Silent Conversations With God #1

Dear God,

I've been having silent conversations with you all day long. Have you heard them? Have you felt the cracking of my voice despite my mouth not speaking at all? Have you seen the hopelessness in my eyes; wishing for calmer seas and not storms I am obliged to weather?

Today morning, I looked up at the sky and sensed you looking through me, too. 

Do I disappoint you? Or is it a mere assumption based on a subtle projection that I have it in me to both disappoint and be disappointed at how things have come to collapse despite my best efforts? When I come so far, only to hit the ground this hard, it disturbs all the sanity in me.

I am thankful and eternally grateful for Your blissful aura of protection that surrounds me wherever I go. I've grown a habit of crawling back to you in times of despair because in Your embrace I feel safer than a newborn in its mother's arms.

I've always believed in You, heartfully and devotedly. My certainty of Your existence was never based on proof or rules or logic; it is what my heart truly holds.

Going back home in an uber today, I heard your words in an audio on the radio, and I collapsed in tears like an unarmed helpless little child. 

There was another silent conversation between You & I. Because when I looked up at the sky out the car window, I'm sure you heard me, and saw how shredded my insides were at that moment, but I couldn't hear you back.

I heard nothing. Everything grew darker and darker, and I struggled to breathe.

Forgive me when I ask, if

“On no soul doth God place a burden greater than it can bear.” 

then why do these burdens weigh me down with the certain impossibility of my capability of carrying them any longer than I have? 

Due to the ongoing crowdedness in both my head and soul I cannot continue this written conversation. But oh, how I'd kill just to hear a silent response. And oh how I long for reassuring answers or unspoken relieving conversations.

Until then, I will stay open and aware. Though my pain has grown strong, my faith is still as profound.

Yours, sincerely, wholeheartedly and vulnerably,

Your child.

the humming of the birds
singing their songs of turbulence
the sky
so desperate
as every prayer is denied
you should've known better
when having heart-to-heart conversations with a twenty year old ceiling
witnessing it from the bathtub you were stretched out in, only sinking deeper into it
had given you nothing but more despair
to cover yourself up with.
a table for two no longer fits you
after all, you did not come here alone
a package of feelings
that is yet to be recognized
had followed you all the way.
you could've sworn you buried it home and kept it at bay
but little did you know
that its claws were etched into your body
and you carried it around like a backpack
foolish enough to think that if no one could glimpse it
then it will remain unseen even to you.
little did you know,
they are ignorant by nature
as opposed to you, suffering the atrocity of noticing too much
recognizing what hides under so many layers of thick wraps.
i dare not say a word
in the presence of the
bickering of both
my heart and my mind
it is loud enough inside
to let everything around me resolve
into background noise.
no coherence, no comprehension
just a bundle of irritating mumbling
that disappears only when i shut my eyes hard enough.
"at times like these, think of a happy memory" one of my good ol' struggling psychiatrists used to tell me
dear one, the only happy memory i could summon
was me going to sleep without hearing internal screams
getting louder by the second
i could simply fall asleep
knowing that tomorrow a new day will rise
but now, tomorrow seems like a foreign concept
i cannot gather up the courage to await

