as the birds still sing, as the children still play, as the lovers still kiss, and as the poet still picks up his favourite pen to write, i'll love you forever as though it is my second nature, for you taught me how to love -- with every ounce of my body and every drop of my blood -- **you taught me what love is

it's been lifetimes since i've allowed light to shine through these windows.
-
i've never let anyone in; nothing like the way i'm willing to let you fall into me, to hold you so close that my tears become an ocean you refuse to dive into and your eyes become my refuge. (yes, never is such a long time)
i've never let anyone touch me the way i let you, because all that anyone has ever done is rip me apart while building their own castles and collecting their cheap crowns. but you, you hold me like i'm a butterfly, with delicate wings that have become tired, all in its pathetic attempt to be beautiful. you hold me like i'm all you ever need in this dying world
and everything else that exists is just a repetitive love song.
i've never loved anyone's voice as much as i do yours. how you speak prose that sound like eulogies, solemn but necessary; with patience, kindness, and everything that love bleeds, everything it professes, everything i need.
(you're amazing and it's killing me)
-
the sunlight is creeping in through the curtains, windows no longer shut. i feel my heart beating again and i'm no longer listening to the solemn lullaby that put me here in the first place.
you've woken me up
and now, i'm finally free
**(to love you endlessly)

I. stop singing me lullabies every time i can't fall asleep.

II. stop taking me places and clouding my thoughts with memories of you that will forever stay engrained in every fissure of my skull

III. stop writing me letters that i will never get to read because i have no home for you to send them to

IV. stop believing in our happy ending when the world has turned to dust and silence is all that you can hear

V. stop holding on to threads that you know will snag from every tree you try to climb for me

VI. stop fighting for me when all you have left are two hundred and six broken bones to keep you company

VII. stop writing songs for me that i will never get to hear

VIII. stop wishing for the stars to form constellations for we will stargaze at nothing but a pitch black sky

IX. stop holding on to the photograph i took of you on our very first date

X. stop making me burst into flames, for that's how loving you feels like to me
(especially with you so far away)

i feel your energy surging through me
-
through the veins that keep me breathing
and the scars that keep me fighting
(though i wish they didn't)
through the extremities of my fingers
all the way to my tippy toes
-
your energy is all i need


i feel your smile energise me
-
through your whitened teeth
and your crooked beam
through the timid smile i can't help but create in response
i know with all of my soul
you are far brighter than a thousand suns combined
-
your smile is all i need


i feel your breaths complete me
-
through your oxygen
that circulates through my body
through my detritus that yearns for you
(and just you)
i've come to realise
you've become my only supply
-
your breaths are all i need

i write poems and stories about you
that you'll never get to read*

but one day,
if you try hard enough
you'll read them through my tears,
see them beneath my scars
and feel them through the pieces that used to hold my heart

maybe then,
you'll bother to pick up my pieces
and glue them to yours
maybe then,
you'll let me keep some of yours for reading
maybe then,
you'll know that i've *loved you more than even i can possibly bear

just a door away
from the pain
the ache
and the terrible mistakes
that held u in chains

just a door away
from all the tears you
shed
and the world that soon,
consumed you whole

just a door away
from your dreams and
the failures that could have kept them
alive
(at least for a little longer)

just a door away
from what nobody imagined
you would do

and it was just the door
nobody opened
that became the one that
kept you hidden away

**when you let death and beauty
play a game

i long for a love that i cannot reach and cannot hold
it is a love so far away from tangibility and from the dreams that keep me awake (yet asleep) at night
it binds me to nothing because nothing is all i can obtain
yet nothing is everything that means something to me:
nothing is everything that i cannot grasp within the tiny hands that have carved these thoughts for a lifetime
because the possibility of our love is as slim as a starving human
and as unfathomable as the thousands of stars that overwhelm me as i gaze up at them
what we have is truly inorganic, lifeless, tired to the bone
it is sterile and unfertilised, impossible to merely thrive or bloom,
burdensome like the words that have made me who i am today
and stagnant like the brain of a dead man rotting

in other words,
our love is and will never be a reality
because you are a masterpiece
and i'm a disaster


**(( still i long ))

it was a saturday night when i promised myself never to fall again because i knew it would only leave me scathed to the bone and lost in the desolated world that i had unnecessarily created in the past. i had come to the realisation that there was an inevitable slough of despond, waiting to pull me mercilessly into the black hole that i knew held a despicable love that i would refuse to ignore if i did not steer clear. though, steering clear was never my forte. instead, diving idiotically into cold waters without caution was where my roots stayed, in love with the fray of things. lost in my welter of thoughts, my little pandemonium, i dreamt of you and slowly tried to fathom how we ended. was it the loss of attraction, transient chemistry or the indubitable end that had already been set in stone? because all my life, i had tried so desperately to search for nonexistent formulas for why things ended, only to accept the fact that every thing was made to be ephemeral. stop, stop, just stop! my mind never failed to repeat, yet my heart failed to comply; my stream of consciousness always led back to you. i felt alone, pathetic, mawkish even, as i dialled your number with the dignity i no longer possessed. with each ring, i tried to stop the shivers down my spine that felt like a terrible ague, knowing that you had already given up on me, on us, and wanted nothing to do with me. you were obdurate on your decision, happy to move on.

but as for me? i remain that hideous book you indifferently hide on your shelf, in the shadows of your newfound lover.


(( yet, even now, that saturday night repeats itself every single day, the vicious cycle of an ancient spiel that i cannot seem to let go, because the thought of you coming back still remains, engrained into whatever pieces of my heart i have left. ))

i don't want to fall in love
because i'd rather say that
-
love digs its hands deep into the dirt to plant its roots,
to give false hope to the weaklings of mankind that requite is truly attainable
that love lies in the tears of our galvanised hearts, attacking the cracks of our fissured craniums
reminding us of our (now) inexorable incarceration
that love creates waveforms between fragile persons, in its attempt to orchestrate some sort of perfect dissonance
that love declares 'i am in control' (and makes us believe so)
to toy with the pieces left of our already tortured souls.
and that love only breaks us whole,
when our holes were what broke us first
-
than say love was "made" for me and you
;
because to fall in love would mean
falling
(onto your chest to remind me of what we had)
which would be a deathtrap on its own
one i would shamefully not regret

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 ))

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.