Her eyes were made of stars,
And yours, a black hole.
Whenever she looks at you
She sees her own death.

In or out,
Don't step on the line.
I am not a door with broken hinges.

Throw me out
Or pull me in.
Time is at risk, don't keep me in between.

Black and white,
Like ink and paper.
The obvious things you have yet to discover.

I was born with the night sky painted upon me,
Rivers of stars flow across my cheeks.
Your beloved sunlight stings a bit too much;
Even your shadow is a glittering navy blue silk...
I am still scratching out bits of it from my skin.

Tear-stained floor,
Ceilings burn from my gaze.
Why can't I make someone stay?

May I ask if for just one moment,
Even just an innocent split-second in your life when you were free from all your reasons and all the history you've been carrying with you,
If for just that one moment before you let those things take over most of who you are,
Did you love me?

"In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain
the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes.
You have used up the years and they have used up you,
and still, and still, you have not written the poem."

- Jorge Luis Borges

I did. All forty-five of it, with one person sneaking in between every line like waves persistently knocking on shores.

These poems will never meet the eyes of the one who guided my hands; the one who sung the melody to which my words danced.

You have conquered me.
You set me on fire
And it's the kind of fire I'm almost willing to keep,
Only it stings a bit too much.

"Do you save what's left or what you are afraid to lose?"

...maybe I should just throw it back to the ocean where it belongs.

"'Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.' Bulgakov wrote that. You should know."

…everybody's scared of something.

It feels like what happened and what I've felt for you
Were just a paragraph in a series made of indefinite volumes.
To be honest, I am unsure whether or not what we had is enough to be considered an epic,
Worthy to be idealized and remembered throughout the rest of what will become my history.
Yet, what I know is that for a certain time,
Though infinitesimal compared to the rest of my life,
I was willing to ignore every danger, hopelessness and fear just so I could give in to your light,
If that would mean I would be able to make you stay.

It wasn't that much but I guess it was enough to call it real.

It was strange not to feel anything at all
When all was said and done and every point has been proven wrong.
What once had been a matter of heaven and hell
has now turned into a mere speck of dust
Floating in front of her eyes.
She let it blur in her vision,
And then she shrugged and turned away,
forgetting it even before it was gone.

The universe has been out of sorts lately but with respect to what I've been through
and all the battles I've won,
I will look down at the eyes of the devil
and spat on his feet just to let him know that even though he was able to make me shiver for a moment,
I'm still going laugh at his face and I will scare him more than the angels did.

I'll be off to freeze up his hell because now I'm ******* ******.

Maybe I am just pushing it too hard,
Holding on to that faded chance that this might work out.
And maybe this might really work out if he tried,
But he's not really trying at all.

It is a road less traveled yet even a
long abandoned pathway has to end.
As I tried to slowly raise my foot off the ground, I caught my breath in desperation to pause the moment
only to find out that time is a moving picture playing continuously without mercy.

There will be this one fascinating thing which will come to take over most of who you are only to pass,
Fluttering its wings to an escape,
Dissolving into air.
I try, withstanding all my will to resist, to anticipate the arrival of the dark reel of film where the closing credits will soon roll in.

My body shivers as I wish to preserve the remaining last few pages,
But shivering might break my bones and I know
That it is a terrible, torturous thing
To want someone who wants someone else.

I once lived a night when shooting stars rain down from the sky until morning.
My sight blurred to pastel ball of lights that filled the streets outside my window.
My feet itch to silently walk that empty road,
My eyes beaming with a desire to keep everything inside the pockets of my shirt.

Everything was perfect until the lighting struck, truth carved deep in my skin,
Screaming in a deafening tone that all of it was just a dream.

There she stood
with wobbly knees,
arms limp as a dying flower,
shoulders set to kiss the earth,
hiding within her heart
this nerve-racking,
conspicuously slanderous self-awareness
of being unloved.

