UntamedUnwanted

This is how you will hurt. It will be a sunny day and you are still in your room, your curtains drawn to keep the light out, your body shaking under a blanket that just won’t warm you up, but then again, you haven’t felt warm since the day it happened. It is like he took every bit of warmth from your soul, and the only way you will ever feel warm again is if the entire sun grew inside of you. Your mother is knocking on the door. You pretend you don’t hear her. Your greatest deception since it happened is trying so hard to be normal, and today you do not have the energy for it. Today, you are going to stare into the darkes

The way I grieve for you is not loud. It is not a cry in the dark, a wail to those who love me, a breakdown made of tears and apologies and ‘why is this happening to me’s. Instead, my grief is a silent killer. It suffocates me in the night. I feel it poison my lungs every time I draw in breath. I feel it wrap its cold dark hands around my barely beating heart, squeeze until it needs to gasp to restart and yet it does not speak. My grief is silent, so others think it doesn’t exist. They look at the unbreakable mask I wear on my face without realising my insides scream. They wonder if I ever loved you the way y

i. We found each other like hope on the coldest, darkest day of January. You took my hands, eyes soft like the clouds before rain and promised me a whole life that was not yours to give. No one had taught you about borrowed forevers. No one had taught me about people like you who looked like homes but were quicksand instead. ii. This is how we ended: I stopped talking but you didn’t notice because you stopped listening long ago. iii. People fall in such deep, dark love with each other that they forget that love is a perishable thing. They hold on long past the love growing bad until one of them finally catches scen

We loved like Hera and Zeus. Tricking each other into thinking the other would better us, cure us and that ours was a love which would last so long that we could take each other, our bodies and souls for granted. An endless chasm had opened between us before we realised we had convinced each other our blood ran immortal ichor Yet there wasn’t a drop of it between us This is what a borrowed forever looks like; the person you love most falling into a chasm you both created and you are too far to save them. In the end there were no Gods to save us. We had killed them all.

1. You were so torrentially toxic to me I had to slice my own veins to get you out. 2. There was more chaos in the way you loved me than there was in the winding weather storm that broke every window in the house we called home, you turned that home into a house. 3. You claimed momentary insanity, like your hero Hercules, the day you used your fists for the first time, the same insanity that plagued Hercules when he slew everyone he loved. I wonder if there was a storm where he lived that day too. 4. Harbinger made of hemlock and heartache, hurricane made of hurt and heartbreak, you were Hera’s lesson of harm and habit

There is witchcraft in our blood, in our bones we carry the magic that you could not burn away. You see, fire does not eat fire. Your mother would have taught you that if the world hadn’t convinced her that despite her body being able to bring life into this world, she is not a magical thing. Maybe the witches you burned were the daughters of something more holy than you could ever handle. So you set them alight for being different, forgetting that even the son of your God was once condemned for being too pure, too beautiful, too different for this world. History devoured your name, but we have never forgotten what you di

I tell him, if you love me, you need to stop reading the poems. I tell him, if you read them, you will find a version of me you hate. I tell him, if you want a future with me, you will stop reading the poems. Because the girl in the poems is kerosene dreams and ink stained scars and whiskey flavoured fury, and the girl he is in love with is cotton candy soft and summer dresses and vodka laughter. I tell him, he can’t have both because he doesn’t want both, no one wants a girl whose lungs are smoke black rage even if her heart is made of tissue silk. Girls who are both, are too volatile, too painful to love. So I keep he

1. The difference between being thin and being skinny is that when you’re skinny, everyone is constantly trying to get you to eat. As if you are deliberately starving yourself. As if they are soldiers and you are a war they must win, food instead of guns in their hands. 2. Seven years ago, when I first realised that I couldn’t sleep on my side anymore because my hipbones cut like knives into my skin, that I could count every single one of my ribs, I ate everything I found in the fridge till I threw up, and my mother assumed I was doing it on purpose. It took me three sessions of intensive therapy to convince the th

There is witchcraft in our blood, in our bones we carry the magic that you could not burn away. You see, fire does not eat fire. Your mother would have taught you that if the world hadn’t convinced her that despite her body being able to bring life into this world, she is not a magical thing. Maybe the witches you burned were the daughters of something more holy than you could ever handle. So you set them alight for being different, forgetting that even the son of your God was once condemned for being too pure, too beautiful, too different for this world. History devoured your name, but we have never forgotten what you di

1. The difference between being thin and being skinny is that when you’re skinny, everyone is constantly trying to get you to eat. As if you are deliberately starving yourself. As if they are soldiers and you are a war they must win, food instead of guns in their hands. 2. Seven years ago, when I first realised that I couldn’t sleep on my side anymore because my hipbones cut like knives into my skin, that I could count every single one of my ribs, I ate everything I found in the fridge till I threw up, and my mother assumed I was doing it on purpose. It took me three sessions of intensive therapy to convince the th

i. When you were a child, we would sit on the porch to talk about your day. And sometimes, we would find a dead bird, or a frog on there. And you would ask me about death and why it happens, looking at the poor creature in my hands, its life cut short and touch it tenderly. I would always say the same thing. Nothing is meant to live forever, my dear. ii. The school called me in on your twelfth birthday and asked if I had known how clever you were, that your test scores were the best in the state. They asked me if I knew I had a genius child on my hands who grew bored easily in class and tended to distract others in his classroom, sometime

 "What are you doing?" "I think…I finally figured out percentages." "We learnt those in the third grade." "Yeah, but we always complained that we'd never use them in real life." "And you know how to use them in real life now?" "Eighty four percent." "What's that?" "That's the percentage of how many basketball matches you lost to me when we were kids." "That's not fair! You're taller than me!" "Fifty two percent." "Is that how much taller than me you are?" "No. That's the percentage of times you speak out of turn and get into trouble for it." "Very funny." "Twenty three percent." "Let me guess, that's how much I annoy you?"

Sensei The air has shifted courses, It swayed away, Leading us a way’s away, From our expected destination. But now we find ourselves Back together again. Our winds, combining once more, Gliding around the each other’s waves. Our movements natural and smooth, of course. Reminiscent of when we first spoke, Nearly two years ago in May. Remember the lines? When the weather began to get cooler Our bond seemed to get stronger It’s reversed directions, Because we got stronger As we begin to near the end of winter, And into the beauty of spring. Where we put each other under our wings And just caught up with each other As we e

Ear(drums) “silence is a (needed) serenity            but the music brings me home again” The clank-clicking, pen-pattering, the beat of it,Only the perfection of flawless instrumentation,Leave lyrics of moot matter to me. Just let the rhythm hit ‘em,And the synths carry thee to my safe haven.The beauty of music leaves dreams lucid,Visions serendipitous, I never knew that music could take me to this place. Where I lay in my bed, But still not quite in the perfect space. Until a flawless concoction of rhythmic, Ironically heavenly pandemonium graces my ear drums. Drumming against the ear as the sounds swallow the atmos

wasp-waisted beauty pray into my collarbone let your snake tongue slither with the syllables. i wish for soft-chested nights, and the trickle of champagne down crystal glass. poppy-lips, lull me to sleep, nurse my coiling tongue with yours; tap my scalp like a silent drum, and wind my hair in between your fingers like broken guitar strings. (serenade me with the buzz of pollen in your kiss.)

I. it was only under the weight of the stars that vulnerability personified and he floated into my arms like an honest promise. II. we built castles with our mouths, safe havens with our teeth. III. after all this time, i still can't tell whether he decorated my life or vandalized it. and i wonder if i will ever see him again: painted and proud with those lips like royalty.