The rain is pouring hard today, and I am not with you. My thoughts linger and find you still, though. It is the time of the day when the sun has just finished setting, but a little light still hangs on to the sky ready to sleep. I imagine the world being wrapped in a humid coldness, with you and me living in it. I can see you and me in your single bed, with our skin cold from the weather, with the evening chill clinging onto your bed sheets. I'm laying on your chest and you're brushing my hair with your fingers. We both have heavy eyelids, remaining quiet so as not to break the white noise engulfing us. I picture you planting a kiss on my forehead. I can see you sleepily smiling from the corner of my eye, with my eyelash brushing against your chin with every tired blink. We stay quiet, but our bodies converse. Your index finger traces patterns on my right shoulder down to my arms. My breath creates warm patches on the dip of your neck. It's dark now. We both have the same thought in mind: this is perfect. But we don't have to say it to let each other know.

The rain is pouring hard today, and I am not with you.

This.* This is her. This is the girl you fell in love with. And it confuses you so much to see yourself right where you are right now, because you've had your fair share of battle scars and open wounds in this half-struggle, half-relationship. But you're still here, and she's still here, and you're still together. Sometimes you get lost in the middle of your sentences just thinking about the way she never tells you everything, the way she forgets to comb her hair, the way she doesn't like to hold your hands. This is her, and you still have yet to know some things about her that will make you even more baffled.

She's born to walk the face of the earth, to explore the world and all its nooks and crannies. She's made to take care of herself; she spends her time writing paragraphs about the places she's never been to, and how she'll meet people and try to get a place to stay in for the night after wandering around foreign cities. I'm telling you, never ever try to enclose her with your arms, trying to assure her that you'll never leave her and that she is your home. This is her. You fell in love with a traveler, and she'll never stop discovering things. But you're her home, and she always tells you, "Leaving home feels good, but coming back feels even better." And that is when you know she'll stay.

She's born with the sharpest tongue, but with the softest heart. You know this all too well to deny this. All the arguments, all the heavy silences, all the walking away, all the screaming, and all the other things that made you feel so brittle and feeble -- it's all because of her. She has, inside of her, all the words that she knows will break you apart, but chooses to hide them all away somewhere in the room inside her head. She's born to confront, and she does it out of love. She sounds like she has the guts to snap your ribs and kick your teeth out, but the only truth is that she wants you to take her fists and kiss her knuckles. This is her. You fell in love with the girl who can't tell you what the truth really is. You fell in love with the girl who could only use rage to mask whatever it is that's shaking inside her. But she holds herself still and plants kisses on your forehead to calm down, and she holds your trembling bones from the aftermath of her words. She ends up quiet, as if the silence is the only apology she can offer. You need words, but she says nothing at all. And that's when you know she'll stay.

You fell in love with the girl who's got the emptiest eyes among the people you know, but that's only so if you don't look a little closer. She's born to be frustratingly inconspicuous, and you never get a full grasp on her. She's vague, in too deep in the thought of finding whatever it is that she's meant to find, and it kills you to know that you can't keep up. At least, not yet. You fell in love with her -- the girl who never stops making art, who never stops writing songs, who only jots down the sad things and never the happy things. She's born to keep things from other people, especially the ones that she finds special. Her eyes are only the emptiest after a fight, and only the fullest when the tears cloud her vision, forgetting to concentrate on you and the rest of the world. This is her, and it confuses you because you still stay. And then she unravels, and you watch her, like a flower bud opening up in fast forward. She breaks apart in half with sighs and tears, tired limbs and heavy eyelids. She opens up for you to see. Then you remember why you stay. Then you remember why she stays.

This is her, and this is only the tiny part of her quiet existence. And you're still you. This is the both of you, and you can either take it or leave it. There is no in-between.

do you feel that too? do you feel the sting of the static electrocute our lovelorn lips right after they part? do you feel the pull of gravity when we kiss? it guides our hands to find each other’s necks, and every movement creates heart earthquakes and little soul deaths. do you feel the bumps on my skin as you undress my mind and at the same time, take off my clothes? do you feel your fingertips mark me with potential wounds, but cover them up with warm kisses? you’ve traveled on my body like a clueless wanderer, and you found the places that i hide from everybody else. you’ve touched the parts of me that nobody can see but us. do you feel that too? do you feel the ghosts hide behind the curtains when you say, “you still haunt me in my sleep,” even when we sleep side by side every night? you used to say that the grass and the trees and the leaves and the branches dance for me. well love, they stop all their swaying and twisting when our bodies move together in the dark; we have an accidental choreography to the symphonies that our hearts create. the whole world stops to listen when you say, “you’re beautiful,” and the sky forgets to shine along with the sun when i smile. we are each other’s world; we are each other’s sky & sunshine. tell me. do you feel that too? do you feel the colors splatter your insides when you realize that you’re in love, and when you realize that you wouldn’t know what to do if this love ever falls apart? because i do, love. i feel them all. i feel the static. i feel the earthquakes. i feel the world stop. i feel the clocks stop ticking. i feel everything all at once, even when it only really happens in my mind. tell me, do you feel this too? i feel everything for you.