I keep yearning for your words like an incurable addiction.
I am frightened I am slowly getting used to living under your shadow
And soon it will be difficult for me to step out to the sun when it is time for you to leave.
Yet still, amidst this drifting thoughts heading towards your world,
Fighting storms and sea monsters
Deprived of armor and unsheltered,
Offering my pride as a bait to be ravished by unexpected vultures,
Hear I am,
Letting myself drown in this miraculous possiblity that you would give me more.

I can hear the starlight whisper your name.
This must be insanity.
I find music even in inanimate objects and they all sing your melody.
These colors are starting to have a sound of its own.
They define you, reminding me to think of you,
And I can't seem to get enough of it.

The mental image of your eyes laid on mine has been quite too difficult for me to resist.
You are a habit that chases away my other reasons for living,
Drowning all the names and all the pain I felt before you.
Like an unfinished dream,
You unknowingly demanded more than I can give.
Thoughts of you has become a familiar affair and I crave for it like how my lungs crave for air.

When did the scent of the evening air started to sweeten?
By far, this is the most colorful darkness I have ever seen.
The rush of blood in my veins draws poetry whenever my mind spells your name.
I search for you even in hopeless places,
And even more in hopeless cases.
I could fall hard for you and I would not even mind if the ground tears my bones.

In the scripts playing inside my head you were there to listen.
You were there to talk,
To organize our chaos and to make sense of those wasted days when we could never connect the dots in this cosmic puzzle.
Words are all I need, the right words that can reincarnate the colors of this desaturated conspiracy,
Coming out of your nervous lips as your eyes misplace its focus in the light of my blushing face.

In my head, we were both lost in the midst of something that can fix us.

My thoughts continue to flow on a roller coaster track. In my mind there is a feast of assumptions, of embitterment, of fear. I must not give in to your innocent enticement because now I am running out of words yet my crooked wishes are fighting a war against my new found cynicism.
You certainly are the dangerous kind.

I tried to put the pieces back together and it was never easy to sew back the buttons with an invisible thread. I have spent countless of hours, days and nights, burning bridges just to feel nothing and what have you done? If you are trying to destroy whatever  amount of peace of mind was left in me then you have won.
You certainly are the dangerous kind.

You chant those words like a song trapped in your head - impatiently and persistently trying to make a way out through an orchestral whip of your tongue. You pulled me in only to throw me out.
A kindness that is cruelty in disguise,
Your indifference comes in forms of smiles.
You certainly  are the dangerous kind.

My consciousness has been stolen by the rain's screaming melody.
Sharp as a knife, trying to knock down on rooftops in the middle of this cold dark night.
Thunder rolls upon the heavens,
A streak of light appears in skies like a sudden burst of anger.
There is calm and distraught and nothing in between.

Now the rain has silenced;
it has toned down into a pianoforte piece,
Still knocking and dancing as the city tries to breathe.
Heavy clouds pass by my window, mimicking the procession of the passing time,
Giving me nothing but a strong sense of loneliness in this solitary night.

For the first time in a long time, I found myself craving for light.

Two photographs merged into one vague composition -
A world of wordlessness;
A two-dimensional space made of faded lights and shadows.
As my pulse dances into the rhythm of clockworks,
With eyes wide open, I continue to fall stead fast on solid grounds.
I fear that time will mercilessly refuse to stop when it should.

For the last time let me linger through those memories
That ruined my peaceful evenings, stole my slumber and infused the resuscitation of my long forgotten dreams.
I need to let the afterimages burn in my tired eyes, one at a time,
Until it causes fire within my rueful stare
And only then will it turn into dust.

And if the dust must find a home behind the comfort of my heavy eyelids,
What cruelty must it try to convey?
I will wash myself free from my beloved agony
So that my arms will eventually untie itself from this forlorn fantasy.
The gray clouds will soon pour tears down into the earth where I scrawled your name.

I will send away my disregarded affections in forms of stardust with every step I take as I walk away.

