Sometimes I feel like I'm the worst type of pessimist.
At heart I'm an optimist, looking past the highest mountains,
trying to reach the sky with the tips of my fingers and
catch the clouds at the base of my palms.

However, in head,
I'm the biggest pessimist
finding the dark spots on the sunniest days,
herding death between the cracks in the concrete.

And the head is like the heart's big sister,
telling her to take a step back and make sure of her actions,
bossing her around, burning out her spark,
leaving the dead of the night with nothing but doubt.

But you've got my lips coated in sugar and
my intentions wrapped in flames.
You've got my heart scrapping its knees and
my head spinning

Because who would've thought
it'd finally meet its match,
unable to hold something down
with two hands and keep it in place.

But both of them are undoubtedly worried,
darling.
They're running for the hills and
finding a place to set camp where you'd never find.

Empty handed and confused, they're still searching and
the only thing going through their thoughts remains to be

"there's still time to run
          there's still time to run
                  there's still time
                            just move your feet,
                                       don't look back
                                                 and run
                                                         as fast as you can."

gd

Let me tell you something about falling in lust before falling in love:
They say the first cut cuts the deepest,
the first kiss lasts the longest and
the first goodbye will always be the hardest.

But only now do I realize we were never really in love,
but rather in great—crazy great—unmistakeable lust.

Lust: hands in your hair, and yours travelling downwards
leaving a trail of fire in your path as it runs down my spine
and seeps through my skin to poison my heart.

By the end of it all my heart sat frozen in place,
unable to beat to anyone except you,
leaving it feeling cold and still
like the bottom of the ocean.

But if I was ice, Love, you were nothing but flames,
engulfing and suffocating.
Lust, sweet lust,
like a never-ending dream, so real but so temporary.

And when the sun is hidden by the clouds
and when the rain starts to pour
and when the wind picks up to the rhythm of our paces in sync
and so intertwined, well, there's nothing left but a catastrophe—
a sweet ephemeral tragedy.

See, Love, we may have been great
and crazy and frozen and burned
but rain washes that all away,
not even nice enough to leave any evidence behind.

The first lust doesn't cut . . . it stabs,
and it has just forced me to spill new blood on old pieces of paper.

gd

Is this how a first love is supposed to be?
Indestructible and Irrevocable? Hanging
over your head even 10 months after and
counting cautiously? Carrying this dark
heavy cloud beyond the border of sanity?
Pacing and passing by all your positivity,
creating colossal chromatic colours of blacks
and greys up and down the edges of your
spine?

Following you? Never ever leaving you?
Watching over you in that devil-on-your-
shoulder-conscience kind of way? Restricting
and retreating the surface of your sentiments
until they've all been turned to ash and embers
of doubts and lost longings?

Preparing you for disappointment, always & forever?
Like that first time you locked lips and left the key at
the bottom of the ocean? Like that last time you laced
ligaments between the sheets of some paperweight
comforter?

Under all that dust and debris, does it bury deeper
in the cracks between your heart—or solely in the
space where it's supposed to be? Does it feed on
your sorrows and make homes out of the abandoned
buildings of your bones? It does, doesn't it? This is
how a first love is supposed to be? That even when
a second walks your way, you can't help but flinch?

gd

It was quite funny because
you told me you hated poetry today.

Appalled and speechless
I just stared blankly at your amusement
because little did you know,
I saw every language run down your smile;

I watched words sputter out from your eyelashes
and could make out the faint heartbeat
of a poem waiting to happen.

Plastered all over your face,
twisting into metaphorical features,
unlocking a gateway towards iconic alliteration, and
found the foreign flutter in the irony between your syllables.

You told me you hated poetry,
and I laughed because when I looked at you,
all I saw was a poem.

gd

It just doesn't work, trust me.
You said matter-of-factly in the tone of voice
that could have persuaded me to do anything,
except believe this.

No, it does. It just requires both people to put some effort in.
I remember myself contemplating
and convincing you;
trying to make you believe it was possible, because it had to be.

Exes can't be friends after everything. It just doesn't work.
You told me of all the others
pretty and playful who ran away with your heart
but never gave it back.

