scratches


I am sad. Upset like spilled wine on white, 
like a stomach doing laps. Sad 
like an old lady left standing on a tram, 
sad like a child with a sweet smile 
who will never learn to use it. 
Sad like an empty shell, like the people 
who die alone. I am sad like 
Sarah Kane and my mother 
at their darkest thoughts. 

I write poems that astound people 
but it's nothing to celebrate because I have only 
ever done that when I felt the way I do. Undressed 
and naked from the happiness I genuinely feel,
left staring at whatever is left over. 
And everybody else is staring at it too, 
unsure of what to do with it, 
like a fish out of water flapping in their palms. 
Everybody knows, and I still 
don't know why I am typing laughter 
at every sentences in conversations 
- like it makes a difference.

I am sad because I have no reason to be. 
I am sad and I feel like I am imposing it, 
and I feel guilty because of this, 
so I get even more upset.
So I remain sad. 
Sad like the way he looks at me 
like I have shadows in my eyes, like the way 
they try to place a contagious smile back on 
my lips because my mind is
overworked and out on display. I am sad because 
I do not know when little things like buses and 
light banter and the lack of skins 
for my tobacco started getting to me and I
don't know which junction to take myself away from this. 
Sad because I don't know when the left overs of myself
began to matter more than my entire being.
Down like a basement tenants 
never use, like the bottom of a mountain,
the centre of a cave. 

It is obvious. 

What isn't obvious, is that 
I am happy. Despite all that, I am happy 
like the sun, like the father 
and son having lunch together, like
stumbling upon a sentiment you once 
thought you'd lost. Happy because 
I have somebody to wake up to, to
love and to comfort. Happy because I can 
still feel like I am alive. Happy because 
I am alive.

My mind is at its darkest but 
my soul is still light - where do I go from here?

Tired.


Can't I be tired?

Can't my eyes sink as low as graves,
Can't they shade their under skin dark?
Can't my body deteriorate and cause me pain
And set itself loose at the joints?
Can't my mind wander to the tip of the sea,
Can't it weigh me down and overwhelm?
Can't my senses be muffled and less aware,
Or accentuate with alarm into emotional disarray?

Can't I be tired?

Can't I be selflessly undernourished,
Can't I be helplessly weak?
Can't I be recklessly lashing,
And frighteningly coiling?
Can't I be foreign to the world,
Can't I be familiar nonetheless?
Can't I be afraid of nothing,
Or scared of everything?

I am so tired even my poem is tired and structured and stupidly
bland.

searching for buttons

I settle in the centre 
To give myself leeway of falling back 
Or moving forwards 
When a side becomes too heavy to balance, 
Because I believe I am a coward. 
It is comfortable like a purring cat on your lap 
And the veins on his hand under my fingertips 
When the time is right. 
I watch the sky tell me a story of 
Life as it passes, the many times 
I have missed it happen because I try 
To appreciate the closer things 
Like milkshakes, tobacco, the right films 
And the right dreams and him. 

There are cobbled paths 
on the journey to my heart many have 
tripped and stumbled upon for they were 
too used to easy living, 
But I have found one who has paved 
A similar path a thousand times enough to 
Push on. 

But walking the same road can get a bit colourless sometimes, even for the most determined. 

He shapes his shoulders and I 
Whisper a kiss on the middle of his back where 
The curves were made for me. 
I shiver at the touch of beauty 
In the closure of his eyes as he 
Drifts through a sleep so unperturbed 
As I fight the nightmares away. 

I like the idea of loyalty cards. 
Of how you 
commit every inch of yourself, 
and with every bundle of mistakes 
You can expect at least, 
Achieving something good out of it. 
Safe. 
Sometimes chances are the choices you make. 

Sometimes I smother 
And break concentration 
From the clog of his mind 
But I am impulsive and spend my time 
worrying if I don't tell him now 
Then I will never tell him 
And I will become the secret 
He never speaks of. 

