I thought summation and addition were common knowledge. Seems I'm the only one who paid attention in class. I hate that I memorized the ethics of mathematics, that I add up the givens I'm handed without being asked to, and arrive to conclusions that give me the answers to everyone's problems. But it seems no one pays attention to my givens. My givens don't meet in other people's mind, they simply revolve in passing without being added up. So nobody reaches conclusions that will tell them the answer; that I'm not okay. And I don't feel like providing examples, nor giving them a hand in figuring out the answer. 'Cause I'm so exhausted from solving everybody's mathematical equations, factoring in every new given of theirs, and praying to God that I always get it right. And they praise me when I do. But they don't know that mathematical etiquette is to reciprocate the gesture. I know that. And I'm not even good at maths.

The word cycle comes from how things revolve around,
Hearing the echo trace the edges of a sound,
As it circles and rotates, then finally rebounds,
Shifting the uncertainty into an assurance that hounds.

I am a half chewed apple you can trace back to a tree,
A three-way split mirror with 3 broken versions of me,
A silence you can familiarize with an epiphany,
That what's inevitable has no other ending than to be.

Circumference, border, assigned seating.. are all just names,
The ink ran out when I tried to curve the sphere I became,
No matter where we run the beginning has us trained
To sniff every pattern, till the cycle is ingrained.

Do you mirror the person
you resent
by time?

The ****** in your head
getting both your
shoes intertwined.

That you become them,
the more you
rationalize.

...

I lost parts of me,
the more pieces
of you I gained.

I learnt to hate myself,
your thought process
had me well-trained.

I am the eager intern,
you are but my
narcissistic boss.

When the promotion hit me,
I socialized, with
the intent of loss.

I gathered people, the way
you gathered my
awe-eyed interest.

I left them mid conversation,
like they were
uninvited guests.

My certificate of achievement
said, I learnt
from the best.

...

Do you mirror the people
your resent
by time?

The ****** in your head
getting both your
shoes intertwined.

Is that why my hand
is bleeding,
shards ashine?

I'm a square trying to fit inside a circle
All my sides are bruised,
My story is now a rip off,
Cause my original one didn't fit the mold's strangle.

I remember when I was just a small circle,
Falling through vessels,
Gushed at by my inner circle,
When I adapted with the world I grew right angles.

Back to square one, I iced all my bruises,
When one almost healed,
I Found my old self,
today's leftovers, and me in a love triangle.

In the depth of winter,
the splash of cars,
Mud collecting
in the leg of my favorite jeans,
I wrap my jacket
around me tighter,
And the let it hug
my frozen torso and fraying dreams.

Starry night playing
on each of my eyelids,
A whimsical fantasy
unlike the fog in my skies,
Oh how predictable
the end of the road,
Yet scary the ruffle
of the morning after each night.

And I can't help
but radiate this coldness,
That stirs the passerbys away
as they shoulder past,
Ice continues to collect
under my fingernails
Who'd wanna shake hands
with those glacial hands?

I plead with the rainman
residing in my head,
And write to the clouds
leaking inside my eyes,
We can't keep warning
people of our weather,
Whenever they set foot
near our arctic pride.

With a sigh, I curl
one hand over the other,
Letting them
lone companies hang,
For most people winter
lasts four months,
But for me, I never knew
where it ended and I began.

How do you feel things lightly?
How do you let them pass
To separate all the layers
To let a full breath last?

Cause there are no peripheries,
No borderline were we separate,
I'm smothered by this weather
And I'm so entangled in its fate.

I tried to tread lightly,
To pull up a glass screen,
But when I close my eyes
My mind can't unsee what it has seen.

The more I try to run to the shallows,
The more selfish that I feel,
A traitor fleeing from the huddle
Where all the wounded kneel.

Hands moving in accordance,
Words uttered with no meaning,
A mismatched figure trying
To make her condolences more appealing.

In this bed of water I lay wondering
where the leaks are coming from,
But does it matter, now that the currents
have made it past my wavering front?

So how do you feel things lightly,
How do you let them pass?
To allow for you to address
Your own crumbling castle of sand.

●●●

With uncareful watch of the hours,
The night spreads like threads unlinked,
Drawing a comparison about what’s more frightening,
The stillness or the sudden shift.

Laying in a still motion picture,
A million frames of the same fear,
A tailored Bermuda triangle where
Life stops but the arms of every clock disappear.

And you’re left stranded,
With the anticipation of every wrong scenario,
So for today you’ll munch on anxiety for dinner,
‘Cause the face of every tomorrow scares you.

Oh how little you can do in those early AMs,
When both of your hands are cuffed to your insecurities,
And the night is there like a watch guard,
Standing between your panic prison and clarity.

And when desperation comes to join you,
It tells you tales of a monster that preys on time
“Never sleep.” It warns. “It’ll take you to those intimidating mornings,
It will leave you without a dime.”

When all of those night friendly emotions gather,
And drench your gut in their cold foreboding,
You, too, become a silent watcher, dissociated from your body,
Awake, asleep, floating.

Your mind says goodnight with finality,
Not willing to futher succumb to the night,
In the morning you’ll find you some superglue,
To hold together your broken promise to always take your side.