But for the longest time, I tried to prove you wrong
tried to make us invinsible in some sort of way
tried to make you see in a new sort of light
tried to show you it wasn't that hard
tried to hold on to what we had
tried to keep our friendship
tried to be the exception
tried to keep us intact
tried to find a way
tried to be more
tried to stay
tried to
tried

But I just came out breathless and heartless
because I hate to admit it, but
god, you were right.*

gd

Remember when you bought me three pears
because you knew I loved them? One wasn't
ripe at all—took the jaw of lion to crack that
open. Another had gotten smushed under the
weight of my books, leaving pear juice and
residue at the bottom of my backpack, and the
last just made the cut but fell to the floor after
my second bite. We laughed it off, smiling like
lovers & I told you that you ****** at choosing
fruit. But yesterday I stumbled around the city,
intoxicated and nostalgic under all those lights,
trying to grasp any form of support, hoping it
would be your hand on the other end. Passing
the same spot from our first date and that time
we skipped school just to feel invinsible and so
in love, I realized that those three pears were just
some twisted reminder that we ****** at timing,
too.

gd

i.
The pavement glistened at 10:43pm like a shiny new car. And contrary to popular belief, the asphalt was a painter, stroking a green carpet that stretched across the whole street like a pathway to promises. I couldn't help but stare at it; become mesmerized by its colours that danced along with the traffic lights. They fell in sync as if they were falling in love, like two lovers because when one changed, the other followed: from green to yellow to red, the darkness of the night couldn't withstand the strength of the blinding light. The pavement sang along changing itself to mimic the colours above—a love so strong it kept its promises no matter the change, no matter the weather.

ii.
Then I thought about how that must feel—to feel invinsible with someone... but I realized I had known. So long ago, though, I had almost forgotten. But when the memory hits, it hits hard; all the colours of the wind touching your cheeks in hues and shades of greens and yellows and reds and blues. Blue, like the ocean: constantly in flux yet unable to let go of the particles that were knit between them.

iii.
I felt numb watching the wet asphalt, and found myself hoping to feel like before somehow, or in any way close to it. But if I was being honest I would just admit that I'm scared. I'm scared I will never feel that way ever again, not even brave enough to let the wind colour my cheeks. And I've really gotten over everything that's happened between us, really, but what I'm trying to say is I'm lonely and the streets look filled with life when they're actually just empty. And I do not want to become that metaphor—a metaphor for broken promises or a statistic towards bad judgement.

iv.
I want to love. But I'm scared that I've forgotten how because in the process of losing you, I threw away a lot of things including some of my dignity. I just want to know how it feels to have someone's fingers intertwined with yours so tightly that no words would be needed to know they'd never let go. I want to know how it feels to look at someone and hope they'll be the first and last thing you see from then on. I want to remember how it feels to have your heart drop down to your stomach continuously until you can't even breathe.

gd

Maybe one day I will wake up
having to take an extra second to remember your voice.
One day, I might just stop
getting hung up on ten little numbers I will never have.

One day, my eyes won't dart around in circles
looking for yours and one day
my heart won't tense up at the mention of your name.
But most of all,

One day I will no longer feel as if I have lost more than I have loved.

But till then,
amidst the pink and blue paintings of the summer skies,
I have stayed grounded
forced by the memories of your touch to keep me in place.

With heightened emotions and faulty desires,
I have become less than brave.
Cowering to the past,
letting the green grass stain my toes with their fibres—

I have let the sun shine on my skin without notice of its plan
to embed itself and linger a little while longer than it should.
I have let the thought of you shade my thoughts for ages,
and I know one day they will all disappear, disintegrate with the clouds.

But I'm a little bit lonely
with nothing but faded company,
so it shouldn't be enough,
but it might as well be.

gd

I don't understand what I want.
I feel like I'm cutting through a layer of thick metal,
enduring the sound of scraping steel scratch from surface to centre
and I'm not getting through—through to you.

I talked about him today. Embraced his disappearance in my memory
and seemed to watch him walk away all over again.
I was washed with emotion and serene understanding
of some in depth sentiment that I only found intact with him.

And it just ******* ***** because I acknowledge my surroundings—
they're printed and plastered all over in bright reds and yellows
making room for summertime without the sadness—
yet some void remains sat square in the middle;

Some lost hope, unable to make sense of what exactly belongs there.
And I'm cutting through layers of other peoples' minds
to see if their context can create art with my emotions.
But it's nothing but dull.

It's all surface and no substance,
which discourages the complexity of my being
and causes the wind from the outdoor tempest to reach
the ends of my eyelashes and the edges of my clenched teeth.

What I'm trying to say is, maybe I'm expecting too much from you.
I'm imagining mansions and kaleidoscope chemistry
with sparks sputtering out of my mouth
in the form of stutters and laughs that keep me breathless.

But instead, I'm getting dying embers,
that come from the scorching coal path of my memories burning beneath my feet.
I'm expecting too much, but I can't risk expecting nothing at all
for someone who can't even make my fingertips tingle or cause my heart to race.

