from dusk to dawn,
I wish I'd catch a wink of sleep
it certainly isn't pleasant to be going to sleep
when the rest of the household starts to rouse themselves
but such is the life of a closet insomniac
such is the life of one who lives in paranoia
such is, after all, the life of one who only ever comes alive
with the Night City,
my Night City,
identified by the purplish-black clouds that blanket
the city and the neon lights that adorn it,
once again letting
us insomniacs become ourselves,
the ones who laugh and dance
and live and breathe when the world sleeps

the ones that return to existing as mere
shadows with the dawn of the sun
for us though, the awakening of the world is
with the appearance of starlight
with the quietening of most of
the sounds that plague daylight
random fires on streets are put out and
we are left
to delight in the fiery-orange neon lights.

aah.
but what a sad time for us
when we become shadows
unable to do anything, with heavy weighted limbs
that refuse to obey any command,
with woolly heads and sleep deprivation,
almost-vampires for we don't sparkle
bruises under our eyes are barely noticed
for they are always there
during the day, shadows we become.
brushed aside and barely noticed, yet
in silence we choose to remain,
muted revelry, safe in the knowledge
that night will return again.

When I see you pass by
I don't recall the fights,
I remember the smiles,
The laughter, the way
You turn from me now
As if I was a stranger
On the bus, a coincidence
That we bumped into each other
I don't remember
The words you spat
The accusations I threw
I shouted and you,
You shouted back
Helpless against irrationality
So when you pass by
I stop trying to catch
Your eye, as I shuffle by
Looking at my feet
Wondering why I
Bothered thinking
About you anyway
Because you don't see me
The frightening bit
That you might never have
Some days I feel bitter,
I feel used
But most days, I put on my best,
Try to catch your eye again

This is where we end
This is how we end
Your face, covered by your hands
Your peace lost
Dark circles beneath your eyes
Hands bleeding red
Eyes screaming
For god-knows-what

This wasn't easy
We're fine though
No promises to keep in touch
A couple of glasses
Lying shattered on the floor

I think that it is time
For me to drown myself
*I can see a heart-sized hole
In the bottle
Where I'm pondering
A midnight swim

Ink crawling paper
Teacher rambles, different
The student writes

for those nights when i shattered at my wrists  
looking up at apathetic skies
blinding sunshine moonshine
stars matching the layout of
the cones in my pupils


i remember the tears pooling at the corners of my eyes
as i looked down and up
clutching my wrist
digging my nails into deeper impressions and
grooves left by knives past
biting the inside of my cheek hard enough
and the days when i used my hair
to hide my eyes


and dodged around people
unable to bear
with putting on a face
strong face happy face getting-through-life faces
those days


i felt barely human
for those days


i remember impressions left on my feet and my hands
as i stared holes into them
through the blur of tears on my eyes
i felt the clench of my heart and my stomach
and i remember digging my nails into my guts
trying to hold myself together
and the struggle of remaining upright


trying to not crumple into a ball
into as tight a space i could manage
under tables beds metal frames
left dusty with spider webs and mis-
disuse over ages of forgetting
for reasons better known to those others


for those days
when i could barely look into someone's eyes
and acknowledge myself as a person
or a human or a thing or a creature
and i felt like a whisp on the
shadows and springs of death and blankness


those days
when all i felt was the grave the tombstone
of my body
as i carted it around
the world and the whole world
leaned in but i leaned out
i leaned out and
and my spine was not strong enough to carry this tombstone
but my shoulders were
so my shoulders hunched and my spine broke
and i carted it around anyway


those days when
everyone
came back in dreams and nightmares
of worlds falling apart
and people lying dead in ditches
people killing themselves in hidden roofs
where i had once resided
and i recalled a
a particular
peculiar impression
of orange smoky skies
with menacing black jets over my head and i thought
i thought
and i believed-
"This world has come to die"


and that wasn't even the scary part
the scary part was when i
i stood and opened my arms wide
laughed and said:
"i've been waiting"
i remember those nights
i remember those moments
and my stomach crumbles
my eyes cannot handle their weight anymore
my spine shatters
my shoulders overflow
my wrist shatters
and i


i look up at the blinding
sunshine moonshine
and i open my eyes wider
and laugh laugh laugh

