I’d like to think that there is someplace where you never fell out of love with me and out of the orbits we made. And that’s why I still write — for my poems to be that place where words never failed us, where the goodbyes were never said for good, and where I could breathe in your scent at 6 am and know and feel that you were still there; that it wasn’t just another trace you left behind. At least in the poems, I could make you love me still.

At least in the poems, I could undo the fights and stitch our red strings back to each other, and look at you as if I was lost in the sea, and you were made of moon dusts and starlights.

At least in the poems, I could probably make myself enough — make my love enough for you to stay. At least in the poems.

But then again, they’re just poems darling, arranged to look like a happy ending. They’re just poems. And you’re still gone.

You’re still gone.

mental illness hides itself in the unwashed laundry spread on your bed and on the bedroom floor. it hides itself in the dust that settled on your favorite books and in the permanent markers on your powder-blue walls; it hides itself in skipped meals and in the messy hair you hadn’t washed for a week now and in the chorus of your favorite song you no longer sang to. it hides itself in your favorite constellation — in the night skies and star clusters you stopped gazing at and in those vanilla ice creams that no longer felt comforting.

mental illness is fickle, sweetie, for it hides in bad dye jobs and unopened birthday letters and in dishes piling on the sink. it hides in your limbal rings while you look at those sunsets that feel like summer storms. it hides under your skin while you stand under the shower, wondering why you even bother to bathe, or when you freeze in the middle of street, waiting for the bus to come. it hides in mornings you force yourself to get up and clean your room.

we know it, don’t we? it hides in trivial things. it hides in places people won’t look at, sweetie. it hides in proses like these

You’re everything bad for me; our idea of love is crashing into sunburnt, rust walls, with hands around each other’s neck. There we are, soaked in each other’s sadness. There we are, all cold, mechanical limbs until we can no longer tell whose hand does the breaking – whose skin is left with scars. There we are, silhouettes jumping off Ferris wheels straight into the fray – all broken bones and the maddest smile.

This is love – in its ugliest form.
You’re everything bad for me; you’re every terrible idea – every wrong decision made seconds before going haywire.

And yet, maybe, you’re not – maybe it’s me.

Maybe it’s me; I lived to come undone and fall apart to your autumn eyes. Maybe it’s me: cold, dilapidated skin after all the havocs you wreaked, and still, I would stand and run to you – despite all this knowing – all this hurting. So darling, break me – leave me in ruins, for another life to see.

I wasn’t good for myself anyway.

Love, I said I wouldn't miss the sound of your early morning voice.
These sheets were weighed from all the times the dawn sent its sunrays
like palms filled with love letters;
but maybe I too, had become all the dawns that lingered too long.
I said I wouldn't miss the outline of your body;
oh how I planted kisses on every uncharted curve
but this bed is now a map of strangers from all these towns I do not know.

I said I wouldn't miss the hands, touching,
fingers picking each stray breath away;
I wouldn’t miss waking up next to you —
all serene, all magical than lucid dreams.

But darling, it's ten to twelve and our memories,
they covet me as the summer rain pours outside
and now,

I miss all these stupid little things;
the brief way you wince at papercuts,
the secret smiles after eye rolls
and radios turned to the max,
the way red lipsticks and love notes
linger on bathroom mirrors;
the water and steam have erased them now,
love, I miss the way you hog blankets;
the threads have now come undone,
taking down your scent with them,
all too painful, all too slow, it slips
even from these memories,

And I know I said I wouldn't miss you
but it's half past twelve, and I'm in your shirt
and the rain had stopped
but I think so far — so far love,

missing you has not.

I. One day, the moon will forgive me for all the ways I broke myself, until I was a driftwood crumbling into dust, stirring on the edge of your bed — all the faint traces of the ocean gone. The moon will forgive me for growing bruises where your lips once staked claim.

No, that was not my fall from grace, I whisper; my skin has long abandoned tenderness at the doorstep of the first boy who broke my heart. Maybe I had been broken since. Now, there are some things you can never fix: all the bones that you'd once held are all the bones that break.

