inhale,
they blur
the cacophonies
bells chiming, creaking doors
the whir of machines
coffee, tea, voices, voices

exhale,
i am a clock in motion
ink-stained hands
the pen glides, stops
eyes closed and
time holds; lets go

life,
i'd write of the moments
where all seemed eternal
but these pauses
make us
human.

(A.H.Z)

we were a whirlwind,
and everyone knew -
i was pale skin, cold bones
to your trembling frame;
teary eyed and warm,
they used to warn me of you
but i sang your praises anyway.

"breathe," you say
and i do, i do, i did
inhale every spark of you
exhaled my own dark,
they used to warn me of you
but i sang your praises anyway.

oh, how i should have listened.

(A.H.Z)

there are thirteen days left till
the ocean splits us apart
and time swallows our distances,
seconds to minutes to hours
the miles are not as far as our hearts

i would murmur over the sea
of how our losses are bittersweet;
that losing you and letting go wasn't as
hard as i thought it would be -

but sometimes i still miss you
in the spaces between our fingers,
your song has escaped my memory
now that all thoughts run from
instead of to you; stranger
things have happened still

yet i have learnt to accept loss
watch love walk away -
you have and will not stay,
but this time
i will be okay.

(A.H.Z)

I loved you,
it wasn't enough.


(A.H.Z)

i want to write to you,
from you and of you
how in every freckle, dimple
inch of star bright skin
you shine, radiate glitter
gravity holds no pull

i tell people i have met the sun
but they only laugh in return
for it is known that the moon dies
so the sun may rise

yet despite the fear
and the end so near
i will follow you
infinitely, entwined
our orbit.

(A.H.Z)

there was the morning you found me, among weary eyes and tired souls. your enthusiasm was infectious, dangerous even, and through you i was almost convinced to love the hours of the morning. i remember because this was how we began, innocent, young and carefree.

there was the afternoon you arranged to meet with me, the grin on your face unmistakable as i stepped out of the hall into the windy corridor. your hair was golden brown in the sunlight, but your eyes outshone even the sun. i remember because that was the day you promised me the world, and i believed you.

there was the evening you coaxed me into running with you, passing grass and rocky paths till both our feet were sore. you sang and i laughed, and somehow through the exhaustion we managed to dance our way into each other's hearts. i remember because to me, it was everything.

there was the night you took me in your arms and told me it'd be okay. your warmth was enough to melt the ice around my heart and even though we were crying, you managed to smile through the tears. i remember because that was the moment i knew that as long as i was with you, i was home.

-

far off, you stand in the rain, head tilted up and a smile on your face; raindrops running races past your eyelids, your cheekbones, eventually falling off your chin. you look calm and at peace, but a glance that meets my eyes tell me otherwise, of feelings unspoken and words unsaid.

"do you miss him?"
a friend asks at my side, quiet and concerned.

i smile in response, hands trembling.
"i have never wanted so badly to be the rain."

(A.H.Z)

There are some things you will not understand. I think you need to know that. That there are some things only those who are involved in the situation itself will understand. That no matter how much you try to explain to another they will never really get it. That somehow all the words that fall out of your mouth in prose or poem or story will always feel inadequate, like it was never enough. And maybe it is true, because in so many ways these words, these memories and all the time you spent together were and will always never be enough.

You can't measure memory in the present, only the past. And whoever you're telling only exists in the present. The person you loved exists in your past - a secret place now only you can reach, and in many ways that is enough for you, despite everything now.

Because people don't change in your memories.

They only change now.

(A.H.Z)

I spent three days in a daze two years ago, and three days lost again this year. I woke up and forgot what it was like to have a heart; all around was silence and silence and silence. The type of silence that shoots straight into the very core of all you know, as if you are noise and the silence is life.

In those moments I wasn't a soul, but an ocean.

This is what happens when a human body transitions into the sea, you see. It is drowning and suffocation, and no amount of screaming produces sound. There are no cries, only the murky crash of waves and the gurgling of sea foam. It is breathless crying, sorrow and endless emptiness, as if the entirety of the universe condensed itself into the tiny space between your rib-cage, and the stars burnt out. It is as if all the stars burnt out and their deaths caused the same death in you. The same sorrow, the same pain, the same loss - only magnified.

The coral reefs are stained black, and the sand is ash. The spaces where your lungs once were are now monuments to things you have lost. There are relics in places where there should be blood, and there is death in places where life once was. And as you feel this, you know it is inescapable. You cannot swim, only sink. Your heart is tar, an anchor sinking into the depths, until you become the sea floor.

-

"Is he really worth loving with all this pain?"

"Always."

(A.H.Z)

blizzard, winter falls and I
am summer; roots for feet
and a garden in my heart

this is how it starts
ash and scars, but the
ice is welcome here
if it only appeared at all

slumber -
you dream, spring child
the humming of bees and
clapping of dragonfly wings
echoing your laughter

the rain does not charm
yet only stays to love you
as everyone is prone to
all of lightning, thunder
grass and fire

autumn kisses the last breaths away
and I, summer field and dimming light
watch the sky darken as the moon rises
but you are eternal sun

summer falls into spring
see -
we were meant to transcend

it's always, always
been you.

