Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Sally A Bayan Nov 2013
I Am Like My Mother

In more ways than one,
I am like my mother....
This stands before anything else:
My family is my priority
I preach to respect seniority
But, sometimes I go soft
Upon hearing pleas from little voices.

My life is replete with family albums,
Sturdy wood furnitures that have lived
Through the years, and most importantly,
Old family traditions my siblings and I
Learned from my mother.
I would prefer for these to be observed
By the succeeding generations,
Where love and kindness to others,
Table manners and saying graces are only
A few of those lessons most often stressed.

The children in my family,
Thy grew up the way I was raised.
Humility is practiced at an early age,
Where no child speaks when not spoken to,
And helping with  the chores is a must...
They are taught early on in their childhood
As soon as they are able to understand...
We have a God, our Creator,
To whom we should always be grateful to....
From Him comes all our countless blessings...

My sisters and I...
We are like a sorority.
Hopefully, the other women in my family
Would eventually realize,
There is an expectation
That my mother's ways should be kept going...
This, my sisters and I would make sure of.

Each morning, my mother would look around
The whole house and its boundaries,
With both her arms akimbo.
Now, it is I who does the surveying,
But, with my hands clasped behind me.
Front, back and sides of the house
All kinds of plants and trees surround...
I make sure they are all green and lush.
Fruit trees and flowering plants in the summer,
Several wild flowers do sprout all year round,
To grace our lives through all kinds of weather.

My mother and I, we had an implied agreement,
We didn't discuss it, never brought it up
In any family gatherings.
It just happened that I knew her so well.
Now that I'm older, I've never been so sure...
I am like my mother,
In more ways than one...

(Written August 28, 2013)


Sally

Copyright 2013
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Janica Katricia Feb 2023
It’s been forever ago

It hurt so bad
it created a little hole
that slowly consumes me
from the moment I sleep in the morning
to the midday naps I took
sleep was never here

i moved my bed to where the sun
doesnt reach me anymore
i hated the heat
i hated the hint of
tomorrow’s glow

it’s been years you still
sit at the back of every forgotten memory
dusted furnitures you rearranged
and made a home

there was never love
for you
but i hoped
there was never anything
from you
but i held my neck like drying clothes

i felt ashamed
but never for loving you
it was just i’m ashamed i even dared to

create a space for you
though i felt empty
you never deserved
an inch of everything
i felt.

you never deserved me.

you never deserved the happiness
you stole from every night
and every sun light absorbed
waiting for the day
to kiss you.
ylruceiram Sep 2016
We are all the same buildings
But with different foundations
Variety of colorful and bleak paints
And the mismatched furnitures inside us
That make us look -complete otherwise
Humans are just complex creatures.
Nabs Dec 2015
By Nabs

In an apartment located between never and always.

101.
A boy, barely seventeen, is baking a cake for his mother anniversary.

Humming the song of long forgotten memories with his little sister as she help stirring the batter.
Throwing a pinch of salt, a drop of vanilla essence, and affection for his family.
His mother had gone to sleep for almost ten years now.

The cakes will taste absolutely delicious, though a bit burnt on the side.

Nothing frosting can't cover.

102.
Silence blanket the room, unnerving the guest.

Fidgeting gestures and nervous glances will be exchanged like baked goods.
The Old lady, who occupies this room, smiles a beatific smile that isn't hindered by wrinkles.
The guests will leave one by one, a little girl with big doe eyes stayed behind.

"Thank you for protecting me", the girl whispered as she watched her grandma fades away. The smell of sakura tree and cardamom wafts through the air.

106.
A man in his thirties is dreaming about sleeping for the millionth time.

The rooms is messy, with clothes scattered around and the occasional remorse carved to the wall.
He rolls up his bloodied sleeve and take out his gun, he goes to the window and jumps.

He is glad that this is his last job for the day.

