Before love happened to you.

Love is still a little child growing up
When we find it days-old,
it speaks a language only it understands
It’s a two-sided relationship
built on one-sided aches and a reckless desperation
to find anything to give it relief
It finds you your person
It cares not for distance,
not for tongue,
not for time,
not for you,
never for you
It leaves you for a new shiny thing
as quickly as you found it
Now it’s gone and there’s a love-shaped wound
where love once lived
Love is never enough,
even when it’s too much.
Even when it returns (like it promised),
it struggles to fit itself back into its old home — you
The old house is now haunted,
wounds infected with ghosts of
all the people you were
before love happened to you

–  महिमा /AGirlOfHerwords

the magic of disappearing.

People disappear.
(promises are words and words do not belong in their mouths)
Remember:
what they do will always mean
more than what they say.

Because when they leave,
(and leave)
(and leave)
they don’t need to say goodbye
(and they don’t).

–  महिमा /AGirlOfHerwords

 

from here)

To those who raise daughters.

Do not raise your daughters like sons.

She’s her own person,

and to be more like a man is not

an achievement.

Raise her like a daughter.

Raise her like a warrior, a goddess;

she will become both.

These are your lessons to teach:

Let her see beauty in more ways than what meets the eye,

tell her she’s more than how appealing men find her.

Serve her politics, and literature, and art, and music,

and see her devour it, every last word, ever last note.

Tell her she doesn’t need to compete with men,

teach her — there was never any competition.

These are your lessons to learn:

Watch her occupy the space the world owes her

for more than just what’s between her legs.

She must learn to love herself before

she loves anyone else.

Watch a revolution take birth in her.

She will bruise her knees and cut her palms

as she dances through the wild.

She’s a goddess now.

And the wild doesn’t tame her,

she tames it.

Other daughters will follow her footsteps,

and learn of her strength.

Your blood and bone,

will become so much more.

Remember,

the daughters of the world will one day become you.

Be prepared.

– महिमा कुकरेजा // AGirlOfHerWords

(image from here)

My body, the battleground.

 

 

You’re my undoing.
The pressure on a
newly healed wound.
That breaks it open
and empties me of myself.

The sharpness of your
tongue on my mouth.
On my mouth.
The kisses that can only
belong in a battlefield.

Your words speak in War.
My hands beg for peace.
There are no negotiations.

My body taking the bullets.
My body under the tank.
My body falling from the sky.
My body desperate for survival.

You’re the double edge sword
I fall into heart first.
You can’t stab me in the back,
because I always welcome you
first, arms wide open.

You’re the prison
and the prison guardian.
I am the bars.
I am the window
in the small room.
I am the time that passes.

One day I’d know better.
One day you’ll come for mercy.
And find me covered in bloodshed.

Your arms find the
thread of my skin.
And you pull.
And you pull.
Till I’m bones.
And bones deserve
a resting place.

But you don’t believe in Gods.
And now I no longer know
if the Gods believe in us.

The inconsiderate leaving of tears.

 

Part 6.

there are many ways to cry:
whimpering. weeping. howling.
bawling. sobbing. wailing.

do not ask me how,
ask my body that’s silently shook,
and violently trembled,
and desperately begged,
and made friends with pillows.

meet my eyes.
and deep crescents of dusk nestled.
they well tell you, the cries are gone.

now, what?

what happens when grief unlearns its language?
the hurt remains, the guest overstaying its welcome.

but people demand proof.
show me your pain;
they want to see your pain.

but the pain did no leave with the tears.
how inconsiderate.

(read the series in its entirety here)

Lately, the home could be just another house.

 

 

Part 5.

even with all the crazy sex talk
he’s not them.
there are five hundred different ways to
spend the day with him
and two of them are my favourite things.
i read my book to him,
he says let’s write together.
sex doesn’t even make the cut with
all the stuff we still have to do.

he’s home.
pretension strictly left outside the door.
he makes me hot tea,
i wait for him on the couch,
but i never speak.
he already knows.
the silence never stretches,
the silence is music.

but lately, the home could
be just another house.
lately, i’m not sure he gets it at all.
lately, there’s been no tea.

(read the series in its entirety here)

Happiness is the pink teddy bear.