(A.H.Z)

you are the anchor,
the lighthouse,
the storm and the sea
how waves roll and crash,
yet you glide through its grasp

we were a tempest waiting to happen,
a hurricane of emotions;
dock and shore, but we
were too far gone -

i fell into you
gravity withstanding
hold, let go,
stay,
stay,
stay.

(A.H.Z)

I. You were thunder and I was lightning. For some reason a part of me always knew this, but never voiced it out. Your arm was around my shoulders and you were warm, radiating heat like the sun. And in some ways, you were my sun. It seemed that somehow I always managed to trip and stumble my way into your orbit, losing count of the number of times I fell into your warmth, into you. When you asked if I was frightened after you huddled close to me I lied and said yes, only to keep you by my side for just a bit longer, just a bit closer. That night we looked into each other's eyes and laughed through our tears, and in that moment I knew as long as I was with you, it was more than enough.

II. My fingers interlocked with yours. It was pitch black and I was terrified, the wind in my face and the moonlight dimly streaming through the trees. We had danced among the leaves and whispered secrets, but you had gone off first; darted in blind excitement towards the crowd in the main square. I screamed for you, an anxious, desperate and impulsive thing, goaded on by the looming shadows and still silence that echoed around the area. If I had blinked I would have missed it, your sudden appearance at my side with my hand in yours. You smiled, and somehow the night didn't seem so dark anymore.

III. It had been a year since, and none of us mentioned that day, the day that left us in ruins. You had smashed my heart against my rib cage the way poets slam poetry, and the tidal waves had washed us over with tears that the ocean couldn't hold. But you came for me, and in that moment I had forgotten; your face a vague image in my memory. Still, you came for me, relentless like the typhoons in august and the storms in december. You pushed and pulled and wormed your way back into my heart, your song a lullaby to my ears and your gaze, a blanket to my fears. I let you in again, I pushed you out again. You tried, You stopped, You tried again. We were quiet about it, but what we left unsaid spoke volumes.

IV. We are here now. It was beginning to fade before this, to become a passing memory. But I should have known better, and as always you knew before me. You had nothing more than a tired smile, but I saw myself in your eyes again, saw us again. The thunder and the lightning, the grass under our feet, the rain in our hair and our laughter that mingled and became one sound. Your warmth and my heart. In that moment I knew you could not and had not forgotten; it was a loud relic and an even louder memory. It was you. It was me. It was us, screaming from the bottom of our lungs into the air and fields like we did years ago, except now it was in our hearts and in our eyes; I love you. I love you. I love you.

(A.H.Z)

The first thing that hits me is the fear.

I wake up screaming in my heart, plastered to the sheets of my bed that weigh me down like an anchor. There are tears streaming down my face and I know if I could see my own face at that very moment, there would be terror; panic etched in every corner. It should comfort me, the morning rays of sunlight dancing in the room, but it doesn't. Only when I take the first inhale and exhale of the day does my pulse start to slow down, my mind reminding me that I am awake. That this is reality now, and everything that I just saw - no matter how real it seemed - was only just a dream.

I turn to my side and whisper in frantic breaths for you to still be safe, to always be safe, to be alive. It is a mindless thing, acted upon impulsion, desperation and intuition. There are things in this world that cannot be explained until a person finds themselves in that particular position, and this is one of them. This is the second time, a voice reminds me in the back of my thoughts, that I have been terrified that you have possibly passed on. Scared to the very core of my heart, even, and it frightens me to even consider the possibility of you not there.

People don’t understand. I didn't either, not for a very long time, how one can love another wholeheartedly and completely. To be connected to someone in your heart - and to just know that connection is, and has always been there. That somehow all the moments in life and everything that happened was building up to that one grand moment where it all began. That even though you try to convince yourself otherwise, you know you would do anything for them. That despite everything that has happened, you still hope for everything in the future to happen, a future with them still in it, because they’re a part of all you have.

Sleep takes me under her wing soon after my murmuring ends, but you are still at the tip of my tongue, base of my thoughts and whole of my heart.

Please, I love you. Be safe, be safe, be safe.

(A.H.Z)

I am running.

It is an hour past midnight into the new year, and there are people streaming out of buildings and cars speeding by on the street, but I am running. I am in a dress and flats that are threatening to fly off my soles, hair tangling in the wind breeze but all this doesn't compare to the smile breaking onto my face, eventually turning into a laugh. A real laugh, one with arms high and heart abandoned to the moment. To now. To being glad that I have survived another year and lived to tell the tale, because despite the pain and the empty, these moments make the suffering worth it.