107.
This room doesn't have an occupant, yet.

But the walls are loving and finger paints decorate the room.
Furnitures are assembled in a way that feels homely and was carefully handcrafted by the the native american.
The smell of baked cookies is saturated in the walls.
Children laughters can still be heard echoing between the walls.

The last occupant didn't **** the children after they've kissed them good night.

203.
A young hispanic teen is running on a hand made treadmill, with a speed of 0.5 km/hour.

Sweats drenched her tank top, her skin glisten.
She keeps running and running and running, even though her breathing is labored.
An dusty wheelchair lays in the corner of the room.

She still cant stop being in awe that she could feel the ache in her legs now.

It's a good ache.

205.
This tenant used to have a halo of golden hair.

But now a tuft of midnight blue, so dark that you could mistaken that the glitters stuck in his hair as little stars, greets anyone who would be his guest.
He lays in bed with the girl from 204.
He's rubbing circles on her hand, feeling the steady pulse of her beating heart.

He can hear his heart breaking into pieces, but as he look at the razors blades on the nightstand, he cradles her head and kisses her eyelids.

She doesn't stir, but her chest rise and fall like wave lapping the shore.

210.
An african-american single mother with three children, twins and one babe, is watering the little herb haven they have on the window sill.

The basil and tomato looks ready to be picked, she thinks that making a hearty tomato-basil soup with a dash of fondness will do good to cheer up her little runts.
The twins will agree readily, because they haven't eaten anything for two days. The babe just gurgles bubble.
As they eat their soup and said their daily prayers, the mother phone chimed. She have just received $500 for the job she did.

She's too glad to feel regret that she was treate as less human and more of an item.

301.
A woman was on her phone, talking about quantum physics to her partner.

She is elaborating The Chaos theory, when a knock resounded at the door.
Her partner awaits her out side with a bouquet of Einstein heads and a simple silver band ring.

The woman knows that they're nor legal to marry here yet, but she appreciate the sentiment.

302 & 303.
A family of four filled this room, sitting on a carpet reading Qur'an.

The mother who is kind, slowly teach her youngest how to not fumble with the arabics
The oldest, who is not the first oldest, will continue to devour the holy book, hungry to know more about their religion that people dubbed wrong in this land of so called freedom.
It's been 14 years since the 9/11 tragedy.

The father is just glad that he could still feed 4/5 of his family.

307.
A blind man in his forties lives here.

He is sitting on his living room towards the windows.
Tracing the braille book with his hands, the ghost of color tried to haunt him.
No one could be haunted by something they don't remember.
The tenant across the street committed suicide.

Sometimes he feels grateful he can't see a thing when he heard cacophony of screams and denial.

The world too dramatic for his taste anyway.

310.
This room was empty.

It last occupant, which was nine years ago, was a young boy who stood all alone in this room, except for the bundle he cradled in his hand.
He was cooing at his little sister, promising to bake her cakes for her birthday.
Ignoring the way his chest tighten the longer he stayed in the room.
His mother didn't come home from the hospital yesterday.

He cradled the baby closer like it was his last precious thing.

His little sister turns out to be more than a thing, she turns out into a wonderful person and he is thankful for it.
N Aug 2016
the aftertaste of loss and failure coats my mouth
as i slur my apologies to the wind and
stumble my way to my front door

i try not to blame myself for how things
turned out to be but when people say there's
a whole universe inside of you it's hard to sleep
soundly at night

because how could i contain multitudes
but not be able to do anything when people come
and make me feel like a house
being emptied out of its furnitures and picture frames

even ghosts seem to shun my presence but
wouldn't it be perplexing to say that it's because
i am doing a better job of being a phantom than them?

or maybe it's because of this camouflage suit that
i'm always wearing that is making me invisible
and i want to know if stripping it off means
i am finally surrendering

when you see what the inside of my head looks like
you will see a ghost town inside a snow globe
and there are fault lines everywhere
---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ez7vi-kQdM
---
Adesumbo Jul 2013
I didn't have the wrist of Osundare
Nor the tongue that speaks Wole Soyinka
Yet, my anthology is not up to a Canto
Not until I make for you a Bible, ahead stretching Water

I lingered through the facets of beauty
A million turning a second up in my head
Nothing, no one soothes the burrow like the sky crying
No touch is so tender like the blow from Mama nature

Can you you feel the Lullaby she sings on the Roofs?
Tell me! Does your Mama placate so tender to lure you to sleep better?

