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.

pick me apart,
tear me down,
strip me up,
skin and bones,
nothing else left-
you're a phantom
to me now,
and i'm haunted,
for-ever-more;
i have questions
did it mean
anything to you?
am i different?
just like others?
do i sweep
breath out from
your nicotine lungs?
do i make
you shake, quiver,
tremble before me?
am i forgettable-
a mistake or,
just another mark
on the scoreboard?
are we a
mere whimper in
the never-ending darkness,
or a sparkling
fizzle of a
firework, raining blue,
red and white?
all i want to
ask you is
was i like
the other girls
or am i
more to you?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

i could walk into his world
and forget about mine.

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.