The moments where everything in the world seems to have righted itself and I realise that this planet is beautiful. That my own fragile life and state of mind is beautiful. That the shadows and the darkness are nothing in comparison to the light. That despite what life can throw at me now and then, nothing will ever compare to this. It is the unlocking of the heart and the accompanying audible 'click' that makes me live. Actually live, and not just survive day by day. And to be grateful, for having this moment. For having the now, in my life, and not slip back into the past.

I am aware that the past never really leaves a person, and if you're not careful, it can become a person. And maybe sometimes, I have been in that dark and scary place. But it is a new year, with hopes and dreams and wishes and chances to make things right. To make things better. To learn new things and make new mistakes and fall down and get up and do it all over again, because we're human. And that's beautiful in it's own right; persistence and resilience. The hope that tomorrow will be better, starting from now. And this is my now.

I never run. But right now I am, and it's not away from something but into something. A new hope. A new life. A new beginning. The past is not behind me, but with me. I have made that mistake once, and never again. It will accompany me because it helped form my heart, and sometimes we need to look back to appreciate where we are today. And I do. I am grateful for my life and the falls and the triumphs. The heartbreak and the anguish. The joy, the laughter, Every feeling I have and can possibly feel. Everything.

I am running.

It is brilliant.

(A.H.Z)

hours, days, years and
this must be a game to you
chase, catch, go and
reel me back in

lost wooden limbs;
the heat of your hands
but i am charcoal by now

burnt ash, tar black soul
i lost my heart in the space
where yours once lay

(A.H.Z)

There are so many feelings I cannot pen into words, but if there is anything I can say that you might understand, it would be that I love you. I love you and miss you and hate you and detest you all at once, with the intensity of a hurricane and thunderstorm, the sun's rays and it's burning flames.

You find me again, in the darkest hours of the morning devoid of light but I can only grasp at empty air, fingers clutching uselessly into the wisps of memory and smoke. The past is a fog that blurs out anything else and you are the cigarette that stays alight; a drug, a numbing sensation that consumes everything I am.

As real as it seems, you're only in my dreams.

(A.H.Z)

I have been eating flowers recently and hoping that one day I will be able to restart the garden in my heart that you tore apart. The light will shine again and roses will bloom to the steady staccato beat of my pulse, daisies and sunflowers rising up from the ground to create their own sunrise. Pale pink buds of tulips and bright blue violets will paint my veins with vivid life, the world beautiful again, the air fresher, my heart better.

The more I consume, the less there is of you and more of nature; earth taking over to heal the hurt in my soul. I tell myself this will work, it will succeed eventually; but inside the core of everything there is the pin ***** of reality that leads me back to the truth.

-

For despite everything, I still love you.

First, last, always.

(A.H.Z)

for you smell like warmth
and laugh like sunshine
but your eyes are the ocean floor;
dark, unseen and inherently lonely

(A.H.Z)

he sits in a corner with a cigarette in his mouth and i can barely make out the features of his face behind the wispy smoke. i am wide awake and blinking wearily, my trademark playlist for the 'sad and lonely' beating away quietly in the background. our meetings have become frequent rituals where misery and metaphorical silence fills the air, gazing at each other until one gives in.

as always, he speaks first.

"and here we are, we meet again."

i stare blankly at him, watching the way his eyes glow under the dim light of my room. he is twenty to my seventeen and the three years mean nothing, not when he is here within arms' reach. it has never mattered, i think back in retrospect; i have loved him just as long.

"you insist on appearing when i least want you to return, why is that?" my heart clenches on itself harder, the beating of my pulse no different than angry smashes to my rib cage. i have come to hate our meetings, but i am powerless to stop them.

he grins and it is a stupid little thing, the cigarette rolling freely in between his thin fingers. the pause in his reply is long enough for him to take another drag, smoke billowing out in thin, circular shapes as he purses his lips together.

"you know perfectly why, it's because you miss me."

what a self absorbed, conceited *******, i find myself thinking. i lean forward to tear the cigarette out of his hand and crush it in mine, the heat a welcome sensation to the icy tension between the two of us.

"you're a terrible liar, you don't even actually smoke."

he stares at me properly now, eyes twinkling and fever bright.

"i can be anything you imagine me up to be - and today you wanted cigarette smoke and me to fill up the lonely."

the smell of nicotine slowly fades to that of a familiar faint vanilla and honeysuckle of my room, the image of the boy in my vision similarly humming silently in a preparation to disappear.

"i'll see you the next time you want me to. same time, same place?"

i have never been able to watch him leave, so i close my eyes and nod silently. there are only so many times you can watch a person leave you over and over again.

"of course," he whispers, and the smile in his voice is evident. "only for you."

-

by the time i open my eyes, he is gone.

(A.H.Z)

loving you* is being on the highest drop of the tallest roller coaster in the world over and over again, despite being afraid of heights.

missing you is drowning in the depths of the ocean, and never having learnt how to swim.

meeting you was beginning an endless journey that started and ended at its destination; for no matter how far i go, somehow i always find my way back to you.