A drop triggers a race,
Its menial calls for buckets
Her late stay claims furnitures of ages

A flow of bliss that built Eden here
In her pour makes Marmaids glitter
Puts the smile on Cutlasses and hoes
As more pockets surely would smile

With no paint,
Brightly, she paints the sky Grey
Your Ex-GF would wanna stay more Late
Make sure you didn't make it rain, else, you are in soup!
Patrick Diaz Jan 2015
She is street lights and I am walking
She is medication and I am allergic reaction
She is Christmas eve and I am Monday
She is first in line and I am defaulted
She is mosh pit and I am a ghost town
She is antique furnitures and I am an old man
She is every note and I am guitar strings
She is art and I am a hand
She is used to be and I am toxic
She is 5 minutes ago and I am so late
She is family tree and I am a wall
She is rescue team and I am a soccer ball
She is winter and I am a nagger
She is happening and I am never
Monique Apr 2017
Please listen to me.
Weeping on my knees as my throat clogs with suffocation of phantasm,
I plead......
Please listen to me
Listen to the blood that drips from my mind enclosing the torture of self neglect
Listen to the poison that spills from my mouth that mirrors the monsters I've met.
Listen to the rope that hugs my throat as it kisses me with lies.
Listen to the gun wound with bullets covered in loath that pierced through my soul outcry.
Listen to the writing on the wall that depicts a fragmented soul demanding for the oblivious to be conscious.
Listen to the brokenness that glares from my eyes in despise.
Listen to the pills of escapism I swallow with a smile of wry.
Listen to a soul outcry.
My heart aches of desolation and despair,
Bottles thrown in every direction as the wall cries tears of blood in fear.
Furnitures dismantled portraying a shattered heart one cannot bear.
What's dear to me is incompetent, its sincerity is rare.
Strapped in a chair of agony with my mouth taped and my eyes covered
Heart rate accelerates and my body shakes
My ears is beaten with profanity, animosity and pitty.
Quivering in betrayal, dissimulating awakes
This is what it takes to survive every day.



-dpk
Arshiya Noor May 2019
A night that changed the alignments of my stars.
A night that changed the meaning of my existence.
I realised why this universe had made me wait for this.
For this which was so 'ecstatic',
For this which was so 'unsullied'.

I stood on a land of roses
Sky of spring sun
And squall blowing my hair, it's fluanting
It heard someone saying it's the most beautiful thing on Earth.
That was my 'land'.
That was my 'to-be home'.

Bricks of promises
Cement of love
Colours of trust
And furnitures of a bit of lust.
People admired the house
But I loved the land.
It was there all 'lucent'.
It was there all 'proud'.

The spring brought a garden of Tulips
Yellow Daffodils
Purple crocuses
With yellow butterflies crowning them all.
It was the 'bliss'
It was the 'peace'.

In a blink July turned to August.
Skies got harsh on us
Rain washed away the Daffodils
And land got swampier.
My house trembled
Promises broke and love got washed away with rain while trust faded away and lust,
It was just a 'fancy'.
It was just a 'showpiece'.


I was oblivious to the fragility of my house
My brittle house couldn't even withstand the monsoon.
And here I was, befret of my house, my only house.
Weaker than never before, shattered and scattered.
Monsoon went on for long, quite long
Washing away all the cement of my love and hue of trust.
But I was there 'holding the land'.
But I was there 'witnessing the disband'.