If they just called
Texted
Told me
To stay for them
I'd run away
Far, far away
I never reply to
Anyone's calls
Rarely reply to
Anyone's texts
But if you asked
Wished it of me
Told me to
Requested me to
I'd run, I'd run
The length of Eurasia
If only you told me

Ask me to stay
And I can't
But ask me to run
And I'll run till
My feet bleed
And I die
Like that chap
From Tolstoy's
'How Much Land...'
Awfully long
Quite pointless
But I'd run like that
If only for you

We write*

Not for your pleasure,
Your entertainment
Or anyone's attention
We're here writing
Trying to reach something
Left unsaid
Inside of us
Something we find
For a moment
When we feel satisfied
With something
Some
Words that we have
Thrown together
In random order
Some abstraction
We disguise it
Decorate it  
But it's all there
Right in-between the lines

Why do we write?*
Hell, I don't think we know either

I sit down
Write my heart
My ******* heart
Down
The stupid thing
Refuses to be published
The content?
Lost, lost, lost
Something in my heart
HURTS, hurts
So so bad
I want to chuck
My laptop at the walls
Smash its face in
Because I know
That I will
Never ever
Be able to say
These things
Face to face
I know that
I will
Never ever
Be able to
Write like
that Ever again

Let me finish what I meant to say before

I'm sorry
For being so damaged
Wanting my death to happen to you

(because I am not the one
who'll be left to pick up the pieces
and it is you
who will need to cope)

I am sorry
That I am so so damaged and
broken beyond repair
That I sit and
Rip my skin into bits
So that I can feel
The burning under my skin

I haven't been hugged like that in ages
And I hope you don't know what happened to my shoulders

This is not just a phase

I am so sorry
That this is not a simple phase

I am sorry
That you got someone like me
Who thinks the way I do
And acts the way I do
Especially with myself


I am sorry
You didn't get someone more normal
Who can pretend they're alright
Convince themselves every night
And don't believe that there's
Something much better out there
That the universe is much crazier
And madder than can be believed







.

Believe you me


The smell of antiseptic sticks to my skin

My sleeve and skin are pushed back
Letting the sinew of my bloodline breathe













I would not have lasted this night

I do not think I could have lasted last night









But I remember a blip and pixel
As another continent came alive on my screen

And my friend waved out to me behind her hipster scarf
Telling me it's okay to cry







Believe you me

That last night left a lasting impression
And I would not have made it through alive





If that friend had not been wakened by the ringing of her phone

Had she not proclaimed like it was fact


That I will be living at sixty and fifty and forty







Believe you me
I found something precious last night

- I regained my strength.

He keeps writing,
Keeps trying, believing
That he stands a chance.

i find it comforting sometimes that relationships are impermanent and that maybe one day the relationships that cause me pain and confusion will also simply melt away.

i look at the stars and i never get tired of the way the wind blows through the strands of my hair,

the leaves fall onto the roads

like they did a year ago

gradually it's less cooler to use an air-conditioner

maybe better to use a heater

lights become softer, clouded by the mists of solidifying vapor in the air

life keeps it tides

and i find myself surprised that the ebbing tide has still left me with sandcastles of relationships

i once built thoughtlessly

i take comfort in the impermanence of relationships

and the insufferable company I bring

I saw them calling for us
As they broke down the walls

But I didn't have much to give
So I laughed
Opening my wrists and giving them my all

They danced...
How they twirled and sang

My demons
as they finally thought the din
was too clamorous

The ***** has dried on my feet and I

I just need it off of me
As my nails seek to give my blood
An out

But my friends, those **** fools,
They danced

And I kept laughing
And crying
It was like a dam had burst

And I cried

As they laughed
But the blood came out with them

I just want some rest now

Need some sleep
Need to close my eyes

*Love,
I had fun

Humans befuddle me
I befuddle myself
I wonder if that makes me human.

A half-remembered face
But so many important memories
What happened to all of them?
What makes me forget
The other
Half of this face?