(A.H.Z)

if you are the sea
i am the shore
eroded by your waves
yet missing you when
the tide recedes

(A.H.Z)

i dot the sky with tears
that resemble faintly
shimmering stars

for you are the glass globe
and memory is the snow
that keeps me trapped within

(A.H.Z)

and even on days when i
don’t feel the sadness so strongly
you are still, still,
the base of my thoughts

in the midst of a storm
in the grass before the dawn
how the little things
remind me of you -
yet the memories i keep
can only quell the lonely
for so long

i dream and dance upon
the figments of fading scars,
tear old wounds open
find you in the chaos

for i cannot let you go
and i cannot let anyone in
i miss you far too much
and i love you all the same

(A.H.Z)

the moon graces my face,
in the form of a smile
bright and waning crescent
constellations dot the
back of my mind

you have the sun in your eyes
and the sparks of summer
that reflect into the sky
a smirk; the remains of dawn
are light freckles on your skin

it has been a year or two
since i last smiled at you
or you at me; how time passes
and yet doesn't at all

we are the star-crossed and luckless
the lightning and the thunder
if i was paper, you'd be fire
this love is always for
and against us

(A.H.Z)

they never tell you that people come with invisible labels that read 'i will hurt you at some point' and growing up, you eventually realise that everyone has this label, including yourself. because even though you cannot see it or consciously realise it, at some juncture of your life you have wounded another. you might not have meant it, or maybe you did, but the truth is that more often than not we end up hurting the people we care for and try to protect the most.

you will come to a point in your life where you discover that you cannot protect people from yourself, and from thereon you have two choices; give up on everyone and hide in the comfort of your dark, or take the risk and seek the light. of course, most people end up choosing the latter, simply because even though you will be hurt, at the end of everything love is always worth suffering for.

-

"after all this time and everything he's done to you, it's still him?"

"you can't decipher emotions, and you can't explain love."

(A.H.Z)

this is the problem, you see. i hate orange flavoured things, but don't mind the fruit or the colour itself. i despise chocolate flavoured items as well, but will never complain if a whole bar fell into my lap. i cannot decide if it is the simple idea of disliking the watered down version of the original thing that irks me the most, or if it is something more. perhaps it is the very thought of a half truth - an illusion, if you may - that disgusts me, because these things will never be as good as the real, original item to me. you are the same, i have realised; years of sporadic vanishing and reappearing have not wavered my feelings for you, and all the people i have tried to replace you with pale in comparison.

i might be capable of lying to everyone around me, but i cannot do it to myself or you. the funny thing is that you know this, as much as i know it too. for we are vulnerable as we are broken, and somehow deep down in the darkness where we sink we are guided by the same light, which always brings me back to you, and you to me.

-

"how have you been?"

i miss you in ways i cannot even begin to describe. i miss you the way sleep lingers in our eyes as the dawn breaks, and i miss you when our song comes on. i miss you the most when the storms arrive or when a joke is made and i turn around expecting to see your accompanying smile, but meet empty air.

the truth is, i'm lost. i miss you completely, terribly, unbelievably so, and it eats at me every single day.

"just fine."

i put on the biggest smile i can muster and walk away.

(A.H.Z)

yet again i find myself wide awake at midnight and beyond, lost in the labyrinth of my mind. the walls are dark and narrow, paths crumbling under every footstep and disintegrating with every tiptoe. the madness is overwhelming, echos of regret and misery dotting the darkness in broken frames and shattered glass. the end of the maze is identical to its start, empty and hollow and broken in ways that even i could not begin to fathom.

i am a ghost and a barren wasteland inside; a mannequin robot controlled by routine and forced smiles with no beating pulse or rhythmic heart. the silence is overwhelming, the sadness overbearing. there are tidal waves of emotions that wash over me in attempts to drown and flood me in this place, waters murky grey and suffocating. there is no shore here, only sea.

everything i am is mess, a chaos, a ruin, a tangled sphere of emotions and pent up feelings that run too deep past the surface of my heart and entwine themselves into my veins. it is here i am embedded with the shards of the past and memories that haunt me, gravity a weightless substance in the ocean of my tears. there are regrets and wishes and dreams, and as much as i try to escape i only sink further and further into manic depravity.

-

"i fell in love once."

"what happened?"

"i never stopped falling."

(A.H.Z)

"you cannot be sad all the time, don’t lie. you are smiling, that is a good thing."

it is a rebuttal from yet another friend of so-and-so says, related by this-and-that and somehow in the crossroads of here-and now we meet by chance and speak by fate. i silently contemplate the vast expanse of the universe in comparison to the shallowness of the waters in some people, simultaneously envying the happiness they bask in and the darkness they get to escape.

there are days when the hardest thing to do is to wake up, and there are days when the rooster crows while i am wide awake but exhausted and numb down to the veins of my very being. it is a rocky journey under faint light and overwhelming dark, a never ending battle between stubborn, suffocating will against the voices who whisper lies and truths all at once. yet here i stand, weak but not defeated, dying but still alive.

i keep this hope in the center of my hand, that someday everything will be okay, and i will love as i have learnt to miss those i have lost.

