i am
a confusing person.

i may
love things
that i hate;

i may
hate things
that i love.

sometimes
i adore the sun setting
and i close my eyes
as the sun drapes itself
with dust and memories.

then
i despise the way
the sun rises
with false anticipation
for children chasing them,
desiring to touch
even a glint of gold
and sunlight.

but i try not to love
the way your crooked smile
makes everything look
endearing.

because
i am afraid
that i will soon learn
to hate it.

you were
peter pan.

and i was
‎wendy.

you were always seeking
for the intricacies of
compunctious realities,

that you considered
the one standing before you
as a vestige of existence.

and when i finally let you go,
you still searched for
the great mishaps.

afterall,
you were
peter pan.

and i am merely
a surfeit of mirrors
that reminded you
to grow up.

this is what it feels like to love you;

its almost as if
im a meager child
waiting by the windowsill,
leaving parts of myself
i thought i didnt need anymore,
yet as days and nights flash
before my eyes,
i wonder if this is how
i dreamt to be
when i tuck myself to sleep.

its almost as if
im walking in the darkness
with nothing to guide me
but my own foolishness,
grasping at any broken material
just to keep me from falling —
yet much to my own dismay,
i lie here in the cold floor –
mangled and barren.

and i ponder;

is the universe
trying to keep us together
or apart?

this is what it felt like to love you;
just as how icarus loved the sun.

i woke up next to you again,
red wine lips
slightly parted,
a contented sigh
escaping out
of crushed cherries.

the night is still young,
you had said,
a lopsided grin
crawling its way
to your sinful mouth
speaking in dead languages.

( do not lie to me, darling )

i woke up next to you again,
eyebrows furrowed,
small hands traveled to mine,
soft whilst never unwavering.

you begged me to stay,
never letting go of the
edges of my shirt.
insides stirred,
i watched you in awe
as you pat the spot
next to you.

( just this once, i let you do as you please )

i woke up next to you again,
gaze already set
on my visage.
a lazy smile and a kiss
greeting me.

this was love,
you had thought
but you were
wrong.

( tonight will be the last, mi amor)

i woke up next to you again,
clothes tattered and torn,
lifeless eyes greeting me,
sheets splotched
with regret and blood.

grief and love
are no such thing.

there was a girl who cried wolf;
it echoes from the hollows of crevices
until it inevitably comes back to her --
it only welcomes her with silence.

and i stand there and watch
as she continues to cry wolf.

the river -
gushing, flowing, full of life -
it stops to listen to her wishes.

the wind -
withdraws from crafting a tempest
and stills.

planted in my own roots,
i sit and hear her howls of desperation.

now, sans woe bellows
from her sunken cheeks,
frail body clad in loneliness.
a ghost of a smile
marrs her rose-colored face.

"liberated," she said, "i wish to be liberated."

would it be selfish of me
to ask for more
than sneaky glances here and there?

mouths desperate
to form sentences
to confabulate with you
but i rebel against my own body,
incorrigible mutters
bolting its way out of my lips.

would it be selfish of me
to ask for more
than an hour to spend with you?

eyebrows knitting together
in confusion
as you laugh
about matters of the heart,
looking through me
with perceptive eyes
and i try not to look away.

but fate
has a terrible affinity
for separating the two of us,

so i wish
we werent back to square one
but that would be wistful thinking.

maybe this is
all just a film.

an indie film
starring troubled teenage girls
finding out who they truly are;

a horror film
starring an ex-convict
being haunted by
his petrifying past;

a romance film
with cringy punchlines,
sly glances in the hallways,
passing notes during sessions,
a wink or a two.

this,
what we had,
was no more than
a documentary.

the brusque strokes of color
writing the art of detaching one's heart
in a single streak,
overwritten by harsh
and rash decisions,
regret bursting
through the air,
the feeling of being torn apart
by the swaying wind,
whispering,

the curtains
finally closed.

how foolish of me
to think
late night conversations
could lead to
a sterling amount of love
cascading through me

but all it ever left
was a gaping hole,
stretching itself beyond
to greet the bane's den.

the neverending loop;

stuck-up little poet
thinking it would be
different,
poor little heart;
it had suffered enough,
let it rest.

little girl calling herself
a poet would like to know
what to do
with these memories
of warmth
from her
sun-kissed hand.

