like broken china

i.
i guess it is because these days
seem borrowed.
elusive and slippery like
dead snow catching my feet.

there is a disturbance in my reflection.
frayed with a stream of thoughts 
that translate into static in my ear
white noise at the most silent of nights;
white noise of the troubled.

cold air rises
in the tundra of my skin;
these shallow waters hold no more secrets for me.
the surface is black
leaving no reflections afloat
and no salt for the wounds.

courage, let me wade in
to the unknown
until i reach the depths
and face the risks
one never meets
when one is an island.

perhaps i will find answers,
in the waves, in the forgotten stories
of shipwrecks that have grown to become
beautiful, colourful coral kingdoms.

perhaps i will hear the sea sing, and finally 
be able to come home.

ii. 
i can hear it all when i look in.

these tears are tired, dipped into the
sunken contours that tell stories,
and emerge for the days that fail the sun.
they carry the troubles of a young woman
who feels aged like oak
and the guitar that mounts above the doorway,
rusted and mute.

they call me a saint,
but who am i a saint for? and what happens to saints who 
lose their cause,
and forfeit their sanity?

something has passed on to the netherworld.
it is weightless but it lingers,
the lost soul in our unseeing eyes.
maybe it happened in the dark of my womb
maybe it happened in a coffin of words i brought to therapy
maybe it happened in my mother’s dug up sorrow
maybe it happened in the waking nights of lashing grief,
in the spaces where our breaths catch 
and fall under our gaze.

a pile of shine, unnoticed and unscathed.

i know of its all-encompassing beauty,
i feel the burden of its hope,
so rewarding, so exhausting.
i keep the windows open,
so it is always within sight, 
but a framed perception is far less confident 
than the bigger picture, 
where i could touch everything with all of my being
to become all i was to be.

i walk out in joyful sorrow
memorising life
feeling every energy that surrounds me.
i feel like i live in the centre of a mandala
casting shadows,
and once you are part of, you are part of,
for this is a solid structure, a shelter for the broken.
it is my home, i have learnt to know its
nooks and towering pillars,
i have also learnt its escape routes
in case of an earthquake.

i have always been a cautious person.

gently, gently,
i lift my arms up,
and caress it all.
i stroke the wind,
i kiss the moon,
i hold the rain,
and i weep.

i weep for how beautiful and free it all looks
when you are standing at the furthest end of the spectrum
and this gravity is firmly holding you in place. 

iii.
my hands are shaking,
from conducting this orchestra
playing to the scores of my life, on & on,
the final note still unwritten.

my hands are shaking uncontrollably, 
but they cannot fall

not yet.

my sentiments are real,
glistening in the canvas of evening skies,
strange-like and refracted in the hum of the universe.
these sighing doubts
keep me chained within my own reach.
i believe my heart is shrinking or
maybe it is just the world expanding,
leaving me behind.

the walls are heavy on my eyes,
and all i want to do is sleep where my fears hide, 
lying just under my breath, within orange 
peel and chocolate wrappers.

the hours do not seem plausible,
ticking away like mockery
moving at a pace unparalleled to mine.
i don’t remember how to realign.

this is familiar, but not the comforting type.
i cannot be comfortable here.

i cannot become numb.

where are we, amongst the haze?

i.

this is the most intense i have felt,

looking into the realms of his eyes,

to see everything.

everything my life could be.

everything my life was.

he blinks, and i am now;

we look out the window at a dawning sky

and fall asleep together, the first of many more nights

of his touch tracing the map of my skin,

and a kiss on the curve of my back.

he is there, in that moment of golden dust,

all-encompassing, in full embrace

of all life gives to him,

because he understands that with the worst

you will find the best you can ever achieve,

like how i’d fallen through the cracks and stayed down there for a while

with splinter thoughts and memory minefields 

until nature called for me to seek light,

a photosynthesis of consciousness that has long been 

left in the shadows;

i passed through the cracks once more

and found him, hunched over, 

scraping out his last splinter

and our eyes meet.

falling in love is entirely natural and totally uncompromising.

ii.

it is the darkest point,

he tells me. darker than the blackest night,

he tells me, strangled

in the knots of bedsheets, lost in the scent of stale 

cigarette 

he is trying so hard to become part of;

in the turn of nocturnal hours

he is as wide-eyed as the owls patterned across the covers.

he coils,

into the threads of his thoughts

until he becomes the bane of his own

the curtains are closed.

there is no dawn to rise with.