Part 4.

Happiness is the toy you get
when you put the coin in.
The pink teddy bear.
I’ve put in 5 coins and the teddy
still sits there wearing
its mocking smile.

I wanna go home now,
it’s midnight, but the
teddy sits inside the glass box,
locked.

I wanna steal it because my
hands desperately need to hold it.
Tomorrow I will come back for it.
Before it’s gone.

Some people are better at getting
the pink teddy bears.
But I’m still stuck with the coins.

(read the series in its entirety here)

My feet no longer kill me.

Part 3.

A says fresh laundry will make you feel better.
I do the laundry every night at one am.

B says a clean house will make you happy.
So I never let the house be dirty.

C says have you tried being more active?
So I join yoga, and miss half the classes.
But my legs are doing great.
I can do an almost 180 degree split.

D says sobriety is important.
So I don’t drink, I don’t do anything.
I forget what it was to drunkenly dance
till it killed my feet.

E says try harder.
But have I not?
How hard does hard need to get?
Does it need to finish me off as a proof of its strength?

(read the series in its entirety here)

I can’t talk anymore.

Part 2.

I think we shouldn’t see each other,
not that we are,
but now I’m just mixing two different things,
anyway, back to not seeing each other.

I can’t be a burden.
I am a burden.

I can’t carry the weight of trying to prove something,
again and again, that spirals out of control, my control,
slips like jelly from my hands.

It’s there.
It’s just there.
I don’t want it there.

It just sits in silence pretending to be deaf,
but it knows I know it’s there.

I can’t explain this to you all over, all over,
all over; it makes the thing worse.

Then it cares even less about me wanting it to leave.
It has to leave.

 

(read the series in its entirety here)

The Yellow Bedsheet.

Part 1.

Last week I was sad,
so I went shopping.
Two brand new bedsheets
I was saving for a special occasion.
Between dates, shit happens.

Today, sadness found me again.
The kind that makes you curl up
between every house chore.

I got the bright yellow bedsheet out of
its packaging.

Bet it wasn’t expecting that.

And now I lie on it, naked, hoping the
happiness rubs off on my skin directly;
fuck the science.

I just really want to sleep.
I don’t want to turn off the lights.

The yellow is trying so hard.

 

(read the series in its entirety here)

What War Wants.

War cannot learn love.
It wants and wants and wants.
It hungers for crimson;
for flesh the colour of earth.
It cares not for your Gods,
and your burial grounds,
and your burning pyres.
It wants and wants and wants.
The good in you.
It wants it, and it wants it to die.
It says, come on, give me your worst;
that’s not bad enough, you can do worse.
War cannot learn peace.
It wants your laughs,
your poetry,
your art,
your love,
your life.
And what war wants,
war takes.

khwaishein.

Khwaisho ka kya hain, chupke se chali aati hain.

Battiya bujhane pe, takiye ke sirhane, tehelne chali aati hain.

 

Kaafi mushkilo se maine, pakad kar rakha thha, dabbe mein band karke.

Lekin kabhi neend mein haath lag jaaye, toh phir yun bhikhar jaati hain.

 

Hum bhi magar dheenth hain, unhi tuuti huin khwaisho ko,

phir se dil mein ghar kar lete hain.

Kehte hain, kuch nahi se toh kuch hi sahi.

 

khwaisho ka kya hai, chupke se chali bhi jaati hain.

 

 

Honourary X-Men.

Mother told him, you are special,
and too cool for all other boys in the school
with their hard fists and cruel laughs.

She said, one day you’ll grow up to be a fine
young man, but he din’t want to be just a fine man,
he wanted to be X-men.

He said, Mama, call me Xavier from today,
and and don’t treat me like a child,
you know, I’m really powerful.

So when the other kids pushed him down
the stairs, and waited for him in the Gym,
and laughed in his face, repeating he wasn’t
normal, like parrots trained to be bullies,
he only ever stared back, after all, they
were all supposed to fly back into the walls.

But they never did.

And resolutely stood their ground,
and they walked, and they taunted,
they weren’t going anywhere.

Now he’s 20, and Mother doesn’t
look from behind the hallways,
Mother isn’t in the dorms,
she doesn’t tell him he’s special.