Especially because I know the feeling of awe;
especially because I've felt it all before.

gd

I haven't even been writing for myself anymore.
Does that still make me a writer,
or an entertainer?

The most painful rejection
always seems to come from someone
who already told you they'd never leave your side.

You say
he made you feel like never before,
but so did alcohol honey.

I found myself humming again to the beat of nothing
and the birds are singing with me,
trying to control the pitch and find the harmony.

Recently, I've been on the outskirts looking through the
broken glass of other people's homes trying to make
sense of the dust that settles at the core but never
around the corners and it comes to my attention
that people do not thrive off of happiness,
but rather pain. At their most vulnerable
they are the most loving; but at their
least, they can be so careless, so
blind, so naïve.

gd

I wonder if you stitched yourself into my skin
when I wasn't looking because I am still catching whiffs
of your scent as if it sat right beside me
with a glimmering smile and kind words to say.

But I'm exhausted and worn out
like that faded red t-shirt you stopped wearing,
and I can't help but think if it's because my scent still lingered
when I first fit my arms through on that fall afternoon.

Except I know you've probably washed it
once, twice, maybe thrice for good luck
but unlike cotton,
your etched aroma isn't so easy to scrub out.

Trust me, I've tried.

gd

"The more you hate, the more you love."

Her eyes widened in my direction as if she knew it would stitch itself like a knife into my temporal lobe, which in turn caused my memories to be severed into oozing mush coming out like stuttered words and physical reactions.

So
my memories pooled all around my eyes causing them to shut closed in an instant while I envisioned the first time our teeth clashed from our first kiss and just the thought felt as if someone struck a blow to my stomach because I took a sharp breath in and yelled stop! to no one in particular except my own desires.

So
I remembered when I asked you why you'd been so cold and you couldn't even make a sound to assure me you were even alive and I followed that question with if you had hated me that much, so much so that I wasn't even worth an explanation and I was relieved when you said no but now I'm starting to realize that maybe you never really loved me at all.

gd

It's weird.
Some days I will have complete periods of strength
that reach till the ends of my nails and the tips of my split ends,
then some days I am drained completely from head to toe.

As if I am the rigid metal that carries lightning currents
downwards into the earthy ground -
emotionless exterior but interior chaos.
And if I was a storm I would be the circumference:

Hectic and reckless causing havoc in my path
when all I ever long for is to reach the eye of my own destruction;
to touch the absolute stillness of its centre;
the becoming and acceptance of the right here and right now.

But I am never here; I am everywhere all the time.

I am the rain that falls even when the sun
is shining on the bare skin on your backs.
I am the gasp after shock and the light ringing
in your ears hidden behind the invisible vibrato in the air.

I am the strength and the weakness;
I am the hurricane all together,
attaching myself to imaginary homes
I made out of the rubble of temporary emotions.

And maybe that is why
I cannot seem to hold onto anything long enough.
Or when the storm reaches its peak, maybe that is why
I cannot seem to let go quickly enough either.

gd

Everybody is falling in love
                 and I'm just falling further
                 into the depths of some
                 monstrous black hole I dug in
                 the back wall of my closet.

Everybody is falling in love
                 and I'm just falling asleep
                 under some mysterious concoction
                 you injected into me when I got caught up
                 in your faulty promises, but I should have known
                 that you were nothing but an awful distraction

Everybody is falling in love
                 and I can't help but remind myself that these clouds above me
                 will only remain grey until some external force sweeps me off my feet
                 and carries me towards the highest mountains with a stunning view,
                 and he'll set me on the ground and I'll make a run for the edge
                 only to think twice before jumping off because

                 you ruined me in all the right places  
                 just to make sure everything felt so wrong after you left.

Everybody is falling in love**
                 and I can't help but notice that the weather seems to be looking up
                 and I can't help but hope for it to come crashing down;
                 for the sea to break through the cracks in the concrete
                 so I'll never have to see your face again
                 and you'll never get to see hers either.

gd

My biggest flaw always seems to be
holding onto things too tightly
so much so that when I finally gain
the strength to let them go, they only
end up sitting battered and broken in
the palms of my hands
                                            stuck to the fibres
                                            of my fingertips.

gd

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

Don't look so sad, darling. I know it's tough right now
to think there is nothing worth living for. I know life
can be cruel when you turn your attention away for
even a moment. And I know how much you try and
how hard you work, but there are still some things
you need to realize.

