Nineteenth

How wonderful it is,

to feel tiny
& shaken a little

when you learn

that you are loved
in return.

Gentleness

as soft glowing, snowflakes
& here I fall again.

Litany

Hi, you. How are you? A litany of rhythm rings through my mind. In repetition. Like a catalogue of time. Of winds, and unwind. There is no meaning in mere recitation. 

There are many unspoken edges. Many words to say, but little meanings can be left unconveyed. Maybe they were conveyed. Or my mannerisms were off.

But we are often misunderstood. We like to misunderstand each other. Or not. Maybe misunderstanding is something we both are great at. Unintentionally, like the many things we have done in the past. In our lives. Accidentally. Life is a bucketlist of mistakes afterall, with bullet-points that leave holes marking moments we once thought were bullet-proof.

So here is a little post-it note, if you will. I have many words, maybe little meanings. Or does it matter, for it will all be misunderstood anyway.

For it all,

I only wish

that your mended heart

be safe to embrace again

elegantly, to wither

the euphony of wistfulness -
or maybe just my footsteps.
on an unknown sidewalk,
with curved roads and broken street lines
as fragmented was my coherence

i played pity on the leaves
for soon, they too will disappear,
but somewhere
between my pretentious melancholy,
unraveled a tinge of verity

i envied them.
at how delightfully they, the leaves, were

at how they dared
to swirl like confetti
with the deliciously provocative
autumn wind

even if that meant
to a fall
of decay

such gracefulness
and fearlessness
i somehow knew
i lacked in me

earthly

In darkness you make the universe out of me,
but like the earth,
surely -
I will shiver
& crumble

there is nothing else i want more than to feel this way.

visceral

how does it feel,
to see the trees burn fiery red?
when the skin longs for a palm of heat
but what caresses is
minty autumn breeze?

how does it feel,
when the trickling carillon of the piano keys flutter?
does it make your heartbeat tiptoe and twirl
into light pirouettes-
leaving you in wonder
at what this tender,
muscle of yours is yearning for?

how does it feel,
to breathe a moment?
do you sigh a little
and savour sweetness in reprieve?

& maybe
no matter how convincing
you tell yourself that your feelings are soundproof
it begs its way to be heard
beating in discord to the rhythm of your chest,
and in disguised
in the clandestine corner of your mind

words will be forgotten,
but in echoes, i know
the soul remembers how to feel

a meridian

the zenith is not a desert
in desertion where blowing sands
is your only company

nor is it in the dark, lamp lit street
where warmth of late summer
moist-instilled breeze
cool your fatigued blood
into humility

when you find,
that home is the road all along
where salvation is
the ability to reflect

it is sometimes woven into
mittens of reminisces
or fortresses
of unspoken feelings

Rekindling

Make no apologies for why things did not become as you thought it would. Make no apologies for letting yourself submerge into the darkness and abyss. Into what you thought was fire, red and passion. Make no apologies for a choice. For choosing. For a realization that you have hands. For feeling things with your fingertips you thought were intangible. Make no apologies to release. For letting go of a rope in a tug of war. For letting yourself pull and be pulled, for the calluses that burned, marking fate in your life-lines. It was never a noose, nor should you let yourself be convinced otherwise. Make no apology for self-love. For the realization of how much destruction self-loathing can do to you.

Expect nobody to understand what you are, where you are, and how you are going through it all. For it was never anybody's but yours alone, to know the real you.

& I am more in love with my life than I have ever been before.

-written Aug 21st, 2014

There are two different kinds of sensitivity. One who seeks sympathy. And another who feels for others out of empathy...

& I wonder whether I fall in between.

Street side piano man

I was hypnotized as his fingers danced on the keys. Summer night showered its heat upon my skin. Breathless- but I breathed in nostalgia. My heart swooned at every note my ears captured. It felt like falling in love. How beautiful it is to be able to yearn. And to feel the cavity of my chest be weakened by such captivating sounds...

as all around me, Montreal brought back memories of my last visit.

He sat out on the streets, on a stool with the words "Silence sucks" sticker-ed against black. How ironic that I have feared silence as much as loneliness, yet here I am.

Punctuations.

Ends and beginnings are marked by the same punctuation. How I interpret the sentence before and after is entirely subjective. Contextual, even. For it takes time to understand meanings.

