nails bitten black iii

Part III: acceptance of all that is.

my mind is a fossil, preserved and frail with the weight of the world soiling it to the depths of its buried, tired self. i am sometimes hollow like a shell abandoned, sometimes full like the entire existence of motion, sight, sound, smell, touch infiltrating every inch of everything we see and encompass around our lives. full of wonders, of hopes, of failures, of dreams, of questions, on wonders, on hopes, on failures, on dreams, on questionable existence of time and how it offers its own two hands to the entire movement of a galaxy. the idea of 'now' is a relative term, contemporary like its passing definition. it is hard to avidly keep your eyes directed forward, when we are racing through a mental track of an ever-changing constant. everything we cling to will move back within the trail of our lives and we will have no time to construct what we bring to a future, by focusing so much on a present that is settling to the past. i find myself breathless and panting like an old dog. time goes away, to an unknown destination. i believe there lives a portal under our pillows and in the skyline where day meets night; it takes and takes and takes until there is nothing left for us to offer. and then we disintegrate slowly, from outside in, until our souls have no more homes to crawl back to.

then we are timelessly free, like sand in crosswind.

the walls speak to me like they understand me. i shivered in the velvet blue of the night and my toes tingled. i admired the art of dying and how I went about piecing it together; the 4/4 heartbeat dissonant to chaos on my mind, pink echoes of parquet flooring beneath the stretch of my body, drawn curtains over an open window where I dangled my feet five storeys above ground level many a times with my back to mirrors that glared down on me. I can still remember the smell of an overheating computer, of iron and the colour of wine. it is here, where i stopped to stare into another world, numb and completely accepting. It is the mindset of somebody sitting on death's worn and bent couch but somehow i have carried it with life because i took it back. but unlike the chinese childhood legends i grew up so eagerly on, i did not meet the blind woman, i did not drink the soup. i did not forget the past when i was reborn. i was, instead, spared this naivety by learning to embrace that mortality was as solid as the wall i stare at for long intervals on days when i am dazed and separate to my body. 

what can i say? i adapt.

i have learnt to befriend pain, to learn its secrets and understand its cries. it has a stench like bleach but with a similar effect, it destroys and cleanses. it gives you the outcome you appreciate in the long run when your shoes have gone and your feet embrace soil. i have learnt to show it the way. i stop hanging my faces on the wall and wear them down until they no longer become disguises. this is a new age i have aspired to, when i can accept that things breach comfort and fall, teaching us to find salvation within ourselves.

the handmade blanket of colours drapes down my thighs to my feet. the cup of tea by my side is now freezing cold, numb like my mind as i look at what i believe is a synopsis of myself. i wonder where i can fix the loopholes, the gaping hollows of where i was once decapitated and carelessly sewn back on by hands that wanted to try too hard. i am a happy person, deep inside, in the core of layers and layers of selfish complications i bestowed upon myself. like a pulley, like a slingshot, the weight i carry tugs with determination the further i go, and it is the relief i get when i am lifted and let go to plummet down towards the core of my euphoria.

i listen to the sounds i hear when all is silent, for it is in silence, where secrets are loudest. sometimes, i listen for the songs of the cicadas by the olive trees of my grandparent's garden, and i hear them, distant and sad, ephemeral like the ever-churning concept of reality. i listen for the wind that catches between the wheels of my bicycle in a cool Manchester night. i listen for the dial tone to end and the first, minute, tired sigh of my mother's before she greets me with the romantic happiness i am grateful for. i listen for familiarity personal to me.

what is the permanence of this, other than life and death? everything else is subjective, personal, confusing - like passion, like fear. i try my most to stop anticipating, and embrace everything with the strongest passion i can conjure within myself. i will attempt even more so, to laugh at fear, for it brings nothing but the things i least wish to cross paths with, praying for the best and only the best, sometimes convincing myself that i don't deserve any less. i stare at the ceiling and crawl out from under my skin, dancing with air, fading with smoke. what is the permanence of this?

how many surfaces, i wonder, have i touched; a lamp post, the seat of a train, the condiments that make everyday things, that were once touched and loved by those now deceased in a forever slumber? how many moments have slipped past my consciousness, i wonder, when i was stood next to somebody i will never meet, who learnt my name and read my thoughts, maybe even touched my shoulder. it is an ethereal feeling of being able to connect with another dimension, another realm of living. it is almost like how i'd imagine to experience sitting cross-legged and casually hunched in the middle of a hurricane, when all that are destroyed are now a whirring, low hum of blur surrounding your small, solid levitational state of sacred sanctuary. i think i have touched upon the transcendental stems of my mind, and i will one day exert it to the surface and let it become.

i believe in the spirits, in the unseen forces, in the parallel universe, in the strange glitches we get out the corner of our eye when imagination runs too deep into the wild. 

i don't believe such transcendence like this can be a lie.

nightfall. the stars they call to me, so i respond. i am insensitive to the callouses of the world. tonight, i am at peace.