So I give the choice to say more than 
He might care to hear and 
Be assured he has listened and the 
Choice is now out of my hands. 

There a several snapshots that 
Stay vivid in my memories 
Like learning how to swim 
And my cousin's ability to morph into an old man, 
Scraping my knees playing chase outside my uncle's house, 
And my soul scorched red from the impact of once colliding very physically with somebody who wasn't so nice. 

Some snapshots that 
May not be real, 
Like the man outside the gates on a stormy night 
Sat in with my cousins, 
My grandmother sat on her bed 
A week after she passed 
And the colours I saw when I 
Acquainted with the end. 

There are many chances that come with 
A choice but 
Sometimes the chances run dry, 
Like how I will not have the time now 
until Thursday 
To sew the buttons back on my right boot, 
To have proper sleep, 
To take a trip to the doctor's, 
To take the bins out, 
To make amends with time lost with him, 
To make amends with time lost with myself.

alone in a coffee shop


the things you learn about life are not gradual
like mouldy walls or a caterpillar's cocoon, 
the second lamp in my bedroom i never use 
and art with no timeframe. 
they come sudden
and obvious and permanent.

like the beep at the back of the kitchen that used to sit
just a little out of your hearing range and clockwork mind,
but now it ticks in time to your thoughts,
like how Matt Bellamy takes a breath before 
every line of a song. like how some people's voices pitch up 
at the end of sentences and some do not sing when they speak.
or like if you memorise what one person is becoming
you can predict everybody else.
the things i have learnt about life
has taught me to put aside my emotions
like the way i now recognise
and hear about foul profanities and intoxicating fear 
every corner i turn when i used to dismiss it with
solidity. like when my broken rib showed me ugly people existed
but their strength rebuilding mine showed me beautiful people did too.
and how pain used to never hurt because it was always there
but now it is only occasional like moonless skies and phone calls to my mother.

and how he always uses the phrase "it's dead good", 
because some things are better than life, and hunches
and kisses my lips twice before my forehead at night.

these are things i notice, and i believe
i don't notice enough. perhaps i do not notice the specific day
trees begin to droop and grow old with winter,
or how people walking in groups align their footsteps, though i notice mine,
or the personality of a child by the way they hold their arms 
out and touch you inside.

the things you learn about life are 
not always meant for keeps,
so you turn away and keep your balance,
like the hint of an old bruise or the wild splash of chemicals in their eyes.
like children who learn too early about death and sexual intentions 
and are not yours to teach,
or how some stains resist all the detergent you use.

like the night and days of clutching to my bed sheets
because i couldn't face myself and the world, or how for a moment as
fleeting as a skylark, he looked at me differently 
because he was equally as lost.

some things are not meant for keeps
because they will rot inside you and make you 
regurgitate their poison.

these are the few of many things in life i have learnt
that syllabus and five days a week never taught me
like the counter breaths he takes before his heart can settle
and the way his shoulders shake when he is laughing
the way i can move the shine in my eyes to a certain spot
to hide my disarray of thoughts.
like knowing you are allowed to get frustrated at them sometimes and tell them,
but still share every word and thought because they are your best friends.
how my sister does not know i can hear the tone
in her voice as she says things are fine when they aren't
and the way my dad doesn't have to smile for me to know he is happy
but took a tear from his eyes to know i once broke his heart.
or like the escalation to my mother's voice when she realises 
i am on the other end of the line and i feel complete.

some things i embrace,
some things i throw out to the pigeons 
and lost souls that search for meaning.
some things i let take me to heights i
never knew i could reach.

living the afterhours


sometimes i will feel top-heavy like
the empty shampoo bottles in my shower,
turned over and
ready to fall, desperately
screaming to be thrown away. sometimes his eyes
rage wars with mine until i am
like the flailing ends
of window blinds nobody wants to touch
for fear of causing more damage.

because he fears to break me.
so he wavers,
like white noise and faded tv screens
through my insecurities,
and likewise i blind myself
until i am worn down and discolored
like the photographs our mothers keep
of me and us and their shadowed pasts.