Winter came
Froze everything
Nummed my mind
Cracked my skin
And did everything it could to make me leave my land
And I.. I gave in
I left.
But on my way I saw deluged land getting parched.
My land is here
And spring is near.
It was an 'indication'
It was a 'direction'.

Seasons weathered me down
But I planted the bricks again.
But this time it was just a batterd repugnant house.
No colours no furnitures
Just a house.
But it was there
But it was there.
there is nothing here, much fill of
the vacuous – just tired mesh;
a precise ruling
     of chaos, like how my mother told
me over folding clothes that i have
   my own way of destroying things.

dizzied and then clamped by my
way of default fixtures past furnitures
and a break on the lip of the wound
having knelt on a shard of glass
   age 7 in familial entrails —

knowing how heavy my steps were
by looking justly at worn-out shoes,
pieces of the Earth jammed on slits,
  their countenance earthen, exhausted
from the mundane. walls chaffed
from childish gnaws, drunk on turpentine.
stock-still hands of an old watch with
   dents for portrayal of agonies

in the dresser, clothes pretending not
  much to do

  and when it started to place its
  affect, i have learned enough to love
   was commonplace for hurt,
  and that there is a false horizon
  staring back through tough heads
of protruding nails, giving back a dignified
  image of contrition — in the mirror
a furiously slaughtered conjuring
   of what i once held in my hands
vivisecting to discover evidence
  fingers painted red, running the fugitive,
rogue without emphasis,
    
               hurrying back to home
  photographs nailed to their stations
  with cases fractured, deep into halved
   smiles, mother locating me with
an old chipped drinking glass, telling me
    i have my way
          of ruining things.
Fheyra May 2020
Applause to this object
A star to look up,—
But stands lower than a house
Who gathered all the fantasies— of hopeless travellers,— Which seek for devoted fancies.

Sparkling garlands,—
Simply, a life of itch
Flashlights everywhere on the platform,— Inutile to its basis
I memorize the trades of their toasts—
One day, I shall have my own boast.

After wiping spots on gold bars,—
I am still not a debauchee of love;
Even if they buzz,— Beehives— Are not mine to offer,—
But a gourmet to their stomach.

Assets clothing their merchants—
Reserving the furnitures—
To show the best features
For myself, I want a slammed window,—
Not some firm statues
"Galatea, we all desire Galatea!"

How adorable when 'twas knotted,
Lovely, but not loved,
Sheltered, yet not protected;
Paid, but not proclaimed
How many landlords will adapt me?

There is a target—
To a sudden stampede—
Oh, how startling!
Please, capture me
I will submit to your traps!
This bird is willing to be caged— Away!
I may now have my arrows— To run the bay!
Flipped death is my reward..
We do neither want to be objectified nor sold. Everyone is priceless, especially our lives.
Nothing like this assault.

In here you were gradually
introduced. The keen sense
for identity realized,

the distance that was a sullen
word for madness, a tender
perimeter established.

The calm wind as not-so-distant.
You in your plain clothes this afternoon,
lost in a commute of phases.

This weather schemes to be
your leitmotif.  This is of no
identical ownership but breakage.

In here you were met with constant
delimitation, yet always you are
as you always were, perhaps,

quite unsure of the next face
dislimned past the delicatessen.
The barkeep yesterday wiped the glass

clean as I watched from the edge
of poor furnitures. You, sudden,

of no warning, no clear word
for objects, has objections for marvels
made clear still opaque in the eye of you.

That when you were brought
into the world, I had you coming as
soft blow in the wilderness

hardly tractable, all by yourself
as I witnessed everything, past dead
underfoot, being all necessary

to yourself,  as you always were
in various settings and adjustments.
You were sure of the unsure and I

am in the middle of things
feeling the winding of it all, the breaking,
and the passing.

