"Lord, what fools these mortals are."

In that rush of time and breath between the seconds our eyes connect and our minds find each other behind the veil of our features, I find myself perfectly content. I chased a spirited dream along the boulevard of hope and death crushed my rose tinted beliefs in the cold, hard hands of truth, leaving me a jaded cynic lost in a time warp, unable to breathe or live easy for the fear of it happening again. Unable to hope, unable to dream. I was running in circles for an illusion I did not have the strength to stomach or the courage to brave. I proved my incapability in front of the silent watchers yet again and we both detested ourselves for it but our pain was already inked in the hands of fate, it was too little and far too late for change to make a difference. 

Forgive me, but I succumb to the devils of temptation and desire, to the fires they ignite in me and the ideas they incite in me. Recall my faith in you, it will help you survive the night , and you cannot reach the dawn save by the path of night. And when you don't miss me any longer, remember that I loved you once, with a fiery passion you failed to return except when you were consumed by your temper and I was consumed by my grief. I cried because it was easier, easier to let it out than to bottle it in but I have nothing to weep for anymore and no one to hold me if I did.

Connect the dots for me, I beg you, because I fail to understand, or I'm afraid to. You spell out your intentions in a string of words laced with malice, the end product of your anger and frustration at me because I could never be who you wanted me to be. I'm sorry, I whisper because I feel like it will make things better and make you a little less angry but it does not matter, you were not made to be moved or mollified, and you wave your dismissal without gracing me with a glance. I refuse to leave, feeling short-changed on forgiveness and because my apologies never come forth easily, and when they do, they're sincere enough to elicit a spark of affection, even from your stony heart. You refuse to yield and you swear you haven't changed but I know better. I knew you when you were human enough to love and you loved beautifully. I remember when you let passion make your promises for you and mischief danced in your eyes, when you whispered honeyed strings of words and kissed my hands like there was no tomorrow. And so I withdraw but I refuse to leave, I shall wait out the grief, I shall wait for the empath in you to claim your heart again, snatch it from the cold depths of your chest and let you love again, live and believe again. 

"Remember everything", she says when only the memory remains

If of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
More sad are these we daily see:
"It is, but hadn't ought to be."
-Francis Brett Hart

You did the favour of gracing me today

With your presence

Which wasn’t needed, I assure you

I didn’t particularly miss you in 

Your absence.

I mean, I may have looked at our old pictures

Of when we were smiling and laughing

When we were happy.

I may have cried a bit, or a lot

But I didn’t miss you, no.

I may have missed out on cleaning the hall closet

Like I planned, but I was too busy having my heart broken by you

And you, you were too busy with university

And your excuses, excuses, excuses.

But don’t worry about me, I have learnt

To keep busy

To keep my heart beating and my brain working and my lungs breathing

Without constantly reminiscing, remembering, breaking.

I may have recalled the way your shoulders cushioned my cheekbones

When they were tear scarred and sobbing

And wondered if those shoulders will ever be comforting

Me

Like that again.

Now I’m forbidden to talk about things

That we always used to talk about

I found home in your heart

And now I’m a stranger in my own home.

I confess, I wasn’t ready for this abyss

This big gaping space next to me

Where you used to be

I wasn’t ready to be broken

At least not by you.

But it’s okay, you’re too busy

To bother loving me

And I don’t miss you. I don’t.

And screw you for saying

We barely made it. We did.

And each fight just made me realize

That we can survive the worst parts of each other

And still love unconditionally.

Screw you and your

Goddamn epiphanies.

When you realize you don’t want to be

Overly attached to me because

I’m” leaving anyway”

That’s like trying to not

Love your family for fear of the pain they will cause when they die.

Be brave enough to love me, damnit.

Be brave enough to care.

Photospam!

This just really makes me laugh. People who read are always going to attract readers the most.

 Time's running out for all of us, really.

Word!

For everyone , that has someone they love miles away. Don't let distance ruin it.

Patience, prayers and promises

For those who are afflicted with disaster, glad tidings await them: so remain patient and happy with your Lord. "He cannot be questioned as to what He does, while they will be questioned." (Qur'an 21:23)

Tiny feet, pattering on the floor, following the shadow of his mother. “Mamma, I’m coming with you,” he  intones, trying to catch up, even though she’s only going to the kitchen, a few yards away.

