Phinexa Rose

I'm not proud of my anger; not when most of it is my father's.

But I wield it nonetheless...it is useful sometimes.

But I fear this is what he had thought, when he was in my place, and saw his father's anger.

That's the thing about anger-

it never stays with one person.

It always breaches out and infects.

If one person is angry, surely and slowly, everyone is angry.

Or hurt.

There are two options, two reactions to an angry person;

You are angry or you are hurt

You either hurt or you hurt

Nothing good comes of anger

would you grant me sweet sounding death or bring me to life with your searching hands would i cross the river death without you and refuse your pleading demands 

have i a heart that can refuse any of your yearning calls i have a heart that refuse the pain of the after fall 

The hardest part about being a liar is the desire for honesty. 

It's hard to keep up the facade when you want nothing more than to spill your rotten guts onto the floor. 

It's frightening to finally find a place -a quiet hidden away place where the stench of my rotting lies won't coil in someone's gut and force bile up their throat- to have a stolen moment to let out the screams and cries but not being able to choke them out from where i've wedged them in a corner of my neck. No, not a corner, a silver, a rotting red silver circle that winds around my neck like a choker. Like a target that if you hit and split open, will pour out blood stained words from decades past. Words that by all other's standards I should've let go of, but I haven't. 

You shouldn't keep those words with you, they're truths you've never told, drafts of lies you perfected before spitting out the final and approved version, they're sharp and they cut and they hurt. 

Maybe that's why I've kept them. Maybe that’s why I’ve kept them in my larynx, as a reminder that for every word i say now, i have said many lies before. A reminder that the red spider web slung across my shoulders, that flows from the paper crown a top my head to the bitten nail beds on my hands, that weighs nothing but feels heavy all the same, is not a warm cloak to protect me from the cold, but is instead a series of aesthetic and delicate shackles. All woven together, intertwined, like a twisted collection of fate's red strings; strings that bind me forever to that one fake promise I made seven years ago, and it will never let me go because the consequences of that lie and I are just meant to be. 

I can't remove these threads, I can't tear them from where I've stitched them into my skin so intricately, have I replaced the blood my mother gave me with the lies I told her? Have I taken the needle and thread life gave me to stitch and patch up my mistakes and turned the thread into razors that cut into my own skin and the needle a weak defence against anything that wants to help me? 

How have I become a person I want to kill? 

How have I become accustomed to making the decision between weaving bridges with red thread over a floor filled with broken glass promises or wincing as I run across the sharp floor because the consequences are knocking at the door? 

How have I become a person I can't stand to see in the reflection? 

How?

Oh, what cruel irony it is for the floor to not be marble or concrete but instead to be the soft soil in which flowers are meant to grow. Oh, to cry at the brutal beauty of the indifferent sun shining and scattering light after it passes through the glass, erasing the strange feeling one's supposed to feel when faced with a flowerless field and instead deceiving the eye, making it believe that the field is okay, that it's doing what it's supposed to be doing, that it's real and not fake, that it's beautiful like this and that the red isn't blood but is instead fallen rose petals. 

Oh, to reach out a hoping finger to touch a flower and end up contributing to the red river flowing below. 

Where are the poems that I'll read now and still remember a decade down the line? Where are the poems I'd remember and quote in the quiet 5am sunlight?

Where are the poets, whose souls bleed through parchment and stain my hands for ever after? Where are the poets, whose thoughts I read, who spur me to evolve from my form as a drafter?

Where are the poetries that romanticize life in a loving way that I'm still learning to? Where are the poetries that demystify life and help me understand in a way I've always yearned too?

Ah, teenage years, a time to race down empty tunnels with friends and immortalize them in polaroids.

Oh, to break stained glass and arrange them on the pavement in an outline of a middle finger; to pose in front of it as the streetlight’s beams are thrown back from the glass, and the manifestation of the sheer audacity a teenager has at that age will be left on the road to be found by some adult who had given up on life tomorrow. 

Oh, to stuff a whole gang of dressed for prom idiots into someone’s father’s sedan and order McDonalds only for a quarter of the fries to actually have been ate, the other parts are either in someone’s hair, on the car floor or being gently fed to some stray rabbit. 