« no, no »

how stubborn of me
thinking
i could no longer be
time's fool.

i do not wear
heartbreak well.

i dress it
in plaid skirts
and loose shirts
under
cheap make-up.

i keep it
hidden in between
the pages
of a horror story
that you showed
abhorrence for.

i write it
in forms of sonnets
that overcome the
acrimonious ways
your words found themselves
tangled with mine.

i say it
in jumbled thoughts
and incoherent murmurs
that clouds memories
of warmth and sunlight.

forsooth,
heartbreak
does not suit me.

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.

when i am with you,
i feel
particles of myself
slowly sweep away
until
i am no more
than an empty entity
of existence.

instead,
i am
a melancholic siren;
consternation constanly emerges
from the salty ocean
i baptize myself in
to rid myself
of the blood of agony
on my lips.

sailors enchanted
by the wicked melody
i speak of;
eyes closed shut,
listening closely to
the languages
my mouth formed;
demise imbuing
their eyes
for this sonata
is bewitching yet atrocious.

yet you pay
no heed
to my woes,
even after the
nights transitioned
into light years;

i call for you,
you dare not
look back at me;
for i looked
just like everybody else,

just another
mistaken identity.

december twenty-seven,
your name still rings
from the atrophy
you had bestowed upon me.

how reckless,
the way i love with
trembling fingers
guiding you to every
isolated destinations
withering through every touch.

i could not speak,

for your eyes
spoke of the
inaudible string of utterance
i could not quite decipher.

december twenty-seven
how forlorn,
the way you left me
without an explanation.

your name will forever linger on my mouth,
immeshing the dust within the fragile pages of a literary classic.

“my eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.”
you saunter freely with romantic words i cannot grasp and call as ours.

my love for you seeps out of the vintage texts—
unfinished; refusing to fill out the blanks and questions.

in vain —
that’s what all it was.

no more, no less.

i fancy
using flamboyant words.

"you make me feel like ****"
shifts into
"you have left me
in such a state of perplexity
that even i can
absolutely not comprehend."

"i am heartbroken"
turns into
"the existence of pain and longing
makes itself wont
to the confines of my heart,
making a home out of it.”

"i hate you"
morphs into
"a surfeit of sentiments
fill the pail to the brim,
i could only make sense
of abhorrence clinging onto my head."

every time
i wear my heart on my sleeve,
misery emerges
from the shadows
and torments me --
i cannot be
liberated from
the never-ending loop of misfortunes.

i yearn that these
bitter emotions
diminish into nothingness
until not even an iota of thought
could mar me.

i yearn that these
senseless cluster of letters
find their way back to you--
just as it should be.

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.

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.

it is the rattling of
the picture frames
that you kept hidden
in the back of your mind,
hanging against the
apricot wall;

it was the tremor
that shook every
glass windows
of your body;

the distant knocks
of strangers
you met in your
past life;

it will hurt you
but you still relish
on the feeling of compunction
seeping onto
your delicate bones;

it will come unexpected,
meeting you at every rendezvous

and you welcome it
with warmth and
joie de vivre.

i can be whatever
you want me
to be,

i can be the waves
crashing down
to the shores
to find solitude
in your arms,
aching to seek everything
i can never truly have;

i can be the treacherous current,
sweeping you away
from the palms
of pandora's box,
reaching out
to lay their mouths
( shut / stitched / knitted )
filled with tribulation.

i can fold myself
into neat edges,
abandoning every ghost town
i conquered
and called mine,
every window sill
attached with symbiosis
and laced with piles of
'sorry' and 'forgive me.'

