we were never best friends

Four years ago,
I wrote a composition
About a girl who had, for a year,
been my best friend
And who had taken only a day to stray.
I gave it to my English teacher
and she gave me 85%.

Today,
I saw her again
In the same neighbourhood we grew up in
Through the same glasses I cried in
With the same girl she’d replaced me with.
She herself was different;
Fresh home from America, where she’d spent the last four years
Her face was caked white
And her eyes puffy from an overdose of contact lenses
I did not recognise her at first.

Suddenly it became an unlikely triangle
Of people who had not seen each other for years
And who learned to get used to it
An awkward triangle with vertices that did not quite fit;
Friendly banter was thrust upon me
With the force of a thousand horses marching into war
With the grace of an Asian girl turned white
To their credit, they all joined in
Like artisans at a playing table, throwing out a line
To keep the game moving.
Experts they were, at the game they did not even realise
Was happening
Because they had come to define it as “friendliness”.
When the turn landed on me,
my hand was dreadful; I, a mere beginner.

The friend said “I have a card for you before you leave” and
I watched from a million miles away
As the conversation went out without me
As if it were the most natural thing in the world
I stood there, eyes drifting, silenced, waiting

And I think of possibilities now,
Cards I should have played,
Points I should’ve earned.
“When did you get back? How’s America?
How long are you staying for?”
But feigned interest is something in witchcraft
That I have not mastered.
I look at her and all I can think of
Are the Neoprints she still owes me from 3 years ago,
Back from her first trip home.
The Neoprints that were probably thrown out
years ago.

“The last time you saw her was…four years ago?”
And I could tell the truth but I hold my tongue;
The dying remnants of our acknowledgement
of each other’s existence
Cannot be salvaged by forced, one-way friendship
on my part
And I watch it fade.

Four years ago,
I wrote a composition
About a girl who had, for a year,
been my best friend
And who had taken only a day to stray.
I gave it to my English teacher
and she gave me 85%.

Tonight,
I will go to sleep
And when I wake up,
I won’t even remember seeing her.
And maybe I’ll finally let myself know
We weren’t peas of the same pod
That I was only a make-do choice,
And that she was waiting on someone better.
And I’ll let myself do the same.

{written on 1 August ’14}

you + me = ?

{click image for the source}

As an addition to your life I was nothing more than a contamination; air licking the inside of a jar of alkali metals, salt in a tube of acid. I was like the dirt ingrained into once-golden coins, by the hands of sweaty men frying noodles with towels around their necks. For some reason I have always known that I never complemented you and was never meant to. I wish I could say, ‘I ruined you’, but I was always the dirt under your fingernails, the dust you wash off in the shower, never leaving anything substantial but always returning for seconds. The dip I left in your mattress did not make you miss me, it only made it slightly more difficult to sleep at night. My head did not match the curve of your neck. Rather than leaving scars of ‘I miss you’, I left a litter of bruises than healed with time and disappeared like they had never been there.

You may brag that you are fine with or without me, but I will never have the same privilege.

close call

your words echo off the creaky ceiling fan, the empty drink cartons, the walls of peeling paint. you stretch your hand out, beckoning. reaching for something. reaching for someone. they turn around–

you stare at her across the table, her face between the pages of a book and her eyes nowhere near yours. your hands are by your side. your words are only thoughts. the fan is deafeningly loud and your body has become merely a shell of heartache and heartbreak that has grown all too accustomed to the feeling and the girl across the table, who lives four houses down and whose favorite flavor is chocolate chip dough will never know that you love her.

you heave a sigh of relief.

she was a bubble

curly, blond hair,
bright, grey eyes
with just enough love for life
and enthusiasm for love

they said she was bubbly,
so you took her and injected her into your blood
you sank down into your desk chair,
needle in hand, shaking
adam’s apple bobbing uncertainly

she was stuck in your veins.

was the one minute rush of adrenaline worth it?
when you dropped, devoid of life,
with her stuck in your chest?

the restorer of old bones

Your bones creak like old,
abandoned houses and it has
always been my first instinct
to explore them. My mother
always said that I was never
good at making the right
choices, but she doesn’t
realize that this isn’t a forked
path; it’s a convergent one.
Everything seems to lead to
you, and I’m sure if I’m
obsessed or just a mess.

You should know better than to
trust a girl who tries to find a
home in haunted houses. When
the furniture has been removed
and the paint begins to peel,
that’s when you’ll find me. When
the sky grows dark and the
shadows grow long, that’s when
you’ll find me. In the darkest
hour of the morning, following
the hallway to the leaking tap,
that’s when you’ll find me.