Nails Bitten Black II

PART II: appreciation of all that belongs.

i weep. 

i weep like a newborn, my senses screaming in exaggeration as i feel so many unsaid words and so much suppressed emotions seeping through my pores like osmosis. I feel.

i feel like the pollen of lavender being lifted by the wind, like the breath of a last chord sinking through the audience. i am overwhelmed and in absolute ecstasy because i have a life of everything i have never dreamt of but always knew i wanted.

my life is passing, and the colours are returning in paler shades of what was once a vibrant burst turned stale, but at least i do not hurt my eyes. i am soft violet. i think of the past and i sigh, in relief and tiredness. 

those days are gone.

those days spent under the dark of my table, 

they are gone.

those days.

those days locked in the bathroom listening to my divorced parents shout their realisations that no one but the person on the phone telling me i am unworthy and no, he is not bothered to make me feel better about myself is to blame for my waning mental health.

they are gone.

those days walking into oncoming traffic because that danger was better than the danger i faced when all their heads were turned except his, those days finding new wounds upon old inflicting from a failed attempt to reassure i love a boy who did not love me back,

they are gone.

those days contemplating hard on how this life held nothing but hurt for me, those days of my mother hiding sharp objects from me and my frustration because i couldn't even spread butter on bread, because she wouldn't let me hold a knife,

they are gone.

those days running under the rain, running away from myself, those days are gone and i find myself running towards. running towards a life i am learning to embrace, towards a soul who would come to save my life, eventually.

now he is here, whole and caressing to my wounded mind. he offers a soul who comprehends these intricacies, he offers the gentle touch of a man who, too, has learnt from pain, healed his own scars and recognises a scarred beauty not many can stare into the eyes of. he is broken like me, and we fit together at the jagged edges, effortlessly.

he is not one of those hollow, dented souls who cannot connect with the art of interweaving into a complex flowering, moving, living force of becoming one, who cannot level with the genuine beauty of nature sculpting our bodies to fit in unison. he is not one of those who want for themselves, his generosity and his compassion is more than i ever sought for. i would be deceitful to say i love him with all my heart, for not all of my heart is left. there are pieces i will no longer find, consumed and taken for granted by the undeserving, yet i love him so much more than i can contain. i give him the rest, and more, ready to gamble the ache of being heartless if i lose my entire being to the final person i will love forever.

i feel sorrow from the ugliness of words i reveal to you when i am beyond my happiness and resort to anger. i want to tell you this, even though i am aware that you already know. it hurts when you do the same, but i will remind you as you will remind me that it is alright to sometimes shed unwanted emotions and hang them out to dry, to take off the mask we wore like habit. we are our only people to show an entire form of sadness and complete euphoric state.

i can still trace the scar under the soft of innocent skin grown over, singing of a pain that did not only taint my physical self. but i do not flinch, i merely touch upon the words i have inked over like a bulletproof vest, and find beauty in what could be destructive to the purr of my mind. i feel, now, and it is sanity that calls to me like an old friend.

how i've missed you.

i am the tip of a needle infiltrating the skin and vein of the world, and i pray i am an upper.

i was once told the emotion you wake up with can pave your way for the rest of the day, and it is true, like looking in your eyes when i wake up next to you. i feed off the truths i read behind the emerald and earthy glint of your soul-searching pupils and begin to believe in a future. 

the future is like a black pin on a black rug, like dust on a clear day, it can be lost if we overlook it, so i promise myself to watch it from the corner of my eye. there is space in my soul for the future, as long as i close the door of the past and learn to look the other way. i can be an artist now, holding a dried up paint brush over a half completed canvas. i can be a writer now, and fill the notebook at the bottom of my bag. i can be whoever i want to be now, because i have finally let myself go from the ties of what once asphyxiated me. i have a hand to hold, and it is a firm grip.

this is a big world, and i am only small yet i feel i am starting to grow into the character i am meant to wear. excess it is not a bad thing because one can never be too full of life.

