She fuelled all my bad habits in the best way possible.

I've never met perfection but she was the closest I ever came to feeling worthy of someone above mediocracy.

She judged me, dissected me, took what she wanted from me,
bus tickets and all.
Took my opinions and moulded them into a formula for the perfect human,

She was the dirt that clinged to my skin
like whispers of where ive been without telling a soul

And i let her be everything when I was her nothing
I let her
I let her devour me whole
and I gave her every last morsel of my soul
and let her wipe her sin stained hands all over my insecurities,
leaving me sullied,
even more so than before.

I let her take my hand and drag me to hell
because it meant I would be by her side
burning.
What I didn't realise was that she had an escape route planned,
my only escape was to grow accustomed to flames.

It seems it's the people who you love the most are the people who you allow to hurt you more than any physical pain you ever felt before. Because pain of the body will heal, you cannot repair trust or hearts the like a punctured tire

She took my hand and told me 'chin up buttercup, you'll never be the first, the last, or the only **** up'

She lit me up
Took a drag from my roll up
Flashed me a smile that would make every sinner weak at their knees

But she's in love with a New Yorker now

And that was the end of us

My inability to translate my struggles  past to you in a way in which you will be able to relate them with your first world problems is pulling potholes in our love.

When we originally established that we were from different worlds I fooled myself into believing that this was a matter of race or class,
not an issue of I'm 'too damaged' for you.

The unifying characteristic of people who've felt inexplicable pain is their undying desire to drop anything to help the ones they love.
In times of need, those who have bled are separated from those who have not.
This is our day of reckoning,
whether to forgive you or forget your existence is yet another painful decision I will have to make
in order to bleed for another
In another life

The one who taught me to love the hardest had an anchor for a heart herself.

It was as if the ghosts of the people she ceased to know ran riot on her skin in the form of bruises or scars or the in shadows under her eyes.

It was in those times, when she
couldn't keep her demons down, and we greeted them again like old friends, that we learned to smile with everything left in our souls and pack overnight bags faster than her frantic heart beat.

And we learned to keep secrets, even when the world was quiet enough to hear the rivers running underneath the streets
as they were waiting with baited breath for explanations.

We all knew she meant well, if only she was well.

We kept more secrets than we had taken breaths and yet their burden didn't take hold until days or weeks afterwards and we could barely comprehend reality outside of our twisted youthful minds.

None of us dared to take a breath out of time,
Speak a word or a line out of line with the lies that we were taught to regurgitate from our fire bellies, perfect diamond fallacies,
Galaxies on our tongues.

And so we conclude with the honesty spilled onto pavements during the walk home, like the spirits I spilled on your blouse,
And remember the time I heard someone say that the most beautiful smiles were paired with the saddest eyes.

I see that now.

Let me tell you a secret
I am bored

I'm bored of corporate America flashing their endless subliminal ******* in my face every second
So much so that sometimes without me realising I adopt their accent and mimic and quote what they want me to think and say

I'm bored of reality TV
Of keeping up with the Kardashians and how their name fits so nicely in my mouth like a chunk of poison apple

I'm bored
Of skipping past adverts of skinny black children starving to watch skinny white children starving themselves pretty
I'm scared that I'm the only one whose minds those adverts cling to,
I can only do so much and I can't even trust that I'm helping

I'm bored
Of seeing perfect white girls on TV in their perfect clothes with their perfect hair and their perfect families in their perfect churches with their perfect god who somehow claimed dominance over all the other gods, over my gods
and called me backwards for worshipping the sun and the moon for giving me life and light as opposed to a man who may or may not have existed who they claim split seas

I am bored
I'm bored of being the supporting role
never being pretty enough
but being hot for an Asian girl
being told 'when I think of a beautiful Asian girl I think of you'
being asked 'what are you?', 'no where are you really from?' 'are you gunna go back?' 'were you born on international waters?' Always followed with a 'If you don't mind me asking',  I do,
Let me tell you about the waters that broke and brought me here on this home soil,
let me tell you about the struggle of my mother and the mothers before me and the lightness of being dark skinned in a community of dark skinned beings,
let me tell you about my heritage not like it's a story in a child's book like or a myth, it is real history,
let me tell you about the struggle of my people about the beauty of our most simple words and minds,
let me tell you about how our bodies moulded from the dust and sand around us is no less than yours,
let me tell you what it means to be nothing in your eyes.

We are the products of your mishandling, broken artefacts caged in a glass box with a steel rod stuck up our **** to keep up still in a viewing room in the media's museum
keep us down and keep us quiet keep us looking brutal try to tear us apart from the inside,

Try and tell me I'm a terrorist not a freedom fighter for daring to breathe to speak.
Try to blotch out your wrongdoings by scapegoating us as a region as a religion I don't even belong to as a pigment in a skin colour I can do nothing about I couldn't change it even if I wanted to
Just wait and see how we react

I'm bored of your Islamophobia
I'm bored of you telling me to hate myself
I'm bored of trying to be middle man for two cultures whose only real difference are climate
So *******
**** both of you
Excuse my English
No my Punjabi.
No
I'm done with your negotiations and attempts at tolerance I'm done with trying to blend you both together within me I can't be what either of you want me to be
I can't do this
I won't be a part of your glamourised butchery
Anymore

those days that we were silent, when we didn't even glance at each other, were the worst. I guess they made me more anxious to speak to you on the days you graced me with your soft smile. on those days, I made sure to really look at you, so I'd never forget.

Dear girl who dreams of my  manic pixie nightmare

You are the one I never expected to meet
I am the one you have met a million times before

You're the girl obsessed with film craving invasion on television screens, propagandist **** muse, docs and a **** cut
I'm the girl obsessed with ******* and using boundaries as skipping ropes or thread to turn my hair to tapestry

You're Bowie
I'm Hendrix

You like visuals, shapes and sound and pretty cinematography and things I can't understand, your mind is a transcript in calligraphy I can't decipher,
I like books that come in three and getting to the end and not knowing how to live anymore

You're brimming full of hope and dreams and set lighting
I'm disappointment and drowning shame in the bottom of tumblers, spilling the leftovers into quotable dialogue

You're too good for my obscenity to taint, you can't find what you're looking for in me
I'll be your undoing spiralling constantly in a figure 8

You are the manic pixie dream girl we've all been searching for

First things first
I'd like to apologise

I'm sorry I'm not the good Indian girl I was bred to be
I'm sorry I don't make round rotis
I'm sorry that the tongue I use to speak punjabi is broken and hides in my mouth unused until desperately needed
I'm sorry that I don't cook and clean efficiently enough to be wifey material
Sorry that I love who I love and don't hate who I was told to
Sorry that I can't follow gods blindly and not try to sneak back stage to see their shining gold adornments and blue body paints and multiple arms in full and bare glory and scandal

I'm sorry that I'm actually not sorry for any of this
I'm sorry that these are false and empty apologies

I am unapologetically whole
A human not just a race
A female not a trust fund or business transaction

I filter out the good parts of the culture I'm from and the ones I identify with
I'll wear docs under my saari no apologies
I'll grind on dancefloors and do the best Bhangra dance you'll ever see unashamedly

Hareems and hoodies
Bindies and pin up eyeliner
Hedonism and head in the clouds

My ambition is Ambedkar untouchable
My drive is a salt march surging silently non violently through cities
My hometown pride is built in concrete and rickshaw dust,
Prejudice and Bollywood lust