Don't look too proud, darling,
because dignity is dripping off
the Swarovski crystals on this
broken chandelier and your
name is the last thing they
would spell out if they came
crashing down. A bunch of
boisterous words & boastful
stories won't get you very far
except for a couple steps
[s d a r w k c a b]

And if you wanted to dabble
a chord on my heart strings,
it would have been easier to
not say anything at all, but
your once dormant thoughts
began pouring out of your
once silent lips in some childish
attempt to rattle some sort of
r      a      t       o    
   e       c      i       n

And behind those innocent
eyes lie only craters you dug
out of yourself because of
your own selfish pride. So
don't act too proud, darling,
speak a little louder and you'll
end up biting off your own
t   o   n   g   u   e   .

gd

Pitch-black and silent; another two am asylum.
And I found myself reaching for another tube of toothpaste
only to pray it didn't taste like you.
Yet a sigh of relief was matched with a sigh of despair
as I came to the realization
that I was losing my grip on a lot of things about us.

Even if I tried, I wouldn't be able to remember
most of our defining angles and edges
that were once so sharp.
So I scoured the stars this late at night
only to lose touch with gravity
and to hear my mind yelling back through the void,

"you should have known,
                       you should have known."

They say smell is the closest sense to memory,
but I was so sure that after all this time
the taste buds on my tongue
could still decipher the fibres from your mint mouth.
But in that moment, I couldn't remember
that you had already forgotten about me before the sun even set.

gd

There was always something weighing me down
much more prominently than gravity. It sat on my shoulders
as if it were a king finally gracing his throne, and pushed downwards
on my temples in some attempt of keeping me grounded.

But I began to believe in this burden -
looked towards it as guidance, when all along
I had been walking down a path of blotchy grass and stone
that shouldn't have been trudged along in the first place.

I looked for the answers underneath the soil
and tried to piece my puzzles with left over morning dew,
but the soil just fell through my fingers
and the dew had disappeared before brunch.

The weight was my blanket, my sturdy bridge, my fireplace
- it was protective, sempiternal and warm -
but it was also transparent, rigid, and uncomfortable
- safe, but entirely manifested hesitance -

All this time, I believed that the weight was right;
the burden was compressing me to be simpler and lighter.
But today, I chose the path leading to a faulty tightrope across the way
and I ended up flying instead of falling; free rather than frivolous.

gd