you suppress the urge to check him back one last time
because last time you checked it shattered you so fully even brought home in-sanity
but how can we forget -- the correlation b/w heartbreaks and sanity is less
the lesser time it has been.

curled up in a fetal position,
wrapped in wool that doesn't warm
because cold are tears that trickle down
and it's still not the end.

I wish you hadn't done what you did so I wouldn't have had to face what I did.
It's not normal to keep piling things inside and not say,
when all you want to do very much
is say: This is it.
This and that and everything else. I can't believe I am turning mad.

You thought you were acing it
but literally, you were only leaving it
or perhaps, it  was  leaving  you.
You stay empty-handed
your soul is bare and looks like a skin peeling off
from winter's cold sighs.
Scratch it, and you have his very name on it.

I am a sleepless star
A sleepless, slurring star
High on sleep and this drug
That is your memory.

Please miss me like I miss you.

You're really sad basically

I am just... highly highly obsessed with you.
And it's not even cool or nice or pleasant
because you are so far and so distant and still a stranger
and that, you will always be.

you were so ******' miserable for messing up my life like that.
what do i do now with all those praises you meant so well?
what do i do with your words and your face and your morning texts that keep beeping today even when I have your number no more - hammering my head
your memories leave no chance of torturing
like you didn't

I could still show the pieces of your then-polluting, now-rotten heart, and prove to the world it was not I who was mistaken. I can also present myself as an evidence — a heap of mess, covering blisters caused by the burst of these emotions that never wait too long to spill. Ah, of course because your name still holds magic.

Honestly, sometimes I think we are all sad.
It hurts everywhere.
Some hide it behind their half-rimmed thick glasses from which
Their eyes seem too distant
An Okay Facade.
Some others comb it in-between their hair,
Oil it to the scalp.
Lovers put it in the creases of the bed-sheets, stuff it in, but the white turns red
Colors don't lie.
You at times name it Frustration, some days you say Just Tired
Can't Hold, Oh It's Nothing
Oh, it's nothing. For sure.

Sometimes I think it's really nothing. And that is eating each one of us.

I've been making mistakes.
I don't know why, or how, or how not to
But I know I've been messing with everything I say
- or a lot of things I say
I think I don't always want to blame myself because it's always two to make it weird
But I also know well that you don't have to put up with the phase I'm going through
Which you do
And I'm thankful and sorry and I'm not so okay

How much more poetry

until it's all OK?

That's how it happens
Heart
       b
             r
                    e                   a
                                                 k
                                                                    s

I wish I could ask this from you instead of bearing with this misery.

Like an undigested morsel of food,
a word comes to my throat; sickening me
until I ***** out
this poem.

I cannot help myself right now and I don't know what will.

I feel like a little bird caught in a strong, grey storm.

your sufferings
are your secrets.
don't show them off to a world
that doesn't care!

'Hey, how are you?'
That is the only question you have to resist asking
Until it gets easier to keep on living, without him.

Let's sleep tonight. We can be sad later.

Please don't do that. Look at me. You are better than this.
Please don't hit him. He's just a baby. He is too young to understand what you've been telling him to do.
Please don't hurt yourself. Stop drinking. Please stop throwing glasses around.
Please don't scream. You'll scare your boy. Look, he's covering his ears with his little hands. He is crying.
Please don't cry, you. Come to me. I'll take both of you.
For I am death and I am that sweet escape
I am what all of you have since always asked.
I am here now. I will take you.

If regret was a bird, it would be a blue thrush
Singing songs of yesterday that you no longer want to hear
but can't shoo away.
This feeling. It leaves speckles of blue like dust on the ground
Every time it flies, round, round, and round.

the melodies only your heart can create
so just your soul can sing
and everybody . . . everybody in this wide, wide world can hear
with a sense of oneness: because they can all relate

• not sad. not sad at all.
• this ache is too indescribable for being real
• I die every time. then again I live: to die
• you took away my prose. you snatched my poetry and burnt it
• matchsticks and broken hearts
• voids and monotonous escape routes
• aren't we all waiting?

Can't we sometimes go to people and say,
I am sad, just.
And expect them to take it away?

"you taking care of your sleep?"
asked you.
well yes, when you come I do.
but when you go,
*I forget, I forget, I forget...

I am finding it hard to deal with your loss.

A cry for help
Sometimes sounds like,
"Hey! How was your day? Tell me everything."
But I am not genuinely concerned about the buffets you ate
Or the guy who complimented you while you were both at the parking lot - not that I mind hearing about your purple dress and his dreamy, deep voice - for a fifth, sixth, eighth time
Not that I mind anything. I am more than fine
Knowing about your old aunt's hellick habit of interfering in your personal life
Her probing questions and your oh so smart turndowns
"That would teach her!" Of course,
I don't mind, I don't mind
As long as it fills my silence
As long as it shuts the madman pinning needles in my mind
Tell me how your day was.

my phone never slept this month and last
because hope said so.

'Hey yeah so I really miss you right now'*
and every day
and every moment of every day.
Please come back.

mercury splattered
across the floor
broken into a
hundred fragments and more

you try collecting
but never get her whole
she's damaged so deeply
it's not in her control

I listen to the songs you liked listening to and miss you this way.
Read your letters one by one, everyday.
This is how I know we had something. *The pain reminds me.