i didn't know
that the universe existed
right in the space between our lips
just before they meet
i didn't know
that gravity existed
in the moment right before we kiss
i didn't know
that i could hold so much words in my mind
but walk a straight line anyway
despite of the truth that there is
an apocalypse occuring inside my system
i didn't know
that people could make me feel
like i'm the world
just by telling me that i am
but through whispering into my lips
and through silent conversations
i didn't know
that certain parts of my mind existed
until you walked into it and lit up every corner
until you touched the walls of my skull
exactly like the way your lips traced my skin
i didn't know
that i could have the chance to live
to experience you
to cherish you
to love you
until today
and i swear to my favorite constellation
that it is a pivilege
to have experienced you
to have cherished you
to have loved you
among all the things i didn't know
i am sure of one thing
i know, and i am certain
that i love you
that i am loved
that good things exist because you do
that i can sometimes be the universe
because someone loves me like i am

i love you. i do, i really do. and i’m sorry if it freaks you out sometimes, but these feelings are so overwhelmingly strong that it shakes my whole system even after 2 am. i dream of you constantly and it horrifies me because they seem so real — as if i could still feel it, taste it, remember it like it happened yesterday.

i love you, and it’s scary to think that your words can break me anytime, any moment. i am vulnerable to you, and i think it’s both beautiful and sad how i easily & effortlessly gave it all up just so i could be with you. there’s just something — God knows what — that made me want to be with you even though i’m aware that you’re galaxies away from me.

i love you, and i love how i feel beautiful when you say that you are in love with me too. God, you are my favorite. i must admit that i have kissed & loved enough boys to know what brokenness truly feels like, but you mended me just like i’m something familiar, something you’ve been fixing your entire life. it’s a sick, mad world we’re living in, but you make it seem less agonizing whenever i hear you say those three words at 3 am, 4 pm, or 11 pm.

i’m in love with you, and it’s more intoxicating than the cigarettes and the alcohol i’ve taken in my whole life combined, and i don’t even want to be sober. you are the high even without the drug. you are the euphoria even without the ******* (beautiful) fireworks. you are the emotion even without the words.

i love you, and it’s okay if you can’t put it into words — how you feel — because even the silence i spend with you is enough to give me butterflies in my empty stomach. i don’t know what time it is, but it’s past midnight, and i’m still writing about you. i am a mess for and because of you, and my handwriting is proof. you shake my system even when you’re not there, and my dear, this is rare.

i love you dearly, with all honestly, and with all faithfulness. and i can’t help but think about you, every **** day. you’re both my drug and my antidote. my poem. my sunlight, my stars. my soul.

and i hope you love me too, as much as i love you.

it's interesting how, at night,  the smoke only reveals itself when shone on by the light. it's not even only the smoke -- it's the wind that moves it.

i thought of you while i smoked those three cigarettes. i can only reveal my true self when i'm with you. you are my light; the only one who possesses the ability to bring out the beauty in me, the beauty i've been keeping in for a very long time.

i'm intoxicated. both by the cigarettes and by you.

He's the son of the wind and the ocean
I'm the son of the mountains and the trees
The water is his element and i, the earth
His cool demeanor made the rock beneath me
Melt becoming quicksand
******* me into the cold, dark ground below
When he comes close,
Everything feels right
When he touches my skin,
Tremors appear like the remnants of earthquakes
When he says my name,
The mountains recede,
And the birds sing brighter
But the geography does not align
Alas, the mountains will never move
To meet the ocean
Only the wind from coastlines
Can meet with the canopies of the trees
But, the waters cannot flood the summit
and, thus, we can never be.

maybe...
maybe it's okay to lose people.
maybe they're supposed to stay
for a little while;
they are only vessels of
tiny reminders such as
let the pain remind you
that you can still feel
and
so now you know
why not to trust and get attached.
maybe...
maybe it's okay
to leave people.
maybe we're supposed to leave
because they're poisonous
- or maybe we are -
either way,
when it's not right,
someone's got to leave.

i'm screaming under the layers of sounds;
i don't know where they're coming from,
but they keep pointing at my broken heart.
the edges of this glass-piece contraption between my lungs
sing like static against my rib cages,
muting the sound of the words i've been aching to say.
the sound of the tearing resonates relentlessly like the rain,
and there is comfort in the sound,
but it feels heavy in my chest
like the apologies that rotted in your throat
before you could tell me everything.

i'm screaming under layers of sounds;
i don't know where they're coming from,
but they keep pointing at my throbbing head.
the thoughts that rage sound like breaking glass,
and they create shipwrecks in my calm mind.
the words that you said still bombard the walls of my skull,
carving every sentence that i wanted to hear from you,
but never dared leave your mouth.
perhaps i'm going crazy, but at least feel a tad bit honored
that the way my head spins
is all caused for and by you.