Nails Bitten Black I

PART I: anger at what shouldn't be.

in a fetal position, i call out to my mother. i am scared and vulnerable, i convulse and stray from where all is calm, where my thoughts do not overlap nor overproduce. self destruction is a clinical satisfaction. it is the willingness to push the boundaries like children scraping their knees before knowing some things cannot be done without getting hurt. the walls, the sharp edges of everything i can trace my skin upon and shards of broken glass and blades are my friends and also my worst enemies. i had nothing to be ashamed of, until i fell in love and gave myself reasons to change this. i am a parallel soul to the one in love, the one that takes the brunt of words like "i do not believe you", just like the day a creature from the darkest cracks of this world who took and took but never gave turned to the whitest fractions of my soul, of my virginity and branded me a deceiving piece of meat, used and reused, a blatant mockery of the purity i had to offer. it took and took and took but never gave until i gave in to a fictional sin and believed the worst of myself that was once never there.

i found it at last, the poor quivering, frail leftovers of my soul, under the demon's foot as it sat back gloriously on a throne of abuse, and scraped the ragged, crumbles of what was left of my life out of its reach for good. i have never wept much when thrown upon physical pain, but the pain that churns a thousand seas from the tundra of my eye is the pain that you feel long after the bruises have healed and the scars have settled.

the past shakes me, like the earth does a bridge when it moves a muscle.

i have spoken about this demon i once thought was a man many times. but the fear of what i felt never goes away, and i wonder if i will eventually find some logic in these occurrences of my mind, like the way morticians will look at a cadaver and understand. 

i feel physically and mentally ill from all the time i waste reminiscing of these horrible nightmares that i wished were only nightmares. i begin to read The Bell Jar in this mind state and know i will not forgive myself for the end result. how do i expect to feel more than this when i so willingly feed myself only the negatives of what is meant to be full of colour? i feel like i have lived a thousand years with all the memories repeated and compiled like a loop on a tape. i believe i am as old as the holy tree in my childhood Sri Lankan temple, as old as the mantras i meditate when i yearn for clarity in the centre of all that churns and yanks at my subconscious. i do not feel the way i should. i feel ungrateful, undeserving and meaningless. 

the days fall like grey snow, cold and uninviting. i find myself in a mind state of complete and utter spacial void. i am immersed into blank air where everything is discoloured and unexposed, like the first cellular form of life 560 million years ago. 

like the bottom of a deep, sleeping sea.

i sit and stare at the wall staring back blank and absent-minded. am i too busy being insane to leave space for anything or anyone else? am i, despite all my efforts to be open to everybody and everything, completely self-indulgent? i spend drawn out hours tapping on windows and flicking the light switches on and off like they can provide meaning to something i am looking for. i am heavy like the cigarette smoke lurking in the bare spaces of the bedroom as the words that do not sound like mine form shapes on my mouth, open and moving silently. i am at the peak of being totally and wholly shattered. physically i can feel the words tugging at every nerve of my body, and it hurts to move away from this, so i twitch. i twitch and sit perfectly slumped. i look like i do not fit in this world, and i try not to puke.

this is one of those down days when you are sure every bodily part connect, because my guts and mind are screaming harmoniously.

times like these, i would rather sit at home and speak to nobody. i know that beyond the loud, creaking front door, are genuine people who unknowingly put me through the torture of being asked if i am doing fine, and it gets awkward after a while because i am sick of lying in such honest situations. i'd like to say, no, i am not fine. i am not fine because sometimes, i am scared of everyone. sometimes i am scared of the streets, scared of gender, scared of race, scared of voices, scared of living things, scared of inanimate objects that are higher than me, scared of cracks on the pavement, scared of moving shadows, scared of my genitals, scared of human nature, scared of myself for feeling such fear ever since my body was thrust upon selfish, unimaginative, undeserving souls that are many in this world. it is a truth that is black and harsh like charcoal, haunting the deepest corners of my jagged, stark mind.

so i would rather sit back and wait until i feel fine. then i try to connect. i touch people in different ways; sometimes i touch with a fear of being returned the favour. i have touched and plunged headfirst and wide-eyed into the unknown, too, uncaring of the hurt or happiness that will dawn on me eventually for trust is naive, like a child's dream. i am a walking hypocrisy, dwelling deep within the calm of colours and supernatural energies, yet entertaining the sly watch of disturbances, until i find myself going on tangents that wind me physically and freeze my senses. it is not a healthy mind i own, but i am glad it is not stagnant like mosquito-infected waters and puddles of dead rain.

i wear myself out, but at least i never break, like my father's favourite shoes, like my lover's red bulb.

bending sideways

I am drained with what I do to myself. 