I wonder if he was born with an inherent attachment to his mother, or it was simply the fear of abandonment tugging at his three year old heart. I wonder if that is innate too, or simply born from circumstance. Maybe he isn't old enough to know, but I wonder if he’s astute enough to feel it. Maybe we don’t see all that he sees simply because we believe the young don’t understand so much.

I hypothesize that he does feel it inside, a vague shadow of suspicion, even if he doesn't know yet. I wonder if it’s an inborn intuition, if everyone knows instinctively that they’re birthed by one, but born to two. Just like some of us are broken on the inside, hairline cracks running down our faith, scarring our hope, but we seem undamaged on the outside. Whole, and in one piece. Our perception is but faulty, and an illusion at best.

I look down at his sibling, fragile and perfect, like stained glass. His little hands curl up in soft balls against his chest and his small, beating heart, as he breathes in little sighs, in, out. His sleeping face is serenity personified, minute laughs punctuating his breaths as he dreams in his slumber. I pray for him, for the tables to turn, my qualms whispered in the silence of the night to the All Hearing. I wish for his contentment to endure perpetually.

I remember when I saw his mother gazing in wonderment at his minuscule feet. They were only as long as my thumb and as wide as two of my fingers. “They’re so beautiful,” she sighed and kissed them, the pink clean soles soft as down.

The futility of wondering why what happened did, teaches me to trust in fate, trust in His Plan, trust that everything transpires for a reason, and faith teaches me that this too, shall pass, this too.  For indeed with hardship will be ease, indeed with hardship will be ease, I whisper in the dark, reassuring my flawed faith, drawing blissful strength from the divine words, holding on to them, holding on to myself.

Hard truths

This is it. And it’s all the things you never thought it would be.

This is the extra baggage, the insecurity, the loneliness in a crowd, the emptiness of what you never expected. The bitter truth. That this isn't really freedom, it’s breaking out of a prison to find you’d actually rather be back there.

Because it’s familiar. Because you’d rather play a part in a routine you know than act in a role that you didn't know. Because it’s your house, but not really yours, your freedom, dictated by someone else, your life in the hands of an acceptance letter.

Because grammatically wrong suffixes don’t make cousins your siblings. And your hair never gets used to the change in salinity of water, so it decides to behave like straw. And the many accounts you opened on different social networking sites to feel surrounded by people don’t help. And because you know that all the salt and water your tear ducts can produce cannot wash away the stains of grief on your face.

Because traveling the world sounds fun at first, but all that the newspapers have to say washes away your naivete that makes you believe the world would be a beautiful place to see. And because the most beautiful cities have dark allies, hideous crimes, shocking truths.

Because you’re dumb enough to think living abroad would be fun but you panic when your dad takes too long at the grocery store. And you think you’re independent, but you've never really lived alone, and you're silly enough to think you’d be okay. Because you always thought you were mature enough, so you didn't really have to grow up. Because of the promise of time to take away everything you've ever known so the only thing that’s permanently true is that everything changes. Whether you like it or not. Whether you’re ready for it or not. Whether it’s served to you on a platter or kicks you in the gut, deal with it, deal with this, deal with everything.

Endless roads and fading sighs

Empty like your eyes, hardened like your heart. Still trying to find smiles in the wrinkly lines curving around your unforgiving face, I'm still searching for where this thing snapped, broke, and changed. I'm still wondering if we will ever be the same again, still wondering if irreversibility is our punishment, and we are to blame. 

I feel so consumed by this monster of hatred inside of me, allowing me no good feeling, no happy memories to lighten me, no forgiveness to ease my pain. I am sucked into black holes of poisonous words and failed friendships, late apologies and not enough love. I'm swallowed by the escapeless voids within my heart, black walls, no windows, no me.

I'm still searching for who I used to be, for what I could be now, still searching for us, searching for familiarity. I am no stranger to hatred and jealousy, tears and anger, pain and patience, resentment and regret, but I am a stranger to me.

Forever learning

''Life's like that, ''she said. ''We thought it would all be easy and fun, smiles and goodbyes. ''We learnt. That life isn't the merriment it sounds like. We fall, fail to get back up, crawl, pull ourselves up, we fall, fail again and sometimes there's a helping hand but sometimes there isn't and we learn, to fend for ourselves,to break and re-mend ourselves, to fix shattered hearts and broken dreams, to dry crying eyes and to suppress drowning screams. We fall, and the first time, we don't know how to get back up ourselves, but we learn.