Just how many times
I've paired words one and two,
lines after lines that spell nothing
but the damage you've caused.
The colossal, irreversible, unchangeable damage
that has blotted onto my soul most darkly, dreadfully.
How many times
Have I just
Paired lines after lines to spell that.

we had monsters in our house.
they had come uninvited, of course, and they wouldn’t go away.
hush

we had monsters in our house. they had come uninvited, of course, and they wouldn’t go away so we stuffed them in my cupboard
we thought we had hid them well.
only they didn’t like it – at all.

we had monsters in our house and we stuffed them in my cupboard where they took all the space but didn’t like it there at all
we thought they wouldn’t – but we didn’t care
they cared, of course, because they didn’t like it at all

the monsters from my cupboard would beat gongs to protest – I don’t know how they got them there –
the monsters in my cupboard would never rest.
the monsters in my cupboard would not give up.
we would tell we couldn’t hear them but our eyes betrayed us every time.
one would point at the other when they saw several small circles of red veins on their irises
and black clouds underneath
but the fingers would also point back at ourselves so we never had to say
shush

Our Lips Were Sealed.

our lips were sealed except on days we screamed, altogether
we would scream and scream while the monsters from my cupboard would play a thunderous clap
they would shout in alien languages and beat gongs, and roll drums – I don’t know how they got them there but they would. none would tire.

our lips were sealed until the monsters from my cupboard Won and found a way Out
the monsters in my cupboard were no longer monsters inside my cupboard for they found a way out
when they found a way out they hid under my bed. they had better plans to take revenge.

every time the screaming happened, a similar series ensued:
we always got tired and slept cuddling each other, demanding warmth, pleading for safety in The Most Silent Language Ever
we never wanted the monsters to hear. you see, we were trying to manage everything despite suffering
every time the screaming happened and we went to sleep afterwards, craving warmth and safety, rubbing scars revealing fresh blood, one of us wouldn’t sleep.
one of us couldn’t sleep.
one of us couldn’t sleep because the monsters that were stuffed in my cupboard and were now hiding under my bed would find them.
they would face them boldly, ruthlessly, and make a living mess out of them.
they would threaten to shred their skin and scar their lips. pull their bulging eyes out.
(our eyes would be bulging because of our fear.)

every time the screaming happened, a similar series ensued:
we always got tired and went to sleep with one another, but the monsters wouldn’t sleep
they preyed on one of us.
they would eat some of their flesh, and gargle with their blood
and finally, they would pull them under their bed and put a hand over their mouths
As If They Could Scream

one by one, we fell prey to the monsters – at night
during our days we would live like each other.
and did we see our wounds and half fleshes? of course we did.
but we didn’t say for we couldn’t help it. none of us could
and we were losers who had lost while pretending all the way that we knew better
we became them.
and started biting ourselves.

It's so hard to put your faith on someone when it just doesn't hit you
Or simply believe in their ever so charming words
Because what else does a lie look like if not pretty?

They could be laughing in their hearts as they softly stab you in the back, without you realizing
Crack you'll break, little girl, you'll break so much

White noise
doesn't help me block out echoes of your lies
the color of your laughter

I wake up from my sleep, try to open my eyes and adjust to the morning that is dark without your presence -
and so cold,
My body refuses to normalise, limbs don't move
I try to stretch, my chest fills with a nameless void -
nameless but so real,
And then my phone beeps from across the bed on the table; heart flutters; hope smiles
I get up and walk to find someone else's text. Brain says you knew it wasn't him
Weakly, I walk back but now I am moving, and I get on with living another day.
True that it's the expectation of impossible that keeps me alive.

i wish
i could still
do poetry
without having to
write it.

Use this deep discomfort, this anxiety sprouting from your ruins within
Create.

This inexplicable sadness. This sadness rooting from deep down below. This sadness urging me to finally write. This hollow, crazy sadness. I cannot control it. It's sprouting from within, the shrubs thorny and harsh, it's hurting me all the way. It's hurting me all the way, it's hurting me so much.

I don't know what to do with it. Do I hold this baby and cradle it in my arms, do I push it to my chest tightly and suffocate it? It is suffocating me. It is suffocating me, I don't know what to do with it.

Do I throw it away? But it's throwing me away faster, it's cutting off my strings, it's wounding, stabbing, slashing THASH THASH THASH.

This inexplicable sadness that is hurting me so much -- what do I do with it?

*****.

I wish
it was for me.
What you wrote.

I think, sometimes,
I will die taking that wish
of mine with me.
I cannot be your poem
ever
it seems.

I am someone who will start worrying as soon as I find out you're missing.
You're just busy.
But I'll still worry.
Sometimes, I will drop you an email. Sometimes, a comment. A message.
And I will wait.
Looking for you again and again and again.

That's a pretty ****** up thing, if you ask me. You can't like people so much. Not so many. Not everyone.
But some can't help it. And I'm so apologetically one of those.

******* for reminding me how it felt
to hurt.

Life can be pretty ****** at times and it's okay.
We will live it.

I don't know what to do
with myself anymore
that you are no longer here
and we are no more together.

I learnt to hate.
I never knew how it was
to hate someone so strongly
before
but now that I do
I think I know…
It’s like… sipping a bitter,
bitter coffee
so slowly
that the taste wraps around your tongue
and burns it.
It’s like… bringing a matchstick
closer to your chest
and letting it create a hole
a red, blazing hole.
It’s like… being the rose yourself
that the lover crushes in his hands
seeing the fragrance melt—
the petals wither
in your own existence.
It’s like… praying and not receiving
Dying… and not dying.
It’s like panting breathlessly for air—
and blocking all pumps out yourself
But is that hate?
Or did I just define
how it was
*To miss you?

she says it's a sin that I still check on you
I tell her it's not like that, I don't feel it anymore
it's Karma I am waiting for, you see, I want to know how bad
it hurts him in the end.
she believes me. "I'll give you a free pass then", she laughs
And I wonder how I could cut you from myself forever