How are things going? I desperately want to ask
But now I remember how I called you that night crying and desperate
“Sorry dear, I have bigger priorities,” you mumbled nonchalantly in a tone that cut
I guess what was important to you was your short silver dress which you had to keep tugging at
And your layers of mascara which smeared in the heat and the sweat
Maybe you didn't feel like being responsible or putting up a fight
Didn't feel like talking in the pulsating strobe lights
Where you drank and danced and smoked,
Your hands around the masculine men with whom you hooked
I wonder if you still would have hung up if you knew I was crying for you.

And one year later you still haven’t changed
You’re out of school and awfully deranged
Lying at the side of the road in a drunken stupor,
Stinking of smoke and giggling hoarse
Your dress riding up mid-thigh and your heels strewn across the street
Ordering McDonald’s, planting fries in your friend’s garden throwing fits
Sitting in trolleys in supermarkets at 3 am in the morning screaming at the top of your lungs and I
Miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you.
If I ever saw you again I’d bury my face in your long raven hair and whisper how much you meant to me, once.
I’d stroke your whiter than white skin, touched and kissed by fifty other men
Bruised by the very people you call your friends
And I’d cry in your chest and tell you to come back
If all you’d do is swig down a bottle of beer
And not look my way, but cackle cruelly wailing dear
I would die more than a little inside

You stopped caring about anything that was supposed to matter,
Like being better than everyone and writing beautiful badass essays about saving the sharks
(And understanding everything I never understood about myself and laughing at the things I used to say and pinning my name with stars on your charts)
You forgot your dreams of wanting to travel and petting kangaroos, carving out something of yourself so they’d remember you for your passion
and loneliness is the only place at which you’re stationed.

Now all you’re doing is living monotonously, “the *** life” you call it, your dreams all burnt up in the intoxication of the hookah you pretend to love and dissolved in the alcohol you swallow now pulsing through your veins.
Come back.

I'm sorry courage took a longer time for your hair to grow out past your shoulders

Maybe I regret the coveted gazes that took residence in the threads of your muscles now precinct, hardly noticed nor remembered

You're the seventh page of my diary, as well as the eighth, the ninth, the tenth and it goes on till the edge of this cliff you call home

There are things I don't know why I do

Like the time I gave myself bruises on my shins just because I liked the colour

Has anyone ever thought of how bruises are actually a metaphor of everything unsaid?

Capillaries bursting under the surface of your skin and not flowing, like the words that ride in submarines in your head but never brave enough to say them out loud

Things sound nicer when they come from your lips anyway.

I laugh too much

Is the passion carved on your skull as deep and carefully thought out as the things you say?

Warmth from you is as untrue and synthetic as your boxing gloves strapped tightly on

Punches with the soul of death, you pretend your stares are empty

I’ve watched sunsets more times than I have seen your smile

The darkness that swallows the harbor isn’t something we’d talk about over steaming cups of coffee

I don’t drink coffee anyway

I heard you make lovely icy rainbow popsicles and hand them out at barbecues

But nothing’s colder than your hard gaze, as hard as your cheekbones

I wish you’d grow your hair mid-back so you can finally braid it

I am not so sure what waiting is supposed to do except breed hope and a whole lot of misery

Silhouettes are me and you and everything intangible, just like me and you and black and white, just like me and you

I am in love with you but I do not love you.

I wrote my way out of the dark pages of my life.
I know what it's like to see your life hanging by a thread;
scraping your skin with your fingernails to stop yourself from crying;
weaving scars on your skin to get some high out of life.

Smiling on the outside, but tearing up on the inside.
I've been there,
disguising last rites as declarations of love;
holding out for that one guy for some unjust reason.
I was once told I was beautiful on the inside,
I used to scoff at that thought.
I couldn't be beautiful,
my metaphorical skin was sewed and patched, ruined and defiled
and there was nothing beautiful about that.
It took me a while to see that beauty for myself.
I was once that one girl sitting in corner at midnight
contemplating suicide over family tiffs, unrequited love, loss, loneliness, and every other
stuff that I couldn't deal with.
I can't look at my left wrist
without feeling some sort of disgust because of the tallies of pain
I left behind.