We are all susceptible to damage. When all is done, and all is corroded, we come to the very familiar, least pleasing realization that life almost always does more injustice than good.
But there's probably all sorts of damage in this world, some deeper than just injuries on the very  surface. Some open wounds you cannot just blink and expect to disappear.
Granted, you will suffer the atrocity of being exposed to the sudden deterioration of a life you mistakenly thought to be yours, when it happens to look nothing like the life you wished for.
Does that make you ungrateful? Or simply suffering like everyone else and refusing to settle for the pain you are obligated to ignore in order to make it till the day death grips you for eternity and for good?
But here comes the long awaited what-if. What if  you get to experience the known to be terrifying death throughout what seems to be your entire life?
To save you the unnecessary bickering of my descending thoughts projected onto you through my writing, I will clarify.
We are all susceptible to damage, some of which might be eternal, but as humans, we are graced by the blissful and foolish ability to ignore, and moreover deny. However, it is only fair to declare that some are better than others when it comes to ignorance and denial. Some can only pretend for so long.
For a happy ending to occur, one's life must be sculptured in fairy-tale form, and narrated by a soul so blinded by illusions, irritating manifestations of false optimism, and hues of duplicated sun beams. For such entities, reality does cease to remain for long.
But as for realists, and survivors of constant ruin, we tend to see the so-called bright side of things for what it actually is: rare, and almost always intangible. We know happy endings do not have much space to exist in our lives. And in the most sufficient matter of things, we are aware of the presence of silver linings to some occurrences, but that tragedy can always find a way to stain that regardless.
And as for those who had given up on life, forcing hope down our throat would be fatal. We know we are flawed in every meaning that word could possibly hold. We still, however, get to witness days of flickering light, and dim gleams. Promise that we do our best to hold onto that, instead of looking away.

and though the light behind our eyes is faint, we dissever only to collide.
and only through yearning for hope no matter how distant, will the war persist to subside.
violent it is, to fight, but remain still.
defy, defy.
deluding are those who in the face of fear
not burst to flames, but disappear.

Please do not let the impulsiveness
of your very heart
take over.
Please do not dream
or dare
go so far
from where the lines
are drawn for you
you'll end up
undone;
foolishly sucked into a sea
of volatile despair,
so defenseless
like poor Icarus.
A love not stained with fear
eagerly waiting for you to reclaim it
or have it crafted into the shape of whatever logic
left in the bits of your weary brain
stays a myth;
you fail to believe such thing could exist
in our land of reality.
Doomed to fall victim
to your worst nightmares coming into life,
taking form and building houses
on your crackling bones,
so uninvited,
you still, nonetheless, come to believe
it was you who inflicted this upon yourself.
Because after all,
he who does not know how to stay steady
in moments of condemned terror
will forever tremble at the sound
of proper romance
painted by all the lovers that once were.
And if you were to be held by arms
that surround your little body
like towers,
agonizing fears that resonate within you
against all security granted from
the heat of their bodies,
will never be understood to them.
So allow yourself to create
your own ocean of seamless reassurance,
knowing that the waves
might simply turn against you
any minute now.

It is the same exact ceiling
the same exact feeling
just the difference of thoughts
that separates this
from becoming
another vivid
flashback.
you wish you'd
decorate
the stillness
of this moment
with a borrowed
sense
of home.
because regardless of the countless repetition
of clear statements
you provide yourself with
to promise your own heart
that this place
is yours,
that it, against all false realizations of fear,
shelters you;
you still know better.
and haven't the deafening silence
gripped you long enough
to know that even with the thickness of the walls;
the hollering, screaming, and the defenseless cries
still can make their way to your very ears?
haven't you had enough fleeting years
seeking a feeling you know
in your heart of  hearts
you are never to be granted?
love that came too late,
acceptance you gave up on,
and the warmth
you begged for
as a child
still will not have
the four walls of a freezing place
turn a restless, seemingly endless
fight
into a home.
cry about it all you want,
seek shelter in different
places, empty spaces, or even
corners that can completely
hide you.
sing loudly,
let the music echo
through the living room walls
until it becomes impossible
to wrap yourself up in the certainty
that you do not belong.
you cannot conceal something
that is irritatingly brighter
than a mid-August sun.
every song you sing
is nothing
but a war song.

Untitled suicide attempt number one thousand.

My life is not dandelions,
or sunshine kissing
the roots of my hair.
It's a struggle between
suicide attempts,
and waiting for just
one
more
day.

It's hope, fleeting from
the palms of my hands.
And lungs, burning
begging me to stop.
And trust me, this is not
another sad poem of mine.
I am done.

But if life is never fair,
then God must be.
It's the only way
I won't get my heart
to stop beating.

Sorry for the Inconvenience

Those who stay away from what lights their fire, are bound to remain in agony, until all else fails and their pain resides for years, and so they find their way back to what could never dim their fire.