              Maybe a year from now, a month from now, a week from now -
              even tomorrow, you'll find someone who will love the way you
              scrunch up your nose for no reason. Someone who will laugh at
              all your lame jokes; someone who will understand why your
              clothes need to match and your books need to be straight. They
              will notice the way you make patterns with your fingertips and
              how you breathe for good luck. Someone who realizes you only
              like your cucumbers with cream cheese or how you don't like
              peppers. At all. They will smirk about how you smile to yourself
              when no one looks, and how you gasp at TV characters like they
              were your best friends. Even how you like to hum when you're
              bored. And scream your heart out in crowded concerts just to feel
              like part of the noise, because they will know just how much you
              hate the silence. They will bring you sunshine on rainy days since
              that's when you will need it the most. They will realize why you
              never read a book if you've already watched the movie, and give
              you the time you need alone just with your words. Someone who
              will feel the cringing when you hear metal on chalkboards and be
              able to smell your favourite mid-August breeze. They will watch
              you dangerously dance with your fingers as much as your feet
              and sway to the rhythm even without any music around. Maybe
              they will know when you want sushi and how you like it raw,
              when you want pizza - with extra cheese and barbecue sauce on
              top - or how you like no onions on your double bacon cheese
              burger cravings at midnight on a Tuesday. Someone who will love
              you for your big mouth and your little mistakes; someone who
              would bring down a comet when you get tired of stars; someone
              who will be there before, during and after the morning hangover.
              And who will still love you the most when life gets cruel.

But first, darling,
learn to love yourself just as much.

gd

White walls, blank looks,
scattered papers and messy thoughts -
that is what my life consists of right now.
And birds are probably chirping outside
in the spring sun and people are gathering
together in song and in meal and in love.

But I find no interest.
I look forward at the white walls
that have turned beige and the blank looks
that have transformed into sleepy stares,
and I cannot pinpoint the one thing
that is getting me by.

I live to....
what?
To sleep all day to escape the noise and
stay up all night to waste time with silence.
The one thing I despised became
the only thing that kept its promise.

There are papers on the floor and
old clothes on my back and
I can't seem to blink without trying.
For the life of me,
I want to feel alive again;
I want to see the bird chirping and the sun set.

I want to taste the breeze hitting
my cheeks flushing them red,
and for life to kiss my lips as if
they were wishing me goodnight.
But instead, I see white walls
and blank looks.

Scattered thoughts are being binged
on scattered sheets of paper
in hopes of getting rid of the voices in my head.
They do not forget to make you remember.
And the whispers are getting louder:
"Close your eyes for a bit darling, even if you want them shut forever."

gd

Every once in awhile I'll stop time in my head
to linger a little too much in between
every single word I never want to say out loud -
never have the courage to say anyways.

And I get stuck on our bridge,
the one I've burned and rebuilt twelve times over,
just to stay there a little while longer than I should
just to see if you'll come out smiling on the other end.

But with no avail,
I wind up just sitting there alone again
watching the leaves turn from green to orange,
from a fiery red to black ice.

I've watched water glimmering in the luminous sun
turn to overcast mist covered in a sheet of white snow.
I've seen the birds sing with life
only to watch them retreat south once again.

And all the while, I watch all around me
choosing to witness change firsthand
instead of wandering back to
wondering how you are.

Because that leaves my tongue toxic
with words I have no right to say;
ideas I have no right to think about;
emotions I should not even feel.

              But please don't be fooled, I always wonder if you feel the same.

gd

Between cold sheets and muffled giggles,
I remember whispering a harmless
little sentence whilst the
dead of night struggled to live:

"I've never been more sure of anything else in my entire life."

only to end up empty hearted
and empty handed
hanging on for dear life onto
the last plank of our broken bridge.

Needless to say, you lifted four of
my fragile fingers with a slow precision,
ending me off with my pinky to make sure
I watched you break the rest of our promises.

gd

There's a pulsing in my head I can't seem to shake off
and it always beats to the rhythm of your breath.

& because of this I can't seem to pick up
another black or blue pen for my life because
it still leaks the words you told me;
still leaks the words that used to be true.

& I think that's what baffles me the most:
that words remain in the moment - just like pictures
and carved wood - but as time passes by they
lose their meaning and fade away like dust in a sandstorm.

& there I sit, right at the eye of the tempest
waiting for the pulsing in my temples to subside
in the dead of the night with nothing but
the silence to keep me company and the chaos to keep me warm.

gd

I'm running on
black coffee and
a couple faded
dreams all for
the sake of some
promising future.
But if we would
all just be honest
with ourselves,
we'd realize that
promises were
solely made to
be broken, and
another cup of
coffee will only
make my dreams
disappear.

gd