black liquorice.
a man walking me with his hand on the small of my back.
chilli-flavoured chocolate.
being called "exotic".
salads.
my long beautiful hair (it's a trap!).
eggs in the morning.
making myself look "pretty".
foie gras.
bleu cheese.
macarons.

i am an apricot,
dried and vacuum-packed amongst chunks of cashew nuts and *******.

i am a cigarette,
wrinkled and cracked with ashes so rank and how the wind whispers my bones away.

i am a stick of magnesium
extingushed halfway -

and i will never burn again
for you have swallowed my spark.

my name is my mother's strength

my name is an extension of my dad's best friend

my name is a sanskrit darling

my name is a literal gift from god

my name is the key dangling around my neck*

my name is a hair tie

my name is a broken input chord

my name is a ***** pack tied around an old man's beer belly

my name is my name

my name is my name

you know her clandestinely -
your hands seize her cracks and crinkles
as if she was yours to form, yours to grip

you dust her with your powdered purity;
it is the same ivory colour you wear across your back.
your hands caress her the way she desires

she flows
she inhales
she rises

and she's yours to keep warm.

dear . . . sweetie,

the projections of your essence is the type
to cook up a future of you;
of the home you call your heart,
or how you let it spill across the metal table,
just to knead it back together to construct wholesome smiles.

yours is the form of communication i've never known,
a presence that haunts me -
as the scent of your perfume lingers at the back of my tongue
as i taste a sweet fruit,
or how your stories speak to me
as my eyes trickle such mundane appliances around me.

you have taken not my heart, nor my soul.
you have extracted from me fragments of my time;
where i find myself caught in the air, mystically
hearing the songs that were stuck in my head when i first met you.

you are the soundtrack to my little death.
you are always right in the corner of my mind, just as i want to see you:
half-baked, smirking, and vulnerable.

i am a coloured picture
printed in black and white

you've trimmed my edges
i am just as round as all of you

they look at us and they see
a sea of like minds, like faces, like appearances

do we like it

i want to be a wild heart swinging
in the oblivious rhythm of movement

i am not a tool to negate your discomfort
i am not here for you to caress my conformity

ever since i could form a thought-
i knew of this phenomenon called god.
at least that's the name it was given.
but i could never think of god as a person,
a figure to look up to and
are ultimately afraid of.

god was never my best friend,
never something i devoted my life to
nor someone i gave anything up for.

god was the force that willed the plants to grow
upwards from the ground.

god was the recklessness that pushed me to forget my reasoning
and follow my gut.

god is how you can make sense of the past,
how your heartbeat and inhales and exhales
synchronise with the ocean
how you know what it means to feel electric.

god is what made my wrists stop bleeding at the right moment.
it made my father cry when he saw the flaw in his production.
god is what refused my angelhood
and allowed me to breathe
and live.

i still had time to grow.

so i prayed.
i surrendered to the magic of the universe.
i gave it my undying loyalty.