Guess it's back to being strangers again, huh?

No more nervously waiting for your texts
Telling me you're on your way here
And sneaking out the house and telling my parents
Pretty little lies, just to keep you all to myself

No more giggling and acting like teenagers in love
Stuck in our silly bubble, drifted from reality
Walking around in our matching green sandals
Being pretentious food connoisseurs and ****

Guess it's time to forget all the bits and pieces of you
The way you grin and scrunch your nose
Or when you stick out your tongue a funny way
When you're feeling that little bit of anxiety

Guess it's time to slowly erase the memory of us
And the way I always found it funny
Seeing your tall, bulky figure
Stay hunched like a little boy, in your tiny silver Kelisa

I guess it's finally time to say goodbye

Your name
seems to roll off my tongue
somehow so effortlessly
like velvet across my lips

Always stuck between
admiring you
and despising you
with my entire being

And it certainly doesn’t help
that your friends feel like my friends too
and places you drive to for dinner
are places i’ve been to too

I really can’t tell
if our small, weekly conversations
about the most trivial things
will one day add up to something

Or if they’ll just stay as they are
like where we are now
stagnant and insignificant
just constellations of what-ifs and maybes

You see
These walls aren't simply plastered together
just to run away from bad weather
or to hide from being tethered
These walls are meant to be built for her
The epoxy keeping pieces of her together
Her safe space - the one and only shelter

So if I may, my little advice to you dear sir,
Don't come stepping in with your beige loafers
if your only wish is to be a brief visitor
Don't come bringing in your jar of nectar
and happily spreading her toast with butter
if you're only stopping by -  a mere spectator

These walls are so much better, stronger
than the last time you saw her
They're built to last forever
Sealed and painted her favourite colour
So stranger, here's a little reminder
To tiptoe ever so gently like a feather
Perhaps whisper a little sacred prayer

But really now, if you must remember,
genuine honesty is truly all that matters

And maybe... she'll let you quietly wander
Where it all feels familiar, someplace warmer
Faces lit with genuine smiles and generous laughter
Finally, a welcome sign for you to enter

You can come in now, stranger

Falling in love with the wrong person
can feel like you're moving backwards sometimes,
Bits and pieces of you you've lost along the way
They can be hard to salvage and make whole again

I don't believe time heals all wounds
Because when you decide to love someone
You will love them completely, unquestionably
Parts of them will have become parts of you too

But that's the thing
Life continues to cycle on and on, doesn't it?
You will heal, eventually you'll get better,
You will grow, someday you'll find a new her

Slowly and steadily,
One careful step after the other
You see brighter days ahead
Onwards you go, never looking back

My dear bestfriends,
Who’ve become my safe space,
The other home I run to for solace,
Thank you for lending your ears and hand,
For becoming the sister I never had,
Thank you for deciding to stay,
Despite circumstances coming into play,
Thank you for being gentle and kind with my heart,
Safeguarding my innermost secrets from the very start

My dear bestfriends,
Time and time again you’ve proven me,
It’s never about the amount of time we
Spend together when we are together,
Rather it’s the small acts of love that changed my life
It’s the random check-ins, love confessions and life talks,
The birthday presents of stickers, books and silly socks

My dear bestfriends,
Life has a funny way of meeting us together,
All of us travellers of different passages,
Yet our stars remain aligned no matter the weather,
I’m proud of who you you’ve become
And now I am proud to see who I’ve become
Because I see little fragments of you
Ingrained in little fragments of me too

At 24,
I still don’t know who I am
and who I want to be,
I still get bouts of anxiety,
Still questioning my hopes, my faith, my identity

They tell me I’m smart, I’m pretty,
As if things get any more easy,
But the truth is I’ve never felt any of it,
Constantly reshuffling puzzle pieces that don’t fit,
Which part of me is smart when all I feel is clueless,
Which part of me is pretty when this face no longer lights up with hope,
When this heart just feels... incomplete

Things I dreamt of doing have become a distant reality,
I’ve lost track of time, writing poetry at two thirty,

Is this what growing up really feels like in this century?
A deadly pandemic, an economic downfall, a political mess, a vicious war-zone,
Too much of this turmoil and emotional complexities
For my head and heart to make sense on its own