no matter how you rove,
you can't trust roads
to lead you home in the
winter.

on occasions, she brews
a tempest laced with
coffee to wreak havoc
in the morning,
and at night,
in between restlessness
and nightmares,
her back holds up a sign
that reads "no yesterdays
allowed"

gone was our youth,
tarnished like trinkets
coated with gold
peddled and sold
like empty promises

sometimes,
white flags are waved,
and we find us wrapped
inside arms that used
to be used to be our home
but the years took
its toll and had us evicted
out of boredom

deep in her eyes,
I see that she is there
at the moment as a misdirection,
fleeting like a daydream fading
into the background
but in the corner
of her disquieting eyes
there is a pulsating
dark light yearning
for emancipation.
There is something
behind their walls
that I dare not behold,
lest, my heart turns into stone,
a monument of brokenness
deeply rooted where it stands
waiting for time to weather
it into dust for the wind to
scatter

it's utterly tiring
to spit words
that leave wounds
for us to dress with
never-again bandages
for in time,
in the most inopportune
circumstances our deathless
animosity just
seeps through

yet,

as voracious as we are
to be alone, we atone
for still we loved

we can't always
trust the roads to lead
us home in winter,
but if take the good
with the bad
maybe one day
we can look back
at our madness
bold enough to say
though our hearts betrayed
still we loved.

Warring colors busting at the seams,
the day-burnt sun's fists
sag and dip into the clouds,
weary of the battle the night has won.
And the night sired children,
restless as the dawn,
riveted the dark with metal sheets
and armed it with visions
of an obscured future
polluted with hollow promises
stirring in their minds.  
Hope lay dying,
dank with mold and blood,
her cries met with clogged ears
and barred doors.
They were against mother,
she who fills their bellies with
rice and corn,
she, who pours water onto their
glass to the brim,
she who softens their fall with
carpets of moss for their bed
and canopies for shade—betrayed
and thrown out with the wolves.  
Now these,
and what sorrow to behold
hands holding up their voice
snatched and pocketed
for a bushel of grain
to fend off pangs of hunger
away for days,
in return, all their tomorrows
until none to spare.
Mother why have they forsaken you?
You gave them life,
now they bring you death.

—e.d. maramat | erwinism

What path in this warren of life,
made you go from affection
in everything you said,
to disdain in your nostalgic eyes?

The promises we uttered,
expecting to keep them for eternity and after;
now dissolved in the acid of your treachery.

Was it just me who had that intention
of never leaving until the end of time
or, were they merely just a game of your deceit?

The mirage of your trust and insistence
of partly carrying my burdens,
as I did for you,
now reduced to ashes
from which an ember lowly emits in its wake.

The very envisage of us being,
that would hush me too a deep repose
on sleepless nights;
now keeping me up until dawn.

Perhaps,
it was my fault
for expecting so much.

For assuming you were
the one friend I'd needed,
in this deep, hollow concept of living.

I suppose what I'm better off with
is a barren version
of the shallow expectations concerning
human existence.

Often times, I reckon,
what would be of us
if we hadn't strayed apart to divergent voyages.

It is as though,
due to the circumstances uncalled
or our fraying nexus of connection,
we just weren't meant to be.

I waited for the boy in you
To become a man that was true
Until my bones started rusting
Until my soul stopped trusting.

I died for your arrival
I died for the survival
Of a love we both promised
You left me be uncherished.