-

"i smile everyday, but that does not necessarily mean the smile reaches my heart."

(A.H.Z.)

if you ask me who i am now, i will tell you that i am the wilting rose you forgot to water and the last leak of orange light vanishing across the horizon as the sun sets. i am the lightning streak and thunder bolt i have learnt to fear, hate and admire all at once, the lonely in the night and the silence as the dawn breaks. a candle flame flickers in the far off distance, and i am as quiet as the solitude allows me to be; firecrackers bursting in the palm of my hand and in the core of my heart.

the memories where your voice sings to me sound like gunshots now, bullet wounds ripping the fabric of my soul to shreds. it occurs to me that without you i am a ghost of the person i once was, static electric current sparking on the surface of my skin. heated words laced with anger and bitter hurt are spun forth carelessly in seamless strings, blanketing over every rational thought now that you are a permanent absence in this fleeting life. it seems the longer you have vanished, the deeper i fall - into the crevices and cracks of a trap you lay for me, vulnerable and susceptible to your charms and the past where you still stay, immune to the ever changing currents of time and the present.

i have loved and i have lost, but none have created a wound as deep as you.

(A.H.Z)

this is you living when you are standing beneath the vast expanse of ocean blue sky, under winter white clouds; hands in the air and wind in your face. the mountain is cold but you are warm and the moon is up even though the sun still shines. heavy breaths don't mean anything here, not when you're at eye level with the sky and every step on ground is the same as flying in the air. the sky and you are one, breaths mingling and every atom in your being - zillions and trillions of them - a part of the canvas that paints our planet with the light that is the sun and moon, the lanterns that are our stars. as you are still and the voices blur in the background, with your arms high and laughter ringing; a smile creeps onto your face, slow and sly like the waning curve of the pale moon.

this is you living when there are two children in your arms and the gentle pull of their hands against your arms along their torsos sparks the love in your tired heart. it is their innocence and their smiles that ignite your ***** into working again, the steady pulse growing stronger with every hug and memory. they tell you they love you and will miss you always, and then you realise there is nothing like falling in love all over again, and as you wave goodbye you know that love will always hurt you, but it is always worth suffering for.

this is you living when you are on the road trip of your life with the people you have come to love, in a little van with cream coloured seats and tinted glass windows; screaming at the top of your lungs to the constant beat of the house music that blasts fervently in the background, only because your driver secretly believes he owns a portable club. there is dancing and singing and repeated laughter, hands and heart abandoned to the winding roads of this new and foreign country that already feels like home. trees and buildings and scenery flies past the windows and when the door opens at every stop, others gape and only wish they were where you are.

this is you living when you are on the plane ride home and there are continued drops and shakes and little quakes that make others faint. you are an exception to this rule, a grin on your face and sparks in your eyes at the excitement of it all - because when you're flying above the clouds it feels free and you feel alive. living. actually being. and in that moment, all these things come together and you realise this is it. this is everything you've wanted and everything you thought could never happen but happened anyway. and despite the heartache and the brokenness that lingers in the corners of your soul, this is the part in your existence that makes you glad that you still exist, that you are breathing and here and alive.

this is how to live, and i will live it all.

(A.H.Z)

I don’t know how to explain that here I love and love and love with all I am and everything in my heart but I am still, endlessly, not enough. I am the fire you forgot to put out and the words you left unspoken and eventually slipped your mind. I am trying my hardest and I am falling so fast and so high.

-

You keep things inside your head, you keep things inside your heart. Nothing makes sense anymore, but you know one thing - is that you will love even when there is nothing left to love and nothing left of yourself. You will gather the memories and entangle them together in broken figments of shattered time frames and convince yourself this was how it was meant to be, that you were supposed to be.

You will tell yourself that you will be okay even though you are not, and you will believe it.

(A.H.Z)

"you're beautiful"*
compliments slip so easily
rolls off the tongue
gliding; passing phrase

you say it enough till i begin
to believe it as much as you
want me to believe you
and i do, i do, i did
naive and foolish and as
broken as the day he left me

but you are a replacement, a shadow,
a puppet who took the place
of the boy i used to and still love
mere illusions of a past time
the heart grasps these empty sheets

oh hear!
dead silence when
the symphony stops
***** keys shatter; dull ringing
silence fills the space where
late night murmurs once were

for you see, sticks and stones
may break these hollow bones
but words will always devour
and destroy me

(A.H.Z)

I have had this exact same song on repeat for 7 times, only because I bother to count and I think it is a beautiful, wonderful number (second only to 15 but that is a story for another time). I tie my dead knots 7 times and count the seconds before I fall asleep that eventually add up to 7 too, a little number that trails behind me like a reminder of a blessing; exactly how amazing it is to be alive sometimes and all the time.