With trembling hands and a shaky heart, I write this to the person who claimed it to be a good idea to  read this. But most importantly, I write this to me, who had her ink dry and her soul restless, fighting to release the words her mouth couldn't. Two years of crappy, meaningless chatter in my brain, and I dare not write a single letter. 

Indeed there were times when I felt like my soul did not fit in this human shaped body. It all didn't make sense. I mean, the only thing that made me feel like all my systems were working together, hand in hand, in perfect harmony, was collecting words that belonged in the ashes, and creating something miraculous out of them. It all made sense; I was born to write.

Solemn and honest, it took so much bravery to be this fearful and still admit to the world that I'm mourning the death of my words.

But my dear past self, so much could happen in two years. Besides, you shamed me in all the possible ways, and reshaped me into a much smaller being, smothering my very bones with your never ending doubt towards me. I would lie if I said I didn't hate you for it.

There's this dusty old sad shelf that hangs on one wall in my brain. It's where I put all the things I beg myself not to think about. Happy to tell you that the load got so heavy, and the shelf broke. And the things I begged myself not to think about are fleeting out of me like crows that have been caged for a damn century. Now, I thought it was going to be ugly, but it turned out to be liberating, and a bit too excruciating. 

As a result of my shelf breaking, I declare to have found the matches that were able to light my fire once more. 

I thank my teary eyes for witnessing so much ugliness, and not deciding to shut my lids down.

And as for my very self, I thank her for unwillingly living in black for quite a long time, and still not fearing white.

Curtains drop, the show is over.

Please do not applaud.

Obliviate.

Science says that the human body can adapt under all circumstances; that, metaphorically speaking, it knows how to build a womb around itself and survive. Regardless of the change, it lives.

What I mean is, no panic attack can last longer than twenty minutes. And no matter how much it feels like your entire body is shutting down, you are not going to die.

What I mean is, no matter how absurd or prolonged your pain is, trust that your body is in the process of building a womb around itself and that you are not going to die.

See, I've turned my body into a temple. Divine, sacred, wholesome. I have grown familiar with every inch of my skin. Bone by bone, and breath by breath, I built my own womb from scratch. Crafted my name upon the walls and screamed my poetry into being. 

My body took root in this womb. And no matter how many times I woke up with this agonizing pain in my chest, I knew I was not going to die. 

Murphy's law states that whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

And over time, my temple is filled with cracks. But I see the streaks of light coming through and I am reassured. And so I consider it a testimony for how impossible it is for the cracks to kill me.

Now picture this: that temple of utter divinity, that is all I have, can no longer  endure any more cracks. I mean, even though I know the light is everywhere, it does not pass through my cracks. Heck, I can't even see the light.

What I mean is, my body is not in the process of building a womb around itself. It is not adapting, it is not surviving, for the love of God, it is in ruins.

Perhaps the problem is not that. Perhaps the problem is that after all, I am not going to die.

And so as time went on, I took shelter in an empty prescription bottle and suffered the atrocity of sobriety.

Because in an infinite universe of infinite dimensions, in a galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars and enough gas and dust to make a billion more stars, I exist, but only briefly.

Forget the name that I have crafted and erase the poetry that you've heard. For I have been disowned, and I have nothing left to be taken away from me.

One last letter. One last goodbye.

