nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

this is an open letter to anyone who has the audacity to try and love you like i did.

dear whateverthefuckyournameis,

i apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the hem of your skirt. what you need to understand, is that you are standing on ground previously reserved for my feet, so forgive me for any bitterness that seeps through the cracks in my clenched fists. i don't hate you, but i can't be your friend. you probably don't know about me, and if you do, let me commend your bravery. i have a tendency to set my problems on fire, and in my bouts of anger everything looks flammable, especially girls with paper complexions. i'm sorry. i have never been one to walk away, so i don't know how to explain to you the holes in the bottoms of my shoes. but i have been further than you will ever go. this is not supposed to be an angry letter, but lately that's the only thing coming out of me. i don't even know your name but the thought of your hands reaching for him makes we want to break them. i will douse your dreams in gasoline and strike the match against your cheek. but i know that's not right, see, the poison crawling out from the end of my pen belongs to a scarier version of myself i try not to know. my heartache is an insatiable war cry in the dead of night, that will stop at nothing to shatter all your windows. it shames me to admit that i've found a sort of twisted satisfaction in using passive aggression to breach your armor. i am sick with missing a set of arms i was not privileged enough to know. i speak with all the grace of an atom bomb and wonder about the rubble at my feet. you are white picket fence and i am barbed wire. some girls are lions, some are lambs, and i learned to love, teeth bared and snarling. one of the only things that keeps me going is the hope that one day i'll learn how to love something without making it bleed. i may have never been his, but for a time he was mine, so please understand why i taste acid when i think about your mouth on his. again, i am sorry. i know it is not my place to be so full of resentment, but there is a part of me that sincerely hopes it bothers you to know he dreamt of me before you were even a thought. there is a side of me that thrives on the image of the color being drained from your face when you read this. but i am trying to learn how to be softer. this letter is the manifestation of a self-inflicted war that has been raging in my chest since he first told me about you. you will try to be good to him, and you might even succeed. if you ever find yourself singing him to sleep, like i did, don't ask if he wants to hear another song, just keep going until his breathing slows.

- m.f.

here's how it happens
the morning after
you reach into the drawer
where the your t-shirts live
to find it austere
you'll shrug because
you're still drunk
& you can't remember
when last it was
that you had something wet
or how long it's been
since you made the floorboards blush
or why the carpet is upset
who wouldn't be
the contents to the upended ashtray
strewn around the apartment
resemble the aftermath
of the smallest war
to ever take place in norfolk
some midnight thief
must've made off with the lighter
because it isn't in
any of your favorite spots
maybe you chucked it
along with a hundred other things
that make noise when they land
in the neighbors yard
you won't remember putting
the refrigerator's belongings
in the bathtub
or scrawling a buzzard
on the bedroom door
but then again who would
you'll pretend it's spring again
before putting on your winter coat
to go out front with a cigarette
in your mouth
you'll hope for a passing stranger
to *** a light from
or drag yourself to the corner
with couch cushion change
to buy a new lighter
and on your way
you won't bother looking back
this is just another day
on eggshells for no reason
another november
choking on birthday candles
on your way home
you step over beer cans
the kind you fell in love with
and wonder who
had the last laugh last night
or if anyone said a word at all
it might've been another
moment of clarity
it might have been some idiot savant
any adjective that feels like home
anything that keeps you thirsty

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

leaving a place is heavy
as heavy as carrying an ocean of memories
you do not know which to leave behind
so you keep them all-
every single memory
of you.

warm salt water
runs down my cheeks
onto my chin
and drips away.

One tear drop at a time,
I remember
I hold onto
I want to dive into
our time, us,
backwards.

Something comes loose inside,
gives way to a tide that has been dormant,
every emotion
that you gave me
comes alive

The familiarity and yet strangeness
breaks me into pieces.
I fall apart,
crumbling into cascading.

Emptiness Is

Palms covered in little crescents
Your fingernails digging in to distract you
From the fact that your ribs are a cage
Without a bird.

i am an avid non believer in many things
but sweetheart, i believe wholeheartedly
that your mind works in the most mysterious of ways,
that your body's framework is built on nothing but constellations,
that your eyes encompass thunderstorms and
that if you bled, you would bleed golden galaxies.
do not get me wrong, i remain a non believer
in happy endings and romance and love that lasts
but oh my god, even the shortest presence of your gasoline-being
could set a wildfire alight inside of me.

When you leave, go without a whisper,
as though you were never here. 
Do not leave tear stains on my pillow or kiss my eyes and beg them not to cry.

Dissipate, let the thin air replace you. Leave no echo, no trace of your existence, 
no backward pity glance at what might have been, 

**** the drawn out goodbye, the heartfelt speech, the apologies for the inevitable.

It's not you it's me.....It's always me.

Let the truth hang  above my broken form, swaying as the ceiling creaks under its bitter weight. I will dance to it's rhythm soon enough.

Then cease.

///
our mind can feel everything
if we can feel the beauty of roses once
it can make some meaningful words,
even can create a few metaphors of a poem

we write all through our life
it can be grown as words of war
even can be born as a piece of peace
or can be grown both,
war and peace

it can be made a pain or gain
or it can be seemed as a stream,
that can be bought a grain of sand
Even it can earn both,
the pain and the gain

life can make a song
it can be a song of joy
sometimes it may be a coy
even it can make a rhythmic tone
that can't always be a romantic tune
as the river is not always plays a full of chimes

life can be found love
or can be gathered loss
or it can be earned both love or loss
as the poem " Annabel Lee"
that gifts us a pang of pain

life can be moved long like a novel
as Tolstoy's war and peace
even life can be too short, tragic
as the life of a poet,
like Sukanta, Keats and Poe

life looks like a novel
it's growing as well
with both lost and found
of so many stir of dreams

our mind is an endless paper
feelings are as ink
times are as the pen
everybody is the novelist
begins writing since he's born
and finishes before his death
though someone exceeds beyond the death

wise men told
life is a learning
life is a continuous earning of wisdom
that can be repair our kingdom

///
@ Musfiq us shaleheen