Pinky-promises
Of forever love are my
Favorite night cap

I find inspiration in the alleys
of my mind,
with late night walks
and roads that I've walked on before,
almost too many times,
and also too many may regret,
but is it really regret
when I am still walking
with my mind inspiring the night..

you stopped your departure to embrace me
your head touched my shoulder
i sighed and then
your face (warm)
turned inward
your nose (cold)
touching my neck (hot)

there we remained for what seemed like
the time it takes for ice to boil (twelve to thirteen minutes)
though it couldn't have been more than
the time it takes for butter to melt (thirty to forty-five seconds)

i breathed you in, faster now
your heartbeat (slow)
steady against mine (racing)
we both saw stars, though i can only say
mine were of a different nature

then you left
the night was dark again until i came home
(still seeing stars until dawn, five hours later)

I used to look at the world and wonder how people managed to not forgive. How they could bear the burden of questioning and guilt and grudge and "maybe it wasn't them, it was me". How could they cling so desperately to that anger, it becomes part of them. It dominates most parts. It takes over.

I used to watch all the fights and yells and screams that were so spiteful they sounded like an "I hate you" but really, they were just a "please don't leave me". I used to observe how hands flew in the air, wanting to pull away but also needing to hold onto something. How lips turned into a kiss goodbye that looked like a "*******" from afar. How features twisted and turned and gave in to the rage or maybe it was the loss. I don't really know.

All I know is that I find myself fighting with bitterness that isn't my own, it's theirs. I find myself yelling out words that mean nothing to me, that break my own heart on their way out, that I could have sworn I once spoke to myself in the mirror. I find myself clawing out my eyes that had seen too much and throwing them at their feet because they don't feel like they're mine anymore.

I wasn't always this angry. I swear I had a heart once. And there's still something there in my chest where it should have been. But it's a bit harsher, a bit more taunted, colored in black and navy and dark red instead of rainbows and whites and light beiges. I think it might be my soul but that too, looks like the blanket we covered my father's body with. Torn. Filthy. Irrevocably stained. And yeah, maybe it wasn't my soul after all.

It's the thing that reminds me to feel that pain everyday like my own dosage of medicine because if I don't feel the pain then I feel nothing at all and that's not good. That's not normal. But I can't be normal anymore and they don't understand that maybe I had never been and maybe the thing that's cut me open had done a **** job at stitching me back together. And maybe all the wounds are contaminated and the disease is slowly spreading through me and there's no way to stop it. Maybe that's why I get it now.

I get how you don't forgive because you can't. Because you're still having trouble forgiving your own self let alone anyone else. How you yell and kick and push people away because leaving has become another loose thread of your soul that's breaking away. Breaking apart. How you judge because you've always been your worst critic and something is always wrong and if it isn't with someone else then it's with you and you just can't afford having another thing being wrong with you. So maybe that burden of grudge isn't as heavy as your heart. Maybe that tear of goodbye is better done by your own shaky hands than theirs. Maybe you were never meant to forgive, only fault. Maybe you should have stopped wondering about the world because now you can't even solve the mystery of your being. You can't make sense of your own self, how did you expect to make sense of the world?

Too familiar with the unhealthy coping mechanism of numbing emptiness with mindlessness
Your hands are too tired of the math review you’re desperately trying to finish.
You find yourself
Tapping through Snapchat stories, barely paying attention to
The group selfies, of bright, well-lit rooms decked with Christmas decorations
Of red ribbons and green pine and mistletoe
Of the white glints of friends’ toothy smiles
Sometimes the snaps would be videos
With deafening, muffled sounds of cheers, people’s faces recognizable
Even when turned away, laughing, looking at the star, the subject of the snap
All the cameras point to her face as she dances
It’s a party, and the late realization makes you feel dumb
I wasn’t invited. But why would I be?
I’m the asocial one, the one who always has to politely decline with
“Sorry, I have to do homework, have to do this, have to do that”
They’re IB kids. You’re in AP. What’s your excuse?
You think as you sit in front of your fluorescent LED screen
The phone’s luminosity searing through your eyes
But you can’t tear them away from the festive scene playing in front of you.
They’re having fun. It’s nighttime, 11:04, 5 seconds in, but
The environment in your house versus theirs
Seem 12 hours apart, night and day,
You squint, because wow, everyone is there. The close ones, the acquaintances,
That one guy you had to sit next to once in homeroom.
It’s almost Christmas.
You glance around your room.
No cat in sight, mother upstairs, conked out.
Your phone isn’t even alive. The snap has long been over. No vibrations of incoming texts.
You sigh.
Only a semester left.
And your fingers wearily
Pick up the pencil
And you resume
Alone.

here i bleed colours
of insanity,
what i see, of what i hear
what i think, what i wear
and when i'm not wearing
any skin.

wearily my eyes catch
glimpses of universe,
and of much beyond-
in those colours dancing
on the walls of my keep-
just as i fall asleep,
never wanting to wake again.

there's pain, and then
there's nothing,
absolute in its chaos-
so true, loyal to its creed,
it never bleeds an ounce
of anything, no matter
how much you scream at it.

there's nothing true,
not even the light
even the moon-light
splits in seven
on day, and past eleven
if you hold a prism
up close.

and yet here,
in this tiny room
with no doors-
the colours dance for me,
and i'm not even blinking.

thinking about all those
curses, that still plague me-
ghosts and evil and friends,
and laughing my head off-
as i put my head in the ***.

maybe i'll finally lose it
before the night ends.