TRIGGER WARNING: CONTAINS THEMES ABOUT **** AND ABUSE

I once knew this girl
Whose name, I cannot recall
Who she was, I was not so sure
But I knew of the tale that made her clocks stall

Walking home that night
The moon on its rising was a beautiful sight
It was particularly bright
Even more when the candles were blown on the street lamp lights

Suddenly its pearl luminescence
turned into a vicious shade of scarlet
I could not make sense of what
was going to happen.

Her arms are spread at her sides like birds' wings high up in the air.
How I wish they were
So she could have escaped the man pinning her down to the ground, telling her not to make any sound.
To his grasp, her strength is bound.
I hear her heartbeats falter with every pound.
The darkness fall over her like a shroud.

In his eyes, I saw a face.
A girl mirrored in the windows of a soul, disgraced.
Suddenly I remembered.
I am her.


His breaths, the sound of his pleasure.
Mine, the cacophony of torture.
He swallowed my screams
like a fine aged bouquet.
He ******* took the light of day, put it into his eyes where I was blinded by the fires that swallowed my vision.
I looked on like I was a spectator in a dream.
My feet lay in one place.
So this is what it feels to be paralyzed
Oh how I wish I could fly

His eyes were void of the abyss of humanity.
Is it a question of sanity?
I would like to think it was
so I would not place the blame on me.

Did I ask for it?
Did I had one too many drinks?
Did I wear the wrong clothes, are they much too skimpy?
Did I choose the wrong time to go out, I should have known it was risky.
Did I even think?
Did I say too much for him to think that I wanted him inside of me ripping skin over and over?
"Be quiet." He growled in my ear
And I obeyed that order
For years and years

My soul, ripped out of its sheltered purity.
My life, polluted with warped imagery of beauty.
My body, never again felt like my property.

As I look at the animal that he is rightfully trapped in his cage,
I felt a twinge of jealousy
for he will be free of his prison, the only thing lost is his age.
As for me, I will never escape the bars guarding my heart.
I will never find a fresh new start.

My words of dissent will always come out as a gust of air just like it did that night.
And now I see a finished sentence.
These words rotting in my throat should be let go of
and it materializes in the form of a question:
When are we going to learn that no simply means *NO?

The first time we talked, we were both heartbroken. We bonded over equal sadness and the pain of unrequited love. I did not know why but I was comfortable with you. At first, I was happy because I  finally found someone who understood me. I was contented with our friendship but I was never at ease with the simple scheme of things. I ******* fell. It was never something more but that day you told me that the person you liked grew lazy with you....that was when I was ******. Why would anyone dislike you? I was like a kid, raising her hand and saying, "Pick me! Please pick me!" in a dodge ball game. I wanted to be the one for you.

I was disgusted with feelings and all the complications it comes with but you changed that. I am genuinely enamored with all that you are, flaws and all.
An hour of conversation with you turned to days filled with smiles and contentment for me. I think I knew that when we first started talking, I wanted you around. I saw you sad and I wanted to see you happy with me. All I want is a chance to be that person who will stay and make it work for you unlike the others who didn't.

Now, I feel like I missed that chance. I watched as you were falling and somebody else was there to catch you. Blame is on me cause that was all I did, I watched you.

I watched as you stood there alone. I watched as you wrote words for people who were blind to it. I watched you sing to a blank audience. I watched you that night when you were peaceful and I felt like all was right in the world.

I'm willing to wait for that time when you will be ready for the torrential downpour of my adoration.
I would still be there for you.

I know that I would be there when I ask you to make me a list of all the reasons why you think you're not worth it and I'll write a book telling you a hundred times over that you are. Just know that when I see you again, I would still think that "beautiful" is a colorless word.

Maybe the last time I wrote about you isn't really the last time because here I am again, picking up the pen and slicing my skin open. After all that has happened, you are still the ink running through my veins and I am still consumed by the hunger to bleed you into every blank space I see.

I thought that my decision to stop writing about you was final. This fascination with breathing life into the idea of you has got to stop. If I wipe the blindness from my eyes, I will see you walking away from me. Maybe I am hoping that the lines on this paper will serve as strings to pull you back to where you are, constricting you in the process.

