said you're sorry

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

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.

how do i say "i miss you"
in a way that will make your heart ache
as much as mine does

you called me lovely and kissed her goodnight
i fell fast and i fell hard
he's like touching a flame and burning myself every time
but somehow i never learn
it breaks my heart that you give everything i gave you to her

we've always been about
grey zones and blurred lines.
warm sunshine one day,
raging storm the next

don't blame me for believing in your lies
you've always seem so convincing
you could say you're a god
and i would believe you in that instance

but lying is your religion
and your lie is what you preach
with your ego as your holy book
but ******* it, i'd swallow poison if it tasted like you

   -*should've been, could've been, never was, ... someday?

i run with demons. i sit at the table with lucifer and he tells me his secrets. we sip cyanide from crystal goblets and ignore the blood dripping from each other’s mouths. it creates rivers beneath our feet. he says that i am his favourite. when he’s feeling daring he takes me to church for the hell of it, just to turn heads. that was when i first met you. you wore your sunday best and i wore mine and when your mother caught you staring she murmured a prayer. you had an ethereal glow about you and i found myself coughing up holy water hours after the encounter had passed. you’re terrifying. angels would tear their own wings out for you. they would **** themselves to walk the earth. you terrify me because up until the moment we met, i was happy with being a monster. i didn’t mind the flames, the anguish, the bullets that cascaded down on me, the rot. but then i got a taste for the figs that grow on your tree and i found that i would be willing to catch an angel and rip out its wings just so i could give them to you. i would build you a cathedral and i’d read your book, learn your hymns, step into the light just so i’d never have to tear my eyes away from yours ever again.

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 make my heart race
and you make my heart stop
but you drop it like a bad habit
and i'm the one who is addicted

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

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.

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

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

you think any of it matters? i laugh in the face of every new day as soon as the moon disappears and the sun tries to take its place. i chew on the skin around my jagged fingernails and try not to scream at everyone that passes me by. because what’s the point of any of it? what’s the point of the violet bruises, the cathedrals, the retching and the gift boxes and the way her eyes light up when she looks at his face? it isn’t going to save me, it’s not going to save you either. my body aches and it’s brimming with repressed screams in every colour and i want to tell everybody that loving me didn’t help me, not even a bit.

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

i’ve been thinking about how thin i can get
so then maybe you’ll take me with you
if i take up less space maybe you’ll find room for me in your life
if i close my mouth more and the room doesn’t fill with words we don’t mean
i won’t be able to hold you accountable for feelings you never had to begin with
maybe if i can squeeze into a double small you’ll find somewhere for me in your arms
you’ll find a place for me to drown in your thoughts
and you’ll think “wow she doesn’t take up much room at all”
maybe if my physical self wouldn’t drown on a sentence of "i’m sorry"
you’d find a place for me to go with you;
a place for me in you
and maybe just maybe there’d be a home for me
and maybe just ******* maybe i’d be enough
i’d have to stop searching for love where it doesn’t exist and you’d see that i only do the things i do
because more than anything i want you to love me too
more than anything i want you
i keep looking for something and i think i’m dying because this can’t be living
should i keep searching for some kind of meaning?

maybe i need to stop making sense out of everything
like you saying i'm the only one in your heart
while you kiss every other girls that catch your eyes ever made any sense,
like me taking you back after all the knife you stabbed on my back ever made any sense,
like anything related to us ever made any sense,
like we ever made any sense

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

your arms are still my home
despite how many girls
you have invited in

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

in another universe:
you don’t leave the city.
my hand is still in yours,
it’s 10:40am,
you can't take your eyes off of me while you eat your brunch.
we never have to worry about making it work,
because it just does,
it always has.
and you hold my hand,
and (this time) you don’t let go.

in another universe:
we never meet.
or maybe we do but maybe this time i don’t say yes to the brunch
i listen to my brain instead of my heart and run at the first sign of trouble.
i’ve always been good at that, right?
i hold my breath instead of your hand,
and i don’t let you kiss me after two glasses of wine.
and something
feels off.
but i don’t know what it is, so it’s alright.
and maybe i miss someone,
but (this time) i don’t know who i’m missing.

in this universe:
i felt the shift ever since you left the city.
i called too much and decided this is what love feels like.
isn’t this what love feels like?
you held my hand when i asked you to
and kissed my neck like you might still want me
and maybe you still wanted me
but it wasn’t enough to make it work.
i would’ve made it work,
if you asked.
i cried on the car while i listened to our songs that aren’t even our songs because i never showed them to you,
but i don’t care
because you’ll never hear them now.
i think about us in the city
and i think about us at our first brunch
and i think about all the times you said:
baby
we can make it
you and me.
and i wonder if maybe
we still could.
but it’s different now because
in this universe you let go and in this universe i wasn’t enough and in this universe i know who i’m missing and he’s exactly 32 minutes away if there’s no traffic.
and maybe in this universe we don’t end up together,
but maybe (this time) we’re not supposed to.

i had a dream you were kissing her in front of me
and i woke up like "thank God that was a dream"
but we both know it is and it isn't
because you did that
and just because i'm not looking
doesn't mean it's not real

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

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.

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