today, i read our favourite book for the first time since you left me

i fiddled with the little edges of each page as i imagined the creases of our palms that once caressed it with a passion almost unknown to the world. how together, our fingertips caused friction between the prologue and epilogue that united our beginnings with endings so fervently. then, i remembered september 17:

when you told me to look out into the distance with my eyes closed tight to search deep within me so that when i opened my eyes, the image of you would be all that i kept inside from then on. when i opened my eyes, however, those brown eyes, black hair and chapped lips showed me the light amidst our darkness and clearance in the mist that we had pathetically created for ourselves.  it showed me the undeserving being that i had moulded, my own protagonist that i played as you fell in love with my facade and wall of escape.

you had fallen in love with a fool. a fool who read too deep between the lines and connected too many dots to form constellations that were unthought of. one that drank too much coffee and stayed up to form rivers and blood banks that could traumatise even the toughest man on earth. one who tried to stand in the middle of the road when the red man went on while the green man took his break.
one who let you go like a helium balloon liberated from tiny hands while you stood firm on cementless ground. one who ultimately failed to love you right, when love was all you needed.

and as i read those pages that bounded our heartstrings together, the idea of lost love and dog-earred arguments smacked me right in the face where your image had remained engrained. and as i stood alone in the alleyway where we had laid our remains, i replayed the way you left me that saturday and fell deep into the underground to suffocate, this time never to return.

he promised her things that only God could give yet with all of her whole, she believed:
because love was their (arcane) goal*

to them love was the roses, chocolates and the ever so cute 'goodnight' texts. it was the tiny 'XO's at the end of every love letter and the irresistible kisses on a bad day. it was them hiding under the sheets, ardently sharing every secret ever known to the world because the world that they knew was in their robust palms.

little did they know that love was also the screams on a terrible day, the tears of a tortuous heartbreak and the piercing 'goodbye's after repeated arguments. it was the shredding of past love letters, the tearing of photographs and the burning of every remembered moment that was reminiscently shared in the creases of their hands (or their clenched fists).

soon, the little lovebirds turned into fiery ravens because love was inexorable
-- it was the wings that made them fly (in which direction it did not matter).  the "lovers" chose to fly anyway because ultimately, love reminded them of the misplaced souls that they possessed.
(( though love only taught them of the ubiquity of hatred within them ))

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm.
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

ask your blood
your limbs, your breathing feet
what Poetry is -
a phylogenetic anomaly
in light’s discontinuity

or just…
the strange yearning of hematopoiesis

ask the silence in your lungs
the bursting DNA, reinterpreted
how it allures memory inside your bones
how it treads conventions of sleep
with the weight of a sigh

if you ask me
what Poetry is
I’d say: breath calligraphy
a winged dream of depth
on enchanted retina
the bitter-sweet art of airy harmony

ask your hands
what Poetry is
perhaps they’ll take a moment
to bloom

each hour that I see you here, my heart starts to forget. all the times I could've held out my hand and when that something held me back. something, so minute: like a grain of sand or a sliver of light, that'd pull me into a chasm of remembrance, my hole of thought — my inner turmoil.

I'd remember how you'd embrace me with your hug of deceit and end it with your kisses of retreat. I'd remember how you'd shape the curves and ridges of my heart's making then poke it as if I was your little play toy. how you could toss and turn me just like my insomniac behaviour and get away like a thief in the shadow of the night. I'd remember your love for hate and how you thought I was your game, a taste of pyrrhic victory: your temporary satisfaction.

but as I see you walk through those doors, I remember my one regret:
that I learned to love your soul when you only chained me back.