deja vu

We struck matches and lit fires in each others bellies and mistook it for love,
not knowing it was eating us alive, consuming us,
forgetting that fire needs fuel and oxygen. And it took both from us and then we fell apart like used matchsticks

The last time I wrote about you, I swore it would be the last time.

six years down the road, a drug overdose and a wild night intoxicated with insomnia has you on my mind and how I can't unlove your poison out of me

I hear you're into marijuana now
smoke filling your brains
instead of a college education
alcohol has tasted the blood in your veins
The last time you called was never.

I heard your survive on a diet of cigarettes and apathy
that you've  lost a lot of weight now though you
haven't gained any self esteem
And the men are still hopelessly in love with the illusion of you
But you, you have fallen out of love with
yourself

the last time I wrote about you, I thought  the inertia I've chained myself in would break
The last time I wrote about you I thought I was writing you out of my life,
I'm filling the void you left with God,
I'm filling the void you left with unwatched seasons of TV shows,
I'm filling the void you left with all the lives I haven't lived and all the places I've never been,
I'm tasting honey when it reminds me of your hair before I remind myself to forget that the last time you called was a thousand days ago but I haven't forgotten the sound of your voice or wondered when you'd need me next ,
what unlikely crises I daydream may infiltrate your days enough to make me worthy of a text back,
but I'm back to filling the void you left with other people whose names taste different in my  mouth but I'm teaching my tongue to curve around them and forget the familiarity of yours,
the last time you called, I realised your memory is a curse on me I am trying to get the heavens to revoke,
the last time you called I realised I cannot fill the void you left with other people and places because when I'm awake I've mastered the art of forgetting your face but it digs its way out of the grave in my heart when I'm asleep and sneaks into my dreams,
I wake up and the only word in my mouth is your name.

the hole in the ozone layer is male privelege

The sky is submitting itself
to the darknes
the resistance of the earth
melting away
Her breasts are swollen
with unspoken agony 
His mouth drags across hers
Filling her with the
emptiness of unbridled passion
bite marks
Littered across her body like dead flowers in a forgotten graveyard
An unbroken promise spread over the canvas of her stomach
His lonely is spilling
Out of his mouth
Into hers
Limbs sprawled against the grass
The night is wild and the darkness is crawling into her
Spreading her thighs Iike an unbroken promise
ripping her apart as easily as her first
His lust is spilling over
Corroding the air
His insanity entering her
One breathless stroke at a time
the easy sliding of the sharpest knife
in and out
anything
but
gentle.

What does unrequited love feel like? It's like drowning , but you never die."

One
Your lungs
Are filled
With expectations
Loud enough
for your mouth to taste
They are not bitter (yet)
The water is calm
Azure
You think this will
never
change
You will learn
Not to feel this dangerously safe

Two.
Your mouth is choking
On disappointment
Brackish green
Salt and sweat
You're learning to let go
In violent spasms
Nothing graceful
Your windpipe is clenched
Around your broken heart
Stale lies tearing out of your stomach
Here is the stench of the curses you have eaten
the water is wild
It rips away the last
Of your sanity

Three.
You'd think
After all this time
You'd have remembered
that you could not swim

The irony is that
You've never felt
more alive

The water is calm again
Your limbs have stopped
Holding on to the world

You are  caught in between
Your madness and your misery
Seven thousand meters deep
You're still asking,
Do you understand ?
Do you understand?
Does anyone ?

- the stages of drowning

Half woman

Half woman
Here you are
Kneeling at the altar
Of commercially glorified romance
praying for "the one"
Convinced your womanhood is incomplete without a man
Here you are spitting out the blood he made you taste
swallowing rejection like barbiturates

There must be something wrong with you mustn't it ,
Why else wouldn't the men bend their knees,
treat you like a goddess whose beauty they'd finally learnt to worship

There must be something wrong with you
Because the men , they come ,
they eat out your heart ,
they drink out of your mouth,
they leave marks on your thighs,
they leave you with the bitter aftertaste of forbidden flavour in your mouth,
and yet they're never full,
but you're always empty.

the first time you kissed someone your stomach flipped and you couldn't recognise your self because you refused to look at what you'd become

And five years later you're still choking on your sins ,
searching for your sanity and acceptance in the eyes of strangers and men
who only look at you with eyes carved out of lust and hearts blackened
with their insatiable hungering.