II. And I know, it'll forgive me for sinking into the comfort a stranger's sheets somewhere in this bleak, forgotten town. It's been a month, and I am made of lows and pathetic attempts to forget your voice. And the moon knows I was never cut out for love — only for things that resemble it. So when you wrung poems out of my tangled pulseline, when you muttered you loved me that July night, it'll forgive me for sighing myself to oblivion, having been undone by your gaze. It'll forgive me for having wanted to die in your arms. And oh, it was beautiful while it lasted.

We were beautiful while we lasted.

III. And still, I am never cut out for love. The one I know is made for burning down cathedrals. For leaving dead flowers in the gaps of your ribs. For throwing poems under the bridge. For throwing myself thereafter. I always had a proclivity for things that leave me hurting in the aftermath of disasters. And there are no poems left to make sense of it all. Just erratic thoughts. Just a flight risk caught in the loose ends where memories are left to rot.

No, there are no poems to write anymore. Just heartbreak. Just lonely rooms, and drawn curtains, and your scent, fading from these sheets — held close. In silence. Despite it all.

IV. And one day, the moon will forgive me for wanting to stay when I should be leaving.

Maybe I will forgive myself too.

so when you dissolve into a thousand poems you can never write trying to look for the way out, let go. even the moon melts parts of itself, and your skin, it is made from the cracks constellations have between its stars. and when december starts to breathe the last of its sadness — and how it lingers on your skin: a glass so breakable, let go; wilted flowers no longer flinch at a lightning's touch; you are made from the same matter — all cold lips and an ether of sighs. let go, darling. all this, because you are not just a girl. you are a storm without a calm.

You were my only chance at the calm, it's no secret. Not when my skin had become a topography of city light and anomalies waiting to happen. Not when broken wrists and collarbones had defined my name. And for years, my fingers had held onto rusting street signs, pointing to where my flesh had started to decay under the nipping of the butterflies — places to avoid touching, otherwise I'd break.

But you were the calm.

And for so long, it had evaded my side of the bed. And I know you had tasted dead dahlias and maladies off my tongue. Poets don't write about lips like mine — those that repel clarity and softness — those that had forgotten the words to a prayer. And it's no secret that I had spent years walking on a tilted axis and screaming at the pitfalls of my own doing. And yet you kissed me; for once, my skin had learned silence — raw, and in broad daylight. For once, I didn't have to be the storm that I was.

And love, whoever knew you would betray the calm, when you were my only chance at it?

Now, nightfalls just feel like bruises starting to show way too soon. Now, September nights are just cold and are filled with blunders. Now, this heartbreak seems like it may outlast all my well-kept sunsets, waiting for me at the end of this storm. And it could've been you, still — it could've been us. Now all that we were is a wreck to behold. And love, must all beautiful things rot?

You were the calm, but poets don't write about tragedies like these.

Maybe it's better off that way.

honey you never loved me, you simply loved having someone you could write poetry about.



and i gave you that.

darling, my notebooks are running out of strings and pages; how many more poems do i have to write before you come back?

"Please don't ever leave me."

And love, I never would have left — not for all the serene mornings unsettled by these shapeless thoughts. Not for all the sanest kisses laid gracefully on scarring skin. Not for all the storms that had dissolved into the calm. I never would have left you — not for the world falling away into a mess of sorrows while the sun watches from afar. But the street lights are spent and mornings are colder and my hands are bruised from picking up all the pieces that you broke.

Did you feel most alive when you were killing me?


Now in the silence, my poems mourn over a loss that isn't theirs.


And in the silence, you say, "Please, don't ever leave me."



And in the silence, I answer, "I wish I never had to."

and how do i crawl out of this chest — this skin — this lonely, grave, without choking on all the dirt?

now my ribs recede with the heaviest sunsets; look and miss a missing body. look and miss an unmarked grave. right here where i lie indefinitely, there's no headstone grand enough to carve this grief into. there's a hand, repelled by a poem. there is a grief without a name.