I try very hard to make the ends meet beginnings, 
So I do not fall between the gaps of a stagnant being, 
I try very hard to keep my world from 
Quakes and a faceless pain, 
Pushing plates down until they have to crack. 
I still lose control of myself 
And I still lose control of the love I 
Try very hard to place in your hands 
For your keep, 
It is sometimes such a struggle 
Watching you look at it and frown at its 
Sudden obscurity, 
Like you sometimes cannot comprehend 
All I give to you. 

I still lose control of myself 
With my sick paranoia and 
The body of a sore, sore mind 
That never has enough time to rest 
Because of all the time I owe to the world 
As it swallows me by the seconds. 

I will wake up clenching my head and 
Writhing down the sheets now 
Drenched in sweat 
And tell myself "it's just another day". 

I bent forward and move around the slice of happiness 
I have been chewing on for its succulence, 
letting the taste gradually turn bitter before it slides down my throat into 
Thick, black drops of disguise, 
Like liquorice. So I bend 
backwards and wonder why I suddenly feel 
Top-heavy and unsure if 
everything is alright. 

There are days when I don't need to force myself to smile because things are 
A perfect fit 
And you will look at the love 
I try very hard to place in your hands 
Pulsating and growing for space bigger than 
Its own capacity, 
Like you've known it forever. 
And then there are days when I will really 
Really, really wish I was 
Better. 
For myself and better for 
You, 
And wished for a second 
I remember what it was like to not care 
When people walked in and out of my life. 

Detachment is something I can easily do with death, like acceptance, 
Like a friend I have known but never met for a long while, 
Yet pick up from where we left off 
At the next encounter. 

I cannot detach from you, 
For you are the familiarity of now, 
And I cannot make you the familiarity of 
Forever, 
For you are more than a memory, 
Part of the entire being of myself I possess, 
For you, for the world, for my presence. 

I am drained with all the things I do to myself. 

The fragments of my mind 
I never piece back together for fear of 
Breaking again.

learning to breathe

they tell me the same things.

first it was the boy who never learnt to love

then it was my mother and third

was the look in my father's eyes when he realised

everything was wrong.

i know what it feels like to

wear the same clothes and forget the days of the week

dressed in my contorted rib and layers of fresh skin

where cigarette buds and pain once sought ground 

like friction.

i get uncomfortably warm

and sick in the gut

when i remember this

for i remember everything else,

like the seconds it took before his eyes went blank

and the hate from his words hit my skin,

the nights spent under my table with the lights turned off,

like the way everybody tried to remind me

i was not alone and eventually

it worked.

i will remember what day it is

and how long i have felt like

nothing, and i will remember my mask,

which i left on a pile of better-looking clothes

and light conversation.

i resent the smear of a smile that creeps up

when i digest the irony of them telling me 

she should get some help,

so ignorant to how i need it

just as much.

and i feel hate for them,

them who think they can understand what it is like 

to be broken.

i am transfixed by my own mood swings

and wonder what a constant emotion feels like

without the sudden urge to push inwards and

destruct from within.

they tell me the same things

first it was the boy who thought it was alright to hurt a girl

then it was my mother holding my head up

asking why i wanted to die

third was the look in my father's eyes

over my drained and wasted body

first it was the boy who continued to hurt the girl

who wanted to die

then it was my mother on the other side of the bedroom door

hiding knives from my view and screaming at a depression

she knew so well

third was my father giving me pills i never took

and pinning me down in a room as i screamed at his

yearn to understand my pain.

they tell me the same things

like they know better than

what it is like to piece your own pieces together.

first it is the boy who deserves hell,

then it is my mother wishing her years away,

the third is my father wishing me well.

the fourth came in good time,

searching for the love i was capable of giving. the fourth

shelters my pain from a world too big for me

and taught me my own strengths. the fourth is a boy who 

knew what it was like to be broken

and respected the importance to think

different as he told me the same things. 

the fourth is a boy who understands

the only way i can get through the hate and hurt

that aches inside me is to love. the fourth changes my mind

and wishes my depression away

in ways he is not used to

because he knows i do not deserve it.

i know what it feels like to watch disasters from afar

and up close,

i have done it for years, 

from the day i understood the pain in my mother's eyes

and the comfort in understanding something i will grow to inherit.