Nothing like this assault.
Seazy Inkwell Apr 2018
The bed breathed deeply.
The furnitures covered with
your luminescent fingerprints.
The silverware died slowly,
in the grey sink.
The house tried to talk to me/

I was afraid to step out,
Outside the sympathy of my house.
Into the streets spilled with
people of your asymmetric eyes
My house tried to talk to me.

I now have nobody left to lose,
As I lay on the carpet with a sense of sooth,
The chandelier finally sang its vocal cord loose,
The wires looped instinctively like prehistoric noose.
My house tried to talk to me.

Then I know I am not alone,
The house teems with your pulse,
The glass splits from echo of your voice.
The house tells me so.

I broke through the door,
torn away from the umbilical cord of my solitude.
Melted through the heat of the cheering multitude.
My house tells me, taking care of each word.

My house tells me,
I am not alone,
And you will always
be with me in spirit only.
Theamage May 2020
Is it gonna fall on me? A spider
Or is it gonna be hanging there? A spider                                          
It got nothing to prove, I do.
Staring at it, it is approaching,
I wish it to come yet not,
Curious,if I am all immune, all these years.

Am weakend already, the warns from brown recluse
in my bed-room mirror,
A brown recluse, it does back and forth but here
other type is apporaching,
I shall remove all the clutter from my room, here
put all new furnitures,
I shall bug spray gradually without harming myself
perhaps they wont come back.
aa Dec 2022
I have never felt home anywhere
Before I met him
Not at my childhood home, not in my parents bedroom
My first home was him
The presence who cures my insomnia was him
Wherever he was, it was the safest place I could be

I think, no matter how long time has passed,
And how much life happened in between,
His arms would always be my lost sanctuary
I think, that even though I know,
How dysfunctional that relationship was in the outside world
I felt the most comfortable in that little 18 sqm room cramped with furnitures
When it was just the two of us
In that tiny little apartment where our love grew and died
I think, that even though I know,
The future is clear and it won’t be us in the end,
It can still be dangerously easy for me
To slip back in to my old comfort zone and heartache

Seeing him a few moons ago reminded me of that
I’m good on my own
But I think,
If he’d pull me into his arms
I honestly would still
Even after all this time
And bad blood
Not be able to push him away

That’s how it always was with us
How every separation made me bitter and detached
But the moment he steps into my house,
I always give in
That’s how it always was with us
And he knows that
He knew me the best for a significant period of time, after all
A Mar 2018
This shattered home inside of me
that I in desperation tore apart
Stomped to pieces
Wrecked out of me
Out
Out
Out
left nails and wood and pieces of furnitures
(like his bed when he lies awake, lost and torn apart)
And I keep bumping into them
Keep stepping on sharp edges
Making me lose my breath,
my balance
My way
And I don’t know how to get them out


And how am I supposed to build a home
with you
when I’m already full
of broken wood
of the last inherent
EA Jul 2021
I'm used to people leaving
And Im so dependent with the home that I ruined
When the reality is ...

At the end of the day, I'm alone
Just
Me

They are leaving me but the truth is
I'm pushing them to do that
Because
In reality, I am alone

I am alone yet living in this great home

I appreciate the home which I can stay and will wait for me

But I messed it too much

I left stains that you can't get rid of
I left cracks that you can't fix
I left broken furnitures that you can't mend
I left it



I left it



I'm a coward for not taking responsibility but
It's not my home anymore
Someone is much worthy to be there
Not me
And it should have never been me
And it will never be me again


And now,
I'm alone
Just walking to different towns
A lone traveler
Who left her precious home
It's a confusing piece since yeah
JP Nov 2023
Sky disappeared
even
Birds, airplanes, missiles....

Tree disappeared
even 
Furnitures, rain, water...

Sea disappeared
even
Fish, ships, shore....

Land disappeared
even 
Legs, vehicles, rails...

women disappeared
even
Flowers, mirrors, death..

Finally
No Birth
No Death.....

— The End —