These mental movies playing in subdued technicolor;
An entrapment that seduces my entire consciousness like a glimmering silverware under the sun.
It has kept me enthralled, convinced me to strip myself out of my worn out realism,
Then lead me through a journey that is neither truth nor a dream.
These constructed storylines which overpower my will to resist,
Leaving me no choice but to surrender upon its bittersweet, artificial melody.
How tempting and dangerously self-depreciating it is to let myself be consumed by an illusion's thorn-filled embrace,
Emphasizing in persistent bold letters the cruel honesty that it projects.

"I could have been yours."
A mental script that echos in her mind throughout her solitary nocturnal escapade.
A  combination of five simple words that is strong enough to freeze fire or liquefy a a neglected dream.
The perfect conclusion to justify a tragedy -
A tragedy so pure and so close to being a sunset-filled day in between the lines of a fanciful short story,
Yet it also cuts a beautiful outline of its history through her tongue.
It pierces through her skin like fangs of a tormented beast.
A carpet of shattered glasses rest under her bare feet,
He was not there to close the colossal distance that appeared in between.

You are no longer my strange angel.
Every step that you take narrates a story that I am no longer part of;
The sound of your footsteps shall no longer affect the rhythm of my heartbeat.
You may look away whenever you want and it shall never make me shiver.
You may spit sunlight from your smile and it shall no longer hurt my eyes.
You no longer have the right to cause such blood rush in my veins.
You no longer have the key to unlock the room on which I wait.

Sunday Morning means being able to walk in the middle of the road with less chances of dying.
If not for the few people standing on the sidewalk, I might have danced.
I whispered spells to wet pavements and bathed in the warmth of the street lights.
The puddles of water were my mirrors, set to reflect the crying sky.
I conquer the streets while everybody sleeps
Until the sun hangs whole, chasing away the pink dawn lights.

Her heavy eyelids, her mouth shut tight.
A stare that could pierce through ribcages, through pumping organs, through spine.
Her lips were stained with an artificial tint, the same warmth of her own blood.
Her every step was guided by a strange beat of dark chocolate-flavored symphony.
She was there, and not there at the same time.

Venus burns like hell's fire.
When she ran out of tears, she turned into ice.
It was the same dark cloud that found a home in her brain.
It was the same garden of cacti that hangs in her hair.
It was the same piece of rock that blocks her throat.
It was the same mess of dead butterflies, trapped in her lungs.
The only difference was that she finally learned how to dance.

Just when you start to think
That the storm has died,
With just a spark of fire,
It bursts. It flickers.
It has come to life.

I was trying to build sand castles but you
went to the shore to invite the waves.
Colonies of sugar rest on my tongue.
Your hands were all over your ears when I tried to open my mouth.
Your tightened lips made my eyes a home for rivers.
You looked away and it all turned bitter.

The universe is taking it's own course
And I am infinitesimally too small to resist it.
The force of gravity is crashing on my shoulders,
Pulling me down, dropping me off to the same ground where you stand.
In the sky, the stars are writing our story
But you are too busy trying to unlock a different door.

You are not supposed to put boulders on a road that could last forever.
You are not supposed to abandon the steering wheel when a smooth sail is all that the wind has to offer.

Not the bitter kind, no.
Far from it actually.
Maybe it is the eye of the storm
Or the silence after the closing credits rolled up,
I will never really know.
In this vortex of mixed signals and miscalculated worst-case scenarios,
I know I am supposed to find a way out of your world
And force myself to walk on desserts
Or swim through rivers just to be safe from your shadow.
But strange as it may seem,
I have just managed to run away a little and now I stop.
The ignition on my feet is not responding, the chords were cut from my brain.
It did not consume me enough.
I could not taste the blood from my punctured lips.

Every second is stretched like country roads - empty and silent, long and endless.
Every heartbeat is strong enough to destroy walls, loud enough to drown thunderstorms.
Every question is written in indecipherable codes like long forgotten  ancient languages.
Every answer is buried in a world more complex and fearsome than Homer's imagination.

