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.