There's an ice storm in my brain,
        my thoughts
                     are sliding
                out of control,
         there's a fire in my chest,
                        making ashes
          of what's left of
                     my soul.

The sky is the color you see when you close your eyes. Not quite black, just dark. It was nice, the way you looked at me when I was calm. How your smile caressed your eyes, your shoulders seemed to relax. The flowers I planted never grew; they must've been too weak, consumed by the earth. I watch happy people and realize how shallow they are. They space out and talk about their favorite tv shows and worry about stains on their shirts. My fingers are strangely shaped: they curve in and out, thinner than normal. But somehow they fit perfectly with yours, straight and perfect, always oil-stained and callused. I remember when I draped my arm across your chest and felt the scars on your shoulder. How they were arranged in such a familiar pattern. I traced them so carefully and read the word 'fear'. I wish I didn't write about you. I wish I didn't write at all. I know the smell of my mother's perfume. It reminds me of the times she came home and I ran to her after hours of waiting restlessly. Now it chokes me and creates a lump in my throat, tears in my eyes. No one's voice could ever fade in the background yet be heard so clearly except yours; a piano ballade in a distant room. We spend so much time trying not to take things for granted that we end up taking things for granted, for granted. "I ruined the flower you gave me. I didn't mean to," you said to me. It's been three years, and I feel like the flower.

Have you ever tided upon tsunamis?
Indeed, these giant brooms clean everything in its wake.
This is the only time you are glad to have resisted
transforming someone into poetry,
as the waves sweep ink and paper off your desk.
They kissed the shores too passionately this time around.

Have you ever fuelled a fire in the woods?
Eyes burning brighter than old flames.
Exchanging breaths of smoke and dust,
and feeding what has already been strangled dry
To red and orange and blue tongues.

Have you ever triggered an avalanche?
It's a ride that gets faster and faster and faster.
The world spins around you,
And you still hear your echoes
Albeit in the end,
it still is all white and
nothing else.

Have you ever clapped alongside thunderstorms?
Fight poison with poison, they say.
So I shouted your name,
and the storms are singing along.
Up till now,
I still wonder if you could build homes
out of ruins.

Have you ever stood in the eye of the hurricane?
There's a weird kind of serenity in that.
As though you could halt the whirlwind and the cold and its monstrous roar in their tracks
With your bare hands,
and place them where they ought to be.

Have you ever buried yourself in the epicentre of earthquakes?
The earth spins on its axis;
your consciousness hinges on your emotions.
Hold on to the loose gravel around you-
it's the closest you can get to
the warmth of someone safe.
The debris destroys both you and the haven.

Have you ever counted flames, cinders and lava that leaves a crater?
An eruption of falling stars;
home is where they return.
There is always a takeaway
from tragedy it seems.

"shop closed"
the sign never sat
perfectly on any hook
or nook
or cranny
you are an echo bounced
perfectly in every hook
and nook
and crook

"considered sold once broken"
consider it done
once dealt with the devil
his ornamental fairies
consider them whole before
they were bought

"trespassers will be prosecuted"
bedsheets spun out of cobwebs
sandcastles spun in of air
floorboards swallow you in
you dreamt of
anchoring yourself
to the ground

"wine house"
lustre of turbulent pirouttes
trapped within the walls
of wine glasses and
wine-stained dresses
in cadavers' masquerade

"emergency only"
they pushed you in the operating theatre
and cleaned their hands with soap
opera
amputate these phantom limbs
pain has been the only anaesthesia

"in loving memory of"
he is the protagonist
he is the antagonist
and all stories end*
(with)              
                     the former