Every spoken word is an arrow shot in the darkness that I often want to take back.
Every waking moment is spent dreaming about the sound of your laughter and the  sparkle of your eyes.

Slam your head on a piece of white paper
Until blank ink spills out of your forehead.
Until the ink forms words, phrases, sentences, prose,
Something that will perfectly justify how it feels like to have swallowed
a rock, a planet, a universe.

Find a friend who tells the truth.
Tell her everything and listen to her as she rips out your soul and crush your heart into grains
While she speak of things you already know but you were too stupid not to believe.
Truth heals another truth,
Let it devour you.

Get a rich old man to like you and spend most of your time thinking of the smartest way to stay away from him.
Channel all your energy to your new found fear and disgust.
New problems patch another problem.
Distraction is the key to stop the living from haunting you.

Force yourself to get out of your bed
the moment you first lift your eyelids to check the time on your phone.
Do not nail yourself in there.
Your bed is one of the most dangerous places at this stage,
It is a VCR for mental flashbacks.
Get yourself out of the dark.

I am a gray-sky afternoon.
I am all shades of wet asphalt.
The fierce battle between the droplets
of cool water and the warmth of the ground.
I am the white noise that envelops everything.
I live in a world of blurry reflections and subdued colors.
I look for feelings and thoughts.
I am inspired by anything that surrenders to whatever I sprinkle over them.
I live on a rainy day.

Now, in the fast-forward pace of things, thoughts, feelings, life..
Every drop of the pouring rain is carrying the same burden I have been holding in for the last couple of hours.
I have this unusual desire to collide with the ground.

I have yet to have a taste of slumber, not even a blink.
I can't afford to pause and linger, or stop the time.
If I sink deep down inside myself I will burn.
My heart might punch a hole out of my chest and I fear it might leave.
This is my defeat; my price was gone.

I am still standing in the middle of a blank slate.
In time, rivers will flow down from my eyes again.
Nose red as fire, face swollen and crumpled.
Loneliness will creep in and disappointment will drown my whole being.

For now, I must stay away from the dark.
Hold it in, keep it safe until it is forgotten.

Just like how the dandelions disperse
with a sudden yet firm kiss of the wind,
I hope these unvoiced feelings of passion,
of longing,
of dreaming,
of loving
will soon be swept away by fate
so it may find its way to flourish
within the tall fences of your own world.

As they fell for the characters,
I fell for the authors.
And I am frightened
that I might never be free.
For I will always be earth-bounded
by the gravity of what happens in real life -
the fact that the mind of a stranger,
could be this beautiful and splendid,
and this is the closest thing I could get to it.

She was a monster who lost the sharpness of her fangs
Who ran away to hide inside an old, mystical cave
With faded black and white photographs on wooden frames
Hanging on its cold, uneven walls.
There were dozens of fireflies dancing in the shadows
to which she compared the beauty of the stars.
There were cracked mirrors and cobwebs and broken clocks
And old binoculars with dusts permanently embracing its lenses.
There was a tiny forest at the bottom of the cave
With miniature trees and lakes and stagnant rivers
Where the three-inch rainbow-bearded goats and one-eyed faeries play.
She spent the whole afternoon sitting on a small flowerbed
Beneath the cracks where the sun was shinning --
dazzling and serene, magical and quiet,
As she read thousands of tales about the real big things.

As we slowly drift away from each other
We both changed,
Bit by bit, like a gentle rainfall,
Until the traces we left were all gone,
Until my soul no longer remember
How nice it actually felt like to be with you.

It certainly doesn't feel real anymore.
It is as if I just woke up from a long yet hazy dream
And everything that happened
Is now a part of a non-existing world.

I know I am empty,
But at least I am free.

You are a clock without hands.
A living metaphor, forever vague and paradoxical,
A second-hand gem that I can only admire
behind the safety of a glass case.
You are the dust on my knees,
A part of me that I will soon have to let go.