i look at my bare hands that have learnt

the contours of his face and i look into my own eyes,

in search of his pain.

he is not here, in this moment,

stray and mind askew, searching for 

comprehension even he cannot master.

i am here, 

waiting for happiness to find me in the centre of its palm again,

and what more can bring me closer

besides patience

and compassion?

iii.

the winds have blown

and the leaves touch ground

in delicate search for gravity,

the way i search for calm

at the end of heavy rain,

where the air is static and my emotions are weary.

he wakes to a brighter day

and looks into my eyes for comfort,

and the voices under my pillow and

hanging off the doorknobs tell me

it will save him if i learn to look away,

because he must learn

that his truest comfort can only come

from himself, and love must come from within

before he can connect with it 

externally.

but i cannot look away,

because i fear the worst,

and want the best,

so i look deep into his eyes

until i begin to stare and touch his all

with the purest of honesty,

until i find a nerve and prick it without notice.

the storms return,

torrential and unforgiving,

but i have faith in the sun

for i was born under its light.

iv.

i do not want to listen 

to the echoes of empty walls

and empty embodiment. 

these hands

there are changes in the weather

that lives in your eyes; we will experience 

a high chance of storm

but still,

the sun will shine.

the sun will shine where you soul has hidden away from.

these hands were your shelter

delicate, but firm

the lines told you stories of all you could live for,

and you’d grown to learn them like the map of our universe.

now you have gone astray, 

like a leaf amidst the wind, spiralling out of reach,

and i only hope you will not forget the contours of these fingers,

these cuticles that don’t quite fit around the nails

from bad habits that cannot be broken.

i forgave the hurricane,

when i learnt its ways and learnt to appreciate

the beauty of destruction;

i looked in, i sat in the centre of the hurricane

and heard its hum,

calm and peaceful amongst the forces that churned and unwound.

these hands are still your shelter

no matter which way you wish to run

and the paths will hopefully

lead you to where you wish to be held again.

these hands are shaking, but they will still carry you

and still do their best

to catch rain.

of patience, of urge

courage, take me where the deepest fears linger,

teach me to swim to shore.

there are eyes that glisten with the yearn

for hope,

and there are those that look 

away from where the light refracts.

my days are towed,

heavy and testing on the pull of my shoulders,

bearing the weight of expired minds behind heavy duty locks.

there are tears flowing from a broken pipe

behind the wallpaper, 

rust and pressure wearing it down;

it will not be long now

until the damp grows through the walls 

forcing the corners to curl and

shrivel

so the strong and sturdy, too,

begin to tire.

but all it takes,

is a fitting hand and the right tools

to straighten things out

and stop the tears from flowing.

notes for the beaten

the dust settles,

in the stagnant veins of your soul

and soon the spiders will

leave their webs

to find new home - then what will be left of you?

on a night like this,

i stand with my feet buried in the moist brown of the earth

and embrace the logic

that quicksand is merely an aid for the people who have given up

to disappear is a very easy achievement.

i take a step forward

and break the hold binding me to the grasp of the ground,

to disappear is a very easy achievement,

but what do i really achieve,

if i cease to exist?

the dust settles,

in the tire of your mind,

and i appreciate how fear has matted your eyes,

singing its lifeless songs as they were once my own to sing

and i stare into a rendition i know so well

listen to a masterpiece that once sounded its discordance within me.

hello again, dear friend

i remember you, and what you made me feel. 

why are you back, and residing so comfortably 

in the home of my love?

the scars differ, yours and mine, his and hers, theirs and ours.

but every dent has its purpose,

etched by similar thoughts, similar reasoning - or lack of.

our energies rise and fall in phase,

like how your negatives will never stray far from mine,

but it is our perceptions that enhance us.

we prolong each emotion as we age,

losing the ability to restore balance,

the way a child would when she cries over scraped knees 

then proceeds to fill her lungs with laughter

when her sister pulls a funny face.

so just as easily, your positivity will not stray from my own,

and i give you

through every kiss, every thought,

every touch,

every sleeping and waking moment,

the positive energy burning and birthing on the pinnacle of my entire being

and i will in turn,

caress and cradle the negatives surging out from you,

catching them as they plummet,

to restore whatever balance the world is missing from me and from you.

it is alright to embrace 

and take what life has to offer,

in all its entirety,

because choice can be such a selfish thing sometimes,

in such an open field of everything and nothing, don’t you think?

take a leap

with arms wide open;

somebody, somewhere

will always reach out.

