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.

Waiting

I’ve spent my life waiting.

And I’ve wondered why flowers close up when they feel the rain,
Thinking of how I’ve left myself open to drown in you.

They’ve learnt what happens when you’ve run out of space to breathe,
I’ve learnt that I’ll never learn anything unless it kills me.

We’ve both learnt the importance of patience
Because we’re only waiting to be picked.

Tyre Swing

And I could dent the hardest earth
With my steps weighed down
By her anxious lungs.


Anxious not for me
But for the dissolving of the bitter tablet
On her curious tongue
To numb the pain
Of a broken tyre swing and
The haunting of a shadow who liked to play tricks


I remember a heart full of hope
And the taste of sunshine
Stolen from the Southern hemisphere
And a locket around another’s neck
Where I dared not to cross
Lest I was prepared to give it all up


And I did, for you.

Triangles

A triangle is always going to have slopes. You're either climbing or falling.
Up.
Down.

Up.

It looks so beautiful from the top and you've never had fuller lungs. Don't hold your breath now, that thing beating in your core doesn't know what it's like to fall

down.

Air everywhere except inside you. Lungs folding into paper planes that had a map of her veins and a picture of a smiling sun. The heat you felt beneath your skin, but it was always Winter that far off the ground.

Some corners are sharper than others so I picked you from that tree and slipped you into the pages of my favourite book of poetry, forgetting your colours like to run

away.

But honey, triangles aren't round and now there's punctures in the leather seating. You could patch them up with nests stolen from bushes on fire and feed the

flames.

With old letters written on puzzle pieces. She was the greatest mystery. Floating in tea pots, making sure to miss your cup. You watched them

drown

their sorrows and you swallowed the pills left in her purse.
One white.
Two blue.
All triangular.

They're dying to be brought up.


Keep them
d
o
w
n


A triangle is always going to have slopes.

The Calendar

Last week I could have written the angriest words. My skin felt tighter around my flesh to the point where I thought I might start showing thin over the parts I used to punch at my feelings for you. My body dissolved every feeling of ecstasy I had aligned with our memories. If you had been a blade of grass, I would have pulled you out at the roots and exposed the part of you I had just discovered and wish didn't exist.

On Friday, Sadness joined my Anger. They fought and Anger won after I said bad things about you because my body couldn't release the steam quick enough. I became the water that spits around the bottom of the kettle and starts screaming until you remove the heat from under it. But you're a flame that doesn't like to be put out. So I poured alcohol over my wounds and lost you in the spinning of the room.

On Saturday, Sadness crept in while Anger was still sleeping and quietly held a pillow to its face. Then crawled and sat on my shoulder and sang me songs that had you hidden in the lyrics. I tried to push it away but it followed me around a room full of people and joined my conversations around a table of pretty faces so I drank on behalf of both of us and made sure you were held down at the bottom of my glass.

Yesterday, Sadness called in sick and realised I woke up next to Disappointment. It was there with a purpose, walking behind me, quoting reassurances I had heard from your lips. It had a journal and as it ran its finger down each page, it sang to me all the things you hadn't kept to. It started painting a picture of you and I noticed there were colours I didn't like, ones that had been harder to spot earlier but now stood out so bright that I had to look away. Everywhere I went, those exact colours jumping at me, splashing onto my skin and soaking through my hair. But I lacked the energy to scrub you off and now I wear your disappointments as a permanent reminder of a human condition: That people are selfish.

Today I was surprised to see that I was unaccompanied. Maybe you're putting up less of a struggle for my psyche to throw out. I remember when you would run by 118 times in one day and I'd welcome you back with a smile each time. But now I think of you only in fleeting moments and even then, Disappointment waves from across the street. I can feel you moving away and the spaces between us getting darker. I know that one day the the last light will flicker to its death and we'll be left with nothing. At lease nothing we can see or touch or taste. Like we were both figments of our own imaginations, created to revive our faith in a love we had both watched die. You needed someone to show you that the crying would eventually stop and that your heart could still skip even while it was broken. What is left for me now after I've put all the pieces back together?

Tomorrow I am certain of just one thing, that you will be further from my thoughts as I am further from your heart.