Here you are
Kneeling at the altar
Of rebirth .
Finally learning to worship your body
Reveling in the glory of your womanhood,
in all its shapes and forms
Here is where you will teach the men and lead them in prayer
Your body is a goddamn temple
Tell the men to enter
With humility
And to sacrifice themselves  for you
The next time
He says you're not woman enough
Tell him
It's because
You're half lioness.

every shade of blue.

Outside the living room, down the street , across the world , there are enough people but not enough saviors,

not enough for you.

The bathroom sink is flooded with your guilt , 

the glass shards of his anger littering the floor, 

still stinging, 

still merciless.

The dishes aren't wiped clean of yesterday's regrets ,

the penance you are paying like rent to live in this chaos

and trying to believe you can save this marriage.

The first time you met him , 

he'd already decided you were the one , 

you tested those waters with both feet at once, 

and you are still paying the price.

You honeymooned in Italy and said your vows in Venice

 and when you looked at this man then

 you swore he was the only way out of the darkness.

When the baby was born you decided to paint the walls yellow

because you reasoned,  yellow was a happy colour, 

but it was because you could already feel the blackness

growing in the heart of the man sharing your bed, 

the black that spilled over into the carpet 

and discoloured everything .

When he leaves in the morning you stir circles in your coffee

 and try not to think of your first date together.

When the toddler wakes up, 

you teach her the letters, 

the colours of the rainbow 

and worry about what she remembers from last night .

Red, you're saying ,

holding up a crayon,  

red is the colour of his rage 

when he returns home 

and it fills the room like the smell of potpourri , 

red;

the blood that runs between your teeth 

when his fist slams into your jaw.

Orange, the colour of the lights swimming behind your eyes 

when you fall to the ground 

and your head begins to spin.

Yellow, you could paint every day of the calendar 

that goddamn colour

and it wouldn't take away any of this pain.

Green, every woman you see,

everywhere, across the streets, down the lane, 

incites this corrosive envy in you

because they can still leave the house

without being asked about their bruises.

Blue,  the colour of your skin

the first day he sheds his mask.

Violet, that was the colour of your dress on the first date

and god,

how you regret this insanity, 

how you regret Italy,

and the first coffee,

and ripping your hair out at three am ,

and still deciding to stick around with this man ,

and trying to save this house from your madness,

and yourself from his rage,

and trying to save your child from remembering anything,

except the damn colours , and the numbers you sing to her.

Life in all its inadequacies

Tonight there's the quiet , the woman in the temples have stopped weeping and the sky is submitting itself to the dawn with resignation underneath it's breath and my head is finally clear enough to think of you in all its clarity. The air is alive and my lungs are filled with all the words I did not say.

Things I have learnt this year:
no human is one hundred percent good or one hundred percent bad

ironically ,emptiness can fill you up

Things I worry about :
I do not trust men enough to live happily in a  heterosexual marriage
I don't trust God like I used to
I don't pray like I used to
When I shut my eyes it takes a lot of self control to want to wake up
I'm not ready for death either
The person I am in love with is an illusion
My childhood has scarred me permanently

Things I understand now :

I will probably never not love you
It's probably never over in my head

Some things just aren't meant to be
And you were never meant to be mine.

Resurrection

Her name speaks of revolution.
Underneath her bones is an abandoned city.
Waking up to injustice

The first time you kiss her like an apology  she tastes like forgiveness
The second time she tastes like blood.

Her name is an anthem in your head
of a country that refused you refuge

Her name sounds like love to you

Your name sounds like revenge,
like gunshots,
Fire
Rage in her mouth , a trigger shaped like a swear word
and a barrel full of broken promises
the bullet shells clinking to the ground
Echoing anything but forgiveness

In the war inside your head
You realise your punishment
Is living with yourself.