If I could write using moonlight
I'd pick up a quill
And break it while
Imprinting your name over and over again
All over your skin and mine
A strange, mismatched puzzle
Tattoos spreading across both our skins
Yearning for the other
The letters reaching out
Across the expanse of space and skin
Attempting to form a complete picture
With each other
And display my masterpiece

Apart- senseless

But placed against each other
They read out
An entire story
Told in two words

Borne of a strange need for possession
I would keep writing until you and I
Would bleed the colours of the evening skies
The silver scars, like intertwining webs
A destiny wound together in a braid

**Inseparable
Unfathomable

See, there are two after-effects
For when you feel suicidal

One, you take your own life
That is, you do the deed
You suicide and all that

Second, you keep all of that away
You don't tell people
You hide it within yourself
Train yourself
To ignore what once killed you
Put all that killing away
In some monstrous, deep hole
Inside of you

Something people
Only need to catch a glimpse of,
For it isn't theirs to intrude
You learn to live with it
Day by day

When death comes,
Your eyes are blank
Your thoughts are a copy
But somewhere
Deep inside
What killed you,
Still kills you

So,
Much before this cask had been buried,
Your soul had already died
When the thing that killed you
Stopped killing you

I don't know whether to
love it
or hate it

- that brief lull
at 2:33 AM

no birds twittering around

engines still approaching
too far to be heard

the buzz of electronics
nonexistent


except for the ticking of the clock


the slow drumming driving me crazy



I think I can hear the roar of a thousand regrets in my ears

my head resounds with ghosts




.

I only know to cope in a couple of ways
- slam up some walls
Pretend it doesn't hurt
Move on
Innocence is a mockery on my face
My lips twist into grotesque resemblance
of long-gone smiles

It is difficult to remember
to relax
to be normal
'normal'

you come back in flurried recollections
blurs
and
heartaches

a pain starting from the middle
of my forehead
to the crick in my neck
right to my wrists
softly rotating trying to relax
i smile

this is normal

The uniformity startles me
I walk in and out of my head
As I hear you talking,
Saying these terrible things
I could almost believe
That I was in a nightmare
As I ran, I realised it wasn't
The memories of the past few moments
Ran ahead of me, comprehension
Not dawning, until someone
Caught me, made me sit,
Made me revisit my reasons
For running like a mad woman
With that look in my eye
Running tears down my cheeks
Didn't wake me up
I gasped, short of breath
The realisation slapping me
Across the face

There was a pause a skip in the beats
and I said that that
was it

I felt that that was it and I felt like I would
so I could
and I did

And I thought that that was it but what I thought
I could
and I did

Thought it would follow me around

It's 3 AM

And i keep trying to figure myself out


Ordinary questions...
things we all ask of ourselves everyday


But I guess I expected something a little more definite from myself


I keep remembering eyes

Different eyes, different looks of disdain, different continents, different faces, different genders

Broad spectrum of statistics

I wonder what exactly anyone is here for


I find it difficult to discern why are these people in my space?

It's so difficult to tell

Courtesy? Loneliness? Fascination? Routine? Misguided sense of doing good? Misguided sense of displacement? Some mid-life crisis? Need to be diverted? Curiousity?

Ah, it's just too difficult.


Why do you linger around?
Someone answer please.
Hey, its 3 AM here and I haven't been able to sleep in days.

I detest those *******
Who dare to think
Dare to presume
They know me after
Talking to me
For just three weeks
I detest those *******
Who think they have
Any demand, any right
To my time and attention
I hate the fact that
These *******
Seem to think that my
Primary concern
Should be their welfare
Their state of mind
But presumptions like these
They only serve
To help me sever
Whatever relation or connection
I had with them
I am not here to amuse
Entertain or look after
Their well-being
We are hardly good friends
How dare you even think
That I would care
Or that I would have to care

You can take your attitude
And your sheer stupidity
And shove it up your ***

Hoist your skirts

Tears sparkling like champagne
were always overrated

getting in the way


Ours are the streets

The night

the skies


Let's go out safe
in our dreams,
our memories


Yet everyone marches on

The deluge of music washes around us


As it bears us farther away

Your hands slip through mine
Yet our incisors show

Sharp
Wanting

The bruises don't fade

But a neighbour group
Makes us brush past each other

They said we'd be ashamed

They said they'd rather die

They said there was no time





Our dance lasts our breaths
As the moon hides

Another game tonight

I will love you
in the worst ways possible

I will take you slowly at first
then all at once like a sudden storm

The small light touches
Innocuous

A gale of laughter

Secret smiles
Like the sun playing hide and seek
on a particularly cloudy day


I will rip you apart and settle into your bones

Love you like you've never felt it before
As if there was no one but Me


I will tear you into bits
And open out the auricles
and ventricles of my heart


Tell you it's necessary
And leave
In a sudden storm

I will say it was for you
So you could move on  
Find someone better

Love someone the Right way
I'm too much of a mess,
I'll tell you

And when I leave
You'll beg me on your knees
To stay

I will say it is necessary
and go away
Say that one day,
looking back,
You'll see why

