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.

"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."

Alam ko naman kung ano ang patutunguhan.
Ngunit paano makararating kung ang bawat hakbang ay mas mabigat pa sa mga delubyong pasan?

Is silence a sound?
If it is, it sure is ******* loud.

I hope I live long enough to see my dreams transform into reality.
I hope I live long enough to feel my tomorrow's welcome me.
I hope I live long enough to know what love, family, and friendship really mean.
I hope I live long enough to stand in a place where the air will whisper that I am finally free.

I hope I live long enough.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, come drown with me.

Should have known that all things transparent
Will sooner or later
Be broken
Especially when it slips from nimble fingers

This is not a home, it is just a house.

It's funny how we easily forget each other when we are alive
But in death, we remember everything even the faintest of sighs.

I used to be enamored with the sky because I believed that its blue hues are unchanging
                  *then it started raining

Nagdasal at humingi ng isang tao
Na magtutulak sa akin para bitiwan na ang panulat na ito
Isang tonelada at mahigit na ang mga salitang pasan ngunit hindi pa rin ako nabibigatan.

Mali ang akala.
Hindi pa pala.
Lalo lang umitim ang tinta.
Dumiin sa papel ang pluma.

Nanatili pa ding naka-dantay
ang mga salita sa namimitig kong kamay.
Hinihintay nalang mamanhid
para hindi manatiling nakasilid
ang mga naipon na tula't sanaysay na wala nang saysay.

Hindi na ko humihiling
ng isang dahilan na dadating
na aalayan nitong mga salitang
naririnig at binabasa lamang.

Mga letra na binibigyang kulay,
nagkakaiba lamang sa kung sino ang bumubuhay.
Nakakapagod mag pinta
kung ang bawat makakakita ng obra,
babaguhin ang imahe sa kung ano ang nasa harapan nila hindi man lang isipin na magkakaiba tayo ng mata.
Inilarawan **** berde, gagawin nilang kahel.
Tinta mo na asul, hahawakan at magiging pula.

Siguro nga itong mga kamay na biyaya,
hindi na para sa papel at tinta.
Kasabay ng maraming paalam
ang huling isinulat na liham.

I'm not sad.

It's just that I wake up in the morning and I wish I didn't.
Every time I see a car zooming past, I also see myself in front of it.
I stopped crying because I feel like my tears are apologies for living.
They say it is only a vice but they will never understand how my blackened lungs serves as the only thing that reminds me I am alive just for the very reason that I am still struggling to breathe.
The clock is working but my time is frozen. I took its hands and put them in shackles.
My body feels a little heavy than usual as it fails to lift me out of my troubles.
I read a hundred different worlds from books and wish that I'm in one of them.

I'm all of these things...
                   but I'm not ******* "sad".

I have to stop opening my arms for people with shiny eyes.
I hold on to them for dear life,
embrace them so tight.
But when the time arrives that their tears have dried,
I am left empty and all I can do is sigh.

My friends asked me to describe you.
I failed to say a word.
All my thoughts of you were rushing in my head like a blur.
No matter how hard I try, the question remained floating there.
I was silent and with one glance, they understood.
The smile on my lips was the answer.

I learned that happiness is not a destination that you arrive at.
Just as sadness is fleeting, happiness can also be a minute fragment of our days.
It is not a matter of who, when, where and what.
Maybe it is being unafraid of the possibility that it does not always stay.

I do not want to write about people I care for anymore.
It seems like it is only in these words
that their presence is born.
They only live in these lines
and the blank pieces of paper.
They stay there
while I continue to stare
at the silent and solitary air.

Still waiting for the end to my series of almost's.

I was defeated when you stepped out the door but just know that I kept it open, hoping that you would turn around and enter again.

I hear a thousand voices in my head:
The screams of many lost lives.
What I did not realize is that all of them were mine.
I chose to suffer in silence instead.

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.

Looking up at the stars
From behind these iron bars
I realized with a start
I am a prisoner in my own heart

You can destroy me
and
I'd still find a way to complete you

My lip trembles when...

I'm trying to hold back laughter.
Or when I'm trying to stop the tears from falling

But when I'm with you, I'm sure
that the reason it's trembling is because I crave to taste yours.

Suddenly, you stopped telling time by how the clock forces its arms to travel for her.
Instead you measure it by

how many friends turned into strangers

how that face you passed by used to be your lover

how your heart quivers

*and how sweet words turn to sputters

You told me that I have to stop seeing him in everyone who holds my hand and tells me that I can be someone in their life

You told me that I should let the Sun rise
You told me that there are bluer skies

You told me to stop looking at things like they never seem right
You told me to wipe the venom from my eyes

You told me to listen before I write it off as lies

You told me I won't get very far
if I run away from my heart

You told me that I will eventually meet someone along the way
Who will compel me to stay without much words to say

You told me I should stop waiting
Because he walked out the door
And he will never walk in again

You told me that I have to stop thinking that people are going to leave
just because he did

You told me that you love me

There are no poems made because of happiness.
Sad ones are the best.
In them we find a place to put to rest
Our hearts, always a mess.

Some people are like sand
You hold on to them for too long
and they slip from your fingers

I woke up with thoughts of you in my head
I guess they never really left my bed
I can feel my heart breaking
But at least i'm feeling something

I can't speak
Because if i do, sand will spill
As my love is countless
But i'm afraid you'll leave it
Lying there, a mess
I wish you'd put it into a bottle
safe and yours alone

Far away
You're so far away
But even so
I still stay
Hoping for our someday

Woke up
Just another day
Everything's the same
Like the way i say your name

You are only alive in the words I write and the ones I could never say.

I lit another cigarette and as I watch the smoke trailing from my mouth, I realized that the way I love you is no different than this vice.
It destroys me, makes me ache all over and my lungs take in every molecule of oxygen like its their first...that's the way I feel when I think of you.
I know that it's bad for me but I can't let go of it same as my love for you which you will never return. I want to say I love you but I'm afraid you would not say it back;just like I want to continue living but I can't resist finishing another pack.
The flames catch on and I'm surrounded by smoke like sadness whispering and waiting for comfort. I know I should stop but I can't.

Maybe I'll quit until I can't go on anymore.

Am I talking about the cigarette or you?

Well, the chemicals swirling in my bloodstream can possibly take my life but you refuse to be in mine. A broken heart is infinitely more painful than a frail body.

So I smoke one after another so I won't tell the difference between my lungs gasping for air and my heart aching for you.

I grasp your limbs with both hands as if they are lifelines to which my reality is tethered to.
Your emptiness called on me to fill it.

I held your hand as i hear the pieces of your heart slowly clatter to the ground, breaking with every teardrop you let go of.
And i catch all of them like a little girl with hands outstretched under the fleet of snowfall for the very first time.

I held on.
I held on to you.
And you did too.

For once, I don't feel like floating towards an endless sky.
I did not crave to disappear like a shadow in the dark.

I felt gravity through you as if i'm a helium balloon tied to your wrist.

So you can see how much hold you have on me.
I can give you this and everything i can see.

If i could ask just for one thing: please don't let go of me.