we will all do the same eventually.

sometimes i wonder how life can be
this bipolar, throwing me
in the deep ends of both
extremities where all is
as light
as dark
as the place sitting still
in the bottom pit of my body
where either rupture or serenity takes place;
pick and choose.

sometimes i look at my reflection
and like what i see, most often
not,
because there are never enough
expressions that can change with my mood
to keep it intact and easy to display.
like how there are never enough
seasons or words or time in a day.

and i get sick of the see-saws that
fluctuate space inside me until all the
contradicting emotions
confuse and cause wreckage when really
i just want to love.

it is 8.22 in the morning
and the storm is on fire
because i let it.

sometimes i can hear his heart break.

it is the sound of waves
colliding with horizons
and a sky of despair.
it is the song my heart, too
has long memorised.

i have a compulsive obsession
with rubbing on surfaces
until every single layer of dirt the world
had to offer wipes clean.
maybe it is because i believe fixing
what the eye can see will
distract from the depths of
every detailed leftover debris and clumped underneaths.

or maybe not.
maybe i am really just okay,
and my mind chooses to exaggerate pain.

but pain is no longer my sole familiarity
and it scares me when it drops by to visit.
it is no longer my home, because you are.
your love.
your tears.
your laughter.
your hurt.
your joy.
your soul.
with mine.

heavy eyes, they say it all


i cannot breathe.
i cannot think the way i want myself to think because my thoughts are running over each other and i feel every scar on my skin revisiting the surface and screaming horrors into my sleep because my mind is as tense as air molecules struggling for air in a stained, overused kettle before they take flight and 
evaporate.

i try to place radiance where there is dark
in every single fucking thing i do
because shadows can never form
where there is no shine
but i smother myself with so much
until i am stood too close to the light
and my own shadows engulf the entire space 
of my being.

i want to feel the way i deserve to feel.

i carry myself like deadweight
promising myself the meaning of all this.

sometimes i meditate to such heights
where i feel completely ethereal
but always fall to the constant comedown 
that resides in the depths of permanence
clogging my will and draining my sight.

i want to feel the way i deserve to feel.

there are days like these
when i try to face the world
because it is expected of me
and assume that if everybody else 
cannot see the girl that digs her nails into her skin and
tears her hair out and runs into walls
at the flight of insanity
this girl will soon disappear
but there is only so much i can exert
before i revert into myself
and claim recognition with this
familiar pain i try to disguise and
push out.

i tell myself there is more to life
and truly believe it
because of you and because of 
who i have learned to become 
when i am at my strongest.

but maybe i will only settle on the ease of
believing it in all purity
if i dare to accept
that without this pain
life will only be as meaningless
as my belief that i am in complete control of myself.

it is with pain
where life is shatteringly beautiful
and all i feel 
is worth everything.

i want to feel what i deserve to feel,
so i need to stop fearing fear
and face it
and fight it
until there is nothing left to fight for.

ode to the sleepless


i hit solid wall and
drift backwards.

the valley of emotions unravel, 
like loose string
caught on the crook of 
hope
fleeting pass

my skin is too tight for my mind
so i strip down to an inner orifice.

i run nowhere,
hitting blanks and
i undress the fabric
of my inner self
until i am all around me.

i felt unfamiliar,
dwelled too long
in the cracks my shadows
carved into walls.

i travelled sleepless nights
to a land i cannot live in,
so i stumbled along my footsteps
tracing the lines i drew and
never coloured in.

then there was a strange light,
trapped in the blinds of my eyelashes
drying from the storm,
and i found rainbows
in the shape of you.

i learnt to hit a wall,
only to fall backwards
into your entire being
and live in you.

i found in the depths of your body
the traces of me 
i absent-mindedly drew,
and ran to your mind until i
found the hues i long abandoned
from myself.

[i shine.
i shiver.
i soar.]