I had this habit of saying 'I'm always good' whenever asked
but I got tired of seeing illusions as reality,
I was tired of escaping my own life. I was not okay and I needed help.

I wish somebody had told me
this sooner:

MELANCHOLY IS NOT TRENDY, DEPRESSION IS NOT COOL,
CUTTING IS NOT A FASHION STATEMENT
SADNESS IS NOT ATTRACTIVE

It's actually sad that we,
teenagers,
advertise sadness as if it's something to be proud of.  

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL
YOU DON'T NEED VALIDATION FROM PEOPLE
DON'T LET HIM TELL YOU HE LIKES YOU BETTER WHEN YOU'RE BROKEN.
NO, SCARS DO NOT MAKE YOU ATTRACTIVE
SOME SCARS AREN'T WORTH HAVING
CRAZY IS NOT ****
**** IS NOT ALWAYS ****** SHEDDING A FEW KILOS WON'T MAKE HIM LIKE YOU ANY MORE THAN HE DOES
UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS DON'T HEAL --words I wish I'd  heard sooner

You are not broken beyond repair

YOU ARE A PHOENIX,
A PHOENIX MUST BURN TO EMERGE.

we live in a world of concrete
who needs trees anyways?
we're happy with our gases
the ones that suffocate us
but not as much
as the fresh air.
who needs a healthy environment
anyways?
we have our hospitals
and cures to diseases.
peace of mind?
that's been eradicated completely
and quite successfully might i add.
because life's just not fun
without any complications
and in our case,
they're not even natural.

When we look into today,
*Do our minds dial back to 16 June '76 to envision the torment
Our fallen heroes endured?

Is your vision blurred?
Mine isn't.

Their fight was just,
It was sacrificial
One by one they perished
But, even with blood and sweat slipping
Through their trembling fingers
They did not falter

They pushed boundaries
In order to create opportunities

They had a burning desire
For something greater,
For freedom
The freedom that we now bask in
Like it's just another day of leisure

"The youth of today are the leaders
of tomorrow", they say

Look in the mirror,
Are you really the leader of tomorrow?
Do you fit somewhere in that statement?

Me: No

Do we have the will to stand
Firm for what's right,
Against what's wrong
Or do we clam up, let the
Truth escape through broken doors?

We feed the stereotypes,
We fit perfectly into the stereotypes
We've been dubbed insubstantial,
Not layered, and one dimensional
What are we really after?
What are we doing to change that perspective?
No- what am I doing to change that??

Ask yourself, what would the
world have lost if you were not born?

Me: Nothing

But there are those who
understand that the meaning of "struggle"
Goes beyond the dictionary definition,
Those who look at the world
With crystal clear eyes
Those looking to make a difference
Those looking for a difference

We may be in freedom,
but we're not free at all
The chains are still bound to our
Wrists binding us from reaching
Out to the sun,
The chains are still tied to our
Feet hindering us from going further

We can stand united
Against the ****** government,
Against illiteracy,
Against poverty,
Against pointless wars,
Against abuse.
We can clench up our fists,
Ready to fight for what others
Led way for

I am, by no means, a beacon of
Hope (hypocrisy at it's best)
I'm uninformed, like they say
Ignorance is bliss
But I am not proud of it

We've come far since '94
We still can go further

"Together we can do more"

Falling in love is as
beautiful as watching
the sun shining on the rain
in Spring
An ineffable yearning,
Is serendipity,
A blissful sorrow,
Is not lucid.

Falling in love is  
picking shards of
broken glass knowing
you'll bleed,
Is a veritable tornado,
The eye of a hurricane
flattening everything in
it's path
And it doesn't abate


It's roller-coaster you must ride

Only to throw up after.