Chernobyl eyes, green flashes of mutual destruction. 

I hated that word until the day I broke it down. 

And so I want to thank the architect who built her up

Who tricked me with her maze heart

And made me think that what goes up must come down. 

Because I've been to every floor and they all look like heaven 

I used to think that heaven was something they devised to make me like boys

But no boy has ever made me believe in god the way her sad eyes do. 

-I'll white-wash my pallet to remember the taste of you.-

And I'm still waiting for her to say "I see what's going on here."

But it's always me doing the looking. I look at her like she's the the reclining ocean just before the tsunami. 

I have no idea of what's coming but I want to follow her into the corner, stepping on all the jelly fish kisses she leaves behind. "Kiss me here and here and here," I'd say.

I imagine what her tides feel like.  

Man, I'd let her burn smileys into the back of my hands and watch as each one bubbled like the way she said my name. 

Put the lid back on, we're not done yet. I want to stick to her like spaghetti to the roof. Yeah, they'll have to scrape me out from beneath her nails. 

I know what they meant, those Cold War Kids,

Singing about something I'll never get to feel. 

If she wasn't real, I swear I'd still make her up. She'd be my Princess Bubblegum, a ticket to the land of Ooh. 

But tell me, how do I still breathe so easy in your post-apocalyptic wasteland? 

The Truth About Me

I have two distinct memories from my childhood where I thought I was going to die.


The first was the complete acceptance of my macabre fate while lying at the bottom of the pool. Instead of panic, I felt serenity. The calm I felt then, still resides in my bones. I wasn't afraid of dying, at least not if it was as beautiful as that.


The second, was what made me scared of death. Waist-deep in the quicksand I landed in at the bottom of an abandoned water slide. I was still crying long after being pulled out.


It's strange, one erased my fears whilst the other instilled it. Maybe that's why I find myself impartial to it now. I think of death only as the past and not the future.


Growing up, there's more moments than I could ever try remember, near death experiences, that have accumulated in my bones. Pill swallowing, alcohol poisoning, times when I thought I'd die from a broken heart. We forget about these because the important part is that we lived.


I lived. And I'm made up of all these odd quirks and habits, fears and dreams. I am the person I am today because I lived.


Things like, whistling when I'm alone. A phenomena unlike talking. Yes, it's making a sound with your lips; but it's also making music out of nothing. I don't even need to whistle a tune. I whistle because I can and because it doesn't need an explanation.


I am obsessed with the sound keys makes when thrown into the air and then caught. I can't walk past a microwave if it has been stopped with a few seconds still remaining. I have a collection of bubble wrap in my cupboard. I pop them one-by-one, row-by-row. When I'm anxious, I get dizzy. So I'll smoke a box of cigarettes to have a reason to be light-headed. When I'm sad I eat until I feel sick, or not even at all. The only time I'm happy is when I'm making people laugh. Some people hate that about me, but I couldn't live with myself any other way. I sometimes make up whole conversations with just myself. I crave human touch. Not in a sexual way, just for what it is. I tell certain people that I love them even though I don't. Because not loving them would cripple me. I truly love my mother with all my heart. She's the one person who can never do wrong by me. I don't think I'm capable of physically harming another person, not even playfully. I'm petrified of ghosts. The only way I can get through the night is by convincing myself that they don't exist. How could they? When someone dies, the only thing they leave behind is memories. Sometimes memories are even scarier.


I don't like saying no. I forgive much too easily. I don't think that's a fault but I wish I was somehow harder. I wish I cared more about myself than I do about other people. I seek affection from people I don't really want and I give them a piece of myself that I didn't have to begin with. I can convince myself of my own lies. I'm a mean, mean person. I can't decide whether I hate or love that about myself. I put up a rough exterior, where you'll only ever see me as the life of the party. But I'm sensitive and raw underneath. And God forbid anyone sees through my charade, awakening something that should be left to sleep. I cry. God, I cry a lot. I grew up too fast, I know how to be an adult. So I don't want to act like one. Be a kid with me. Run through puddles barefoot, colour in books, hold my hand when we cross the road. Be my 2nd grade best friend and my lover. Tell me secrets, or better yet, stories. Stories that you make up on the spot. Make me believe in worlds that we can escape to, rolled up in blankets, where I always get the girl in the end.


Does believing that love is all you need make me an idiot? Because then I'll be an idiot 10 times over.


Sometimes I'm scared of who I might reveal if you looked too close but for the most part, I just want someone to take that chance. I believe in so many things. Real, make-believe, past, present, future, I even believe in you, whoever you may be. Maybe all I want is for someone to believe in me.

If we had more hours in the day

If we had more hours in the day,
I would still hurry home with eager lips.
I would not waste my time completing tasks with utmost attention to accuracy.
Instead I would draw your bath to the most delicate temperature, smiling at the thought of your skin, attended by goose bumps, as it exclaimed how warmth was every bit a lover as my hungry hands were.

If we had more hours in the day,
I'd take my time guessing how long God devoted himself to the gaps between your fingers and the curl in your lips, before deciding that perfection was something he had saved until creating you.

If we had more hours in the day,
I'd make sure to look you in the eyes with every word you shared with me; and search your eyes to guess the words your perfect tongue hadn't learned to roll yet.
I'd kiss your lips when words weren't necessary at all, maybe I'd kiss them just because I could.
Because kissing you deserved a day of its own.