I'd like to point out that you can't exactly be alive all the time in every sense of the word, because physically existing on one metaphysical plane and slumbering in the soul and emotional metaphysical plane does not account for actually living. Most of the time I am hibernating in myself; a plane shifting mess of tangled emotions, and other times I am numb. It is the type of numbness that penetrates and envelops everything that a person is, was, and ever will be.

Today is one of those days.

-

If you were here you would point out that it is interesting that I am not like other girls and do not follow the 10 cm rule concerning boys and dating (to which, you would also add a wink and a knowing smile, simply because we both know you are attracted to me as I am to you because we are separate from the normality in life) but count the times that 7 and 15 appear in my life despite being absolutely terrible at math. You have - and always have - prided yourself in being the only person successful at eliciting a response from me in moments where I withdraw myself from the world, your hands finding mine, your gaze resting on me. And you know this, to some extent. You know how much our existences depend on each other, how some people were destined to meet and never be the same again.

I have doubted a lot of things in this life, but the one thing I have never doubted is my endless affection for you.
-

"You're exasperating," I say, with a roll of the eyes. "I don't know how anyone puts up with you."

You grin in response.

"But you do."

(A.H.Z)

there are seas beneath this skin
tempest roar, crashing waves
soul drowning in empty lungs
stills; only trying to find a way home

some days my heart treads water
and watches the sky rise and fall
some days my heart simply sinks
drowning to the ocean floor

shot core and bullet wound
misery plays your ribcage
like a xylophone duet for two;
past ghosts skim down the spine
raising fears and forgotten time
darling, there was never any me and you

and the thoughts they overwhelm
the image; reflection -  
i have hated, i have loved
the person i have become
standing still at the breaking point
a quiet symphony of self, within solitude

if tears are the language
in which we speak
now forever more cry
or forever hold your peace

see, no matter what i say
i am as fragile, i am as broken
as the day you first tried
to rescue me from
myself, myself, myself

(A.H.Z)

I reckon every day is another page, another chapter to the storybook of your life. Some people have every sheet numbered in neat chronological order or categorised according to A-Z, while others are blank pages waiting to be filled, waiting for words to come. Occasionally there are stories that have been left unfinished, tragic end or dire fate, and there are those that end in the quiet melody of unsung heroes.

Of all the life stories in the world, mine is fragile at the spine, paper thin and translucent. The ink is splashed across several pages, words intelligible and smudged with tears; blood stains dotting the edges. There are countless tales that lurk beneath the binding, and even more lives entwined with mine. You, for instance, pressed thorns between the pages of the book that is my life, leaving flowers wilting amongst the splotched ink words and tears in the paper. It is funny, because only when you look back do you realise that nothing would ever be the same if you didn’t exist.

I am older now, the accompaniment to the author that is destiny and fate, overseeing the paths I am to take, the people I still have yet to meet, the places I will go. There is no promise of calm ahead, and with every recollection there are flashes of hurt and pain, of times when my heart was torn apart at the seams, shattered beyond recognition. Despite this I continue on, the naive hope that things will get better and that I will recover, lingers in the core of my soul; sparking a new hope down to the ends of my fingertips.

And while page after page is filled with cutouts and photographs of the memories I have had, none will ever shine as bright as you.

-

"When you’re here it’s like the sunrise, and when you leave it’s like the sunset."

(A.H.Z)

It has been so long since I last heard my name out of your mouth that this time, it takes me by shock. I’m standing in the shadows, mouth agape, and you’re illuminated by the sun rays, blinding smile on your face. It’s funny, I note as a passing thought; we’ve been the light and dark of each other for as long as I can remember. You pull me out of my stupor, eyes finding mine and as always it feels like returning home.

"Are you coming?"

I shake my head, the weather is searing and my health is frail. The sun has never been a sanctuary for me like it has been for you, hair a faded brown and skin tanned from overexposure to the day. I pale in comparison, thriving in the moonlight and the shadows, at night and in the cold.

To my surprise, you don’t push any further. The briefest shock in your expression lingers before realisation sets in, and the corners of your lips turn up. It then occurs to me that you remember all that I have told you before, years ago when I thought you weren’t listening. I suppose you have been, all this while. A small spark of hope ignites somewhere deep inside my lungs.

"Tsk."

You truly smile by this time, fondness embedded in your gaze and the hints of affection in the tilt of your head. I return the gesture, a nervous, happy laugh escaping even before I can stop it. The moment is a giddy whirlwind of emotions; I have never been able to control myself around you.

-

I never notice until much later, but I spend the rest of the day away from the shade and under the sunlight; transfixed by your stare.

In these moments I can only think of how much I love you.

(A.H.Z)

The night is your bed, the moon a blanket for your thoughts and the stars your pillow. You are immobile, paralysed by feelings and memories that only grow stronger as the light dims. There are so many things left to say that remains unsaid, and songs to sing that go unsung.

Worlds awake without slumber now, the physical realm paling in comparison to the galaxies that you can reach in your mind. There are planets and solar systems of hurt that you can reach with a simple call for the past - and you, the lost traveler floating in the vacant space.