if i remember the motions through it all clearly,

i promise i will turn out alright.

the hatch is open

i dress up in yesterday's clothes

and feel the weight of the pain i left on my sleeves

the bane of my mind on the loose strands clawing on my skin.

i am tired, in body and mind, my entire rattling being,

hearing whispers that seep out from my sleep,

from the core of my thoughts when they are unshaken and still.

i do not respond to them

because something will break, otherwise.

i speak to my mother, putting her mind in place

to feel like i am still capable of healing broken souls.

i cough up my regrets and too many words said,

trying to retch out enough until there is

nothing more left in me to dispose of,

and begin from the outside in.

sometimes, you need to deconstruct matter

to allow creation,

and as i look out the peep of the window,

i find a world not meant for me

looking in

and decide that the only way to forfeit this pain,

is to forfeit this world,

collecting the leftovers of its leave,

to fit under my shoes.

only then, will i be able to lay new skin

over the wounds that are now

stark and open,

like the truths i never learnt to face

in my reflections.

no place for a tarrorist

sometimes the air will thicken and compress on my skin

locking me into a most shattering fear

by the emergency exit of a bus or a tram

the backseat of the taxi back to you

or walking around the corner

that a stranger will leave death for me 

to endure. i will remain restless and scared for 

the "i love you"s and "i'll see you soon"s 

i forgot to take with me that day.

i will think about death again

and remember the last conversation i had with him

whilst i lay on my mother's lap wishing it all away

as she prayed for all the love and protection in the world

to save a wretched child like me.

i will wonder if the world would've carried on

or slowed to catch a breath at my leave,

realising things will be as black as it is white,

for the lives i have touched,

for the lives i have not,

and the greys will seep into the lives i will touch with my journey on.

the trees will still grow to greet May,

the day will still remain grey,

in search for the sunlight it promises,

the nights will continue to steal

the warmth of our bedsheets and it will

leave you cold and shaken.

passer-bys will mourn the morning news

and forget it by evening for their own lives to lead,

friends and family will weep and soon find a time

and courage to share stories of a girl who they once shared life with.

they will lay their heads down to sleep a good sleep

but you will not be ready and feel the most

indescribable pain i would never hope for you to feel.

so i learn to watch my steps

and get angry when i trip on my mistakes

slowly grasping the importance of life and

and the permanence of impermanence

and the beauty of things that can be misplaced,

misconstrued, misheard, misjudged, misled.

missed.

many wept on the twenty-second of december last year

because they still saw dawn and felt cheated

but i woke up with an embrace of the sky

that shone on our three hundred and sixty-six days

we built from our own two hands.

death can be a friend

if you know he is a fickle one.

i haven't spoken to my mother in days

and this is wrong

as wrong as smoking five cigarettes too many 

before six in the evening.

i have forgotten myself

by a bus stop or under a streetlamp somewhere,

therefore i have forgotten my place,

waking up for thirty-six consecutive days from dreams

that make me dislike what i see when i see myself,

so i rely on your eyes and everything it touches on

when you look at me.

the rain is pouring again,

because my soul is weeping

for the strength it needs for the both of us.

for the strength it needs for the both of us.

alone with four years ago

Within an hour, I have wept seven times.

My most productive thought so far
was counting the seconds somebody will call for help
if a car ran me over.
And if nobody did
will you find me?

These thoughts are familiar, they have plagued my mind
many nights for a long time
until I met you, until I was given more to think about
instead of car crashes, of late night wanders, of escape.

But these thoughts scare me, they push me in
and make me weep like a child with scraped knees.

I cried for all the beautiful things
still trying so hard to shine a light on me
sitting in a corner where all is shadowed and refracted.
I cried for the moments
that make my heart skip a beat
and my insides erupt with ecstacy,
the moments I feel so strongly
every now and then
like the hint of sun in these ungrateful Manchester days.

My body is drained and metaphorically
out of proportion but I cannot sleep
because the sheets feel different this morning
and the walls are breathing down my bones
giving me shivers even the coldest night out
could not.

I cried for a day of
too many cigarettes and
too little food. Of nausea, of strain
of weakness.

The side effects all seem too familiar
and I feel them just from watching
the healing process of a genuine soul
slightly jaded and restrained
and I feel them so deeply
because I cannot contain my emotions in a box
even though at times like these, I should.

I learn to steer my thoughts for my own keeping.