Words can trigger feelings. But I have always wondered about how silly it is, that some feelings cannot be put into words. 

Right now, it feels like I swallowed my own heart. A familiar feeling. It is a weird dull ache, in my chest. For which I have no rational explanation for - how paradoxically foreign. But a positive one, I assure. 

bare and windswept;

morning comes,
light stream through sheer curtains-
my shadow disappears
for she no longer recognizes this body

while birds sing sweet greetings
only silence bids by time,
there are fissures under my eyes
yet, i am reminded
that even mountains wear away

dull ache sits in my chest
how sweetly tingling bitter this hints
i still enjoy to faculty to feel

you will forget me,
like the wind that sweeps graceful tall grasses
i am ethereal.

bella luna

my candle flickers-
swooned by your beauty
la lune, ma lumière
it is no wonder
your elegance unclothe contesting hearts
to yearn in idyllic languages
of vows and desire

For every word comes from somewhere,
from places you have visited
and depth of darkness within you.

sway

here is to the softened gaze,
it goes, without saying
no words - letters and spaces
but for once i felt
the spaces between us are filled
where nothingness and something
becoming one thing.

beat, heart -

heartbeat,

i can hear you

even after all the violence of love

the vulgar wounds 

you still burn within

heartbeat,

forgive me

for when i fall and be forgotten

i still feel

all the filth in me

heartbeat,

do not break me.

there is static in my mind as the candle dances before me.
little things do not need words, i guess
feelings are unspoken poetries

breathing butterflies

Summer nights. 

Canvas colourful balcony;

I am barely breathing. 

Charades are pretentious,
so are butterflies
but they reveal honesty

I love, because my love is not dependent on the object of love. My love is dependent on my state of being. So whether the other person changes, becomes different, friend turns into a foe, does not matter, because my love was never dependent on the other person. My love is my state of being. I simply love

 ― Osho 

I am fractioned and frictioned by this arrangement. This feels like chasing for temporary highs. I used to love city lights, now I am afraid I might rupture.

you make fireflies dance in my chest-
but this is too sweet to be true.

seindah semua

terdiam diri, sedingin hati

melayan kenangan jelas di jiwa

mungkin mimpi tiada berakhir
ditulis takdir, terurai jua

Realness

Everything is not as it is told. There is little left to sow, too little left to know.

I have one life, yet I have led many lives. You can spill your heart to a thousand paper pages of sorrows. But every page turned will still feel the same to your fingertips. Out of ordinary. Desperate for a design, for a purpose, for an inked marked skinned to my dried celled skin to tell me-
To just be.

All of the things once said and wanting of each other to be. The compass of my heart is out of tuned, for the needle no longer points north. I have no understanding of this. I have no grip of this vertical reality, spun and twisted in ways I no longer find familiarity...so I just be.

I wish I hadn't felt realness. I wish I hadn't seen it. Tasted it. Smelled it like the wafting scent of your cologne.

For there is nothing harder than pretending to be strangers with another- no greater lie ever forced to live - when you know you have lived one too many lives with someone.

refracted

I found a little piece of broken glass.
It reflected me, in a refracted way.
Forcing me to take a good hard look at myself.

We don't want to be seen,
so we come and go
Like the night, like the shadows
when nobody knows
we'll understand
Trust me now,
trust nobody

I hate how my heart feels squeezed and cramped tight within my ribcage.

living apologetically,
it is a struggle in itself to realize
that you should not apologize for your own existence

- the struggle is mine.

everything is we, everything within

There is an echo in my soul,
though it is not empty
if we can unwrap every layer
of this skinned muscle in my chest
maybe we'll find simplicity

Neglected

I was earth,
dry and cracked in places
of my parched lips
in desert desperation,
but you-
you were the rain
that trickled like tears but felt like kisses
how, you were so gentle
yet, rarely you came.

For a weekend, I felt eighteen again.

The Mast

A harbour anchoring moments,
Winds whispering feelings
Mind reeling into reminiscing 
But like the rope hitting a yacht's mast,
Persistent-
And resisting in a desperate rhythm
Reminding not to linger with the restless wind.

A perched seagull squawked arrogantly,
It soared free to the horizon.

Here I sit seeking no sympathy
With stillness unlike the lake before me,
Let the gentle ferry horn reprimand,
And the wafting dock console me.

