Penitence.

But mama I'm a changed man, I swear it on every promise that I broke,
I've counted my mistakes and I'm ashamed of all I spoke.
and I hate my hands for what they did,
I'm ashamed of all I wrote.
but mama I swear I'm clean of hate,
I changed after I broke.
I woke up everyday to see a stranger in my face,
and I cant look myself in the eyes,
I'm desire's guileless slave.
I've been to hell and back and I swear,
I'm never going back again.
cos Mama, I'm not the same.

***


I've got to learn from every mistake that I've made
I'm ashamed of my past and scars I cant erase
but if you try to take that from me, then I wouldn't be the same
and you say it's a test
and "things happen for the best",
but I can't guarantee an A.
And if I tell you I don't recognise the person that I am
Would you believe that I am in chains?
and I am breaking free of what was me
I'm breaking everyday.
I have a healing soul and a softened heart
and I know nothing for sure
except for this, and only this
I'm not who I was before.

Slaves of perception

Amid the shaky trembling bodies

this ocean of lost souls swimming against the currents of life

I make my way

it's just another day.

What if you could see past skins and sins? What if you could perceive what lies inside every being? When the different textures and colours of epidermis flake off with time, will we realise we're all the same inside? We have hearts that beat out names and sing melodies our brains have forgotten how to dance to and we all have felt the desperate beating of a single heart against the breaking and we have shut our eyes and tried to dream while fear laced its fingers in our souls.  we have had hopes crushed and dreams walked all over and our words hushed and our spirits killed underneath the cover of skins; we hide these secrets like grains of sand lost in the sea, hoping despite ourselves that they'll metamorphose into strings of pearls and wishing someone would  take a leap of faith into the ocean and dive deep down to find us and

love us and we'd realise we're beautiful to someone and we mean something to someone and believing that that is all we ever needed .And  we pray that when it does happen, it'll be enough.

surface scratches

I need to feel alive. I need to jump from somewhere up high just so when my bones break I know they were really there and that there's a body of me and parts of me and bits of soul clinging to it, all trying to hang together to stay alive.I need to touch something and see the mark my fingerprints leave on it to prove to the world I'm not invisible as they would have me believe. I'm here, I'm human, and I'm alive and I still have time.

I wish I could make tangible lines to mark what I know for sure and what has washed away with time. I wish I could pick out a passing second in time and know for sure that's when I started falling apart so I could turn back and fix whatever was breaking inside me. I hope this will be behind me one day, I'm tired of permanence and I'm tired of change, and I'm tired of the ground shifting underneath my feet so when I look up I'm not really where I thought I was. I don't want to be confused anymore, I don't want to be scared
and alone and depressed and overcome by the waves I drowned within me, and I don't want all the scars I ever fought to resurface on my skin, just to prove to me I'm not whole. I'm fragile like my skin when it flakes off to reveal my imperfection. I'm empty as my eyes when the tears have run dry and empty as your words when you tried to apologise. I'd claim to be immune but my weaknesses are showing through the cracks and peels when I can't hide underneath the guise of my skin anymore. Seek the light, you told me once, and I've been searching ever since.

Deliverance

I've been daydreaming about 

that fateful afternoon

When our eyes met and smiles 

danced in conversation

And how your heartbeat quickened

When we were sipping coffee

The tremble in your palm

When you reached out to touch me

And your breath warming my flushed cheeks

When we were too breathless to speak.

I remember here, in this room 

Your chocolate kisses and your fingertips 

When we swayed back and forth

On the currents of fickle faith

I remember all the promises you made

That you never managed to keep

I remember my absolute naïveté.

I've been thinking about empty mornings

And the air heavy with your absence 

and how our words blurred into silence

And the silence ceased to be comforting.

I've been trying to remember to forget

The way our fingers seemed to interconnect

The way you moved with easy grace

Your luscious lips upon my face

So here it is, empty room and empty words

I've tried talking about it, but I doubt you heard

Or cared either way.

The coffee cups sit empty

The silence is overwhelming

How do you undo a part of your life

And disconnect it from your living?

How do you manage to break things that are already broken?

How do you bury words that have already been spoken?

Is there no limit to the grief I can feel?

When the darkness devours the light

And everything becomes unreal 

When you're no longer by my side

Where does the phantom pain begin to ache 

When I can't find home because it isn't a place

Walls.

Where does the warmth in your arms go when you don’t want to hug me any longer? Where does the light in your eyes disappear to when you don’t want to smile any longer?  Where does the comfort of sunlit afternoons go in the winter?

Why does everything beautiful disintegrate? Why are we forever being subject to change? When we are weaklings, unfit to survive slights.

Where do memories go when I refuse to relive them? Why has the passion in your eyes diffused to steely stares? Where does your heart go when it ceases to care? Where do your unspoken words go when the space between us grows? How can you be? So still and so silent and so cold.

Where does the sun go when the sky weeps?

 Where do I go when you’ve replaced me?

"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be a star, in somebody else's sky
But why, why, why can't it be mine?"

- Pearl Jam, "Black" 

"This time, we don't need another perfect lie"

In the middle. In the middle is how I will describe this while I wonder if I will try to erase this from my mind later on in life.  In the middle of a dark past and a bright future is when I struggle to block out the memories. Just like my siblings. They try, too. We all try. But it never really leaves. You always remember and your eyelids are always struggling to stay dry when you’re in the middle.

All my secrets cannot forever be holed up in my head for the sake of maintaining a normal front in society. One day they will spill over. One day the floodgates will break under the pressure of wet eyes and stories untold, and one day, the whole world will know what we concealed in our hearts and minds even though it almost drove us crazy as her, crazy until we broke in front of family and friends who left because they got busy and all we really had was ourselves, me and my sister. 

Erasing the middle, I wish I could tell you how it was. It’s like knowing your name begins with an S and ends with an H but there are blanks spaces in between, blank spaces and you don’t know what you became in the middle, what changed and gave you courage, courage to run away from this, run away from home, run away from her. Run away even though the voices in your head called you a coward for not fighting back, not standing up for him, run away because you’re brave enough to confess to yourself that you  have no strength against this.

Screw the stars for promising us a better future, for making the skies look like they were shining for us and screw the world for telling us everything would be alright, happy endings are only in chapters that lead to bad beginnings.  “You don’t know.” He sighed and I wish I could tell him I did. I did know of pain and terror of a very exquisite kind, something he would never know of. 

Erase the beginning because that’s where it all began. Erase the beginning, erase the moment you were born from the pages of the history books of the world because that’s the only way to escape the middle. If it wasn’t for the beginning, you wouldn’t have found yourself here, here in the middle.

The middle. Where you define yourself with words called adjectives to give yourself a ground to stand on.  And you can stand as long as you believe the lies the voices in your head breathe, the voices that everyone else believes. But when you realize you’re here in the middle and you don’t want to be here anymore, you notice the cracks in the ground before it gives way to your feet. 

When you realized it was all a facade, and it wouldn’t hold any longer. 

When the past finally caught up to the beautiful middle and ruined it. Despite all your efforts to run, run, run away from it.

I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to be patient.

I’m sorry this really has no beginning or end, but I’ve stopped trying to make sense.

I need a compass, I need an atlas

I need you, and the ground to walk on

And stay steady under my feet when I cannot carry my own weight.

I need to be able to speak the truth

Like I know it, like we know it, the truth because

Nobody else knows it.

I need the blanks in the middle to go away

Please make them go away.

I need to not be afraid

Anymore.

And I need you to stay

On days when I’m in the middle.

And there are blank spaces everywhere.

"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.