he said to you on a friday afternoon,
a cup of coffee
held by hands
which dilapidated
on top of
deific disasters;

“promises are meant to be broken,” whispering,
like he did not want you
to hear the inner war cry
he kept on using
at nights he stayed awake,
only his thoughts as a perfect company
as he keeps a conversation
only the moon and him
know the existence of.

when you reached out to hold his hands
that were painted in shades of blue and grey,
it felt like forever
since your hands brushed
something so eloquent
even after the ungodly hours
he still called his decisions as mistakes,

or when he promised you
that the grandeurs of life
are crushed into smithereens
on his sturdy palms,
not telling you about the stubborn apparitions
refusing to let go
of everything it once held dear;

when he flipped through the pages
of a worn-out scrapbook
like it was your
place of solitude,
staring at each snapshot longingly;

when he promised you that
he, too, would not let go
even after the nights
he calculated the
possibility of you leaving him;

when he told you
that he was a troubled painter,
sketching the familiar taste of dysphoria
dawning over him every time
he was told he was onerous;

when he promised you that
he would finish every painting
but he kept each canvas hidden
under the floor boards.

you told him on a saturday morning,
a cup of tea
held by puckish hands
which built walls
around everything
your little heart desired,

“then, why make them?”

you do not smile in portraits
because you are terrified
of your own unwavering gaze
staring
back at you;

the blemished sentiment of
happiness younger than the spark of noon diminished into an infinite pail
of abyss filled to the brim with
unforgiving despair clanking like
clumsy church bells.

you are reminded that you are
nothing but a vessel,
prevaricating questions that have etched long enough onto your skin,
emaciating the fragments
of existence that you
desperately clung onto.

you are reminded of the time a boy
whispered he loved you as if he meant it but the glaring reflection of your dismal eyes crawl on your back,
drowning the shrieks in an
ocean of happiness you cannot
indulge yourself in.

a storm of consternation submerged
from the empty hallways
of vintage photographs.

sans hope;
sans love;
sans everything.

you always had an affinity for the complexities of life,
clutching onto precarious thresholds
that you vehemently
refuse to call
a bereavement

you always had an affinity for
bodies of matter that refuse to take
care of you back,
an abundance of saturnine
sentiments is what you are
made of

you always had an affinity for
convoluted recidivism
that always seemed to mar
the ineffable reverie
constantly buzzing in
your head

you always had an affinity for
a jargon's mouth,
wanting to emblazon the
sporadic tribulation along
the interstices of your
deleterious wreckage

you always had an affinity for
everything quintessential
that your reticent heart
can glom.

she was the incandescent body of matter
that always seemed to
wander at places she could
not call home.

she was the jot of rapture
that embodied the broken and entangled
messes of the earth,
holding them together.

she was another form of self-destruction
that ignored the blaring sirens
and stretched her hands forward,
intercepting through my body
and seizing a grip
on my heart.

she was an iota of fear
but still reached her hands towards me anyway and grounded me like a lighthouse beam reaching
towards a boat and guiding it
back to shore.

she was a scintilla of whims,
a soft-spoken disaster.

he was the stars,
watching during the day
and shining throughout
the night.

he was firmament and vastly seas
pushed together, the
semi-broken pieces
of existence.

he tells me
every terrible thing he
had done and i kiss them
all better.

he was the wind,
caressing the crevices of
a poorly lit street, whispering
warning signs to
trepid vessels.

he was the sun,
sparing creatures who
are too petrified like an expensive
glass dangling onto dainty
lips muttering never-ending
victorian poetry.

he tells me
about the bad days as if it were
kids daring each other to ring
the doorbell.

he was the safest method of self-mutilation,
cradling lullabies for
unblemished and
unwavering hearts.

he was every nook and cranny,
repeating resplendent lines as if
it was the only way to
utter goodbye.

in the morning,
you wonder to yourself why
you feel effusive,

and then you remember that
you were left with
nothing but melancholy.

he left you with pieces of yourself
still under his teeth and you
ponder why you
feel so empty.

you always put fragments
of your tumultuous love on
anything else that ensorcelled
you and yet you still
question why you
feel so vapid.

in the afternoon,
you gaze at the gaps of
your woven heart,

admiring how you still chose
to love albeit it has been
treated by uncouth and
cantankerous men, grabbing your
jagged edges and claiming it as a phantom's home.

walking home was certainly an
experience for you, you were
scrupulous on avoiding the cracks
on the sidewalks because you
were afraid you would fall too deep and wander around the empty
hallows of quandary.

in the evening,
you wear
a careworn visage.

the efflorescence that you
once desired for was kept
untouched at the kiss of the
pale moonlight, swooning you with every echo of apologies dripping down
your god-forsaken body.

your heart, beaten and
turned into everything
sublime, is ensconced behind
the walls, cosseting the bruises
he had left you and not once did his
eyes become rueful.

loving is a mixture of
boiling thoughts and sleepless
nights, a state of perplexities
wherein you plead that
maybe, just maybe, he still thinks
about you too.