Life's like that. People leave, you learn. You have to leave one day too, and you'll still be learning, still be living, breathing, writing reminders to yourself to move on when you find yourself empty and the road ahead barren.

Ask the widow, she lost her husband nearly twenty years ago, and she still has his ironed clothes hanging in his closet, making their house look like he's just left for coffee, making it look like he'll be back now, anytime now. She still has sleepless nights and she's still learning everyday, still learning, that he is never coming back, not today.

Ask the abused wife, she would do anything to be a widow, so she won't be judged, so she can live freely in a society that looks down on womenkind and dismisses their suffering, she's still learning that some things never change, some morals are never obeyed, some people can never be trusted.

Life is like that. You learn some, and you think you've seen it all, but you're always still learning, still learning till you're done, and you breathe the secrets of a broken heart no longer.

Decimating the beginning

I wish I could tell you what I feel but I fear it is too violent for letters on a page and too broken for sleepless hearts to read. I would tell you what I feel but I'm afraid my tears would blur the ink on the page and stain your fingertips with salt and pain.

If I did manage to spew out the vicious fire lit within my being, I would confess my fear that this wasn't good enough for you. You are only a few days old but I swear when I talk to you, you gaze at me with the intelligence of someone who understands. I wish I could tell you the family structure society thinks is perfect really isn't. How we imagine things should be aren't really the way they are in reality. You'd say a family consisted of a couple and their children, but I'd tell you that family is anyone who loves you. You would think you need a father to have a normal family life, I would make you believe you don't. You will probably ask me where your daddy is. I would tell you what I felt but I fear it wouldn't be enough, it wouldn't be enough for you.

I know you'll ask questions, and they won't be easy to answer. I wish you wouldn't have to ask about someone who never asked after you. I would tell you what I know, but I'm afraid your tears would blur the words they shouldn't have to read.

I wish I could live like that

Your perfection is marred by the path you walked, your scars and stories. Every experience you've had you've turned into a lesson, now you've learnt, this is how the world works. These are the disguises of the people who claim to love you and these are the people who do. This is the hurt-forgive-repeat cycle that life runs on, the handles in the hands of those who can. Who can forgive, let go, love, laugh, live freely. 

Four am feeling

I want to make a collage. A picture collage of sorts, pictures of people and things that made a difference, that have changed me to some extent, made me what I am today. They may not be wonderful memories, but they're part of me. I want your picture to be amongst it, I want our memories to float underneath the laminated and the faded, I want it all.

I wonder if people finish writing books and read them again, I wonder if they avoid it because they fear disliking what their own hands have created over hundreds of pages. I wonder if people about to die feel that way about their lives.
I know my book is being written somewhere and I know deep down I want it to be perfect. I want to live this life and leave the world a little better than when I entered it. I want to look back in my dying moments and love what I've created. I want my book to be read and reread like a thousand bestsellers with words that eyes would never grow weary of reading.

Three weeks old today

They say you don’t understand my smiles or sighs yet, or when I babble baby talk to you because I feel like it. I think they’re wrong. What do they know of the contented whispered laughs you make in your sleep and your nano second mischievous, toothless smiles? Would you breathe so peacefully if you didn't know you were loved so much? The language you speak isn’t what tongues utter and minds process, it is the language of the heart. And I think you understand me perfectly.

That week.

I have felt my heart stop dead as I watched her wheeled out of the operation theatre, I have felt a thousand flutterings in my heartbeat and a surge of affection flood my being with all the force of a tsunami as I held him, just minutes old, so fragile and so beautiful.  I have shattered as I watched her in so much pain I could do absolutely nothing about. I have felt my strength break and tears well because of the cries of a three year old who missed his mother, I have tried to comfort someone touched by the pain of death, I have felt the helplessness of being miles away from someone I loved who was grieving.  I have experienced a giddy level of happiness and the joy of a new life and the grief of a lost one all at once. I have confronted the fragility of life and learnt to accept its transient nature, I have begun to understand the written fate that spares no one.

I'm harsh and bitter and I let loose my tongue when my anger gets the better of me. I'm self righteous and arrogant and think I'm perfect but I'm not. I sin shamelessly and lecture others not to commit lesser sins. I'm a wreck most of the time and despicable too. I think I  ought to be pitied but I shouldn't. I'm a pathetic shell of who I used to be and there's still a part of my ego that claims I'm good enough. I have hurt people that I love enough to hate myself more than they do.I'm living on a shipwreck that used to be the titanic. People lie. You don't get used to change, you just get used to crying.