Expiry Date

But I treat my hearts as if it’s a child, “it’s just a scratch, now get back up that tree or else you’ll forever have a fear of climbing.” I’ll misjudge the weight of my uneasy steps on a rooftop or forget how horrible it was to be rolled up in salt water when wave after wave tried to keep me for itself. Every year I’ll still return to the sea to collect shells and feel the water hug me after I had been away so long. As if nothing had ever happened. As if the scar on my leg was a peace offering from the coral reef after I intruded its home with the knocking of my body as the waves unabashedly threw me down.

I’ll admire cacti too closely even after hours spent fighting the burn of invisible spears after they tried to warn me that they’d prefer to be left alone and that that’s how it had been for their fathers and their fathers’ fathers. For centuries they had needed no comfort other than the reflection of suns and moons on a desert floor.

But I was born with a curious heart and curious hearts might seem brave but all they really are is scared of the unknown. I could fall from every treetop; I can feel the trickle of regret after trying to open a can with a knife. I could learn my lesson the hard way after stretching my pupils to take in more of the bright lights I can feel moving under my skin. I could feel the cold burns of Loneliness every time I re-invite it back into my bed after finding out you are just the same as everyone else. That all your words had an expiry date and now every thought of you curdles in my stomach. There was no warning, no sourness pinching at my tongue, so I swallowed you whole and now you’re eating a hole right through me.

You make it look so easy. And I was a fool for you.

But darling, I'm easily fooled.

Luckily nothing opens your eyes quite the way disappointment does.

Pink Balloon

And now this brown leather couch has become the symbol for everything I've grown to miss over the last week.

The fact that you're away and how much I miss the way we sat here and laughed and maybe nearly cried even though neither of us would be brave enough to keep eye contact long enough to notice. How I took comfort in your silence because you didn't want to burden me with your troublesome thoughts. How we spoke of each other only in profanities but we both know we mean the world to each other. How I've never felt closer to someone by just sitting in front of the television with a cup of hot chocolate. I love you like a sister and you've become one of my favourite souls to encounter, like a thousand year-old willow who you could get wrapped up in and lost between the different threads of vulnerable, green plaits. I just want you to come home so I don't have to look for you in traces of cigarette ash left in the bottom of our teacups or salt left in the fridge because your life is about playing tricks on yourself. We could play tricks with a magical Moose and rule the kingdoms in our heads because I'm going to be here through it all even though the fridge is screaming at you for letting all its coolness out and I'm screaming at you for never being on time and you're screaming at yourself because you never manage to get your hair quite the way you want it (even though you'll still always be the prettiest girl in the room). So now I sit on this couch and I have the comfort of this blanket, but I miss your pacing around the kitchen and your smoke cuddling up to our bedtime cup of tea.

I'd follow your advice even if it led me to the scariest corners of my frivolous soul and I'd share my shade with you even if part of me got burned. I'd leave the party to put you in bed after the devil offered you candy. And I'd never judge you, not a single moment, not ever.

I love you, faglet.
Come home soon<3

A Letter To My Darling - No.3

It’s like some days you’re there and some days you aren’t. I remember seeing you when I looked outside my window and when I looked again, I realised it was only a cloud. How wonderful it would be to just float above the mess of people on the ground too busy to look up. But I find myself looking up more than looking ahead or behind because the sky doesn’t lie. When it’s angry, you can see its burning troubles showing up in grey. When it’s happy, it reflects what I’d imagine a newly painted nursery to look like after the parents couldn’t express their joy in any other language but colour.

When I think of you I see red. It seems so fitting – the colour of a rose, passion, lips after they’ve given into the hunger of spilling their secrets onto another’s tongue. The colour of caution. But why would we listen to caution when what we want is right in front of us, hiding in a bathroom stall, hands burning to dance on each other’s skin. I would have painted your whole body red that night.

Another cloud, only this one is shaped just like the beauty spot you have on your jaw. I jump up and grab it and for a second I remember what it felt like to have had you and lost you all at once. That’s all there is to us, to everyone, is things and how long we can keep them for before they’re lost or given away or stolen or seeped into the ground the way I spill out my words as if there were no consequences. Sometimes I don’t care for consequences but truthfully, I’m scared stiff of them. I always thought I had the most irrational fears: ghosts, words, that sinking feeling when I realise I’m alone right after having been in company. But the one fear I can’t seem to dub foolish is the one of the day we will realise we have nothing to say to each other. Nothing that has any meaning, just words empty of intention or feeling. Especially since I think and see and write about you with so much feeling.

And sometimes I feel like a passer of time.

