in a world full of colour,
i am a blank canvas.

i just want to see you happy,
even if it doesn't
include me.

we are young gods,

daughters and sons of a generation

who gave up on love a universe ago,

but we do our best to experience it-

we sell it in bottles of pop culture and rabid obsessions;

turn it into a conglomeration that profiteers on excess,

a chaos of depression, anxiety, dark self-depreciating wit-

and become artists who lament on first-world tragedies.

we are young gods,

we scoff at religion and we bathe in unholiness,

sin is the new in, black is your best act, and we love it;

we wear our indifference like an armour,

because we fear what we'll see if we're allowed

to understand our emotions and display our vulnerability.

we are young gods,

happy ever after is a joke and true love even more so,

we inhale criticism and exhale cynicism,

because the titans before us acknowledge that the world is cruel

but we embrace it- we drape ourselves in abject and misery,

stitch and mould uncaring faces onto our flesh that gaze upon

the heartbroken jagged shards of ourselves, bleeding guts and glory

embedded all over the cement patch wood floors, amongst the whisky and wine.

we are the young gods;

a mass of degenerates with our entitlement and liberals,

a numbing, sweet hollow feeling that we substitute

for the lack of love and care that we've grown used to;

a realism that carves like a knife at tender ages and

we wear our sadness like a charm- aesthetics to be envied;

we're self-destructive, faithless, pointless,

burning in our question for the meaning of existence

and the only religion we'll ever bow down to

is ourselves.

you're a haze of ninety-nine cents dreams,
naivety bottled in your distressed jeans
and your ******-inspired bambi teardrop eyes;
and i'm the devil behind why you've cried

your mouth chokes with fury and rage
'so why are you still here?' i ask again
but secretly, i know you and your obsession
-the glory tales of getting heartbroken

you know i'm pure poison flowing in your veins,
a disaster functioning on self-hatred and novacane,
but you're wild violet and champagne in a sweet kiss,
desperate to be inundated into my abyss.

i drowned myself in you so much
that i don't recognize myself in
the reflection of your lake anymore.

i was trying to find a home in you,
but i realize the only way i ever will
is to build my own.

we are a generation of sedation,

discursive, empty, godless children,

raised in the age of social media,

where the height of our emotions

lie in our 'thoughts and prayers',

and the best we can do is a touch of a button,

a share, a like, a tweet, a reaction documented,

rumination we pretend we've borne.



is it our intrepid numbness to it all?

after all, we are best known for

the plight for attention and validation,

or rather yet our entitlement and our narcissism,

terrorism doesn't have a face unless i see it,

and it begs the millennial question,

are we just a bunched of depressed sociopaths?



or is it because we are the privileged 20%,

nestle in the fringes of developed nations,

with our precious technology and our internet,

unbeknownst to a third world, a third world

we mourn according to how it benefits us.

after all, don't forget that in an emergency,

there is always 'thoughts and prayers'.

-

your shadow lingers
from time to time
you're especially apparent
in the twilight
when the sun is burnt
and the horizon blushes,
i think of your feather-soft hands,
how your promises once sounded
and all that blue in your closet.

by the morning
you've taken your things,
and disappeared into the ashes
without a trace,
i think of how we used to love,
like little children running down streets,
lacing our shoes and kissing our bruises,
and now we're too old for our bodies,
our souls are too weathered and battered
for such a thing.

i am:
three a.m tears,
the way thunder claps,
neon lights in crowded clubs,
sharp tequila and acidic limes.
clasps hands and sweaty palms,
tongue kisses from strangers,
clouds hovering a crescent moon.
i am the best you never had,
thorns from roses,
slow R&B from the 90s.
i am here,
and i refuse to not exist.

velvet stains on the crevice of your lips,
and you taste like water, not whisky.
your lucid sky-coloured gaze chase to meet me,
and even in the dark, they're evergreen.

they say that we're made of blue blood,
but all i taste is red, red, red- metallic, like rust,
i can feel my heart pulsing underneath my wrecked lungs,
because here am i, soaked in your stardust.

the room is struck with electricity when you arrive,
ochre colours my cheeks and heat in my skin rise,
like the silver waves, you sweep me in with the tide,
and once again, i'm yours, lovely, you have me stupefied.

when i'm around you, my heart pumps crimson,
and i wear your breath on my neck like a chain of diamonds,
and you look at me, glory behold like i'm your redemption,
like i'm an ultraviolet, phosphorescent burst of magnetism.

