Come and meet the *****
The one who watched her mother's skin painted in every shade of the galaxy
Meet the **** who was reminded she was a mistake ever since her existence
She handed her entire soul on a platter to the first person who showed interest
She knew she lost the game as soon as he caused her pain
There's no way she could get lower
He took advantage
Seen her damaged
Didn't think it would make much difference
So she took her name and owned it
The ******* rogue
She doesn't need anyone else
She sold her body in the parts she was reduced to
To keep her whole

Once we lay
On the green carpet of the Earth
Looking up at an oil painting
There was not a star in sight
But the clouds look like velvet
There was a stillness in the air
And it felt like we were the only ones out there
The moon appeared
But it did not speak to us
I showed you who I was
Before the world told me who I should be
And I had given you the opportunity
To die in my arms
Or on the pages of my poetry
You chose
And I wrote
I am still writing you away
Perhaps I loved you to miss you
Perhaps it was the relief I'd feel everytime I met someone new
And didn't feel the same way as I did with you

Now that I look back
A feeling of daunting realisation sinks my stomach
Every incident you've ever told me about
I no longer see you as the victim
I wonder why I had so much sympathy
Now that you've done to me what you did to them
I think
Maybe it was you all along
Maybe you were the chaos
But I took you in my arms
Comforted you
And soothed your arrogance
Mistaking it for hurt

So who is the one at fault?
Now that I think about it
I was wrong about you all along

I don't want to give this a name
But if anyone asks
We are dancing with fate
If anyone cares enough
We are interacting with faith
And if they want to get personal
Give them a million reasons
But let them guess the truth
I want us to be as pointless for them
As a chocolate teapot
I don't want to give this a name yet
But when we do
No one needs to be told
Every question
Every intention
Every thought
Is you
There's the entire universe
But for me there's only you

At sunset
We hung our heads
And knelt in the field of faith
Watching the dead go free
Our stories changed with the moon
But I was still a girl
Who cried at night
Waiting to sail a vessel into the night skies
Freedom did not always mean happiness

I kind of wish we argued
I wish that you were angry
That we stopped talking for days
On and off until we stopped for good
At least that way I would know what went wrong
At least that way I might have expected it
There's something about the sudden way you cut me off
That makes my heart not want to accept it

It's a sticky, humid August afternoon
And I am like a rag doll thrown over furniture
Over half of the year has gone by already
And I worry
I wanted to make something of myself this year
There's still time I think
Definitely still some time
I need to do something
But if I'm happy in my dreams
Does that still count?
If I lost someone but found myself
Does that mean I still won?
If I learnt how to hide the memories
Could I erase the history that produced them?
I played a dangerous game
When I turned off the alarm clock after it rang this morning
And rested my eyes
There's still time I think
If I wasn't afraid
What would I do?
The year is not over yet

When you left I didn't have a period for months
I thought I was pregnant
It turns out that trauma could do that to you
It's called secondary amenorrhea
But I call it mourning
I remember it as the time I missed you so much
Parts of my body gave up functioning without you
Now I see how people die of heartbreak

If you come back
I won't let you
It won't be to open arms
And nothing will ever be the same again
Because I don't want us to be normal anymore
I don't want everything to be how it used to be
I want you to regret it
Not what you did
That was your choice and you always had that
No matter how much it would always hurt me
I want you to be sorry
I want you to be ashamed
Because of your heartless way
The cruelty in which you dug into my mind
And planted seeds of self doubt
The needless guilt you left me with
Without explanation
I want you to stay up thinking about
How you lead me on
It was unquestionable that anything could be wrong
We never even argued
I want you to have nightmares
About the last time we met
How it was you who made plans for our next date
Held me close to your heart
And said see you again
Eighty six minutes later you sent me a text
Fifteen years
And everything I had with you went down the drain
You told me about suppressed feelings
And things that didn't sit right
Vaguely you aimed your words at me
And hit the bull's-eye in my chest
I want your everyday
To be filled with recoil
I want everytime you look in the mirror
To see the shrapnel you lodged in my life
How difficult you made it for me to move on
And everytime you look at the sky
I want you to think about
How you loved me to the moon and back
Then suddenly had none left at all
I want you to have an overwhelming moment of loneliness overcome you each time you meet someone new
And remember how you judged me to not be good enough for you
Because you were progressing faster than I
And we were no longer on the same level
I want you to reach whatever it is you left me for
I pray you achieve your goal
But I want your success to stink of the remnants of the bleeding heart you waded through and know that you could have taken the stairs all along

Maybe this fever is a way of my body praying
Or repenting or cleansing
Or maybe it has clashed with the soul beyond repair
Maybe these aches are accountability to what I put this body through
How I abused its health
And pushed its boundaries
Or maybe it is the birth of death
And my body has begun revolting in fear
Of returning to its creator
All used and broken
Worn and torn
Would he give me a refund and let me try again?
Perhaps when this fever is over
I'll be better

He asks if I've ever been in love
And I say
Every poet is always in love
Everything is a prompt
Every object and person
Every moment
Every feeling
We love it all
So much so
We fantasize about it
Write about it
Imagine it to life
The freedom
The despair
The sky of each day
We're in love with the journey
The creation
The creator
The story
It's overwhelming
To have your mind be in five places at once
All illuminating the other
Transcending from a memory with no language
From reality to fiction
Fiction to reality
And we write
Into an empty space
At a stage so far from where the thought began
With no certainty of how it will end

You'll never know about the light that died within me
After you left
You'll never know how many people tried to light up my future again
But my heart would not catch the fire they tried so hard to set

I need to know
Did you break or were you broken?
Did you forget or were you forgotten?
Your eyes show unease
And I see your forehead crease
I need to know
If you stopped then why can't you continue?
If you slept then why can't you wake up?
I see your hesitation
How you evade the conversation
Did you fall or were you tripped?
Did you leave or were you chased away?
I need to know
Were you always like this or were you made?