I cried in greeting to the next six days of the week
steadily turning into a blur of selflessness,
of commitment and obligation, the next six days of
not enough hours to lie in bed
and wish for nothing
because even my days are now not my decisions to make.

The best of times are when I am in your arms
shaking my head at everything I feel now,
because we promise each other things always get better
and they do. Always.
But I cry today because you are not here
and things are not better
and no leaflets or photographs or cigarette buds
or mantras can shake my momentary loss of balance.

I weep for the happiness we bring to each other,
scribbled on crumpled paper and locked in glass bottles,
for the hurt that it all mistakingly latched itself upon.

I have to remember the ability to recycle these useless waste of feelings.
I have to remember the ways of an expert healer,
of closure and of resistance.
I have to remember how to withstand feeling sick and tired.
I am sick and tired.

So fucking tired.

Within an hour, I have wept seven times.
Four times for good reason, three times for
all the pain this world brings with life.

the days we never wait for

these are melancholic times,

wrapped in dried tears and torn laughter;

a sincere smile, a beautiful stagnancy,

like diamond drops on cracked windows 

after rain, heat rising from beneath earth,

the aftermath of a stretch broken,

lingering over like a constant hangover.

my mind, it ripples like stoned water,

musing on how perceptions shift with

waves of emotions, but never time. 

my eyes are tired, the blackouts blazing past

the shine of my light,

greying everything in sight.

a parquet soul, linear but easily scarred,

i sit in the centre of all that touches me,

a mural of my memories,

and i watch from afar,

when you touch me from the inside

because our happiness is sometimes worth

standing back for to admire;

i believe that much that it won't just

wilt and fade away.

this is the beautiful stagnancy resting on me

altered and obscure,

and i get scared sometimes,

like a sleeping child in reach of colourful dreams

because everything else is so

goddamn monochromatic.

i watch our struggles through the best of times

from afar, counting back fourhundredandthirtyseven days ago, now

fourhundredandthirtyseven days on, feeling as tested as the twelve cuts on my hands.

carry me with the strength left in you

for i cannot carry the weight of our entirety,

but i will carry yours, and set mine aside

for you, 

because i trust in you to believe, too.

this is an uneventful feeling,

what twenty eight days can do to us,

with a string of bad sleep, bad health, bad timing.

bad thoughts.

i can sometimes taste the fear

at the back of my mouth, dry and

uncouth, teaching me familiarities

of the fallen like a second-timer.

the things i gather start to ache

and stain the hoards of happiness

i bring in baggage, so tried and pushed to the limit.

the shadows in the day have begun to shadow me

like mirror image. i am sad,

mind as blank as the road i stare down,

forfeiting all thought, raging a war that is so

sickeningly and obviously self-inflicted.

i look into your eyes,

and see myself, worn out and stripped down,

knowing i will never see 

the better version like you do, because you 

make me feel stronger than i really am,

even through the harshest gush of unwelcoming friction.

these are melancholic times, like a mother's weep

and my shaking hands.

tell me,

will it only lift up from here?

my favourite phase

I carry this much talked about weight

once again,

like a catch of breath above my diaphragm,

it is difficult to get used to this,

like bags that never get lighter with time

and rich food you always leave unfinished

but keep ordering anyway.

I take the same route home everyday

and begin to notice things that

never before touched my sight

like which pavements accumulate the most puddles,

the regular accordionist's second favourite spot,

the time it takes for the bus to pull away from Sainsbury's,

and the number of steps before i reach his doorstep

depending on my mood.

sometimes i wonder what would happen

if everything ends and i never got off at my stop

and carried on

like a role i have never played before.

in life i have earned so much,

and lost more.

like the smiles i could've given my mother

in replacement of slammed doors and cold dinners,

like the virginity i shouldn't have saved for someone

who never saved his violence,

like the friends i would've kept but let fall out like

loose waste off a truck,

like the passion of my hands and my heart when i created,

like the happiness i scrapped as an end,

made instead as a prologue,

like the life the students from my school would have

that i chose to walk away from,

like the life i once chose to walk away from.

i listen to songs that used to play

as i dangled my feet out my bedroom window on the 5th floor

never really believing i could fly away from everything that

ached

and wonder if i would be able to take it now

if i ever felt such pain again.

i lost that too.

'don't change' she says, and we laugh

knowing it is easier for her to say

than for me to do

and wonder how much hurt i will inflict in the process

of standing still when the world keeps pacing

ahead.

sometimes i cannot keep up,

but life really isn't something i want to lose

entirely.