Linger Longer

There are things you need to know about me. Like how I linger on things. Not the regular type of lingering, but the absurd type. They make me do it. They tell me it’s unfair to let things pass my eyes without entering my mind, cruel to let sound beat unheard, smell unnoticed. They tell me to feed my mind with my senses so that I can feel my surroundings inside me. They tell me the exterior deserves a spot in my interior, and now I’m an architect drawing everything I witness on the walls of my brain, so that I can linger just a little longer. They say it’s always healthy to linger a little longer, but now my drawings are overlapping, and although they’re weightless I can feel them consuming me. There are things you need to know about me. Like how I linger on things excessively, and how my mind is so hefty, I don’t think I’ll ever carry anything as heavy in my entire existence.

RIP

A girl I once knew passed away not very long ago. She was fighting a battle for a really long time, until her limbs eventually gave up. I mourned her so much. I think I still do, but not as often, not as much as I should. She made me feel whole and worthy. She made me feel alive. And now that she’s gone I hear her calling for me in my sleep every night, only to wake up to her death every day. I haven’t gone to visit her in a while. It’s not that I’ve forgotten her, I just don’t want to remember what it was like with her here. And I don’t want to cry anymore. People keep telling me to not cry over someone that is gone. But I miss her, like nobody could ever understand, and I would trade anything to see her staring back at me through the mirror just one last time.

Damned Explorer

There’s a map behind this closed door
A map I promised to explore
Lands that do not feel like bed sheets
Lands that speak to bare feet
I want to breathe air not breath
Witness life not death

I want to break free from these doors
For there are maps I do not want to explore
Roads too narrow for me to tread
Roads of danger and bloodshed
I want to paint blue not red
Witness life and not death

Mother there’s a map outside these closed doors
A map I need to try to explore
Before my demons convince me into thinking
There’s a world awaiting in the skin that I live in
A map of veins I cannot pass on exploring

Haunted House

Father my friend says our house looks haunted
She likes the way it hisses in the dark
With its olive green skin loud

And the little rusty squeaky gate
She likes that too

She doesn’t know about that scorching day
You triggered my fists into the wall beside it
She doesn’t know my blood seeped into that brick
She doesn’t see the blood that drips from the eaves
Our blood mixed with anger and dust
She doesn’t see the way our house is bleeding father

Our house is bleeding father
While you’re busy restarting the wifi router
Our house is bleeding

Tell me what the use is of mending doors
When we are imprisoned by walls
We cannot escape

Father my friend says our house looks haunted
But she doesn’t know of the ghosts we adopted
After we exhausted ourselves of silence
She doesn’t know they sleep in our beds
And feed off our flesh

She doesn’t see us bleeding father
And I don’t think you do either

Colour Breathes

Remind me how it feels
To walk on grass bare feet
To be pinched by its spikes
Smeared with its blood
Blood brown on my heels
When colour did not breathe
Brown on my heels
Remind me how it feels
To walk underneath the trees
To be showered by their breaths
When trees held only leaves
When trees did not watch me leave
When open sky did not threaten me
Nor the birds flying free
Remind me
Remind me what it was like to be free
When I only heard screams through my ears

Opposites Attract

He looks for edges in her curves
He says he likes straight girls
Straight because he is crooked
And he heard opposites attract

He searches for sharpness in her subtlety
He says he likes girls that cut deep
Deep because he is shallow
And he heard opposites attract

He finds bliss in her danger
He says he likes girls that are braver
Braver because he is weak
And he heard opposites attract

He forms fire out of her water
He says he likes girls that burn red
Red because he is blue
And he heard opposites attract

He is in a shower
Looking for the edges in her curves
For sharpness that will hurt
For danger to stir
Red to blur

He says he likes the idea of death
Death because he is alive
And he once heard someone say

Opposites attract

Self Loss

Don’t tell me I don’t know what loss is. I’ve lost more than you can imagine. I’ve lost so many people, people I never thought were capable of leaving a bruise. I remember watching a boy I once knew when I was young in a shopping centre. I remember wanting to talk to him and deciding not to. I remember my trembling body later that night when his name was mentioned in the caption of a picture that showed smashed metal and glass. That boy lost his life that day, and although he didn’t mean much to me I felt the loss. However I didn’t feel it as intensely as I did when the first boy I loved crushed my soul. I lost that boy then and it hurt like hell. I lost him the same way I lost the girl I once called my best friend. But all that loss is not the loss I’m referring to. I’ve lost more than people, because I’ve lost pieces of myself with every single one of them. I’ve lost more than you can imagine. I’ve lost myself. So don’t you dare tell me I have no idea what loss is, for what greater loss is there than this.

To The One

My doors I have opened
To too many strangers
As impatience grew on me
Awaiting your arrival

Impatience grew
And it blossomed with tears
That sent its vines spiraling
Against every inch of my body

Impatience adorned me
Made me a shrine for the desperate
Where entry begged no cost
And guaranteed a relic upon departure

My doors I have opened
For too many to peek
For too many to pick
From the garden planted by impatience

I know not your face darling
But I know you have not yet visited
And part of me hopes you do not

For I fear you may not find
A single rose left to treasure

 

Backward

I am on a bus, seated facing opposite travel direction. I am on a bus, a bus that only moves backwards, covering the same tracks which now appear unfamiliar. Strange how the ordinary is now new, capturing the attention I would usually grant the clouds or a mark on the wall. Strange the way the buildings stand distorted although they are very much upright. I have never bothered to look too much, but I could almost swear that cafe never existed, and neither did that sign. I am on a bus, and now I am not sure I know the way. It all looks so different from where I sit, and although I know it is just the same, I am yet anxious of the unknown. I am on a bus, and it seems I am the only one moving backwards, while the other passengers move forward. I am moving backwards, noticing all I prefered to be blind to. I am on a bus, and I really regret choosing this seat.

Naked

Darling, will you like me in the dark, when the eyes hold no value? Will your fingertips know the flesh on my hips, the bones that give it the stretch you worship? Will you know the landscape of my being, the veins that mark their tracks on my earth, your earth, your world, as you once said? Will you like me in the dark, when my demons rise like hair on cold skin, texturing my body with the distinctive pattern of fear and anxiety? Will you feel it being imprinted onto yours at the touch, will my shivers shake your anatomy? Will I rock your world? Tell me darling, will I rock your world when the lights are off, when you are forced to hear, to smell, to taste, blind? Will I still sound like the raindrops through the storm, will I still smell of caramel once my sugar is burnt, will you still be able to taste a sweetness in my damned bitterness? In the blackness, when light is shy, will you prove to be dauntless, to cherish me in my utmost nakedness?