I’ve always been drawn to
devastation and decay.
Abandoned houses are a life
sized self-portrait. I will re-paint
the chipping walls. I will dust the
shelves and sweep the floors. I
will move in my own furniture
and leave the lights switched on
at night. I will fill the house with
music and laughter and love
once again. I will not let your
bones grow cold. I will not let
myself grow cold.

When you wake up and find
me sitting in the spaces where
your rib cage doesn’t
completely cover, I hope to God
that you’ll find it hard to
breathe.

(written on 19 march ’14)

living ghosts

A woman emerges, clipboard in
hand, glasses perched on the tip
of her nose, focused. Your mother
stands abruptly, pulling you up.
What’s wrong with my son,
doctor? she pleads with grey eyes
the colour of desperate, helpless
oceans who cannot control their
storms. She looks up from a
clipboard. Your hand clutches
your chest, as if someone poured
cement down your throat and
filled you like an empty bottle.
She looks at you.

I’m sorry to have to break the
news to you, she starts. We could
only find hollow space in the
area between your lungs and
ribcage where your heart should
be. Your lungs have been
overworking just to keep you
alive. Your blood vessels are
on the brink of imploding.
You’ve been functioning on
virtually nothing. Your mother
chokes. She puts a hand on your
shoulders, but it passes right
through. She gropes for
something, anything. But

You have become nothing,
because you never were
anything. You died at birth.
The only thing that fueled
your existence was your
parents’ deep, aching longing
for a child. But now she has
returned to the earth- (the
human body of your mother
beside you decomposes
rapidly) and your father is
long gone. Your time here is
over. You begin your end.

(written on 17 march ’14)

one part words, two parts longing

Dedicated to the mothball filled winter coats in the back of your closet that have forgotten the feeling of your skin.

I’m droopy-eyed, lying sideways
on my couch. The light above my
head is the only one still switched
on in my house. It clings
desperately to the dust-covered
photo frames lying in the dark and
out into the darkness of the street.

Dust particles dance in the air and
they remind me of the snow that
is probably brushing against your
face. I miss you;

I’m not sure if this a letter to you;
it’s been too long since I
remembered how to type soberly.
It’s been too long since I felt sober.
The clock is telling me one in the
morning but I can’t remember the
concept of time and space and
distance.

What’s the point of knowing how
to tell time if all I know is that it’s
running out? What’s the meaning
of knowing distance if it means I
know exactly how far away you
are from me? I have a hurricane
in my head and a hole in my heart;

Sometimes, deep into the night, I
realize that commitments and
responsibilities exist for the sole
purpose of buying time. Someone
in my head is just waiting to set off
a bomb. I have come to know how
truly horrifying the mind can be
when it’s empty.

I need distractions like I have an
addiction; I need people to devote
my time to, things to do, spaces to
fill and things to fill me. The human
mind is a black hole waiting to
appear – please give me something
worth fighting for. There is nothing
in this house but the sound of a fan
spinning and a pipe leaking; No rain.
No pathetic fallacy to add on to
everything.

My life is nothing like a movie nor
will it ever be. It is 1am and I am
scratching my arms from the
summer heat; There is nothing
romantic in this. I just miss you.

It is at times like this that your
chest seems infinitely softer than
my pillows; your arm much
warmer than my blanket. It is at a
time like this that I remember
falling asleep to the sound of air
circulating at 20 degrees celsius,
your arms draped across my
waist, your head still against the
headboard. I remember waking
up two hours later, to the sight
of your black-framed glasses
drooping off your nose. And I
was content to lie in your
embrace, content to feel loved
and safe in that tiny room,
at 20 degrees, cold outside
but warm inside.

(written on 17 march)
{say something – a great big world ft. christina aguilera}

i promise

It’s easy to fall in love with parts, but I will try my best to love you whole.
I will love you on angry nights,
empty mornings,
and when your words hang in the air as the aftermath of some 4 a.m. drinks.
Do not be afraid of yourself.
I will love you in your tenderest,
and you will love yourself too.

the season girl (i)

{click on the photo for the source.}

She is like winter
her emotionless eyes pale blue
and her skin translucent,
the colour of a flower vase
people tend to shatter carelessly
every so often.
Every line on her skin is weaved
into an intricate pattern of snowflakes,
held tightly together
not to protect her from the outside,
but to hold her insides together.
People do not understand
that when cut open,
her white-hot liquid sadness,
sparkling like snow in the sun,
likes to spill out.
And every once in a while,

it chokes her.

“trust me this once-“

I would pull you out of the ocean
But darling,
I, too, am drowning