Writing about you is the only thing that I know of. It is the only thing that fuels the could, and should have been's surrounding my love for you. It is this, not a confession of my love to you laced with reality. These words that I and nameless strangers would read about a girl who is kept alive by sentences intricately woven to fulfill the need to hold on to someone who was not even mine to hold on to.

It's sad that when I think of you, I become motionless. Maybe it is because my thoughts of you are so heavy that my body too embraces the gravity. It is as if my body succumbs to gravity, falling into it just like my soul fell for yours. This very reason made me realize that I have to stop loving you. Thoughts of someone special should make me fly, right? Thoughts of a love so consuming should make me weightless. It should make me light so I could float up into the sky. Instead of all that, I am stuck in this lamp lit room, with the pen heavy enough to weigh down my hand and my heart filled with you, feeling as if it will never love again.

Someone teach me how to let go of the pen. I will forever be grateful for that saving grace.

I promise that I would stop writing about you.

Maybe...

Loving you was a lot like smoking cigarettes. If you ask me why, I would go along the lines of how I got addicted to you the same way I did when I acquired the vice of finishing a pack of Marlboros everyday.

I still smell you on my fingers. Hours spent with you on my lips make me want you more. You have seeped into my mind, making my head pound and my hands shake. I tried hard to get away from you but fleeing from the power you have over me is like dragging a mountain behind me. I can do well without you but I find myself crawling back to where you are like a parched man in a desert searching for an oasis. I cannot figure why I continue opening my mouth to taste you. Even after we part, I still feel you in my veins. I feel you slowly travelling down the road in my bloodstream. You will wreck me, I know that I will crash into a solid wall but I fear that I might have given you the control to drive. I cannot keep letting myself be a slave to your power. Everytime I breathe you in, I lose another second that I can add up to my life.

I come to you when I feel smaller than the fingers on an infant's hand or in times when I feel as if the walls are closing in on me. I have to say farewell to you, love. For everytime I inhale you, I exhale my approval to die a painful death. The moment I begun with you marked the start of my ending point. I know that you are only offering me an easy way out, you are not the villain here. I gladly accepted the sinister nature you possess and made it a part of the air I breathe. I will let go of you. I will be grateful for our little affair. Now I give up. My voice would not be as hoarse anymore because it would be clear as day as soon as I stop this conversation with you.
Goodbye.

I will see you in my memory as you creep in the confines of my vitality.

I broke up with God
at our favorite eatery
in our favorite booth.

We settled into familiar creases
and asked for the usual.

My eyes lazily staring at fingers
stirring the straw around the ice cubes,
God cautiously spoke up:

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.” (Thinking about the dormant phone
concealing behind the lock screen
the open Facebook tab
lingering over the relationship status section.)

They silently mused over the laconic reply,
til the waitress showed up with the food.

“Thank you!” God blurted with agonizing alacrity.

I received the sustenance lifelessly
and aimlessly poked at the burgers and fries.

The waitress eyed me with vague inquisition,
popping a bubble in the gum between
big teeth, refilled my water
and pirouetted hastily.

We ate in ostensible harmony,
the silence gripping like a chokehold,
the visible anxiety and subdued resolve
settling like a stifling blanket
over the child waking
from a nightmare—

Til we couldn’t breathe,
and I ripped back the covers
and looked into the eyes
of my tormentor.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

God, taken aback by the curt statement,
dropped their burger with shaking hands,
silently begging with wetting eyes
a greater explanation.

So I elaborated:

“It’s not you, it’s me.

For your immaculate conception
was created by human hands,

your adages rendered obsolete
by human words,

your purpose and plan for us
distorted by human nature—

I cannot hate myself any longer.

I cannot pretend to know you at all.

Who my mother and father say you are
is not who my friends think you are,
nor my teachers, my pastor,
the president, Stephen Hawking,
Muhammed, the KKK, Buddha,
the Westboro Baptist Church,
Walt Whitman, Derek Zanetti,
******,
and Billy Graham.

I am told you care who I bring into bed (and when),
and what movies I watch,
and what music I listen to—

I have not heard what you say about
child soldiers, the use of mosquitos,
or the increased destruction of the earth
which you proudly proclaimed your creation,
or the poverty and disease and famine
which has ridden so many of your children—”

God interjected,
“But you’re chosen!”