His face smiles down from the trophy room,
and his girlfriend kisses him so hard,
the room fills up, the room overflows,
it can’t be contained.

Now, he knows how very special is,
because he doesn’t need those words.

Xavier would be so proud.

Tickling

tickling was their inside joke,
with their fingers remembering
funny stories.

every time they touched,
they smiled in new places.

collecting laughs for rainy days
for when it got difficult to remember
why they ever promised the days.

now necks, and legs, and bellies
hunger for giggles, like they’re starving,
and they’re delicious.

Becoming Gods.

sing me your songs as i stare into your eyes,
and name undiscovered galaxies after you;
let your hands burn a trail of sunlight down my spine.
but do not be gentle, i’m done feeling powerless.
speak your words to my ribcage and pause at my heart,
and press your palms to my chest to catch a rainbow.
lips-to-limbs would be our heart-to-heart.

and we could fill books that will retell our lore,
and people will talk about how there were two who
were really always one, and call us both with the same name.
so that one day children may dance around bonfires
reciting our faces and proclaiming us Gods.
and this is how we will learn each other,
to the limits of divinity, to the limits of mortality.

The Art of Mending

we go wrong each time we teach
each other that all broken things
are useless, and that they can no
longer belong to anyone.

and when they learn to throw them away,
we ask them, why didn’t you try harder,
how did you learn to be so careless.
so we hand them a bottle of glue and
demand they unlearn what they’ve been taught.

but they nurse broken hearts
and feelings that shattered to
the ground, and they do not know
how to hold them close, they look for
ways to throw it away.

they do not know Kintsugi,
that broken things can come back to life,
that they can be beautiful too,
that we must care so much
that it turns to gold,
and gold is precious,
isn’t it?

it takes forever to learn,
that broken things can be loved too,
and sometimes, even broken people.

 

Incurable Bodies.

there are knots in my guts,
that cannot be untangled,
and thoughts in my head
too sacred to be said out loud,
and beats in my heart skipping
like a girl on a rope,
and hands that shake like an earthquake,
a body that’s a calamity with no survivors,
and a mouth that moves in desperation,
and nails that scrape the surface of my
skin that was never bullet proof,
and veins that carry lores of yesteryears when
i still loved myself, and a soul that still sings,
and feet that move in circles,
and eyes that are called in for a statement,
under oath, as the lone witness,
and when all this ends there’s
a sentence to be passed,
and it’s always life imprisonment,
where love is the only redemption,
but i’m still incurable.

Writing.

somedays my love abandons me,
a lover who refuses to say I love you back.

my love isn’t a choice, it never was,
it has filled up pages, and entire diaries,
through lost pens and ink refills,
but never on my terms.

my love doesn’t want me back sometimes,
it says here is your pen
and here is your blank page,
but the words aren’t coming,
the words called in sick today,
it says i don’t care how you feel.

my love is unrequited, it says
today you live without love,
and haven’t you already learned
to hate yourself?

my love is a moon gazer, a chain smoker,
a drunkard on weekdays; my love swallows
Bukowski and keeps begging for more.

my love says i’m quitting on you today,
and laughs in my face because it knows
i could never say that back, it knows
i’m not moving an inch until it comes back,
it knows it doesn’t matter if it’s hours
or days or weeks or years.

my love finds me patient,
finds me ready to take them back,
and when we embrace,
it offers me the only thing that matters,
it says, here, i got you your words back.

 

Bubble wrap.

Comes to me packed in bubble wrap
swaddled in gentleness and fragile inevitability
and I take hours just to decide if it’s worth
opening and spilling its contents all over me.

My fingers decide for me, and there it sits
opened and inviting; there’s no ‘don’t touch’
as far as i can see but my heart still thumps
louder than thunder, louder than a broken engine
on a silent, dark winter night.

It’s mine for the taking, and yet i’ve never
been this afraid to claim something that
had my name on it.

It’s familiar, and looks just like the one
I have beating inside my own ribcage,
inexplicably, it looks newer, less prone to damage.

So I open my chest, cleave it open with love,
and put it next to my mess of a heart.

The thumping is louder, but now it’s
raindrops claiming barren lands
colouring it a new green; now it’s
a broken thing coming back to life.