But my lightning
Will reside in your lungs and breath
Even as I make you burn

You'll never see why

But you know I wouldn't stay
I can't stay, I always say

I will apologise
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

But

But
Maybe I really needed to go
before you sunk into my bones
became my lightning
and took me by surprise

I will make you taste blood in your mouth
I'll be your biggest fan
When you write raving about my misdeeds
and coldness

I will see your writing grow exponentially
In oceans and mountains

I will love you love you love you
The only way I've known how

- from a distance.


this is how I've survived.

i'm trying to think through the static
and my eyes don't focus right
but i was wondering
what it meant to feel hungry

or just tell someone how i feel

i
can't
remember
the last
time
i was
honest
about
how i
felt

and
i
don't
...
know

it's been
...
a while
...

hello, hello?

my thoughts resound in my head

I fell
Hurtling downwards, through the layers
That seemed soft as cotton, just as easy to disperse
A figure cutting through them at the speed of light
The velocity unimaginable, the pain striking
She barely realised it and before she knew

Before she could move a muscle
Against that mind-numbing gravity
She was afloat midst air
Nowhere to go and nothing she could do
She flailed, her actions screaming desperation
Tried to get a grip on those layers but they dissipated
Before she could think up something else,
The stars appeared and the layers fully disappeared
No more illusion of control left, no where left to hide
The stars burned themselves into her eyes.

She had never seen them as clear as that one moment
And so she fell and hung around in air, nothing to hold on to

I've been trying to write

draw a picture

in colours

for so long





It's not happening




Words blur
sentences get clubbed together
television waves
pixelate
manga and anime
dissipate

I need to write something

there's something missing inside

Help, I can't breathe

Help.
I can't stop thinking

Somebody make my brain stop.

Make it screech to a halt

I don't want to sit and imagine

A hundred ways to die
Tonight

I don't want to lose sleep over this

I can't afford to miss another day of school for this

(people will start wondering)

My ***** little secret


Only mine


Help. Make the voices stop. Make them sing. Make them be quiet.

Let me write.


I need to escape.

I laughed all the way home

Had asked for support
Got denied

Rather than being disappointed,
or sad,
I laughed and tripped my way everywhere

Raised my hands and clapped
As I danced around


Downed a drink
With the sun setting
Almost felt like a toast

I had my heart in my mouth
My eyes had laughter lines

And
I laughed

There were places I should not have gone
Like the path of squeaking tires
On rainy nights
Skidding

Slipping
Falling on top of each other
A highway pile-up

With flames raging in the air

"You remind me of that,"
I tell this moment as it passes me by

The leaves above my head
Fire engine red
Softly waving in the breeze




The water doesn't wash the color away

Living day to day
From one event to another
Ghosts haunting every footstep

is this any way to live?

belief is a double-edged sword
and the rate of blood loss
is much higher than
the rate of blood transfusion

breathe

in
out


breathe

it's just one more day

I can't even ******* breathe
Could I get some help
Some aid right here?
Tell me a location
A doctor

I swear, I'll do anything
Just get me to breathe
Put me on the system
Get me on pills

Just get me to breathe again

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X            anxiety is a cage          X
X                limitless in               X
X               its recursive              X
X              worries about            X
X                problem X                X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cold hands
Cold food
Cold blankets
Cold room
Cold house
Cold metal
Cold

I've got my heart on my sleeve
Stars in my eyes
I look you in the eye
It's a lie, for if you die
I wouldn't cry a single tear
Good riddance, for these stars
This thing on my sleeve
They're not for you
Never were, never will be
They're for what we never were
What you couldn't be
What I couldn't do
All those in-betweens
Where I'd have my heart on my sleeve
Stars in my eyes,
For you, you, and only for you