And sometimes I wish I could have a straight stream of thought, less confusing for me and for you and I wish I could always make sense so you could read me easily. But I’d stay awake all night reading to you while you dreamed of things I wish I could see. Then write about them in poems and read them back to you when you woke.

I wish I could wish these things knowing you wished them too, like when I told you it was 22:22 and I wished for you.

But there are no more clouds in the sky now and the only traces I’ll find of you are the wet kisses against my bicycle’s wheels as they tread through puddles on the way home. Such a sweet sound it makes, like giggles from little girls when they realise falling down doesn’t always hurt.

I know it won’t always hurt. I know that everything happens for a reason and I know that nothing is ever truly permanent.

But if I could, I’d leave permanent kisses on your cheek.

Yours in wishing,
Jenique

Intentions

There are days when I sit down in front of my notebook, full of intentions. I look at the thinned-out black horizons that separate the sunrises and sunsets of the words that could see morning or never step out of the shadows. The broken railroad tracks over words underserving. Undeserving of who, I don't know. Maybe my future self? The same girl who wants to believe in the good of everything except her own fortune and ability.

It's hard to swallow that my biggest fear is a few moments from where I am now. That I'll wake up and set fire to who I was  before I put my head to my pillow. Sometimes I can't stand finding myself splattered across a page, pathetically claiming to have felt things and been a part of something that will periodically crawl back into the bottom of the kettle and ignite the next time I'm shown the slightest bit of heat.

The sound of ballpoint turning into the ticking of the extended arm of an analogue race.
A word.
Words.
An underground stream of dirtied sentences.
They show up sometimes without digging, sometimes only after finding the roots of century-old trees wrapped around my neck.

I hate words. I can't live without them. I hate words but if you asked me where I was from, I'd dive into worlds made up of previously scribbled tales from when I was scared, when I thought I had found love, how I had burned myself so many times before and how I'd imagined my future to be something everyone would read about.

Truth is, I read my own writing in song form but still find them unworthy of a harmony. Maybe all we are is a sad song, subjectively made positive by the five year old girl whose joy is found in licking the gaps between her fingers after eating ice cream without a spoon. That girl used to be you and maybe she used to be me, only now we couldn't bear being caught with our tongues out. And I can't bear the thought of writing another word.

Because I hate words. I hate words but I can't stop writing them. I look at my pen and I see myself edging towards you the way the ink makes its way to the page end. You're my punctuation; the comma in my breathing, the ellipsis in my hesitation to touch your hand. I could do with a world without fullstops but I think I'd miss the moments just before you've decided what words to say, the words you hope won't hurt me, but the words that are as inevitable as the fullstop that follows them.

Sometimes I sit down in front of my notebook, full of intentions. "This time I won't write about her," and sometimes I'll make it halfway to the bottom having kept my promise. But you're there, pole dancing around my 'L's and falling over my 'I's and you're racing my pen to the end of the page.

You don't have to run. We both know you'll win.

A Letter To My Darling - No.2

Let me start by telling you how beautiful you are. Wonderfully beautiful. Don't let anyone tell you differently.

I woke up with a heavy heart this morning. I had spent the night dreaming of you but not once would you let me see your face. I chased you around corners and through crowds to no avail. And then I thought that it was a sign, that I wasn't worthy, that I was just a girl who had words to offer in the place of kisses.

I could sit and look at your name on my screen all night but that wouldn't change anything. I'd think of things to say like how you make things better, even the taste of tea, or how I've had the impulse to buy a ticket home and remind you of our shaky breath the first time we kissed in your car. I keep thinking of what you said last night, how you wish you could reply without feeling bad and that broke my heart. Surely we should be allowed to say what's in our heart?

And then I realise I've said too much, like I always do, because self restraint is not something I can associate with you. No, when I think of you, I think of how we can find magic in the most peculiar of places. How we shouldn't brush something off before we've gotten to know it, the way you've gotten to know me and found comfort in my already flawed way of thinking. That means the world to me by the way, so thank you.

You really are beautiful. I can't stop picturing the way your eyes smiled whenever we found each other in the crowd and how our fingers weren't happy unless they were tied together. I'd spend my life sailing just to learn how to knot up our souls so no one could separate me from you.

I'm sorry your world is riddled with hurt and confusion. 
I'm sorry that this letter is drenched in melancholy.
But mostly, I'm sorry that I couldn't be saying this to your face.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. I can only hope that the sun will shine for you always.