I tried to feel your physical presence, I tried to smell you in wafts of oncoming breezes, I pretended you were here while I skyped you and kissed the screen.

I tried to tell myself it will be okay, but the truth is life without you is stretching ahead of me like a vast empty expanse of nothing, a bleak world that spins in an orbit with no sun, with day and night intermingling and stretching into nothingness, meaningless infinite voids of nothing. Nothing virtual will ever replace the warmth of your hugs or the softness of your voice, and no comfort equals the strength your words give me.

I am lost, I admit in an ocean of humanity, nameless, faceless, directionless, and you gave me direction and faith and without you, I’m but a speck in the the billions of particles of this world.

Allow me to be a little pissed off at you, I want to rage, rant and explode in a fury of my own words and disappointment. I never meant to isolate you or drift away but watching you slowly slipping out of your own control and turning into what you used to despise is heartbreaking and infuriating all at once. All I ever asked was that you had a little common sense and stick to the basic moral values we shared as friends, all I ever asked was that those basics did not change.
But they did, and drastically so, and now all I have is nothing, nothing I care to remember, nothing for us I look forward to, and I cannot begin to comprehend how fast and how irreversibly things changed. Have I turned into an inhuman piece of nothingness that distances itself from everything that annoys it, zero tolerance, zero anything? I'm too tired to care, too afraid to ask, too terrified to open my eyes and realise you've changed, and that nothing will ever be the same again, too hopeful to disappoint the part of me that's living in denial. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Your words still hurt like glass shards long after I pulled them out of my maimed and broken body

I waited an eternity for somebody to fix me

and pray that I'll never be afraid again.

I waited eternity for the tears and the shaking to cease, and for the fear of you to leave

I waited in vain for death and its offerings in blissful sleep

I prayed though my faith was beginning to falter and fail

I prayed for an end to the darkness and for the sun to shine again

I prayed for light

and for the will to survive.

A while ago I told myself I wouldn't care and for some time, I didn't and to be honest, it was easy to live without   caring about you because it was living without dealing with you, without hurting. 

But truth, especially bitter ones can only be buried for so long before they snake their way out of the dirt into heat that melts tears beneath my closed eyelids and threatens to break me completely. Because the truth I try to run away from is that it hurts that after years of friendship and a million moments shared and countless jokes and laughter that bound us together, all you can remember is the bad phases and the fights and where I messed up. I know where I was wrong and where I let my temper get ahead of me and let myself speak what I didn't mean in the heat of the moment, but I've changed when you were gone and I've learnt to shut up before I hurt people I care about. 

But you won't understand and today all you could possibly think of me is the person I once was and you refuse to change that frame of mind and you refuse to believe I do care, so much that the notion has gained momentum and a lot of people have ended up telling me I don't care as much I should about you, and some days I wonder if it's people's opinion that hurts me or the voices inside my own head. I did try, not to care to save myself from being hurt by the resentment you hold for me, but you can't bottle up and forget feelings, I do care and it does hurt and I wish it wasn't like this and I wish I could rewind and change what I did or make you forget where I failed as a friend. Some days I wish you wouldn't dismiss so easily what we had, I wish you would forgive me because I was a kid like you, and still had so much to learn, even though I thought I didn't. I wish people would think before they judged me and our friendship so easily and sometimes  I wish I had an outlet for this frustration that builds inside me for all the things I can never change.

Only evolution

Am I doing this wrong? Was I meant to be doing something more? Something else? Am I hurting you? Have I changed in ways I cannot see? Has my faith fallen? Have I become unbearable? Or have I always been this way? Is there an answer to anything? Am I so lost I cannot see where I've failed? As a person, a friend, a sister, a human? Does it matter that I do not understand? Do I not deserve a second chance? Why doesn't anyone deserve a second chance? Why is everything I know about me, that is solid and secure fading? Would it change anything if I apologized? I want you to apologize, is that wrong? Am I wrong? Why do I not know? Why is my sense of judgment failing? Why am I failing people I love? Do my tears mean nothing? Do I mean nothing to you? I want to matter, I hope I'm not wrong, I hope I find a way, before I fade, before I fail again, before it's too late.