In the war inside your heart
There is no victor
Your body is an abandoned graveyard
of all the dreams that died in you
marching like soldiers to their death
Your mind refuses to grant you refuge

In the war inside your bones
Your demons are waiting to swallow you whole
To shred up your soul

Your reckoning has come, he wears black ,
he calls himself judgment day
Spitting stones and shooting missiles your way
You're on your knees praying for an escape, paying for it with regret
But you're confusing escape with death.

How many miles have you walked for men that never held your feet in their lap? - Warsan Shire

Men.
Snakes.
Sexual predators.

Vice in their eyes , lies tainted with cigarette smoke in their mouth , the world lying flat in the palm of their hands, their eyes on your chest, the curve of your hips, watching you out of the corner of their eyes , their tongues curving around the word baby, their lips pretending they're sealed, though they'll splinter your reputation in a second,  their hands everywhere they shouldn't be.

You sit with these boys in class,you take the bus home with these men , you go to work clocking in hours with them ,

but  god forbid they see you as anything but a conquest, 
a mission,
an escapade
a foreign flavour they crave,

they try to get you to fall in love,
Smiling when you fall and break your face against the cold stone pavement of reality
telling you falling in love hurts while they
lick the blood off  your face
But honey, love doesn't taste like stones in your mouth and humiliation

they want the landscape in the background of their homecoming story to be the wind in your hair ,
they want your name on a list of 'achievements' next to your underwear, 

they see you , and god forbid they think of anything apart from your breasts,
god forbid they think of anything resembling consent,

honey, what a shame you weren't born with independence between your legs like them,
what a shame you're soft down there like a pillow to soak in their unwanted advances ,
their sugar, their baby ,

their smiles like poison dragged across your mouth ,
their appetite for the syrup in your tongue unquenchable, you gasp ,
you turn away. But you.

you shock them.

A girl with a mouth full of words like razor sharp blades,
ripping through their veins,
breathing living speaking rejection,
the audacity your speech bleeds,
the shock that you claim your body your own by covering it completely, 
declaring it not theirs to look at
to touch
to speak about
to think about

and now the vile monsters are clawing to get at you , to touch, to get a taste, they fetishise your fucking toes, your feet,  they imagine worse, they jack off to the way you walk , they open their mouth to swallow you whole ,and these primal beasts cannot process your brain , your thinking , your natural innate urge to say no, no , your inborn instinct to kick them in the crotch and set their lungs ablaze with dismissal , and risk waking the sleeping dragon, you take the risk every single time, even though it could take your life.

They still couldn't spell consent after you were done with them.

Slander

You reach the basement. The wall is painted a nauseating bright yellow. You've heard yellow is supposed to be cheerful, you stare at it trying to soak the happy in.
The sun is blinding , the coffee is bitter , breakfast means entering the mess where strangers look at you, prejudice colouring the corners of their eyes , rumours blurring their vision of you.
You look away.

Across the road , next door, everywhere are people who are free of guilt, poison soaked tongues spinning their lies into the grapevine, vilified sentiments taking up all the space in their throats, using slander as arrow poison.

Why do you keep running , he still asks ; it's because it's  harder to hit a moving target.

Constantly looking over your shoulder , sleeping uneasy as as a hundred tongues wag to the tune of a thousand lies , lies that crawl their way up your back when you lie down,  sneak into your mind when you're unguarded, you wake up to find your posture so defensive , fingers scrunched in a fist,  ready to lash  out.

Lies that haunt you in the eyes of strangers , your mouth is halfway in a smile when you meet them before you slice your lips against  them, your smile wiped off your face with blood.

Lies building up a reputation when you're assisting the boy next door who lost his friend to suicide, rumours about your best friend in spending the night with an unmarried man, she starts, she's hurt, your curl yourself around her the next time she sleeps, like you could protect her when you were eaten up by the million mouths yourself .

Sneaking in through the slit under your door , playing with the strands of your hair , finally reaching the tympanic membrane , red fills your vision, you've burst finally , carrying  your mouth , your guilt free heart, your tired ears, you take them home,  you collapse .

You empty your best friend's room of sharp objects before you leave .

lost cause

Hello there, old friend, I've been flinging my heart at the mouths of strangers who couldn't swallow brokenness, I've been falling in love with the lonely highway, counting the kilometres that will take me home, shutting the prayers in my chest asking for one.way.ticket.please.

tuck away these dreams spun of starlight under your eyelids , dawn isn't calling you, not today.