Dearest,
I have written over fifty letters to you, talking about how keen I was on letting go; how fond I was of finally detaching myself from you, and my previous failed relationship with him. I must've written fifty other letters to God, apologizing to Him for my failed relationship with Him, too.
The thing is, dearest, I was so keen on letting go, but never ready. The past five months, I was--and god knows I still am, in ruins.
It's like you're in me. Like you are a disease. Like I was infected by you.
You grew inside of me like a tumour, and my body was never ready to let you go.
And I spent one hundred fifty days thinking that you were meant to stay inside of me; scared that my body will be in a lingering state of panic, entirely shut down and eventually decay if I were to get you out of me.
But here's the truth, solemn and honest,
If I am to let you go--if I am to live without you in me, the process would go like this:
My body will indeed panic, as it has lived for what had seemed to me like a lifetime with you spreading inside of me like cancer, growing and feeding merely on my love and ache. My body will not be ready.
But I promise you this,
It won't shut down. It will take its time to adapt. No matter how weak, no matter how drowsy, no matter how drained and dreary it will be at first, it will dwell just fine. It will breathe without you.
Eventually, my dear, it will grow stronger. It will survive.
And I. I am still in ruins. But it has opened my eyes to this; that ruin is not a deficiency.
We all spend our lives running away from it, scared of how it might destroy our lives.
But the thing is, ruin is a gift. For everything ruined must build itself back up again.
We must always see ruin for what it is: the root of transformation; the root of change.
And from ruin, everything shall rise again, better, stronger, and taller.
Building a shelter out of ruin; out of the remains of your older self, is a gift.
So, yes, dearest. I am in ruins, and I am getting you out of me. I am changing, and I am finally prepared. 

Tonight is the night

Tonight is the night
I break my ribs open,
shall everything
staining, and straining
and weighing down
my very soul
bloom out of me
in a sequence of explosions.

Tonight is the night
I break my ribs open
to let you know that
in spite of everything,
darling,
I still believe in the root of you.
In spite of the haziness of
both you, and I
I have spoken of you
only in the name of love.
Inspite of your unsteady heart,
inspite of my stuttering kneecaps
and all my anxiety attacks
and my clumsy body
and my trembling hands
I love you.

Tonight is the night
I break my ribs open
to tell you that
you
are everything that is
staining and straining
and weighing down
my very soul,
shall you
bloom out of me
and shall you
cut the roots of you in me
for good
because you,
my darling,
are too gigantic an explosion
that I cannot
forever
hold closely to my heart.

Dear David

Dear David,
To wait for you to come home is to wait an eternity; both my heart and yours know better. You and I, we both deserve so much, but not one another. One day I clasp my fists so firmly and pray for you to crawl back to my embrace, the next I thank the lord you are no longer here to burn my insides to flame. I am sorry if it makes you seem like the bad guy.
It has been ninety-four days. Ninety fucking four.
Ninety-four days knowing that no Morphine but you will ever do. Ninety-four days and not even the fire inside my heart could keep me from shaking. Ninety-four days, my dearest and my beloved, my loveliest most tender lover, without you by my side.
God, I could have sworn that I have not slept for once because your empty side of the bed did not let me be. It was always haunting me that it was not in my power to have a single thought that was not you, or something that I wish I could reveal to you.
I am sorry; for I never told you that ever since, all my sunsets were devoid of color; that the absence of you is not the absence of ache, but the complete opposite.
Still I know, in my heart of hearts that we are not right for each other. That we are not thunder and lightning. That we, my dear David, are two different seasons. We repel.
Do you know what it's like to be the wrong person in the wrong place? Like burning sun in the midst of December, and crashing rain in August. Odd. Very odd. I think we were like that in each other's lives. It was only fair for someone to walk away from the other.
But in the days when I think that all my feelings have dried up, my pen starts writing words of grievance, in the loving memory of our love.
So  David, I beg you to teach me how to forgive you. I beg you to not haunt the rusted corners of my brain at 4 in the morning and keep me glued to my bed for what seems to be forever.
I beg you to teach me how to let go. Because I understand that you have used up all your strength to love me, and I was never easy to love.
Out of all the eulogies I have written for our love, my tears were the sincerest.
Goodbye, my David.
Yours, no longer,
Me.

It is summer. The sky is painted in the clearest shade of blue. Head over heart, I am all calm.
You walk me home every afternoon. Loving you is the only thing I've done right. I am sure. I am sure because you surround me with light. Your scent kissing me, your soul stuck to mine. Even if the heavens were grieving I wouldn't fucking mind.
Warmth, sweat, insanely in love with you. Every feeling in the universe, swiftly poured into me, I cocoon around the entirety of your skin. I am finally home, and nothing shall ever hurt me again.
I watch the light around me dim, ever so quickly in the winter. You slip from my hands, but I hold onto that last thin thread of what could ever be. The skies are bruised and all sounds are wrecked. I am left there as if I will never bloom again, for it feels like I am standing at the heaven's gate with an empty heart; standing at the open hands of god, and still admitting that I have got no home left.
But in the spring I promise to water myself again. I promise to not bathe myself in our sins. I promise to find a place in the sun for all that I've done.
I promise to find me another home, without our memories buried under the bed.