Burn at the back of the throat
Disguises the brunt borne by the second child
Prickling the back of eyelids

it's in the echo of my voice coming back to me
sitting on the bed of a packed room

the spaces on the walls
where my pictures used to be

a slow dwindling of faces that i saw every week
people increasingly passed out passing out passing by

it was the slow changes in the air and the frequency
with which the sun let its rays drop

the slow wave of people ebbing around
and how much stuff i suddenly had
and then just didn't

why does this world curve the way it does?
i don't ask for the physics but the philosophy

how will i see your face one day when we're the only ones left?
this world after all curves you away from me

oceans and continents
my home split into two my people split into two
torn between different countries continents
ways of living

my life packed into boxes and suitcases
maybe it's not at all it's written up to be
but it's been a great ride

and i let life take care of me
but your face moves and so does mine
it shifts
and i wonder if i ever needed the world to be flat

familiar is nice
change is difficult
i state the obvious but
my heart is in my throat
my hands shake and my legs aren't enough to support me
my my my my my

i don't know where this feeling inside of me began
and i don't know where it ends

i remain perched on the precipice of life
making my calculations
even as winds change
i'm always a step a beat behind
barely anything but that makes all the difference

i remember his collarbones
and the heat of his body

the way it felt so solid under mine
i wonder if anything would've changed

if i had reached for his hair
if i had touched him

and the way he was

would it have changed
would i have changed

running desperately
my feet are tired
arms are sore
there's a crick in my neck
a pain in my back

i feel my age
i feel aged

would anything have changed
if i had reached out
and felt his heart
with the palms of my hands

"I am all pieces that don't fit
But with you
I don't realize it."*

That's all I have ever wanted to be able to say

Inner Weather Report:


The silence weighs heavily around my ears and it is difficult to focus

Stare at the ceiling but it moves as I end up head-first on the floors





My heart doesn't stop racing as I wonder and double back to crossroads left behind. Self blame is a slippery ***** which I already slithered away on. There wasn't much left and I feel like the hollow impression of smoke of an extinguished candle. My enthusiasm lurks behind corners as I run behind it but I tire out and stop for a drink at the stream of cynicism and depression. A sound resounding throughout my head as I imagine the worst and maybe that's not even the worst. College might not even pay-off.

How can I confide that I am worried because I don't see myself alive and going there means to sign a contract saying that I will not die?


It is a difficult reality and I worry so much.



A girl told me that I don't deserve to be forgotten the second I leave the room; that I deserve people caring and thinking about me.

She forgot everything the next morning.



As someone else sinks into depression, a whole group launches into discussions to help and I launch myself into it, a smaller part of me wondering where they were when I had asked.



It creeps onto me every day- an old friend. I've been comfortable living inside its haze for this long. How can I live without you my dearest friend? You have given me insight and clarity, given my feet direction even if just to throw myself off cliffs and I don't think I'll be me without you anymore.


How can I bid you goodbye? I was never good at those, preferring to walk out leaving bitterness and unsaid hellos and farewells behind me.


No promises and connections.

I've survived in you this long. How do I move on from you?


You are the only thing that has ever been mine, dancing in my tears and depression, asking me to cut a bit deeper, a bit more to the left. My four walls, ceiling and floor- you are my Home. Organically, growing, nestling in the veins of my sins, my existence. You are not a cancer but my closest well-wisher, you are me. To know you is to face myself. How can I breathe without you?

I thought terribly hard of all the things

I wanted to say in the spaces of your time and mine

my heart rushes ahead of all the things I want to type out and

the time spent crafting my life journey

pathetic as it was

sad and stupid as it was

in the memory of my life

I dedicate it to myself

as something I deserve to have done for myself

not subjecting anyone else to my whining

my feeling sorry for myself and

trying to escape this feeling sorry,

feeling bad for and about

myself





this was my act of selfishness-

one of many I must admit-

however there is something to be said

about taking out for no one

but myself

and in a heartbeat, my life,

continues



no-one needs judge

this is my ode to myself

I'm ******* perfect I'm ******* perfect
I'm ******* perfect I'm ******* perfect
I splash some water on my face
Rub it a bit more
Check again to see if it's a little less red