i can be metaphors
clinging around every part of you,
wishing to be liberated
from reveries
accompanied with memories
of how you held me
with qualmy and shivering hands.

so tell me
because
i can be
whatever you
want me to be.

when the outline
of your lips
brushed against
mine,

it molded perfectly
like its sole purpose
was to be with each other.

but when i was left
with nothing but the cold
and harsh breeze of november,

your kiss left me
writhing in pain,
bruises marked my skin,
a gamut of unfortunate events;

it was a
kiss from death.

the warm wind
of the
fourth of july
rested on the
arch of your back
after a
precarious tempest.

the cicadas
cried,
so did you.

this is
fiction
and nothing else.

you and me,
twisted by pretty words
with senseless meaning.

laying down,
restless nights,
tranquil walks
with sober souls.

holding your hand,
a four leaf clover
stretched onto yours,
you kissed mine.

waiting for the howl
of misfortunes,
i clung onto
your kaleidoscopic smile,
you stayed.

but,
time and time again,
this is fiction
and nothing else.

the melted horizon
climbed upon your starry eyes,
i want nothing more than
being greeted
by your heavenly structures.

“from this moment,”
from the gentle breeze
of four a.m.,
your arms around me
never letting go,
the soft humming of your breath
against every little secret
that i had made.

“to this point in time,”
heated arguments,
saturnine interims,
moments i wish
i could take back.

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 only said you loved me
when you were lonely;

you were scared of
feeling even a tinge of loneliness circulating inside your body
so you impulsively go out
during late nights
to search for love
in befuddled men.

you only said you hated me
when you were inebriated;

you were scared of
feeling even an ounce of happiness
surging through your veins
so you look at yourself
in front of the shattered mirror,
who pitied you
for ululating constantly.

your flagrant atrophy
shouts your
malapropos name
across the hearts
worn on every sleeve.

serendipity is not
the word to describe the
two of us;

we desperately tried
to fill the empty spaces of
our non-pareil hearts

like jigsaw pieces
adamant on forming an image
but not knowing that
they are not meant
for each other.

malevolence is
the word to describe the
two of us;

we hid the screams
under the ivory duvet,
complimenting the bruises
the two of
us had carved

like a stubborn mule,
we still keep on coming back
to each other.

you told me
love was a capricious thing
that could only hurt
those who beseech for more
than what they ought to have.

and then
i saw you in the arms
of another.

she looked at every
arch of colors
with so much fascination
that her seamless doe eyes
became one with the
unification of the splashed canvas;

she held his hands
with so much gentleness
like she was holding
a small piece of origami,
crafted by sturdy hands
but fragile hearts,
weeping ever so slightly
at the sight of the
sun coming back up
even after the nights it said
goodbye.

she was an explosion of colors,
all at once,
that was always
too good to be true.

the universe has a daft manner
of reminding me of
you.

your voice resembles the breeze
that blows during the ungodly hours
and i realize that
the mists and fogs
just want to deceive us with
empty promises
and fulfilling lies.

your eyes spoke of the way
the moon danced with the stars,
a secret affair with the sun.
they take in every detail;
from the freckles
that adorned my face
to the scars
that still crept into my heart.

your hands clasped onto the meteors
but you were too unforgiving
and the galaxies sent you away from me
to scatter along the heavenly bodies
and await for rebirth.

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?”

the falling leaves
rustling,
brushing the
wind;

i finally
felt
at ease.

to love only from afar
is a matter of hearts
begging to touch the other,
clad in drops of daylight,
mysteries of the night
as it calls upon
the dreary apparitions.

reaching out to grasp
nothing but the cold breeze,
the chimes of the forgotten fossils
of how we could have been.

you craft harmony
and rhapsody
with the way
you immesh your hands
with dust from the stars,
scraping against the sky.

this is poetry;
in its entirety,
soft and weak,
accepting as it goes;
made by the sound
of a blemished
and careworn heart
from heartbreak.

this is the
"could've"