Spinning into infinity

Crater

A big black endless hole

Stars above, beckoning

Come out into the light

Deception

Because there's no rope

Falling

Shining above me, twinkling fireworks and promises

Liars

There is nothing good anymore, nothing happy

And there is no light

Not here

Still falling

There is no bottom, I realize

Just before the ground hits me,

breaking bones

Blood on my fingers

Tears on the sky

Blurring the stars

Everything is black

Violets will never bloom again.

 * * *

An hour passes

The bleeding stops

But not the burning

The skin is torn apart,

I can see the inside

I am alone

Oh but for you, I was never good enough

I was ugly before I was born

How did your heart turn to pebbles and grit?

Thrown together

So much ice and stone

So cold

Fingernails and fists 

Breaking my defense

It was still my fault

It was always my fault

Breaking my heart

Not that you care

Breaking my wings

But you'd already cut them off

Before hope could hope to be born

And all of them are dead

love and hope and prayers

and my plentiful worthless tears

Buried in a field of violets

But you shut off the sun, so the violets don’t grow anymore

Now it’s all black.

But I promised myself I would be happy so I smiled

Even though my tears ran a river

and your words swam in it

I took your hate and put it in a cardboard box

and then I taped it up so it could never get to me

Acid, dripping off your tongue, scarring

Your hate seeped out of the cardboard box

drop by drop like poison

Burning everything in its path, sucking oxygen and hope

while my tears are flowing down a valley

the streams are becoming a river, it merges, it is a sea

It is overflowing, overwhelming, I cannot breathe

It is seeping into the ground, giving back life to everything you destroyed

It is flowing into the field where the violets stand   

Nourishing their empty purple hearts

My faith is no longer shattered

Arise from the barren fields

Hope, no longer dead

My desperate prayers have been accepted

The cardboard box may be open

Your hate is free to roam

But your words mean nothing to me

But I am no longer in the black hole, no longer unhappy

No longer under your control

The stars are real, they were not lying

I am whole again, and perfect

But above all, I am happy

I can smile again, I am free

Tonight I will not cry myself to sleep

Tonight I will sleep in peace

Holding on to the belief

That to someone, I mean something

For them , I will live

And for them, I will breathe

Even after you take the light from every part of me

Even after you steal the sun from my violet field

For the best friend I've ever had

It’s on nights like these that I miss you the most, your quiet wisdom and your unfailingly right solutions to everything. It was what would comfort me the most when I was faced with what seemed like the hugest problems in life, that I could enter your door, always unlocked to me, five minutes away and find within a way to stop the flood of tears and answers to all my questions and probably, the truest home I’ve known. I miss talking about everything late into the night, and finishing your sentences, when everything was so right and so perfect. It’s times like those I want to preserve forever so I can revisit them when I’m in the darkest of places.

Most of the time, I make it through, though I’m confused if it’s others making judgments or just me judging myself. Lately I’ve just taken to crying it out, there’s pretty much no other way to deal with it, I don’t think anyone knows me as well as you do and no one could be of as much help. It’s ridiculously difficult not having someone to talk everything out to, someone who understands and has solutions and gets your jokes. It’s like missing a soulmate.

It is hard being the strong one, the sensible one and the dependable one all of the time. I see it now that you’re gone and that responsibility has naturally fallen to me, and sometimes I think I’m failing at it. Sometimes I think I’m not suited to the job even though I try very hard, I do. Most of the time, I wish you were here to tell me it was okay, and that I was good enough.

I have no idea how you did what you did for me, and probably for everyone you know, too. Your strength seems so infinite sometimes, it shocked me when you broke down once in front of me. It was so easy to forget you were human, and only a girl, although older than me. You probably had to swallow all your problems to make room for everyone else’s and it would just seem that you had none at all, when in actuality, you probably had the most. To put others before yourself is something I’m only truly beginning to understand when I stand in your shoes, even though I feel like I don’t deserve them. You are one of the most selfless and beautiful people I know, and I am truly lucky to have met you.

I miss you. Not all the time, not everyday, but when I realize I have to do everything on my own, and how much easier your presence made everything. When I do, it hits me hard. I pretty much remember everything about you and just the fact that your physical presence is far away makes me feel utterly alone, a deep and endless ache, because you are truly irreplaceable, in every possible way.