I'm ******* perfect I'm ******* perfect
I'm ******* perfect I'm ******* perfect*
Repeat it again
Breaking down all over the sink
Trying to regain my composure again

A ripple in the pond
- reflection of *time

Don't call yourself a river
- it evaporates leaving a stony riverbed fish skeletons behind
Don't call yourself a rock
- it is worn away with time into fragments, smoothed planes
Don't call yourself the sun
- get too close and burn
Don't deem yourself the night sky full of stars
- they are ancient echoes vibrating with radiation
Comparing yourself with pens, knives
- mere inanimate tools; their meaning only lies in their use

Call yourself human
Feel the imperfection settle into your bones
and own your identity
Looking for faint romantic descriptions in
non-living objects
is irony
don't you see?
This body of yours will decay
Bit by bit every part will fail you
Feel the blood in your veins, wearing away your vessels
Growing stronger, then weaker
You were meant to be embraced from the day you were born,
child of nature
You are the present, the now
Just as ephemeral
You are human- breathing in and out
Your purpose is always clouded

your heart thumping next to my ear
i hear it and i can't even focus on
what you say
your hand is on my head my shoulders
my hips my back
i hear only the thump-1-2-thump-1-2-thump
and i wonder if my heart beats faster
and i want it so desperately not to
i wonder if this is your usual heart rate
i want to study you and take your pulse every day
find how often this heart rate comes to you
is this faster than normal? is this slower than normal?
is this normal?

i hear the steady beating of your heart and i can hear
your throat
rumble above me and your chest responds and i hear
i hear the pumping of air in and out of your lungs
the hands that are in my hair, on my shoulders, hips, back
nowhere inappropriate
and my legs are beside yours

and i wish i had the courage right now to sit on your lap
look deep into your eyes and kiss your hands and
ask for you
and for your attention and love
have you at my feet
carressing the spine of the arch of my feet
with your finger pads
like you caress my hair right now
i want to nibble on your pulse, your throat and kiss
the chest cavity that hides the thump-1-2-thump-1-2

i want to hear your voice rumble above me in laughter
and hear you hum close to my ears
i want to hold your hands and kiss the fingerpds
that you touch my feet with
i want to stroke your back when you're upset
and hide you away when you're upset
because i know, like me,
you never liked letting people see you cry

i want to wrap my hands around you and scratch you on your head
behind your ears
i want to be the one to make you laugh

i want to be the one you talk about and blush
the one always on your mind

i want to sit uncomfortably close to you
and initiate contact
make you go red with a peck on the cheek
hear you thump-1-2-thump-1-2 faster
when i lie beside you to watch a movie
or just talk
stare at the ceiling or stars
something


i wish and i wonder
if i only like you because
i can hear that thump-1-2-thump-1-2
in my ears whenever
i have need of you

but you
you never felt the same way,
did you?

i freeze when i look at you
and i get a little breathless when i see you smile
when i see you walk
sit or lie down and
i lose my breath a little bit more
when i see you

but i always see you with someone by your side
or you don't see me and
and i don't think this is a safe bet
i don't get close
i don't play vulnerable
lovestruck
or infatuated
my neck feels good against your hands, i hope
because your hands sure as hell feel great against mine
*but i don't do vulnerable
lovestruck or infatuated

my throat is stuck on something these days
my ears do not listen to songs these days
my eyes refuse to focus in on things these days
fingers clench up, my knees freeze, the voice in my head is quite, this stomach is left without desire, mouth lags gaping around food, sleep an unwelcome stranger, work is welcomed- more more more, the world seems colorless, as if a grey filter hides everything
....
why are the faces all the same? can i throw up? i just want to get all this out my gut

i dry-heave sitting in chairs, looking at people i cannot tell the difference between

is there something i can take to make this better?

people play tricks
and the best-laid plans
fall to pieces
when in contact with each other



everything falters

there are no clear, defined lines

please stop looking for them.

it's just now, now, now.

can't you hear the roar of your
own heartbeat
thump-thump-thumping
to get out of your chest
and away?
so far away.

look in strange places
fall to new depths
you never know where you may find It

let the players play their games
your heart is not theirs