(i want you to look at me like that forever).

once upon a time,
you painted my skies
and built my world.
you crafted a reality
of freckles spangled like
stars up your cheekbones
and the lights you lit in
my dark, hollow eyes.

once upon a time,
we were a collection
of chapped lips and bad breath,
lying on our backs on
country roads and suburban fields.
our bones were weary but still alive
with that frantic flame of
youth.

but once upon a time was then-
and we live in the now, which
is a journey I'm still going through.
and the thing about constructed realities
is they tend to fall apart (eventually)
and the thing about fires is that
they go out.

[nothing lasts forever].

i keep trying to break up
with poetry
but he keeps calling me back.

this is the first time i've picked up.

her pin-up figure drifts from body to body,
eyes red-rimmed from *** and ketamine;
you can taste the hurricane when you kiss her,
and know from the very start, this is your destruction.

everybody loves her- or rather, the idea of her,
infatuated with the caricature of her depression,
her cherry-pink mouth and bottle blonde demons;
those bambi eyes streaming tears down her apple cheeks

you think you're the knight in shining armour-
hell no, you're merely a victim of her wildfire,
a statement made to anyone who dare enters her hearth;
she's a heartbreaker, made out of vices and poison.

i remember the past
of how i once thought
your future was me.

i could walk into his world
and forget about mine.

you awaken galaxies in me
within the first conversation,
and we're fluorescent in this
cold grey world we're born in

coffee on the roof of your mouth,
your eyes wide and kaleidoscopic,
my dress is suffocating me by my waist,
and yet i'm still dancing to every beat with you

but then we fell apart in your usual way-
we didn't crash or burn, we just ran out
but i still see your face in every single crowd
because you're forever stitched on my sleeves

we didn't go down in a spectacular explosion,
it was more of a worn out melody tuning down,
and it's funny how i think about the past now
because back then i used to think my future was you.

like a change of the seasons,
the faces in your life disappear,
and new one materializes-
some sunrays of the summer
linger to the autumn,
but by winter, they've faded
to a mere memory of
what it used to be

some days the internet
feels like the equivalent of
walking into a room
full of people and
still feeling alone.

i'm writing this at two in the morning,

barely functioning on heartbreak and whiskey,

at a party my friends made me go to,

i see you with that t-shirt from two nights ago

you're avoiding my gaze like it's make out of laser,

ready to burn and sear you into pieces.

i remember your kiss like glass shards,

from nights of being drunk in crowded clubs;

but i don't mean much to you

because we're generation l o v e l e s s



i think i'm actually incapable of genuine emotions,

because i'm a cynic who refuses to let people in,

my mother thinks i'm awfully indifferent,

she's right so i pretend to seem interested;

and work on fruitless endeavours to give a ****,

while drowning myself in sirens of trap music and rap rhythms,

swaying my body with people i call my best friends,

and writing tales of golden boys and gilded girls,

twirling in sunshine, holding hands and falling in love

but what do i know?

after all, i'm part of generation l o v e l e s s.


you erode my coats of armour and walls of steel

like rust and water and metal,

and even after i told myself, ten thousand stories later,

this isn't going to go well, and believe me, it didn't,

i'm here paralysed in a paroxysmic moment of words,

hurtling at me like rapid machine bullets,

bemoaning about a soul that will never

consider me as an equal,

and you have me here, lying on alabaster sheets,

as sleep obnoxiously eludes me,

turning you in the currents of my mind, going one two three

like the beat of a love song playing behind our lips

(maybe i'm not as loveless as i thought as i was)

the devil has a name
and it was yours.

women are not beautiful.
they are magnetic, majestic, magnificent,
they are more than doll bodies and ****** eyes,
they are more than what they were born with.

women are not beautiful.
they are effervescent, enigmatic and evergreen,
they are more than paper-thin waistlines and cherry lips,
they are more than what the eyes can look upon.

women are not beautiful.
they are powerful, passionate, and puissant,
they are more than barbie figures and pink hemlines,
they are not beautiful simply because they are more than that.

in the grand schemes of things,
we're just specks in a fraction
of a fraction of a second-
and while in the future,
we may cease to exist-
it is in the present
that we are immortal.

from when the sun rises
to the moon's transcendence,
it's always going to be you.

did you had to pluck my flowers
just so yours could grow?

whose name made you drink enough to forget your own?

why are you slurring, stumbling, shivering, shaking,

your mouth a spillage of magenta and fuschia,

hands slung over your best friends as they steady you into a car,

a cab they've called in a flurry of messy text messages and laughs,

joking about how drunk they've gotten to make sure his name

never perforate itself in your mind again.