Yours faithfully,
Jenique

A Letter To My Darling

Today I thought of you 118 times today. I know that because each time I had to remember to breathe. Then I thought about the number 118 and how the 1s stood side by side and then I remembered when you stood behind me and I could feel your breath on my shoulder. I liked the way they were equal, the way I imagined our souls to be. Sometimes You would describe a feeling and I could feel the way your heart was beating as if it were in my own chest.

Then I thought about the number 8 and how it was the most complete number I could think of. "You've made me feel more whole than I've felt in a long time," I remember those words and the night you said them and how you turned my world into the number 8 just by being in it. Now I see you, me, I see us, in every 8. Turned to the side, a symbol on infinity, the number of words I'd write for you until you came back to me.

So many moments passed that I wanted to share with you today. The way the weather changed almost as many times as I thought of you. How I wish I was sitting next to you on a couch while the rain kissed the windowsill and then how I wish we were walking through a park while we held hands and the Sun would tell us that happiness was something we had found in each other.

There was a spectacular moment on my ride home. As I turned onto the downhill, the perfect song came on and the clouds couldn't contain their secrets anymore and spilt their heartache around me. The moment their tears touched my face, I wasn't scared anymore, somehow I knew that things would work out and my feelings for you grew seven fold while I let go of the handles and trusted the winds to carry me to you. God, I wish that road didn't have to end.

But everything must end, the song, the rain, this letter.
We can't let that discourage us. We have to keep hope in our hearts that the world is full of spectacular moments and I have to keep hope that I will get to kiss you again.

Try not go to bed with a heavy heart tonight, you're the loveliest thing I've ever seen.

Yours faithfully,
Jenique

i have learned

I have learned that free will is still the most powerful force. You can't change it.
I have learned that you can make the same mistake over and over and still not take a lesson from it.
I have learned that being vulnerable isn't the same as being romantic.
I have learned that love follows the law of gravity - you can fall fast but it'll take longer to get up.
I have learned that words can fix a broken heart but they can't claim it afterwards.
I have learned that silence between two people can mean a number of things. Don't mistake it for something it's not.
I have learned that cars are better when travelling at high speeds.
I have learned that some playlists should never be burned.
I have learned that just because someone holds tight onto you, it doesn't mean they won't let you go.
I have learned that distance doesn't mean they'll be farther from your thoughts.
I have learned that you can find traces of her in every song.
I have learned that sometimes it's better to write about love than to feel it.
I have learned that happiness is fleeting.
I have learned that "but" can break your heart.
I have learned that just because you've stopped crying for two years, doesn't mean you have stopped for good.
I have learned that stolen kisses always come at a price.
I have learned that when you think something is too good to be true, it is, so run.

Run as fast as you can.

I swallowed the ocean in search of her beneath the waves. Now water spills from my fingertips and it gargles at the back of my throat and my shoes are weighed down like boats that lost the wind that used to fill their sails. "There goes that girl with the tidal wave heart," I hear them say.

My anchor catching on memories as I drag it through islands of good intentions. I suddenly realise that I've been looking in the wrong place, only to turn my head up to see her ablaze in the sky. "But how do I get to her?" I ask, "you can't," they say, "you were made to sink."

Continuum

I'm not even sure if this makes sense but I wrote it anyway and then posted it here and now you're reading it. Cool.

***


I don’t know why people are so scared of it.

Silence.

I think that’s where we discovered each other. In the silence.

She sat there, pouting her lips at the floor and I grew to learn that she did this when she was content, not when she was thinking of things to say.

So I sat there too, with my hand over hers, but with my fingers slipped between hers like keys trying to find the right lock.

I didn’t have to look at her, her face was stitched into the bedding of my mind and the sheets tied a rope down my spine – the first place I’d feel her presence when she invited herself in.

I’d never known anyone to be so there, so present in their being that you’d imagine her heart to be a forest – static but ever-growing – and I was sure that I could count the seconds between the blinking of her eyelids even with my eyes closed.

Everything she did echoed onto whoever was near her. People blissfully ignorant in their freedom of choice but they had no idea that it was no choice of theirs at all. They were the ripples of things she had done and when she stood still, you could hear the purpose escape them.

That’s why I could live in her silence. Because it was more than the absence of sound, it was the world re-wiring itself to fit our moments. How selfish of me to keep them all from their intentions, but how lovely she is, much too lovely for me to change that now.

The truth is, I’d watch the world crumble so I could hold onto this continuum of her.