You
You who
Who thinks too much
Who cares too much
Who loves too much too relentlessly
Who cries too much

You who have buried darkness in your heart over and over but its ghost never fails to haunt you
You giving birth to the idea of giving up,

hold
on
one
breath
longer
You ,still giving your heart to the edge of the sky and praying it won't be flung into oblivion ,
You ,still making love to yesterday's mistakes, still afraid to let.go. , afraid to cause pain so much that your skin is broken,reworn inside out and you're still stringing yourself up by morning  trying to be there for people who don't know what being there is like
You , so dependable
Rapidly becoming so expendable.

I swallow the words like broken glass and walk away ; remember when you were raw with me and we had the ocean at our feet and a roof, a heart , a town , a person to call home ?
Have you stopped waiting for them who can't wait to leave you behind,
Have you stopped mistaking pain for poetry and this madness for love?
Has the instinct of self preservation saved you from the cruelty of unrequited affection , not yet , no.
Your heart is too big for the world to hold ,
and all the people couldn't fill you so you filled it with stones ,
and find the courage to step into the ocean and finally
Let
Go

Razor blade mouth

She was four feet , a vision in pink , eight years old , her birthday was three days ago , her father used to tell her she could be anything she wanted to be.

They had a quaint garden in the heart of city , the first act of rebellion Baba taught her. Her teacher, Mrs Azmi said that she was too loud for a little girl , her tongue was far too sharp , her words too many but  Baba laughed it away, as always.

She was ten when the city splintered its spine on the bloodthirsty breath of a tyrant and the collateral damage of politics , her house quivered,her miniature garden collapsed, her father was buried under the rubble of time and blood . Her legs were torn from her body , her father ripped from her soul.

Eternities later , her name is called , her physical form is taken to a makeshift refuge,  a white man with stony eyes glances at her , unfamiliar , foreign, he asks her questions she cannot understand, she stares at him. PTSD,  he mouths to the nurse.
"The scarf," a lady says, " you can take it off now."

A reign of oppression has ended, is what they say of the city in smoke in the papers the next day . The bombs liberated you. Liberated you from the oppression of your religion, the oppression of your male family members, the cloth you were forced to wear around your head , we saved you.
What ?
Rage wells in her tongue , razor blade mouth they used to call her, Mrs Azmi and the kids at school , baba as he ruffled her hair but her mouth is shut forever, Mrs Azmi is probably dead, baba is locked in the afterlife , his body too torn up to recognise.

If she could speak she'd say Baba told me I could be anything I ever wanted. Baba saved me from everything , everything except the explosion that tore him to shreds. If baba were he'd say , stand up for yourself , binti.
But I lost my legs to the bomb.
Speak up for yourself.
But post traumatic stress disorder skinned the words from the roof of her mouth, churned them into gasps that dissolved at the base of her throat. 

We've saved you the horrible woman insists,  this is what you really wanted. An escape from your father and the system trying to strangle your voice with the hijab around your neck and your head, your head that is too brainwashed and still believes religion and god will save your broken  heart even though it didn't save your dad.

No, she tries to say , baba never shushed me , the scarf around my neck didn't rip my femur bones  in half and nearly kill me , you did that ,this war against my people did that, this war took my tongue and my will to live and baba told me I could be anything but I can't be anything because I can't walk and I can't be anything because I can't speak, god gave me everything in the world but you took that away from me ,  all she wanted was to shut her eyes and dream the white woman away , all she wanted was an escape, a bullet to the brain , like a ticket to the grave , the white woman wouldn't go away ,she wouldn't understand her scarf wasn't oppressing her as much the stench of blood on the white woman's hands, as much as the shrapnel pooled at her feet, the hole where her home and heart used to be.

1, 2 inhale .

Time is burying disappointment in my veins like the bitter bloodred of betrayal , did you know the oxygen you needed to live can leak into your arteries , block them and cause a part of you to die ?

It's called an embolism.