The sin was in the way I loved you
Too much
Too strong
Too fast
I left no room for anyone else
I mourn not for loving you
But how deep I fell
How badly I craved
And caved
Gave every little part of me away

Woe unto me
    I was foolish  
              I walked in with my eyes open and thought that would help

I got lost in the traffic of my thoughts
And the silence of a secret

The only time he feels alive
Is when his lungs burn
And each breath is a rasping exhale
Then gulped
Fast
Vigorous
Hungry
It hurts
It feels like desperation
At least his body wants to stay
It works
It fights
For what he doesn't know
And in that striking moment of fire coursing through his veins
He is grateful for something
A feeling
A desire
An awareness of not knowing the hereafter
His chest aches from the apparent

She said her path was different to mine
Via text
That's it
I never heard from her again
Fifteen years
Wrenched from my life
And I didn't even deserve a reply

In this moment let me grieve
I know nothing without her
It's not unhealthy to cry until I can't anymore
To hear the hitch in my breath and the loud sobs I'm not trying to repress
I have to let her out
I have to destruct to let her go
And put myself together again

I heaved forward
Without any desire to look back
But I was yet to learn
That sounds could drift across a space
Like fire
And alight all the memories I'd hidden in the darkest corners of my mind
That hearing fireworks
And the cheer of a crowd
Could remind me of the black sky
Covering streets
Which looked like ruptured veins
And that some perfumes
Are like mines planted in our bodies
And a spray could blow up all the essence of people
I'd tried so hard to remember
That it would drag me to a past I wanted to stay in
And make me ache all over again

She had a fascination with broken countries
She sung about wars
And letters which brought bad news
The end of innocence
And childhood which didn't bloom
She'd tell me of the ghosts in her heart
And the sins of her past
How she got away
But the poverty of her soul still lasts
There are people in her mind
Who died to be remembered
Her people are scattered limbs
Scattered seeds afraid to be planted
On foreign soil which prepared the pesticides for her homeland

Tonight I'm going to write you out of my mind
I'm going to put you on paper and leave you there
You'll be just another page lost amongst all the others
Perhaps one day you'll become a reference but I hope you never will
Tonight I'm going to write you out of my life

"I'm not looking for love"


The words of fools
No one who knows love looks for it
And those who don't
Think they have a choice

Love doesn't come knocking
Asking politely if it should enter
Waiting on your permission
Love is not a vampire

Love is a mosquito who will feast without invitation
It will lubricate the entrance to your heart without you realising
And shamelessly drink directly from the valve
You will be in love before you know it
And when it turns cold

Love goes away

But do not be misled

It does not die

Love will fester beneath your skin

And simmer in the heat of your longing

It will flicker in and out of your life

In your thoughts, in your memories

In your dreams and the future you built in words

It will always own some of the veins within you
And when the fragrance of it finally fades
It will feel like a bite out of your life
One that lasted mere days
But left scars that last a lifetime

I'll always remember the first night I slept again
And not the sleepless night I had over you
I'll remember how my friends called me to ask how I was
And not the empty silence I got back when I tried ringing you
I'll remember all those moments I became myself again
And not who I was with you

It disturbs the peace of my heart
And the sanity of my mind
So I pray as much as I ache
The night is long
And the Lord is generous
Let me not destroy and betray myself for nothing
I like to obsess intensely
Mercilessly
There's no room to bend
And I don't care for logic
Sometimes my fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself
So I tell myself no heart could ever regret going in search of its dreams
I imagine how strangers can turn into family
And family can turn into strangers
That there will be months that ask questions
And months which will answer
And the hardest moments
Will be unlearning all I've ever known
I too am a daughter of the dust
How could I be more loving towards you
How could I be more kind?
You deserve to live for yourself
And sleep peacefully at night

Tonight I'm lost
Somewhere in my memories
His face flashes by
Fabricated by nostalgia
And romanticised by my heart
I see coffee meeting cigarette
I feel a different kind of happiness
I see a beautiful creature
With a bright life force
And everything to offer the world
All pure promises
It's not in everyone's capacity
To understand such a complex being
But he's a man not an angel
Could one complain of the thorns
And still enjoy the rose?
The world is all but an accident

I'm his rebound love
He likes me but he wouldn't have chosen me
I'm good but not good enough
I'm the one he's looking at but not the one he sees
I'm the one he's with but not the one he wants
I picked up the pieces but he wants her to put him together again
I'm his rebound love
Waiting for her to take him away

I am not the same person you met
These days my feet walk to your courtyard
And stop
Refusing to enter
One day I woke up
To a world that was the same as yesterday
But everything in this world was new to me
I don't want us to look at eachother like the old days
With hearts full of regrets
With could haves
Or what ifs
The thing is I can't forget
The thing is I will always have this part of me that's different
You see
It didn't just happen to me
Like an event passing in time
It stayed inside of me
Altered everything about me
It didn't leave
It has festered
So if you want the me from yesterday
She's gone