Maybe today, I am new colour too.
Can you see it?

 

Bloom.

 

 

My eyes bloom in the season.
The dark under my eyes is
the dark, fertile soil.
They harvest like spring
as the winter says its last goodbyes.

They look to the east,
look for the sun.
They are sunflowers.
Van Gogh’s yellow and
ready to be shown happiness.

Epiphanies II.

 

a)
I write, not for a living,
but in order to survive life.

 

b)
Often we grow,
not in years, but in mistakes.

 

c)
It was cold but often, death would
bloom like spring inside my chest.

 

d)
Quitting smoking
is a waste of death.

Redemption.

Most nights, I can’t fall asleep. Even with the lights off. Even with the temperature all the way down; with me bundled under blankets. Even when I go through all your pictures in pitch dark and the only light is the dimmest setting on my phone screen. I only get sleep when I picture these big bold words in my mind like a slideshow: “You are redeemable.” They play over and over again, and I count them like sheep. I wake up at noon, still exhausted, still trying, still looking for redemption.

Epiphanies

a)
Your hands were a prison,
and I was getting tired
of serving the sentence.

b)
Marks on bodies are just
poems trying to get out.

c)
Love is a wound without
an exit. It’s a bullet still
lodged inside of you.

d)
You’re not born kind.
Kindness is learned;
kindness needs practice.

Riddle Me

i’m looking for things to break
to disappear into
bone by bone

my hands are doing things
i can no longer control

i’m breaking
i’m breaking
i’m broken

i fit inside the box

the Schrödinger’s cat

if you open the box,
would you find me dead?

—   Mahima/AGirlOfHerWords

Lessons in being lulled into a false sense of security.

1. They were firing. The roof exploded in smoke and bone-chilling screams. Mother told me they are fireworks.

2. We had just had sex. He told he loved me. I snuggled up closer and tried not to dream.

3. It wasn’t six feet deep. It was twenty four. He pushed me into the deep and told me he’ll follow if I begin drowning. I reached the shallow end sooner than I expected.

4. “I love you too”, I said with a smile.

5. “It’s not going to hurt”, she assured me. They pierced my flesh with the syringe. I cried like a baby.

6. “Have another drink”, he said. “It makes the loving easy.” I don’t know why it hurt so much.

7. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”, they questioned. Anywhere but here. But I never said those words. I’d trade them for security.

8. “It was just the fucking”, he said. “I still want to wake up next to you every day.” The words had to mean something.

9. “Shhh”, she embraced me. Everything was gone, but in that moment, everything was right.

10. I arranged the pillows. Put away the bottles, the pills, the drugs. Mother visited a vanilla-scented lie and left with a smile.

– Mahima/महिमा

A city of ruins

You could never do a good job
of hurting me properly;
so you’d slam the door on my face
but then hold it on your way out.

You’d leave me one calamity
away from utter destruction;
so i became a city of ruins
which wanted either for a saviour
or an apocalypse – but got neither.

Belonging

You belong to me in your glory
and all the colours of the sky the sun dyed you in

You belong to me to with all your stretch marks,
like lightning running through your flesh 

You belong to me with every single scar that adorns you,
so telling of all the adventures you had to reach me, finally

You belong to me with all your insecurities;
they can play with mine

You belong to me with your early morning face
and when you put on your brave face

You belong to yourself so completely;
and this is why you belong to me so much

It’s raining and I’m thinking of home.

Mother, I’m coughing because I’ve been poisoning my lungs.
Mother, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m great and that’s nothing in my eyes.

Mother, the tea cups.
The fifth tea of the day and your words were hot and
mine wouldn’t go down my throat without burning me.

Mother, the rain.
The rain feels new in the new city.
Mother, you always made me rain food.
Mother, I’m still hungry today.

Mother, is your phone on silent?
It doesn’t matter, it’s not gonna ring.
My hands refuse to dial your number.

Mother, I’ve not been thinking of you.
Mother, I’m a liar.

Mother, they say intuition is real.
Mother, why haven’t you taken the next flight out?

Mother, do your hands remember my face?
I’ve forgotten how I look when you look at me.

Mother, I’m fine, I’m fine, but I’m not fine at all.