I think about the hundreds of text messages flying through the airwaves, racing through space and time to reach friends and fathers and lovers, messages that didn't reach in time , messages that were read after the senders were shot dead , last words entombed in fragility, messages that were still never replied to.

" I'll call you," she swears and I try to not think about all the birthdays she's never called me, all the times I've meant nothing, waiting for the phone to ring like a sickness to end.

Take me to the city of dust and bones , a childhood spent in heaven. The flight is achingly familiar , remember when they gave Patchi on national day ?
Remember how you said you'd always be there ?
Remember when our words slipped between borders and countries , time and land separating us like never before, and you said you couldn't do it and you were sorry .

In forensic science we learn about how most murders are lust murders and how close rapists are to their victims , how the  food that sustains you can lodge in your larynx till it suffocates you to death.

I can't recall the last time you texted I love you too back and I can't help but wonder if I was too drunk loving the poison of your memories to realise they were killing me , sucking the life out of me , the worst kind of betrayal .

Dementia

Reading countless posts which talk about how the generations most remarkable feature is that they've lost the willingness to live and aside from art and the culture of melancholy that enraptures  our vacuous minds,all I can think is , if death was a gift, what makes you think you deserve it ?

Sick hearts chasing delusions , we're the twenty first century of a world meant for destruction at its own hands by people who forgot humanity before they learned how to crawl.

You've prayed so much to be free you can feel the tons of unanswered calls pressing up against your eyeballs like a weight the sides of your skull don't want to hold any longer and you're thinking of freeing yourself in the shower , freeing yourself as you walk home , you're thinking of the rope he wound around his neck and how his parents begged you not to do it to yours and you're wondering , am I really all that different ?
You're wondering if his family can remember his face because you're beginning to forget your family's names and you've been so far so long , you're trying to convince yourself you wouldn't matter and they can forget. You've made homes of roads that moved on, who is the weakest ?

Anger is no longer distinctive , I can feel it every day,corrupting my senses , burning through my veins , reducing me to viciousness , stripped down to bare animalistic desires , you think you're different but so does everybody else, but you're all monsters , you've all learnt to break hearts, just different kinds.

Strike two

She has eyes strikingly hazel and dusky skin that reminded him of sunsets and the flush of blood pulsing underneath her  neck, so very alive and warm. Some days it feels like the earth is swallowing her and even the ocean can't understand the emptiness in her, some days stone preaches to her heart about softness .

He imagines his mouth on her skin and she pictures freedom from him and his persuasive eyes .

She's  counted her blessings on the stars and the sky rent asunder to show her the stars weren't enough .

Except for him , the burning desire that pulsed through her arteries ,her heart skips a beat , lust calling her name and claiming her soul in a rush of impassioned mistakes.

Apologies couldn't keep anyone sane but she would find that the hard way. Suffering is a form of life she had never pictured until she had to live it. Patience bent into her bloodstream , the caverns of her veins echoing with decided resignation.

Only God loves you enough to forget the devil that walks around with your heart and name.

RIP to another soul lost to the obscurity of the afterlife

Death catches you unexpected , like a fog you walk in to to find yourself blinded and confused.
I walk into the kind of silence only death can invoke, murmurs pressing up against each other , sighs escaping tired lips , everyone treading the dreaded path nobody chooses to walk on, prayers pulsing through veins that are now acutely aware of how very much alive they are.
I woke up this morning to that fog. To be reminded of how grateful I should be for life and everything that is worth living for.

you've only got yourself and your insanity

But you make it messy when it's going good. You make it all so messy and your face blurs every memory in me until I'm standing next to you and I used to mean something to you.
What satisfaction do you get living your pathetic life glued to people in virtual worlds who don't give a damn ? What fun is it being a fan of a game, I never understood and what pleasure did you get in selling out and god you are so beautiful I wish you wouldn't.  I wish you wouldn't sell out because you are worth so much more.  I wish you wouldn't sell your soul to the devil and I wish your face wouldn't break my heart everytime I looked at it. You've insistently consumed me and I'm tired of your flames girl and I've been burnt so thoroughly that I'm all but a handful of ashes in your hands and can you please let go of me.
You're a beautiful lie.
It's a trap and everything you've been banking on is going to slip and give way beneath your feet and you'll fall and break like the delicate skin and bones you are but god you act so tough you've almost deluded yourself into believing the lies you project.
You're worth more than this.
You're worth more than this.
You deserve more than this and I know you said sorry but my heart still breaks.
Why did you change like the tides
Why did I open the doors to damnation for you ?
I still remember when you said the old you was dead. And she is. And it aches like this  because I miss her everyday .
You've no right to say you still care and wreck me like this.
It's so difficult  to take care of someone so fickle.
It hurts to look at your face and I can't explain that and it hurts to think about you in ways I shouldn't and it hurts to have thought you changed only to realise that you became much worse.
Vacuousness isn't appealing on you.