the rain won't touch you

it is tender,

the traces of you that live in

the sheets, the door knobs, 

the curve of my neck and

the sprinkle of sugar spilt

on the kitchen top

as you rushed to make a brew

because you have no time to waste

in your clockwork life.

some days i will find traces of you,

in the dent of our couch,

when all is still,

and you are in the moment, 

with me,

caressing each second with 

pure, aching gentleness.

on days when the sky is

a tad bit too grey, my heart will sink

with your mood,

and i find myself framing the small part of a world

unfair to you on the corner walls

where the sun won’t ever touch upon.

you live in the soft of my mind,

where the glitches of my most haunting thoughts

are kept at bay

for the shine of your being.

the wonder of eternity’s rise and fall

is how easy it is to dismiss the

pessimism of a lover’s curse that everybody 

fears so much,

they fuel its presence.

but i, i dismiss it wholly every time i wake up to you,

smiling in its everlasting familiarity;

i dismiss it in the way my toes still tingle when our fingers touch,

when i still pluck out the stars that have collided in our love from the skies

for you.

they are milestones of an eternal love,

glowing from every intangible emotions we experience,

together, every film ending we criticise, 

every cookie crumble on our bedsheets

and every state of being we will ever feel.

i travelled the landscape of you

and found the site of flamboyant, frayed flags on bent poles

of those who had conquered,

so i sit in the chaos of what was once,

and hold in my hand the gentle breeze of a white flag

not to conquer you,

but to surrender to the colossal beauty

of all that is you

and all that is love.

you live in the soft of my mind

as i do yours,

and we unravel in unison,

becoming beautifully, succulently

and joyously

comfortable.

to a rock; you are diamond.

you used to be my hero.

maybe you still are,

when the days are violet and

i laugh at the way you used to dance

around the living room to Estrellida

and talk to the fishes; when the tears i drop

are not for you.

that is when you are still my hero.

it is appalling,

the way i have stopped

plucking out your grey hairs,

instead i cannot bear to look at them.

the way i have stopped getting your crude jokes

because the crude words have

sunken in and etched themselves

onto my skin when i was many times

their victim on the days your eyes are

black as coal and earth-less.

i remember embracing the tuck of your frown

and humming to your rants like they

are things to love,

and maybe then, my love was truest

because you didn’t need to be happy

and fit in my wants for me to love you this much.

my heart sags at a certain angle

for the stones of your heavy regrets

i inherit, yet these are not the kind of stones

we can surgically remove

or throw down a hill, because these are

the stepping stones i have acquired

in growing to understand the woman

who used to brave the world for me

and now sits in the dent of her pains

hoping for the world to ask her forgiveness.

you used to be my hero

and i feel like i am betraying you,

each day as they pass

when you make plans for a summer

you and i will not share,

but you make these plans anyway because deep down

you know they will never happen

yet you do it because it moves me

and gives you more to lose

when i too, become the tales of your suffering 

you will tell your sisters on the way to dinner.

today he said the way i licked my teeth after the meal

reminded him of you

and i was angry for the negative tone

but was i angry

because it was negative,

or because i didn’t want to be like you anymore?

i once wrote about my biggest inspiration,

and it was you,

because i loved every inch of you

and woke up to your words like gospel.

you will forever, still be the hero,

the inspiration. for you are

everything i loved

but everything i never want to be,

because growing into you has never looked so heartbreaking.

through the walls

it is a new kind of sadness

i carry with me,

like the overused plastic bags that have seen 

enough runs to the shops i so adamantly try to keep;

it is not heavyweight or bulky

but crunched up and sharp, slowly expanding with 

the weight i stretch it into each day.

it is a new kind of sadness

that finds me in bed, wide-eyed and struggling

with cold toes and incorrigible energies

sifting into the spaces of my centre,

catching me off guard.

it finds me calculating the meaning of happiness,

wondering where the equation went wrong in her mind,

where calculations are plenty but with illogical 

relative solutions.

it finds me listening through the cold plaster walls

to hear her yawn and remember

every distinct note and effort it takes

to be as tired as she is now.

it is a new kind of sadness

that finds me praying into the night sky,

for peace to fill her soul in a world too big for her

where some things cannot be possible.

it is the sadness that my tears can 

never truly explain and words become meaningless 

at the presence of knowing

a mother’s soul at peace

is hard to achieve as long as she is alive

and breathing into her cup of sorrows 

in the late of the night, clutching onto a demise 

that no chinese films or homemade meals

can distract her from.