An apology letter

I stretched your heart until the blood spilled over. I did it to fit him inside of you. I cared more for him to have a home of you than I did about breaking you open. And you did. Your lungs were drowning in blood. I saw you gasping for breath and did nothing. The blood seeped through you everywhere. Everywhere. And I took your bloodied fingers and wrote of him still. I wonder if he ever read that, if he ever cared about your fingers bleeding him words. But I never did; so why should he?

You made a nest of your frail body and flailing limbs. Sometimes I catch you clutching at the wounds I gave you. You’re trying to love yourself more than you love him, in hopes of having yourself back. But you fail.

Your body is now a crime scene. And when they wheel you away to cut you open, to study you, I know what they’ll find. More words inside of you than there are stars in the galaxy. And all your stars would have his name written on them still. They will collect those and put them in little plastic bags marked “evidence”.

Would they be surprised when those stars begin to revolve around him? Will they put him in handcuffs and demand he give you your words back?

You will stop them.

I stretched your heart until he fit there perfectly, until you no longer could.

This is my apology to you, dear me. I’m sorry.

I give you this word back though it was but one of the many exit wounds on you.

Loving You Quietly

I’ve loved you quietly,
in sneaky glances and in
trying not to smile
when I see your face

I’ve loved you in drunken messages
and morning regrets

I’ve never loved you loudly,
in words that never really meant much

I’ve loved you in moments when
I tried to not think of you
and in moments I wrote for you
wrote about you
wrote to you

I’ve loved you every time
I felt it wasn’t enough
that I wasn’t enough
that maybe I was too much

I’ve loved you till exhaustion
but always quietly
behind the curtains
and the curtains never rise
maybe they never will
but I will applaud you from afar

I’ve loved you every time
I wanted to touch you
and then touch you again

but all this loving, all this while,
I’ve been too loud in my head

Look At Me

my room smells of cigarettes,
which once smelled of you.

it’s so stupid but all i think of
is if you were here you could’ve
held my trembling fingers.

and, if you called me now, you wouldn’t
even hear my voice, because that’s
how loud i play the music, to drown
out the absence of your words.

would you believe me if i tell you
the only time i bothered with
clothes today was to get more
cigarettes and while my time
till it’s tomorrow again because
i don’t have the energy to cook
myself a meal, ‘cos all the energy i
spend is in trying not to call you.

“would you fucking look at me”
i’m mentally screaming these
words at you; “look at me and
tell me i’m too good for you”,
maybe i’ll feel too good for
misery too.

hey misery, i’m too good for you.

hahaha.

i’m getting better with jokes,
will you come laugh with me?

the room suddenly smells of you again,
guess it’s time to open another pack.

Lies and Lists

1. I will tell you I’m brave but I’ve learned to dress my lies to make them look like truths. I will say poetic things like “I write till I’m all blood and soul” but I’m a liar. Is that clear?

2. I let them affect me. Have you ever seen me enter a room? I walk in like I own the world, like I own every single person in the room, like I own you. So when they said all those cruel things to me, I smirked like a queen talking down to those unworthy of her words. But I’m a liar and it honestly hurt.

3. Sometimes I say “I love you” with all the strength I could muster to stop it sounding like a lie.

4. They’re reading the bestseller’s list and my name is on it. Why? Because I finally wrote that goddamned book. Goodness, this is a dream okay. It’s not happening. He asked me yesterday how it was going and I told him I was halfway through it. Talk about lying through your teeth.

5. He says he loves me but he never calls me. How could it be love if he doesn’t desperately want to get to know me. Maybe he’s lying. I do seem to be all about that.

6. Bucket list. To-do lists. Change my fucking life lists. Quit smoking and drink less lists. Move to a new city and it’ll all be great and you’d do a hundred new things list. Poetry has no place, be more practical list. I have my lists and then I have my failures. I should’ve followed these but we all know how good I’ve gotten at lying by now. Especially to myself.

Lessons in How To Forget Him

She wakes up every morning apologising
to herself for loving him hard enough to
be all stones and flesh and crumbling bones.

Now she repeats the word ‘sorry’ like
she’s praying a rosary, but she finds no
redemption, no easy way to forgive herself.

