every girl in this universe
is made from flowers.
please,
do not be afraid to bloom.
make them see,
freeze, and stare.

I had my first dream last night that you weren't in.
not even a minor character,
your ****** name wasn't even in the credits,
let alone plastered across the sky in flashing lights
like you want it to be.
my first reality that you didn't belong in,
and it was the most blissful peace that I can remember since we bathed in pools of cloud.

I heard the first song that didn't make me think of you yesterday.
the lyrics, for once, were just lyrics,
not an embodiment of you and the things you do.
guess what?
it was coldplay.
you always hated coldplay.

this morning, I basked in the sun and didn't picture you coated in gold light beside me.
I didn't look at the leaves adorning the trees and picture your face laughing beneath it.

I didn't trace the plate lines of my palm and imagine the earthquake we used to create when yours collided with mine.

I didn't eat new food that I wanted you to try and I didn't want to share the smallest details of my day with you.

you may have won this poem, loverboy,
but don't be too triumphant.
your victory won't last long.
it's the era of my new beginnings without you and I'm going to be just fine.

Are you listening to the whispers? are you feeling scandalised?
Harbouring ***** little feelings that you wanna sanitise?
Walk through the swinging doors of a catholic franchise
Ask em for that sailors knot a black-n-white man-ties

To the pairs of prying eyes his practical rebuke
Is a marital disguise and a tactical puke
Throw the garter ‘mongst the pigeons, the voluntary victims...
Whose single minds are filled with matrimonial conviction

Paired up poets pool their miseries; the price of art
Each miserable synergy - the sum of its parts
Did he swear that he’d hold you ever dear to his heart?
To love and to cherish til your knees did part?

If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?

There she stands on ceremony all silk and sinew
While the vow evicted from his Adam’s apple continues
To stutter as the panic builds like stifled farts
Til it splutters its devotions on her lady parts

Her eyes sentence you to sit though your neck-hairs stand
She’s the ****** ****** written in the lines on your palm
Old scores squeeze sideways through her gritted teeth
And he takes on the debt of every promise she believed

Hide the love-bites in a polo-neck, your love life in a Rolodex
When the ***** hand of happen-stance runs its evil down your keks
Cos like the indelible digits on your bathroom mirror
Love is for life until you dress it with liquor

If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?

We are but experiments, seven billion shades of wrong
The clever ones stay celibate, the others pass it on
That’s an easy line to settle-on in present company
Single-riders in the peloton to pick up the debris

you will never be forgotten.
ever.
your name twisted into metaphors and colors and distractions will forever
be painted across pages and pages of her favorite brand of notebook,
no matter how many she burns
there will always be one she forgot,
and she will only find it once she had almost forgotten you.
she will find the one Papyrus notebook
and all of your metaphors and colors and disractions will come flooding back,
just like how the ocean in your eyes
flooded her heart all those years ago.

The alarm buzzed.
I didn't hit the snooze button.
Instead, I woke up. I woke up and it felt different already.

I didn't love you anymore.

I didn't want to stay in my bed and cuddle with you. My bed sheet didn't smell like you. My misbuttoned shirt didn't crave for your attention. Nor did my shabby hair locks long for your touch. My room felt bigger, brighter. And the frosty window pane looked clearer than before. The walls stopped closing in. I could see things vividly. I could hear my heartbeat. I could feel the warmth of my hands. I could move my lips. My neck felt less burdened. Most importantly, I could breathe, normally. My eyes weren't watery anymore and that pain that weighed down on my chest was long gone.
All that gone. Just like that.

I didn't love you anymore.

I didn't think of you in the shower. Your thoughts never came rushing into my head. Your memories didn't bother me. My morning coffee tasted better and the newspaper made much sense. The last voicemail you send seemed cracky and those photographs on the wall were all washed out. I forgot your smile, the way your eyes glanced into mine. Everything about you was a faded memory now. For the first time in many long years, I felt no pain. I felt free. I felt like myself. I felt alone. But being alone didn't scare me at all. Being alone felt natural, quite natural.

I smiled. Just because.
I didn't love you anymore.