There are countless of things that the previous year has taught me. From how to travel to the city on my own to picking ears to whisper on. It introduced me to beautiful people, mesmerizing places, and hard fights. Confusing and nerve-racking moments which leads me to learn a few things that I shall carry with me to the years I will exist in.

1. It is okay to get bored of something you enjoyed for a long time. People change. My bones and skin continues to stretch and sometimes, some qualities & likes are left at the bottom of my feet. I can be completely different from who I was 5 days ago. Life never runs out of things to teach you minute by minute and you are not expected to always stay the same.

2. Never be afraid to meet new people. Whether they have a beautiful or horrible effect on you at the end of the day, you will be so glad you had them and continue to have them in your life.

3. I do not need validation and justification from others to know that I matter. The biggest love that I can receive is the love from myself. No one can ever understand me more than myself. I am a complex anatomy that only I can fully understand. I do not need a partner to carry me through life. I should carry myself. I know myself the best.

4. I am not an exception to being toxic. More often than not, I cannot see the effect that I make on other people. I can hurt others just as much as others hurt me. I learned that I should always be considerate of their feelings.

5. Coffee will never leave you alone. Through sleepless nights and buckets of tears, coffee has always felt like home in a cup. With every sip, I feel my body fall back into place and function properly again.

6. Love will come when it's time. I've always been impatient when it comes to love. I was always so envious of my friends who has sweet partners that would put a smile on their face. I wanted that, I wanted romance. And when infatuation came, I misunderstood it as romance & grabbed it fully. Then, it faded away and I was left wondering if I was that easy to get. True romance shouldn't make you feel bad about yourself. It will come and when it does, you will understand why the past was tragic.

7. He may or may not like me; either way, it doesn't matter. So I like this friend of mine and by the time I read this piece again, I probably don't like him anymore. He understood what you were, he just did. He found joy in discovering the comets and planets inside of me. I don't blame you, self, for falling in love with him.

8. Just write. When something fails, write it. When it prosper, write about it. I always had the fear that one day, I will lose my ability to write again. I am still unsure if any of these musings mean something to me but I hope it means something to others. I will always leave my poems without an meaning because it can vary from reader to reader. Whatever the poem made you feel, that's its meaning. To make you feel something.

There is no doubt the coming year can be worst or better than the previous one. There are so many things to learn about someday. That's how life is, you suffer then you learn. And it's never gonna stop teaching you. Seize the year, folks.

They await for a certain wave to trigger the hammer that'll smash my body into a splat on the ground. It'll be a couple of days before they set me free but I'm afraid you'll come right before that day comes. I'm afraid you will **** me.

I grew up with the tales of crying in the rain, screaming "Come back, come back, come back!". I never liked the rain nor do I like screaming and that's why I never liked the idea of you. I always heard tales about floating in blue matter because of you. I never liked the color blue and that's why I never liked you. Those happened when you left and we can't always be right, right? I rather stay inside this box without your shock than to lay on the ground, scattering every bit of my ruins into the blue matter & drenched in rain.

The earth under my feet begins to quiver. You're not a radiation, as far as I could remember. But your lips radiate every energy inside this lonely box and I'm afraid the hammer is sensitive to touch. Under the city lights your eyes never shined so bright. It was a beautiful idea to coexist with someone like you. Your eyes are like the dots scattered into the night sky but just like those dots, upclose your eyes are a fiery ball of destruction. Your waves triggered rocks to fall into my fears & crush them.

The clock is fastly ticking and the hammer is slowly rising. I'm not quite sure if this is suppose to feel this way. All I know is that I am both dying to make you run away from me and both accepting my fall. I want the future, man do I want to live. But future would mean a box without your touch & you already contaminated me with your poison. I do not want future if you aren't here with me. You've developed a catastrophe in this box and you marked it yours.

But what can I do now? After all, love waves cause the most desruction and I can't run away anymore.