Maybe because there’s a gaping hole
carved neatly in her ribcage with words
that were sharper than any sword,
and no words now, no matter what she says,
can fill it up enough to stop it bleeding.

Can you keep a secret?

The first time you fucked her,
she switched off the light,
and although you told her
you loved her every bit,
she begged you to love
her in the moonlight.

The first time you fucked her,
it was a revelation;
she was the moment when
electricity was discovered,
she was the first light source,
her every nerve ending alight
with your touch.

The first time you fucked her,
you read her like every secret
she’d ever kept and now she was
breakable under your fingers.

The first time you fucked her,
was the last time she ever loved.

Secrets are meant to be kept,
and you should’ve known better.

Claustrophobia

I’ve hated closed spaces
for as long as I can remember.

Windows that wouldn’t open
all the way up and rooms that
were too crowded.

Walking without a jacket
because feeling free was more
important than feeling warm.

But when I stumbled on to you,
I stumbled on to my cure.

Now your arms around me
just can’t be tight enough.

2015

1. I’ll devour books. Word by word, line by line, page by page. I’ll taste the words the writer spit out for me. Only, for me.

2. I will exhaust myself with kindness. I will forget about all the good that I’ve ever done and then do more to compensate.

3. I’ll run until my thoughts gasp breathless – not being able to keep up with me. Good, I’ll enjoy my void.

4. I will not give up on myself. I will love myself so much, you’ll have no other choice but to love me too.

5. I’ll write everyday, I’ll write for myself. And my readers. I’ll write until I drown and then I’ll save myself with words.

6. I’ll pray to music. The old gods and the new. Music will be my religion and I’ll find new ways to worship it.

7. More hugs. Hug my dog. My family. My friends. I will hug the strangers I fall in love with and I will hug them through the screen.

8. I’ll allow myself mistakes. I’m not perfect. And I’ll never strive to be perfect. But I’ll strive to be better; to be easier to love.

9. My memories will not collect dust. I will find the hiding spots, cabinets and hearts, drawers and photographs. It’ll be spring cleaning for my soul.

10. I’ll be brave. I’ll scare myself with my dreams. And then, who needs sleep when you can watch the sun rise.

11. I was born to dance. So I’ll dance without an audience, without a reason. I’ll dance to exist.

Letter to Luna

Dear Luna,

I should’ve written this earlier. Maybe today is a July evening. It should’ve been. But it’s December and the year is ending and I should’ve never waited this long.

You’re stardust. You’re the moonlight. You’re dusk. You’re the meeting point of light and dark. How do you do this? You’d think someone would be kind enough to ask for permission before gently ripping you apart at the seams. You never stop for permission. You just do.

Gently. 3 am. 2 pm. You do not care if I’m lonely in a blanket or busy with the day. Maybe I should shift the blame to your words. But you’re made of those. You’re made of your words. And sometimes, those words un-make me.

They barge right in. Unapologetic about how violent they are. They catch me unaware. They catch me vulnerable.

I’m vulnerable.

Maybe this is why I never wrote to you in July.

But here I am. And there you are, with your words.

Often, we collide.

Paper Cut

There are books that cut you open like a butcher knife cuts a block of butter in half. With laughable ease. You keep reeling, trying to keep your insides from spilling. But your body gives away. The storms that seep from your eyes. You’re wounded. The decision to read that book – the one that inflicted all that pain, made you wiser – is the best and worst thing. Always both. Now you carry the pages inside your heart. Gently though. If you move any quicker, the pages will cut you again. Is all that blood so pretty?

Small Talk

You can sniff them off a mile away,
move along quickly before they set
their eyes on you, oh they see you.

In the hallways; in front of the mirror
where you fix your hair, how dare you;
at the coffee machines, when you’re half asleep,
they see you. Run, run away.

Poster child for vacant eyes,
they’re all smiles for you.

Good luck, they’re here now.
Pretend you watch the news,
oh just how cold it is today.

Squirmish, fidgety, you’d think they’ll notice.
Haha! They’re not leaving anytime soon,
not until you’re privy to all unnecessary details.

Move along quickly now; before they set
their eyes on you. Oh they see you.
They do.