If we had more hours in the day,
I'd take an hour to thank the Sun for how it danced across your body, shedding light on all the new places my mouth was to explore.
I'd thank street lights for the eyelash shadows dripping down your cheeks,
reminding me that symmetry existed outside our bodies dancing together.

If we had more hours in the day,
I'd still spend most of it trying to find the courage to tell you all of this.
After all, I'm still only a fool hiding behind words.
But if the day were ever to arrive, I'd make sure to whisper it along your spine and over your shoulder.
They'd take their final resting place above your breast and wait there until the beating of your wanting heart slowly absorbed them...

And now I pray,
If only we had more hours in the day.

Feelings to Words

I start every day here. Looking at this screen and trying to fulfill my purpose of doing what I have effortlessly done over and over again - turn my feelings into words.

But nothing.

For a week I have rolled my tongue around almost-words.

I have these feelings burning a hole in my chest and for the first time, I couldn't name them, I couldn't materialise them into something real. So I wait for them to creek open my door while I wait in the dark and hope that I'll get some sleep even though I can feel their eyes burning into the back of my head.

I say 'them' instead of 'it' because I've seen a number of faces. Anger, hurt, disappointment, frustration. Pain. Pain pain pain pain, the face I won't forget. If only it manifested into something beyond merely conceivable. A limb. Something to carve at and remove.

"Beauty is pain."

But no one knows how long it'll take for the pain to turn beautiful.

I keep on discovering these different sides to people but for once I'd like to not learn my lesson the hard way. I always thought that if I cared enough for someone it would prevent them from hurting me. But I've learned that those are the people who will hurt you the most. So maybe my lesson here is that I've been too careless with my good intentions. I've so easily placed my trust into people I hardly know and people who I honestly and sincerely thought I knew.

I'm still trying to find words to make this prettier. I wanted to write something poetic and fascinating. Something to mirror the person I intended this for. But I have nothing. Nothing but old text messages and a name on a contact list that used to spell out everything I found beautiful in this world.

I want this to turn beautiful. I want to believe that people are growing kinder. I want to name everything that flows through my ant farm-heart and tie it to passing clouds so that I can finally say I'm not weighed down by  feeling too much.

I want time to pass so that I can leave and start over and look back at all of this as only a faded recollection. By then I will have forgotten how you made me feel. You will have the serenity and grace of a memory. And if you are to one day cross my mind, I might smile in naivety at the comfort of a familiar but distant name.

Unrequited

It’s kind of sad, you know? Because I would have written your story out of specks of cloud and streaks of light. I would have carried our love around like a blanket in our trunk, making sure to cover your shoulders if the cold ever got jealous. I wouldn't love you the way they do in movies because it wouldn't just meet your eyes and warm your heart. No, it would plant seeds beneath your skin and show you the rain forest soul you cleanse my life with every day.


In a world where you don’t think you deserve much, I’d show you that the sky concaves because of your gravity. How your fingertips cause the thunderstorms in my heart. How I never loved a word until it spelled out your name.


I look at you and feel the storm brewing and now can only wish that your ship was lost in my sea.

SM.

You still find a way to creep into my subconscious and rope my dreams together. Like a silk gown that you wear when you slip into my bed. I don't want you there but you're there anyway. Face framed so perfectly by old memories that I can't turn you away. Your lips, as long as boats, try hard to not sink this illusion. Your lips, the colour of that spot of pink found on the cheeks of peaches when they blush. I lived in a constant state of pinks and reds around you.

Why is it that you're more alive in my dreams today than you were in my life two years ago? In my dreams you aren't that insecure girl. You're warm and forgiving and you seep through me like warm golden sand through fingers. I remember how your fragile body always had to be near mine and how you'd smile at almost everything I'd say. God, that smile would cut right through me.

I figured that God made you so beautiful to hide what was actually there, a darkness so consuming that it still dims my light today. I won't shine as bright for anyone else and I think that's what's so different about a first love; it's the first to eat up all your resources, leaving your crop fields bare. Even then, I'd lie in it all day with you, like when you were hungover and the only thing that would make you feel better was resting your head on my lap.

That's the shitty part, the memories, because they're the biggest liars of them all. Accumulating into dreams where you come to meet me and slip into my bed night after night. I miss you, but I don't. You were everything I wanted and nothing at all. Still, you saw my light when it shone the brightest. You're permanently inked into my skin. You wore me down like soles on cheap shoes. And you hang around, not asking for a second chance, but claiming it.

I want to know when I'll get my dreams back. Because as much as I love having you around, I've come to learn the difference between missing you and missing a memory.

Fight

You walk into the room and smile at all the right times because you know they're all watching you. You play it coy because shy hearts are easier to love, and paired with marble eyes, you're a winning streak any buster would step into the ring for. And that's how it feels - like a fight.

All the screaming becomes white noise because you're the accumulation of every sense. Touch. Taste. Feel. Hear. See. Love. And my heart's doing all the work, making sure every part of my body knows you're there even when you're not. 

I'm two rounds in and I can barely pick myself up off the floor. 

Oh, but what a prize. You stand there, making sure not to meet my eyes and I'm all the way here, chewing on the smoke the train left behind when it ran away with my common sense. 

One.

Two.

I start counting the hearts dropping around you.

Three.

You make perfect look so easy.

Four.

Five.

Six.

I'm walking over to you.

Seven.

Your eyes rush for a place to hide.

Eight.

You can feel the heat of the hot mess I've become.

Nine.

You lose your resistance to my thieving kiss.

...Ten.

I wait as the last heart to drop is yours.