i'm screaming under layers of sounds;
i don't know where they're coming from,
but they keep pointing at you.
you used to be my symphony, my only melody,
but you left me a broken note and a crooked key.
the parts that you planted your kisses on
decided to sound like raging storms and sirens.
the way your fingertips trickled down the line of my back
used to echo the song of the stars,
but now they hum the world's saddest tunes.
you buried me beneath these sounds, and not even i can hear my soul.

maybe that's what you need to do in life --
you have to look
a little deeper,
a little closer,
a little longer.
nothing is a total beauty, i know.
but there will always be
something beautiful,
something radiant.
it's the discreet things
that make things a little more thrilling.
if we keep quiet every once in a while,
nature will intensify for us.
the world isn't cruel;
we just don't see
the delicate parts of it anymore.

the world is kind.
life is kind.

it's just us who are not.

you have never given me
a reason to stay with you anyway.
why should i risk everything?

wishing on stars that only stare back
sitting on abandoned railroad tracks
staring at the blinding moonlight
wishing on the distant city lights
straying a bit too far away
talking with intensifying heart flames

a stomach filled with bitter things
hanging out at the abandoned swings
falling asleep with the tv on
knowing that he's already gone
sleeping on tear-soaked pillowcases
trying to feel the old embraces

looking at the infinite ceiling
nights spent with prayers, kneeling
creating conversations that work your way
watching your once red roses start to decay
ruffled book pages and messy photo albums
contemplating over living in an asylum

no matter how much different nights you spend
your heart still seems like it couldn't be mended
no matter how much you try to push these thoughts aside
you'll still be left with a broken chest and teary eyes
you only wish to bid these bitter things away
but no matter how much you try, these empty nights still stay

i am afraid of having to feel
this way towards you.
this is familiar,
it is a warning sign perched
on the edge of a cliff,
and i am the clueless traveler
blinded by the sunlight and
the colors of the sky.
you are the bottom of
the seemingly infinite cliff,
and i'm contemplating over
jumping or not,
because before, the others
have only let me crash
and never thought of catching me.
i'm not sure if you are
the water or the ground.
i feel all of this only for you,
and it happens as fast as a blink.
and love, i blink a million times a day.
and it scares me to death every time.

sleeping together is a beautiful thing. and by that, i mean falling asleep next to each other. you are vulnerable, and nothing else is stronger than your eyelids shut tight. you can feel the heat sheltered by his skin pressed against yours, making you feel that comfortable feverish feeling that you used to get when you were nine. you memorize each other's bodies even while asleep, through subtle breathing patterns and little body twitches. when you bump into his body, you'll know you're secure, and you no longer have the need to hide under the covers to feel a little protected, especially when it's a warm night. unconsciously, you hold him, and for once in your life, someone holds you back the way you wanted to be held -- with heavy eyelids and sleepy fingertips that hang loosely from the edges of your shirt. his eyelashes would touch your forehead, leaving you with dreams that you will remember when you wake up. and when you wake up in the middle of the night, still in his grip, you'll document everything in your mind. you'll become an artist even for thirty seconds, just to keep these things that isolated corner of your mind, the one you've always been saving for something for so long. falling asleep next to each other is a beautiful thing.

you are my favorite regret --
you are the only one
who can make me cringe
at the memories of us
on a drunken night
with only the lamp faintly glowing.

you remind me of a battlefield.
you have a sword for a tongue
and i have only bare skin as my shield.
with every cruel word you mutter,
i begin to bleed,
and surrender to them.

allow your voice to venture out into the world
either consciously or unconsciously.
somewhere, someone is listening
to the words you speak —
when you mutter out the words
right before you write them,
or when you whisper out a familiar name
during your slumber.

let yourself be heard;
do not confine these treasures
under layers of nerves and blood vessels.
do not keep it armored in your heart.
these words all deserve
to make a hollow mind filled
such as mine.
i will listen to you, so long as you speak.

that's when your thoughts **** you. it's raining, and the white noise is wrapped up around your soul, leaving you cold even without touching the raindrops. you stare at blank space without even blinking once. and when you do, a clap of thunder echoes in the distance, and the raining gets harder. it's as if your horrible thoughts are directly proportional to the strong downpour of the metaphorical tears you've been keeping in for so long. that's when you pull the trigger -- when all you hear is the rain and the words you almost said, but never did, making you feel like you have a fish bone stuck in your throat. the raining gets harder and harder, but you think twice about it because you can't tell the difference between the sound of your heart breaking and the sound of angry rain collapsing on your roof.

and then it all stops. it all stops, but your hope is dwindling. it stops, but you don't see things the same way ever again. you're alive, but you feel more dead than ever. that's when you know your thoughts have killed you.