A Letter to a Dead Boy

Three hours, three times a week,
a stranger memorises his name
by being spoken to, until the girl
on the couch goes still from 
exhaustion

With a notepad in his hand and
thick glasses covering his eyes,
he struggles to break into the 
mind
of the girl who’s already 
in a hundred pieces

Maybe, she’s broken into atoms
and stardust to finally become
one with the universe. After all,
he’s made from the universe too

She doesn’t talk, she howls as
a mad wolf on a full moon,
she laments how a cold stone can
never contain him, how fresh flowers
can never honour him.
Nothing 
is ever enough

When she’s done screaming,
she quietens to a wind talking to 
trees,
to flowers singing to the stars,
she cannot keep his last wish,
she cannot remove him from her

She breaks the promise everyday,
constructing him, as good as new
in a room full of ghosts, chilling her
to her bones until she’s ashes too

It was a love triangle she’s wouldn’t
wish upon the sane – a broken girl,
a stranger on the couch, a dead boy
who just wouldn’t come back,
no matter how much she begs him to

Oops

I was starving for
love when he
offered his heart
on a platter.

I’m so sorry for the
timing sweetheart.

Homecoming

Sometimes the best
part about travelling
is getting back home.

 

That is how I felt coming
back to you, like i had
been wandering between
people, and you were
my homecoming.

Desperately Dark

I’ve battled with darkness
long enough to know how
desperate one can get to
just see light.

I would know because I once
got desperate enough to light
myself on fire.

Broken Glass

Have you ever felt like
broken glass, once perfect,
now in pieces?
Collected and glued together;
a mere echo of what you
were once.

I have some news for you.
When you raise broken
glass up to the sun, do
you know how it shines?

It throws the light everywhere,
everyfuckingwhere without
a care.

And it’s you, a kaleidoscope of
energy and light.

You’re those coloured glasses
in cathedrals; ancient, and
bathing prayers in colour and love.

You’re those shards of glass
they would lovingly put back
together.

Because you are too precious
to let go, too precious to not
be mended and cared for again.

Winter is Here

My breath turns to
ice and my bed
screams of your
absence.

I haven’t been warm
in days.

Three blankets and
counting but it just
isn’t enough to make
up for your body
pressed against mine
on nights that are darker.

And the nights are
darker now.

I wait for you like
you are my summer.

The winter is here.
But where are you?

You Burn On My Tongue

I burn my tongue
taking your name
and yet I never stop.

Maybe I know you’re
a package deal; pain
free with all that love.

It’s like a compulsion.
A reflex action.
I breathe. I love you.
See? It’s involuntary.

This is How You Hurt Yourself

This is how you hurt yourself.
You don’t pick the phone up;
the phone is a time-ticking bomb.

Your hands tremble but you
refuse to deal with your pain;
pain, you’ve decided, is inevitable.

Like long winter nights and poetry,
it just happens, doesn’t it?

The window is foggy with your breath.
Why are you up to turn off the alarm?

This is how you hurt yourself.
With a dinner of cigarettes and pills.
You’ve lost your appetite, haven’t you?

My Skin Has Your Name

I’ll tell you what I was doing
Friday night, and the day before
and every other day of the week.

I was memorizing the back of
my eyelids, trying to fall asleep
after being awake for far too
fucking long.

But there you were, like someone
had taken blistering hot coals and
branded my skin with your name.

That would’ve hurt less maybe.

The burning would’ve gone
eventually. But no luck with you.

You’re a permanent tattoo on
my brains, refusing to fade away.

Tell me a cure, tell me anything.
After all, you gave the scar
but you gave away no remedy.

Losing My Religion

I called your name like
a prayer, hoping to be
answered in the dead of
the night when I needed
you even more than I
wanted you.

You called my name like
it was lie you were afraid
to speak aloud, afraid of
the world finding out your
dirty little secret.

You were about to find out
the truth because I was about
to find a new religion.

Breakable

Hold me like a porcelain
doll, I’ve been broken so
many times before.

Like you were meant to
hold art, like you grew up
knowing you’ll hold a fragile
me one day, utterly breakable
but completely willing to be
broken by you.

Like a practiced surgeon,
feel your fingers over my
cracks, thinking of ways to
fix me back.

I trust you.