listen.

listen.

listen to your pulse thunder through the shield 
listen to your life dislodge into fast forward 
then see it past you, this pulse that distracts
from the calm that you stoically wrap around your naked being
the paper thin sheen like muscle tissue pulls
at its most tested stretch, the risk of tearing
the risk of 
snapping
uncoiling
unraveling
unraveling
unraveling
unraveling.

listen.

listen to the silence, wait for it to deafen you
wait for it to vacuum you inwards 
spinning like a hurricane that settles for less than a hum
listen to it as it pulls at your pace
as it lingers around the corner
as it shouts
angry and loud
angry and loud
this silence is angry and loud
when you hear it from the outside
because you are always waiting
waiting for it to pass.

listen.

listen to the waves of reality
crash over you
a tidal free fall where you slip into the undertow.

listen.

but don’t stop moving.

the channels they switch off

the phone doesn't ring because i matter today.

the colours don't match from my skin to my shoes;
i am an unwashed palette
murky and lacking form.

my words taste sharp and sound rusty today.

i forget to place my pain into the melodies
that stretch over guitar strings
it begins to seep out in my godforsaken
muttering echoing the demise of an eighty year old woman
who has forgotten her place in the world.
it begins to seep out in the dull of rushed smiles
in the strain of my left shoulder
under the words that remind me day in day out
that there will always be room to become unfamiliar to myself.

words that make the silent screech
words that bring the dead back to life
words that send the monsters scurrying under beds
because they too need shelter from wrath.

the lies that wake with me are not mine to bear today.

they are the lies that belong to the ones who
left us behind, and i am angry
for this ugliness i feel does not sit well with the beauty
we summon so naturally on better days.

it is a sad revelation
of trying to convince an unbelieving world
that in finding you, i felt less defeated
yet the world tries to even defeat
this prize of years and years of self repair.
why
is love so abused?

today has been almost half a year of
an unhinged grief
that swells from the fires
of contorted paranoia
of tampered memories.
i have witnessed enough
to want to not witness it all
but to live it all.

i am not a victim of anything else
but this shameless blame
you fucking cunts.

we do not want this throwaway life
so many live
choked with ungrateful resonance
we do not want this life that hangs heavy
on the slump of my pillows
and the strands of my hair.

the lies had long begun before i was born.

there was never a time or place
before you
when i got the right answers
from the words of another human being
because there will never be an answer
honest to a question that surfaced from within myself
from people who never latched on to collective
consciousness, letting themselves become shells of
collected information.

sometimes
i am the eighty year old woman
and it is always a lesson to be learnt
to never listen to these thoughts
because thoughts never listen to me
they only rant and rant and rant
and rant
and most of the time
they don't even make any fucking sense.

sometimes
i am already dead
sleeping in a paralysis that even stuns you
as you sit by my side
fearing the state of cold blankness
when i open my eyes and do not
see you, for i do not see me

all i see in times like these
is the sheen of hate
that is not ours.

reality does not shift over my fears anymore today
and i do not shift over reality.

it is an ugly lie, fear
and people like us do not give fear that much credit.
when you are neck deep in its pool
and you are kept there with the mere idea of
watching the one you love also struggling for air
because then
no one will even attempt to float over with a lifeboat
this pool full of people too unfazed
to go off the grid that keeps them in line.

i do not want to be kept in line
but why is the alternative to become
deadweight thrust upon cliff shores?
why is it the norm
that though freedom is as priceless as its definition
but always highly contracted
when demand for redemption and imprisonment
is the only other option?
i do not want to be kept in line
but i do not want to be the ones they pick up
from the shores; we are not built for the news
and channels they switch off.

if i want to be unseen,
all i have to do is hide
under the waves
where the waters are calm
where all is dark
deaf and breathless to life beyond the surface.
if we want to be unseen
all we have to do is hide
but
why would we?