i seek some rest 

in the soft of his shoulders,

in the reassurance of their words,

in the utmost reality where i am taught

to reach my happiness,

but there are too many hours in a day i have spent

thinking of her happiness

until it is mine,

therefore her sadness,

becomes mine,

but i do not have the strength to 

hold her life as mine to bear.

it is a new kind of sadness

i bring into a room full of comfort

in the walls with a sturdy door confining my tears within them;

a purple couch with a purple cushion i hold onto for dear life,

and a man who tells me

the sadness is not something i can

leave behind every Thursday afternoons, 

but it is something i make a part of me

and come to terms with.

to let go is to understand.

it is a new kind of sadness

that finds me understanding

the lack of shine in her forever eyes,

the sighs she lets out when she wakes

because her wishes for an endless sleep remain unanswered.

i understand the look she gives as she loses herself 

to the thoughts that live in shadows and comes out 

in the turn of the evening

because i too, have gone to that place

many, many times.

to let go of this,

is to let go of her heavy, heavy pain.

her day.

today, i miss you

not for your significance worth celebrating

but the outcome of today filled with

insignificance,

where you are hiding in the dark

and i cannot reach you.

i did not reach you,

and though there is a deliberate motif 

in this new reluctance,

i refuse to feel guilty anymore

for being too exhausted to try

because no guilt or regret

can make the dim light surrounding you

shine any brighter.

but it does not stop the sadness from washing in.

it is a reality i have to learn

to come to terms with;

this light that surrounds you

is not ours to hold 

for we have long been cast from it,

and no matter how brightly

it shines on certain days of the week,

you will always find a way to 

hide yourself within its shadows

but i cannot walk you into the dark of it any longer.

today, i miss you,

and it is a reality i have to learn

to face,

where we do not live in parallel spaces anymore

so i have to learn to appreciate you more

you in your past, your pained present and whoever you may become.

today, i miss you,

and this will be a new permanence,

but i will forever hold this eternal bond with you

on a mindful pedestal

for though you are slowly

becoming one with the dark,

i will shine my brightest light strong and glorious,

forever in your honor.

in eternal embrace

this dent is the result.

it is the effect from endless churning and

unmindful chaos in dark spaces of my choices.

it whispers to me the weight of the thoughts i aimed so 

carelessly towards a particular point 

in the core of my being,

now shaped to carry and sag;

it whispered so painfully i stopped

and finally listened.

the dent is the result of my self-betrayal

and urges me to push it 

outwards

and release.

release.

there are many ways

to conquer fearlessly,

and bring up a shield against

the waning days that loom over

and taunt; to conquer until their

contours eventually bow to your heavy demise

and let you flourish towards self-healing

in your own time.

courage is beautiful when it rests in the curve of your palm

and the shine of your eyes,

for the world will begin to grow under a brighter light.

i have learnt to understand the fine line

between the merge of everything and nothing,

to choose which side of the line

to ground myself.

i see the world in its entirety.

i caress the skin of each energy that surrounds me,

like a lover, like family, like a friend;

recognising the smooth marble textures of the dim and low that

makes me shiver, to the velvet warmth that glow and

fill me with gracious, all-encompassing joy.

i learn to be wakeful,

under the tired skies of a slumbering season,

embracing the patient, watchful steps i take

alongside time,

guarded at first, until i can find enough momentum

to hold its hand and run with it.

i believe in eternal life

and respect that i will not be able

to see the whole of it through my conscious being, 

in this skin i am wearing.

i let the rest remain a mystery

for the lives after mine to experience

what my innermost subconscious will carry on living

after my mind will have long

unlatched from my tangible state of being.

this is eternal,

but my body is not,

so i will nurture all i have

to grow to their full potential and learn to be wholesome;

to exist in the entirety of my life;

on the fine line between the merge of

everything and nothing

i choose to live with everything,

and exist amongst.

i kiss the light of love

thanking it for its presence

so constant,

in such ever-changing passages

and believe,

that there is a reason 

i have connected with threads i have learnt to tie eternal knots with,

the threads of life i have crossed over, entangled with, 

stretched on, laughed with, cried for,

felt intense emotions of both extremities towards…

what i own within my emotional depth,

is a gift,

so i cherish it dearly

and learn to use it to bring me light,

not shed darkness or

hurt to the subconscious path of my soul,

where all should be effervescent and 

passionately on fire.

for life should be effervescent and

passionately on fire.

always.