A prayer

Dear God. I have not spoken to you ever since it has ended. Presumably because what happened has deprived me of all the language I had within. But I am here, asking not for a miraculous change of events, asking not for a recurring nor an everlasting inconvenient fairytale to turn my world around, asking not for you to take me out of this dimension. I wouldn't ask for any of that, because I have this tendency of not asking for too much.
But God, I am stuck here. My lungs start collapsing at the dawning of every new day because I do not want to live through it. I do not merely want, but desperately and hopelessly need distance. So much of it.
God, I need room to breathe.
I need to be far; to not be trapped in this crowded city with all the noise and all the unsteadiness and all the people that make me feel like I don't belong.
I, dear God, need to wake up at a different place. A different space. Because every time I shut my eyes I see a life that I'm not living and a scene that I'm not a part of. I see a world that calls out for me, elsewhere.

Dear God of all gods, to the creator of the universe and you whom I call out for on my terribly silenced nights: the voice in me has become an echo of all the prayers I repeated before sleep, hoping to wake up to something different. The voice in me is cracking with the breaking of my own heart. My heart does not speak for itself anymore.
God, I need to escape. I need a place where the sun is not hiding, where the breeze is not followed with a storm, where there is serenity, where there is air, where there is me, light and diaphanous.
Take me out of here. I am begging and I am pleading, for there is no more light left in me. Can't you see?

For my beloved. My one and only. And a love as infinite as the universe.

A year ago
I thought all love ever did
was fold us into smaller pieces
until we are not there anymore.
I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I have held the hands of.
I have a body full of scars,
we both know loss
more than the sound of our own voices.
Our love came,
when we had both given up on love.
And all your love ever did to me,
was make me grow, and grow,
until I could reach the sky.
Until I was the sky.
I fell for you,
when I was shaking.
Anxiety was eating my insides.
Ten months later,
And I wake up, not scared anymore.
I wake up, ready to fight.
You are every color of God's painting,
the root of the root of the creation of this world,
the madness of science that I adore,
the metaphors of poetry,
the reason of all reasons of physics,
the music in my head,
the rhythm that I know by heart.
And I,
I know it's hard sometimes,
to show me the cracks
of your perfection.
I know it's hard 
for you to give me your soul,
completely naked.
But please know that I,
am not afraid to love you.
I am not afraid to hold you and call you my own.
I am not afraid of your scars.
I am not afraid of your bad days.
I, my dear one, love you, as you are.
Whether it's the days you are a blazing mid-summer sun,
shining so brightly,
dancing with the breeze 
and laughing like pain does not exist.
Whether it's the days you are a hurricane,
quietly aching, and then breaking
everything in your way.
Or even the days you are 
breaking down
into my lap
not knowing the answer to any question.
You are still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Because nothing,
not even my anxiety
not even my bad days
not even your worst nights
will ever change my love for you.
And even this, is not half of what
my heart holds for you
because I love you 
more than my heart can ever hold.

A dedication.