-written May 2014
"Big Tub" Tobermory Harbour

canal

be beside me, but are you with me?

i can sit by this canal

& feel my heart ripen red in my hands

know nothing of desires

but have everything of my own life to offer-

my scars and smiles

my stitches and sweetness

to risk is a game

& so is love

like every other played

i know i will lose

& i sit by this canal

contemplating-

second guessing

if i'm a fool for challenging fate.

There is no scrapbook to feelings

In a someplace you forgot you've been
With someone you never thought you'd remember
There are some pieces of lives held in your hands,
We never really thought
We never really knew
But we had to give back

Purple umbrella

I forgot what the rain feels like against my skin. I feel warmth. Winter seems to be gone. I bought a bright purple umbrella, because I thought its brilliance would immerse vibrancy onto me. Even when the sky may be dark and cloudy.

Purple.
A colour with many stories.

There is so much youthfulness trickling from your skin like dew,

Yet you waste your tongue to chastise with such words so bitter.

Little voices inside of me,
You're the protective plastic,
But I find myself unreeling

& tangled up like a cassette tape again

dear salvation

dear loneliness, you are sweet company
though you lay beside
a concave shell of a body
you know there's nothing in between

dear soldier, you are broken
you wear a smile,
to cover the stitches
of a torn up muscle
bruised and blue inside

dear fragility, you are strength
in this mirror before me
break so i can begin again

but these are little pieces of lies

of temporary things

Textbook

There is no textbook to love,
It is not my list of things to do

Paper blows by the sidewalk,

scattered thoughts swirl around me

& I sit here on these steps

 in awed at the catastrophe

Wonder where I have been

with everything around me

Say Anything

"You should listen to your heart,
It's going to tell you what you need
Take care of yourself
Don't you worry about me"

-Tristan Prettyman

Love and free, love freely

We're all capable of loving
& we all deserve to be loved.
Love in the freest form-
Without leaving us enslaved

I'm feeling grateful.

I was sitting with Christine at Second Cup today when Over My Head by  The Fray started playing. Almost instinctively, we both started singing the words (relevant to what I was feeling during the time) until the end of the song.

I missed this.
It's been five years since we started being friends.
Unashamed to be singing publicly hasn't changed since.

Some friendships are effortless.

Trickle

Your deepest feelings may be boxed. But like everything else in life, it will unwrap itself like a present. Making most of sadness until you are analyzing your feelings...brings you into circles. I am the type to be in control of my thoughts and emotions before they get the better of me- The better part of me. Where is the best of me? I am no longer searching. Just standing, and letting every moment slide against my skin as visceral as the raindrops feel in spring. 


For I am tired of losing myself to winter.

Spaces and pulses

Heart pulsing in my hand,
With redness of truth-telling
But I think my eyes betray me, by
Selling away my youth

To feel you in my arms,

Need not mean I need to feel you in my chest
For there is only so much spaces in between,
Not much room enough left for two

Love is not just a word.
Feelings are not just skin deep.

we can choose
the things we wish to see
but can we choose to feel
the emotions we do not wish to feel?

twist and turn
my heart and mind
but my darling,
 I am no pretzel

Thoughts and words swallow me
But I walk into the Arctic cold anyway
& let the biting frost consume-
Chewing pieces, after pieces of me
Avoiding warmth.

What is heat?
I do not need it-
Softness in warmth is vulnerability.
Warmth makes fragile out of beings
I'd rather break like ice,
shards & sharpness
will guide & guard me

Sweet promises roll off your tongue,

They kiss my fragile frost-covered heart

Here I stand, with nothing in my hands

Afraid to be drown by the darkness & light again

echoes

It puzzles me how the greatest courage comes from the most vulnerable moment,
How you can spend a lifetime with someone, to realize you know nothing about them at all,
That in the moment of pain seared so deeply, you can find numbness

More so,
That in the most fragile moment,
Where you think you have lost everything
& sunk to the very bottom of cynicism....

You realize that you are still capable of loving.
The heart still beats, though out of tune-
You feel it, against the laws of gravity, it keeps you down.

You are still capable of loving...
you are still capable of loving,

& you will keep repeating those words, as if to hold on to it-
so it never flies away.

in echoes.