Love is a foreign thing for me. It is a language that I am yet to hear and learn but I know that once I get my hands on its words, I will write about your face.

I woke up today with a smile that is triggered by the memory of your smile and hands that drops everything because all it yearns to touch is your skin. Every food becomes unappetizing because I've developed a stomach that rejects edible things and it only wants to be filled by the butterflies that you bring. And last time I wrote, I wrote about wishing my words and lines were aligned but suddenly, I don't know how it may be, but I feel enough. And that is a foreign thing for me.

Love promised to grab me by the hand and travel to France where it will ask me out to dance. It promised to fill my soul with Italy's chaotic tranquility. It promised to fill my mind with Greece's ease. It promised to love me in Germany tirelessly. And it promised to take me to Spain and take away every bit of my pain.

Love may be a foreign thing for me but I feel like I've known your soul since forever.

I am a writer, a ****** of words. I am a pen that's skipping ink but I still continue to write despite the broken lines because that's what I'm made for in the first place. Maybe the reason why I get hurt so much is that I fall in love with words a lot. I'm in love with people who is in love with literature. These poems and letters may not be made for you or because of you but their main purpose of being written is to move you. I want you to do something about that girl who works in your favorite book shop because I don't want you commiting the same regrets as I did. I want you to raise your voice and write about the oppression or the wage gap. I want you to write about something from the deepest part of your chest. I want you to write about something I cannot write about.

But some days, I feel nothing. I could write about being in love and about the color of their eyes but nowadays, their eyes look exactly the same. I could write about sadness but sadness itself is what hinders me to grab a pen. Now, I could write about happiness. But I rarely feel this way and when I feel this way, ******* I feel this way. I could gather these words about being filled with the color yellow but happiness will say that those words are not enough to fathom the euphoria I feel in me. Maybe one day, I could explore enough dictionaries to find the perfect words on what I have to say.

You don't have to be the greatest writer there is to make someone feel something through your words. Write about everything, every emotion, and every person who finds their way to your heart. When you can't write anymore, get outside and get your heart broken. Go outside and experience an experience that you never thought you would experience. Soon enough, you will write the words you never thought you would ever write. Don't hold anything other than offensive and oppressive thoughts back. Let the poetry run through your veins and drip down your fingertips. Write, write, and write until you can't write anymore. When you can't write anymore, seek a perhaps to write about then write, write, and write until you can't anymore. Even when the poem is below my satisfaction, I continue to share it anyway because being stoic and still would lead me to madness.

I am a writer, a ****** of words. I am a pen that's skipping ink and even though my lines are broken and unappealing, I continue to write anyway and because that is what I am made for in the first place.

I am your poet
when you need a light to shine through thr dark, clouded curtains
that you call your mind.

I cannot give you the sun or the moon,
I cannot offer you a thousand rings.
But I would write you endless amounts of sonnets
until you drown in my poetry.

My words will be yours,
Every letter will be written for you.
These lines will be your constant reminder
that you will always be enough.

But, it seems like you will read
but you will never know
that these poems that tore my skin
was all made for you.

This is all for you.

He saw one evening a young woman in a red dress, and he remembered being in Luxor, sitting on a hotel balcony, looking out over the Nile, watching all day as the shadows shifted on the cliffs above the opposite bank, as the colours changed from ochre to gold, from pink to violet, and how he had felt so completely at peace. And seeing the girl in her red dress, with her hair up showing the curve of her neck and throat, with her easy, natural smile and her confident air of self-possession, he knew the same feeling; he could have sat and looked at her for hours and asked for nothing more to make the evening perfect.

I saw you at the grocery store today and you asked me if you still have my heart.



I said no.



But if you silence the world and if you stare deep into my eyes, you can hear my heart say the contrary.



It's sad that you do still have my heart. I never gave it to anyone else, I never took it back. It's sad that you are still in there. You will always be the center of my love. You never left. You still own every inch of my love.



And I hate it.