you thought the two (or eight) shots you down,

in flimsy, rough, swallows of gasoline and heartbreak

will bury him in a box underneath the dirt floor of your mind

but his nomenclature refuse to transform from 'love' to 'stranger'.

he stays, he stays, he stays

unlike his form, his body, his soul,

and in the vagaries of life,

we lose and we lost,

because a girl's love changes,

like the seasons,

and we can heal,

we can break,

but we'll be okay,

once again.

there are many stories of how humankind
came to be,
and i'm not exactly sure how many of them
i like to believe.
are we here pre-destined for a great adventure
or rather yet, we're just here because we're here

i don't really like the ones that tells us about fate,
how we're meant to love somebody and all that-
i don't think anybody is born to love anybody
except themselves,
and even then sometimes i struggle with that too.

i don't think we're souls carved out on the plane of time
and i don't think we're beacons that were planned to collide,
i don't think we're a star-crossed fairytale on a dusty page,
and i don't think the air was waiting for silhouettes to fill the empty space.

i don't think i look to the future searching for your face,
and i don't think you shout across the void for my name,
i don't think we're planets intended to orbit around each other
and i don't think we're the seams of this quilted universe
that stitched itself just for us.

i just think we're us,
and that is all we have to be.

i saw you through
my heart-shaped
rose-tinted glasses:
i saw red flags
and turned them green,
i heard warning bells
and mistook them for fireworks,
i scraped my knees on your edges,
and thought the blood was ambrosia
(i knew you were trouble
but i put on my rose-tinted glasses
and thought it was love).

i'm here for your body,
not you,
and you're here for my lips,
not me,
there's no dishonesty in
this sanctuary,
there is only breath and release,
kisses and heartbroken dreams.

i'll pretend to care about you
for the night,
and you'll pretend to hold me,
to ride the tide;
there's no genuine emotions in
this space,
there is only give and push,
pull and take.

i know everything from the soft spot
on your neck,
to how you lose your mind over
every arch of my back
but nothing about your favourite colour,
or if you've ever been hurt.

(but i'm good with not knowing).

i broke my own heart
before you even could.

the heat of your mouth
tastes like a thunderstorm
brewing from a distance away-
i'm so good at being careful but
i find myself getting caught in the storm
again and again and again.

we are all afraid.

when we hide under the static lights of our intergalactic worlds,

behind the screens of our digital age,

it is all because we cannot take risks,

risks of rejection, being unloved, tossed aside

and forgotten like a page dog-eared and bookmarked with a faded polaroid taken

with shaky hands in a half unread book.



we are all afraid.

it is better to say nothing at all,

and let it hang stagnant between two

sad souls, rather than take a leap

and hope- because hope is stupid.

it is a flimsy plastic emotion, on the verge of breaking because

that's what people are- fragile and weak.



we are all afraid.

from a five-year-old refusing to learn

how to ride a bike to an eighteen-year-old

runaway, who looks at a crumpled map,

lost with a chip in her shoulder

and we fear the unknown but we disguise it

under tacky bright yellow stickers

with fake happy slogans that make no sense.



we are all afraid.

we wipe the tears off our cheeks and

prays silently that nobody sees,

because then they'll ask if we're

okay and when we really want to say we're not,

we swallow the truth and plaster a smile.



we are all afraid.

and it's the most human feeling-

the sharp sting of fear and it's telling us maybe,

just maybe

its because we are scared

that maybe nobody really loves us

at all.

with you-
there's always a taste of danger in the sky
and our skins will be set ablaze, sunset-flushed,
under the horizon of peach-coloured clouds,
the wind in my hair, sun in your eyes
and the world right underneath us.

with you-
i feel like a sinner and a saint all at once,
we're flashes of vibrant pomegranate and fireflies
exploding with a firecracker passion romance books envy,
you can baptise me with your thighs,
and i'll worship you almost every night.

with you-
i transform, no longer the cautious observer,
treading around the eggshells of my emotions,
too scared to venture into the hurricane they call your name,
and i'm the willing sacrifice,
ready to spill across the altar.

without you-
i'm a collapse of a soul, a collection of
salted wounds, burning cheeks and stammering hearts,
and i'm perpetually craving what was once mine,
the heated embraces, the chaotic romances of
fire and brimstone.

without you, i'm simply nothing.