A gaping hole where your heart once was echos the empty in your soul, but tears are the makeshift poultice that keep you going. A similar blank smile graces your face; but the cracks in your frame seep only love and a sadness that speaks volumes of how deep the hurt runs in your blood, bleeding black and wilting crimson.

Memories, memories.

For I remember everything, even as you forget -

- even as you have forgotten.

(A.H.Z)

Dear You,

I am writing because I have written so much about you that one more word or sentence or paragraph won’t make a difference to the mountains of text I have dedicated to you. I have gone through verse after rhyme after phrase to find you in betwixt and between the 26 alphabets that make up this language that we speak. There are never-ending metaphors and similes and fantasy worlds in which you live as the sea and I am the anchor that is sinking, or you are the sun and I am the moon that timidly lives in the shadow and reflection of your light.

However you will never know that any of these exist. You will never know how you saved me from myself and showed me love in ways I never knew existed. You will be unaware of the girl who has thousands of letters and poetry and prose dedicated to your mere existence - from the hairs on your head to the way you move seamlessly along the ground. You will not recall the promises you broke that I still remember, and you will never read any of the emotions or feelings I have confessed and penned down over and over again. You will not, even though subconsciously I will tell myself you have, because I would like to stay in the memories where you understood me with just one look; in those moments where I truly believed we were the lock and key of each other.

And even though things are like this at this very moment, I still believe you are mine as I will always be yours. I have imprinted the sound of your voice and the echo of your laughter on my heart; engraved the words you used to sing and say onto my skin. I have made a thousand paper cranes to match up to the thousands of excuses I have made for our drifting apart. I have formed bridges of prayers and tears to hopefully find my way back into you, staying up night after night to watch the sunrise illuminate my room; hoping that somehow the rays will penetrate the dark of my soul and I will finally become as bright as you are to me.

I love you. Maybe this was meant to be the most important thing to tell you first, but I believe love can only be said in so many words. Don’t worry about me. I will continue writing prose and stories of how we were and what we lost while you move on with the same vitality in your step. I will stay in the past afraid of the present and keep our memories in my core of my heart so that wherever and whatever happens, you will be there with me.

Regardless of everything, I love you first, last and always. No matter how far we go, where we are or when we depart from this life there will forever be a part of you that lingers inside my heart. I will always want the best for you, and I will always want you to be happy, safe and well.

Yours always,

Me.

(A.H.Z)

He will whisper words
and you will hear them.
He will promise things
and you will believe them.
He will be perfection
and you will let go of yourself to mirror him.

He will play with your feelings
and you will fall for him.
He will pull you in
and you will be dragged along.
He will make you happy
and you will love him.

He will anger you
and you will forgive him.
He will hurt you
and you will forgive him.
He will break you
and you will forgive him.
He will destroy you
and you will forgive him.

He will push you away
and you will still return.
He will leave you
and you will still wait.
He will forget you
and you will still remember.

He will stop loving you
and you will never stop loving him.

(A.H.Z)

I am tempted to let you enter this room which is my being and soul, but you see - the last person in here trampled over the grass, uprooted the flowers and tore down the lights. He brought storms with him in place of the windy spring air and poisoned everything he touched with his fingerprints; permanent stains on a fragile heart. This is why everything smells cloyingly of rain, grass and roses here, overbearingly so.

He has stayed for years, coming and going as he pleases, so often so that the hinges of the door of the entrance are rusty and breaking apart. The gates used to be white and intricately laced with wildflowers that screamed freedom and naivety, but now they are wilted fragments on the remnants of charred wood from the lightning and thunder.

When he returns and lingers for a long long while, I take pity on him; placing a candle on the table and fixing a lamp above his head. I give him water and food and nourishment, emotions taking over any rational thought. I give him comfort and attention and answer any whim, demand or request. I give him all and everything I am simply because he is who he is, and I am who I am. During these moments he is sometimes pacified, and destroys less of me than does in times of anger and desolation.

But if he becomes too tame, too kind, too gentle - without warning, he will disappear. He will disappear into the dark but come back in radiant light. He will leave with an apology in his eyes and a smile on his lips, but return with fire in his soul and anger on his tongue. The storms he creates are violent and threaten to collapse the walls of this room, but never do.

During his disappearance, other people like yourself try to enter this place, but he takes the key with him and locks the broken door. I have an extra key to escape, but it is dangerous in here - glass shards, broken smiles and plaster masks that litter the wall and floor - so I never let anyone in. Only he knows how to tip toe around the chaos and ruin to find his way back, and allowing visitors in here would hurt them, so I stay alone till he returns. It is safer this way.

-

You will ask why she does not run if he is destructive and as deadly as she says. You will wonder why this girl refuses to escape from the storms she is terrified of and return to the spring. You will relentlessly beg her to stop watering the roses whose thorns ***** her so, but it will all be futile.

Because regardless of what you ask, she will answer out of the same conscience that makes her care for him endlessly; love, love, love.