I snorted,

“You say I’m chosen
to spend eternity with you—
why me?

Why’d you pick me among
thousands, millions, billions?

I’ve been told I’m ‘chosen’
since birth
by others like me—

those with fair complexion,
blue eyes,
blonde hair,
a firm overt ****** attraction towards women,
and a great big house
with immaculate white fences
delineating their Jericho.

I’ve already fabricated eternity
here among the other ‘chosen’
and there is a world of suffering
right outside the fence
and I see them
through the window of my bedroom
every day.

Am I chosen,
if I don’t vote Republican

Am I chosen
if I am Pro-Choice

Am I chosen
if I cohabitate with my girlfriend

Am I chosen
if I never have kids

Am I chosen
if I say ‘Happy Holidays’

Am I chosen
if I don’t want public prayer in schools

Am I chosen
if I don’t want a Christian nation

Am I chosen
if I don’t repost you on my wall
or retweet your adages?

I’m tired
being the ubermensch,
for it has not brought me
happiness
and I blame you.

I will not ignore
the cries of the suffering
believing it is I
who is destined to live
in bliss.

I will not buy
Joel Osteen’s autobiography(ies).

I will not tithe
you my money
for a megachurch
when another homeless shelter
closes down.

I will not tell a woman
what to do with her body,
or a man
that he is a man
if they say they are not.

I am neither Jew nor Gentile,
and I will stand with
my brothers and sisters
of Faith and Faithlessness,

Gay and Straight,
Black and White,

and apart from these extremes
free from absolutes
the ambiguous, amorphous
nature of Humankind
which I praise.

There is much pain and suffering
in this world,
potentially preventable,
but hardly can I believe
it’s part of your plan
to save
me.

I will not be saved
if we are not
all saved—

not one will burn
for my divinity.

The gates will be open to all—
and perhaps you believe that too,
but I’ve gotten you all wrong
and that cannot change,
as long as there is
mortality, and
corruption, and
power, and
lust, and
greed.”

God whined, growing bellicose,

“It is through me that you will find eternity,
I am the one true god!
I am the God of your fallen ancestors,
it is because you have fallen short
that you need me!”

I replied, growing in confidence,

“We have all fallen short,
yes,
but we are also magnificent.

We have evolved,
we have created,
we have adapted,
we have survived.

We have built empires,
and we have destroyed them.

We have cured diseases,
and we have created them.

We have done much in your name.
We’ve done good,
and we’ve done evil—

And unfortunately it’s all about
who you ask.

Your name is a burden on the oppressed
and a weapon of the oppressor.

You are abusive, God.

You tell me you are jealous.

You tell me apart from you I will suffer for an eternity.

I’m scared to die, yet want to die,
because of you.

You have made life a waiting room
that is now my purgatory. It is

Hell On Earth.

So you see,
it’s not you,
it’s me—
a mere mortal
who has tried to put a face
to eternity
and it has left me
empty.

And also,
it’s me,
for I have learned to love me,
as I have expelled your self-loathing imbibition,
and the deleterious zeal
I have proclaimed
through ceaseless
trepidation
and self-flagellation—

I have learned to love me
by realizing I am not inherently evil,
that my body is not evil,
that my mind is not evil,
and, ultimately, that
there is no good
and there is no evil.

My body is beautiful,
my mind is beautiful,
this world is beautiful,
and we are destroying it
waiting for you to claim
us.

I leave you
in hopes to see you
again one day,

and perhaps you will look
different than I have
perceived or imagined,

and in fact
I certainly hope so.”

Just then the waitress strolled back up
with a servile smile:
“Dessert?”

“No, thank you,”
I smiled politely.

And with that,
I paid the check,
and took a to-go box—

walked out into the evening rain
to my car,
put on a secular song
that meant something real to me
and drove off
into the night—

feeling for the first time
free
and alive.

"You know what the sad part is?" she asked as she carefully sips her succulent and aromatic albeit bitter coffee.

"My reflection is more of who I am than the one looking at it," with her eyes brimming with tears, she hurriedly continued, "That and I do not seem to know how to rhyme anymore these days."