****** pulses,
heartbreak tears,
whiskey kiss,
sugarcoated insecurities,
drowning those emotions
(doesn't think she has a problem)
***** penchants
for ******* habits,
disco fever
oh, never sober
sunrise-wide eyes,
adderall nights
i don't know about you
but i think you got some daddy issues

from the moment you coat me in your stardust
i know i'm doomed for my heart to be torn into two,
i'm ready for a pulsating, whirlwind romance,
of two souls ricocheting from every dark corner.

i know my heart will shatter across the linoleum floor,
shards of red and glass tumbling from my open heart cavity,
dripping blood, desire and dignity, because everybody knows
the story of the harlequin girl and her daredevil charmer.

i can’t remember a time before i wasn’t caught
in the pearly whites of your canines, or an era
when i wasn’t perforated apart by your cannonballs,
shot down by the bullets of the glistening emeralds
you call your eyes.

i can’t remember a time when my poems
wasn't dedicated to memorising every detail
of your raven eyelashes curving to the sky,
or how the warmth of your palms transcend
the coldness i tolerated in my heart.

i can’t remember a time when i didn’t
have something to lose, and i think that started
when your honey-lidded gaze fall on me in the
middle of a crowded room with too much sound,
but i can still hear the ‘i love you’.

i can’t remember a time when you used to be static
-pure background noise, irrelevant, unnoticed
after all, doesn’t it drive you crazy how much
someone could mean to you?
at first, they’re a whisper in the dark and suddenly-

(boom!)

lost count of days i've wasted
trying to come up with ways
to make you miss me.

learning to love yourself
when nobody
would.

loving you was a dream that quickly turned into a nightmare.

you're my tropical paradise,
my favourite way to lose control,
my most potent addiction and
the fluorescent spark inside my heart-

when i take a dive into your oceans,
your thoughts and words are coral reefs-
your touch is tender and your kiss
is as sweet as the nectarines you pluck.

i hear angels in your tangerine voice
remnants of you in every memory-
tokens of your pearly white incisors
biting down on my satin pillow skin.

i'll rearrange my insides to fit you-
carving space and toss the rotten flesh out
i treasure your bronzed, sinewy arms and
the way you give out smiles so easily.

your fresh-soil gaze cauterize me,
burning unsolicited marks on my soul
and i could spend the rest of the universe
kneading my hands into your sunflower silks.

you’re my favourite mistake to make.

-hard feelings-
thunderous crash
of the rainstorm,
the cold floor
i land on
the way down,
scorch marks
from holding
your heart,
and then
(~whoosh~)
tranquility
washes over
like streams
over rocks,
a tulip
slowly unfurling,
steam rising out of
hot coffee
and suddenly,
all the feelings
are soft.

no one should ever need
to "complete" anyone;
you're already whole
on your own-
it's just sometimes
we need somebody
to shine the light
on the pieces we
thought were missing.

there is nothing more devastating
than the slow burn of a flame
that used to go off like a firework.

we're not a trainwreck waiting to happen,
or an explosion at the end of a tunnel-
we're more of a light losing it's spark.

and somehow, i feel that's sadder almost-
it didn't happen so abruptly that it felt
like i'm ripping off a bandaid

we're movie that started out beautiful,
but as the end looms closer, you can sense
the ending stained with tear-tracks on cheeks.

after all, i prefer you screaming and shouting
like a thunderstorm fighting through,
than to be a breeze passing me by and letting me go.

stick and stones may break my bones
but words will carve into my soul
and mar upon the walls of my heart

so i turn the poison you spit at me
into knives i cut myself and others with,
until i realize i hold a special power

i hold a power to neutralize your acid
and transform your vitriol into water-
a spilling fountain of kindness and forgiveness.

i'm your black slash of paint
in the middle of your blank canvas
you're a sultry indian summer
in the midst of my siberian nights

you're a firework quietly going off
inside the isolation in my head,
and i'm your hearth, your home
in a crowd choked with strangers

my fingers dance across the ballroom
of your freckles and craters of skin,
and i'm perforating every curve of you,
from your liquid chocolate eyes to your lips.

i calculate every manoeuvre made,
but no one ever counted on you-
and you crash in, guns glazing,
and i was never the same.

your eyes flick to me-
sapphires twinkling back
at mud brown ponds;
with a mouth like valentine
and heart pumping ichor,
you walk a rockerfeller pace.
your kiss is salt and summer beers,
mint with ice and wine coolers,
tipsy two-hour conversations over traded
war stories of nights we don't remember
leaving me walking up to my room
with grins so big they could fall off my face.
you adore leaving in the morning and
pages in your passport wearing thin,
you like cutting holes into safety nets
and being around you feels like
roaming a tranquil spring garden
planted with emotional landmines
or sitting on a train platform
with no destination in mind-
honestly, i wouldn't have it any other way
because you're my favourite waste of time.

never thought
loneliness could
be this loud