(A.H.Z)

I tell you of the time I almost drowned in the sea, because I wanted to know the taste of salt and ocean freedom. I was young, foolish and curious; a combination that invited disaster merely by existing in the same spheres of thought. The ocean was warm that day, although I thought it would be icy cold. I swam out against the tide and current, closed my eyes and let the murky turquoise waves wash over me; then darkness. Even in the midst of my suffocation, the loosening grip of this world never scared me, only calmed me. I wondered how it would be like to sink to the bottom and find serenity, peace and tranquility, away from the glaring rays of the sun and the fears that remained on the surface.

I lived to tell the tale of course,
but I never forgot how the sea gave me death and life all at once.

You laugh, and say you're very glad I'm still alive.
I smile in return, because I am too; to be able to meet you.

-

I never tell you how you are now the ocean for me.

(A.H.Z)

Falling in love with you
was thunder
loud & sudden

Lightning strikes
quick & bright

Here I stand
afraid of storms
yet in love with one

For you smell like warmth;
sunshine after the rain
and ringing laughter

You pose all my
danger in the dark;
yet bring healing
after the pain

(A.H.Z)

Th(i)s life feels like a dre(am)
(a)nd days feel (li)ke fore(ve)r
but if there’s another world
where i am (with) (you)
please wake me up.

(A.H.Z)

I'll write forever
just to get to
where you are

words are steps
sentences are bridges
if paragraphs are boats
may this poem fly
me to
you

(A.H.Z)

Blackness as the
chasm speaks,
language of silence

I am a cactus in the desert
a locked room of centuries old
but my mind forgot the key
is there nobody at all,
at home?

The shadows are gone
not even they would stay
hello, hello
an echo -
you wave it away

desolate; how
my thoughts
they remind me
only, only, only
one.

(A.H.Z)

I spend every waking moment
sleeping in your memory,
for here I feel less alone
and more like other wandering souls
trying to find their way home

Orion, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor
if I met the constellations,
picked the stars from the sky,
perhaps they might match
up to the sparkle in your eyes

Watch fall phase to snow;
wonder why sadness stays
while seasons go

Leaf, flower, fruit seed oh
wilting rose, dead tree
silence takes its toll

See, I tip toe around your thoughts
while you drown me whole.

(A.H.Z)

I am no poet if
you cease to be my poem.
And I am no singer,
if you cease to be my song.

This is why I
carry your memory,
in the hollows of my bones,
where blooming flowers grow.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
yet all these words
always lead me back to you.

(A.H.Z)

Love cannot swim.
I know this because I am drowning,
breath shallow, voice hollow
blackness, blackness.

My heart is an anchor in the sea that is you,
waves crashing to the beat of your voice.
You are in the water, murky blue -

green in the colours of our memories,
in the sea foam forming bubbles
pops; echo your laughter,
your songs, your warmth.

Years, years,
they say time heals all wounds.
Appendages fail; cut rose
petal fall, blood stained call

In you, the sea only grows deeper;
heart suffocating in wounds unhealed,
stories untold.

(A.H.Z)

moon, you smile
fingernail curve
cheshire glint
radiate, radiate
the world is at your feet

moon, you are caged
window glass, storm
breeze and they
hurry to cover your light
dandelion, where are you now?

moon, you frown
the night feasts, crashing waves
lighthouse, lighthouse
if my mind sailed on these seas
then lost the heart would be

moon, you are gone
you imitate, you anticipate
my fall off the precipice
temporal death, life line
there are worlds that awake
under my slumber

moon, you are not the sun
the kite soars; you
swim through oceans
anchored to sea floors
vermillion hues, starry wonder

moon, you are as i am
you will as i would
vanish when he appears
illuminate as he goes

(A.H.Z)

the branches bow
wind howl; graceful entrance
golden sunrise of rain

oh sky shower,
glitter illuminates our
pumpkin breath
wintry air

(A.H.Z)

I wake to marble ground
and golden chandeliers
with diamond jewels
hung all around
polished silverware
glittering, dreamy state
within the walls were but
drifting souls;
empty, quiet,
floating holes

the weight
of deception
burned it down
or time was due
and earth awoke
crackling sounds
amidst crumbling mounds

there are no people
who dare to stay
yet I run back in through
shattered doors
with a hoarse voice
raw screams;
an arrow through the air
fleeting blur, moving down

the pounding of my own
heartbeat settles to
regret the weeping over a
breaking line
but i spin excuses
for the family i leave behind

"if the children get to
laugh and play another day
I will run till my soles grow cold
and this body decays.”

then the lights go dark
but the sun comes out
to shine and ricochet

darkness fades with
fluttering eyes
and silence fills over
pulsing heart

a realisation then begins
of a distorted reality
where i was the buidling
falling for the earth
and love was the one
trying to save every part
in me from being
swallowed by you

because you are
the earth, the quakes
and the hurricane
you are the one
i have adored
despite
the
pain.


(A.H.Z)