Fine lines

I can remember not knowing what a headache feels like , asking my friend once if the throbbing in my head was one , triumphant I'd finally gotten a headache and I could understand.

I could never understand your nuances , 3 fucking revolutions over and your name is the drug that keeps my brain wanting more at 1 30 am. I've forgotten how to unlove  you because I got so busy getting so good at it and now everything you do crushes me and i can't undo the damage I've self inflicted ,can you not be so inconsistent,  you're eating my heart raw and inside out , all I am is a memory, and I'm tired of being forgotten by you.

Now you know how heartbreak tastes in your mouth , you breathe in the acid of absentia , you might as well set fire to your lungs, you wouldn't know the difference honey, you wouldn't know.

Why you should leave when they say "I'm busy "

You are constructed of your parents dreams and passion , an extraterrestrial intermingling of fate and coincidence , your existence is a gift to everyone's life you've touched and you aren't perfect or flawless.
But you don't need to be.
Walk away from people who dismiss your imperfections as flaws instead of acknowledging them as unique manifestations of an individual existence .

Walk away from people who make you feel like you're missing a limb or a spark or something that makes you interesting enough to hold their curiosity, you are not created as entertainment for the masses , your existence was never intended to please any mere earthling , you are an amalgamation of everything you believe in and everything that you do , you are too damn precious for someone to not be able to make time for you.
Walk away from someone that isn't in awe of your absolute magic.
Walk away from people who aren't committed to unconditional love.
Walk away from people who are too "busy " to acknowledge the miracle that you are.

Santa Monica

Find her in the wrecked ship she passes off for a heart , find her when she's sleeping alone in the house she cannot call a home , find her in alleys behind parked cars, in between the cigarettes you hate , find the dreams she drowned in the bottom of a jack Daniels on the way to yet another party full of faces  she doesn't recognise , men she doesn't know brushing up against her , their perfume too strong against her marijuana soaked memories of you , find her when she's sober, look her in the eyes and see if to still recognise the girl you called your friend. Find her behind eyeliner that is too harsh against the ebony of her skin , behind the walls she has built with broken bones , find her behind the facades she has constructed , find her on her way to drown her sins in the sea,take her home. 

Find her stumbling drunk , clutching the sink like a drowning man would reeds , holding her hand to her throat , puking put the poison last night chose to force feed her, find her when her demons are ripping her limbs apart , find her blades and protect her wrists from her fanatic attempts , save her from the chaos of her mind at 2 am when you're clinging to pills to escape the pain of seeing her shipwrecked lungs zoom in on you and call it home ,save her from the blind instincts to turn to people who would eat her raw and bleed her dry , save her from the burning in your heart when you look back and find she's found a safe house and it doesn't include you.

I wish we all could make it

On Thursdays we wear sadness like  a suffocating cloak that threatens to put out the light of our very existence . I've crossed oceans to be able to stand here and the ground is giving way to my feet and no face looks familiar except that of death .
I've left promises I've broken to myself under my feet as I'm walking away from them,breathing in the smoke of burnt perseverance , I've lost the road on the way home , and it's raining uncertainty and clouded with a chance of corrosive heartbreak , didn't I tell you not to break down my walls,  they were to keep my demons from devouring the earth after tasting my soul and declaring it dead. Didn't I tell you the girl with the copper skin will tear away your resistance,  didn't I tell you sin would consume you, didn't I tell you to forget her and the poison she made you eat and called it love. Don't save me sugar , there's no saving the dead.