This is for all the times my body was bruised and knocked down, and not even the sound of thunder could move an inch of me. 
This is for all the times I failed to see the light when it was clearly daytime outside. And all the times it didn't matter if there was any pulse left in me.
It was scary. It was scary to look at the size of my body, and see how small I am; how no part of the world could fit me perfectly like a sweater.
It was scary, trying to create distances out of every breath I took because there was never enough air to keep me here, and my insides were always crowded.
I am no saint. I made poetry out of blood and romance out of smoke and jokes out of delicacy. 
I am a killer in disguise. For myself I have murdered, a hundred times over.
And I, like any other sinner, always had my reasons.
But no apology is ever sincere when actions are striven to be justified.  
And then one day, at what seemed like the break of dawn, I stopped swallowing the words I threw like knives at my being.
One day, I threw them all up.
See, before what I thought was my last breath, I fought. I fought like the devil.
I am no saint. I make peace with my ugliness now. I wear it like my favorite sweater, and it fits me perfectly. 
I am no saint. I no longer cringe at the cracking of my own voice. I learn to love it.
I am no saint. I look my fear in the eye, like a good ol' warrior. 
I am a sinner. I put my pieces back with glue, and never look back.
I am a sinner. I chase death until it's worn out.
I am a sinner, with no shame. Because I now love myself unconditionally, with just enough strength to drink all my past sins in, and carry on.
Because who said I was made to be anything less than the universe anyway? 

There is this scene that keeps flashing back and forth in my head. You are not in it. In fact, you're not there at all. Yet, somehow, you're the reason for it.
And I keep wondering how and why and in what world of whose god is it normal that you are a part of everything that you are not made of. I keep wondering how you fit perfectly into each and every picture, and how each and every perfect picture is always missing something, like some essential color, if you're not there.
This is how the scene goes:
The sky is just right there, the clearest shade of Blue. The sun's not blinding nor is it burning, but there's just enough light to warm up my heart. And the wind does not leave a human skin untouched.
There you exist, in the simplest act of God. There you exist, my darling. In each and every place I look.
You are not a metaphor. You do not stand for something else. You are something else.
You are the silence that I long for when everything is loud and unclear.
Dearest, I know. I know life can be strange and overwhelming. And sometimes our days can be on repeat. I know how it frustrates you.
But there is so much more to you than what you, I, and the rest of the world get to see.
There is much more to you than what you know.
So remember that there is always light, but only if you don't keep your eyes in the dark for long.
And remember the warm summer days of the smoke and sweat and our laughs echoing through all the corners of each part of this city.
Remember the cold winter days when I kissed you with a burning passion in my heart to never let you go.
Remember each time we hugged when it started to rain, and how we never mind getting wet, because there's always a better thing to do than regret.
Some days, I will not be there. If that ever happens, call my name. I will hear you. No distance can ever part us, no wind can ever carry you away from me, no love can ever be greater than ours.
On the days where you think that you are such a mess, I will wipe you clean.
On the days where you are ashamed of who you are, I will remind you why you shouldn't be. I will always show you what you can't see. I will always trust you to be okay on your own, and will not mind it if you are your own person.
On the days where you're as happy as a kid, I will look at you with the warmest smile on my face.
To sum it all up. I will always be your loving best friend. And will always be your lover.
In my absence, I will still hold you with invisible arms, and a love twice as big as the universe is.

A crack in the ground

A hole in a wall

One big thing

That's ever so small.

You can have me,

And grab me by the

Hand

Or taste a burning fire

On my lids

And bury me

Deep in the sand.

Gods from above,

Angels on earth

Demons in love

A chaos rebirth

Will you be

My mortals in disguise?

For I can hear

The wind

And sea

And birds

And trees

Tangle beneath me.

I cannot reach them

It's a whirling breeze

But I am growing

So let me be.

So this is

how the story goes:

Once upon a sunrise

A girl your age

runs, 

and runs,

yet her feet

are never tired.

"Sit down,"

we say

"get some rest."

But she can never

slow down.

So the days go by,

and we are met

eye to eye

on every clock

and just like 

the wind

she flees.

And sunrise

after another

we beg her 

to stop

but then we 

know

it's best to look away.

We grow old,

and so does she.

I think I heard 

them call her name.

"Time,"

I shout.

"linger still."

But she looks away,

she looks away.

And off she goes.

Forgive me Self for I have sinned.

I wonder what would happen if we could just pretend that unoccupied spaces are filled once you forget that they are unoccupied because of the absence of someone else's occupancy. In other words, if you are certain that one person's wholeness does not kill another's, then why won't you stop acknowledging the void?