Oh, to throw open the doors of veterinary clinic at half past midnight when the nerd of the group had the sense to google if feeding a rabbit was safe only to find out it wasn’t; to wrap a confused a little bunbun in a Chanel shawl and race to the vet lest this prom night be followed by a mourning morning; to have the vet not only treat a rabbit but also throw strawberry suckers at bawling kids from a safe distance. 

Oh, to have the trees surrounding a clearing with a bonfire not recognize the song being strummed on the guitar only to calm it’s ruffling leaves when the song closes and the friends applaud the guitarist for their first original song; they still shove shoulders, theatrically exclaiming that they’re so honored to be friends with a Grammy winner and make shared google drive folders with picture specifically saved to embarrass the guitarist in the future. 

Oh, to find old warehouses that are labelled as unusable but beg to have their walls echo with unrestrained laughter and have the only source of light be either the moon or the ablaze pile of exam papers.

Oh, to have no yearbooks on one’s shelf but instead have a painted cereal box filled with cutouts of faces and quotes that are tearfully nostalgic to look at; to whip it out decades later at some party and sprawl out on the floor as wrinkled fingers graze over smiling faces that never lost their shine over time.

Oh, to feel your throat choke up with feelings that weren’t there before.

Whose are they, whose are they, I know they aren’t mine.

Oh, to not see the light in front, only hear the melody from far away, as tears spill over and turn me blind.

These tears, I assure you, are not mine, yet they ask to be wept from eyes of thine.

And I brush them away, these unnecessary tears, but they well up behind my irises and they knock on my wooden door.

They don’t in barge, they are no bull, they sit in front of picture frames and wait for a lull.

For a moment of quiet when the silence is too loud, and I louden my music in hopes that it drowns, it waits for the second, follows it like a hound and when it arrives it viscously pounds. 

It knows, it knows, I know that no matter how strong or high i build my walls, water will always manage to slip through the cracks and soak my sole in discarded tears. 

And it wont hope I'll drown, no it’s isn’t malicious, it’s a thing, something, in the corner of my vision.

It has no form but it takes up space, it has no body but has a formless face. 

A mouth open wide and holes for eyes; a wailing sound a bleak and trapped cry. 

It’s everything is weeping, it’s face and mourning clothes. 

But there are no tears nor sounds though the mouth doesn’t close.

And then I understand, why i am weeping tears that aren’t mine.

There isn't much separating,  this world from another. A shimmering veil, a door, a step that hovers.

There isn't much holding, one back from forgetting and leaving.  A touch from reality, the feeling of a chest heaving.  

There isn't much difference, from here and that other half. But here is to dream, there is to have.

There isn't much reality, in that world made of dreams. The most beautiful of faces, have the shrillest of screams.

Maybe it was just for a moment; so what? 

Why can that moment be my best? 

Why can’t it be my loveliest?

Why can’t I live all of my life in a single moment? 

Why do i have to stretch myself out over months and years?

Why can’t i have everything right now and lose it all right now?

Why can’t i break the glass and dance on the shards?

Why can’t i count every constellation in one breath?

Why can’t i live a dream then fall asleep in a blink?

Why can’t this one lovely moment be my every moment? 

Why can’t i litter my life with moments of love?

Why can’t i fall in love with a rose now, a sunflower then and a butterfly later?

“You have to save your love for one moment-” No! 

I don’t want to! I don’t want to wait for that moment, i want that moment to be now.

I want to fall in love in this moment, why should i save my love for something later?

Is your heart so weak that it can only ever love one thing? 

Is your heart so afraid that it won’t fall in love with anything else except what’s promised to be its own?

Are you so afraid that you won’t be able to love then that you save up and deny yourself love now?

Why won’t you let your heart care?

Let’s decorate our farewell. Let’s have the flowers bloom and the stars shine. Let’s have the sun rise and the clouds mute it’s brightness. Let’s decorate and commemorate our last goodbye.

There’ll be only one of us remember it. Only one to break our promise not to cry. So let the one that left forgive the one that’s left  for crying after their goodbye.

The sun was bright when I broke my promise. 

I promised I wouldn’t cry. I promised. And I kept that promise for as long as your life thread ran.

When the cloth of your life came to an end, when the string didn’t have to be broken because there was nothing left of it. I broke my promise. I broke it. 

I didn’t even make it that far from the door. I didn’t make it past the path end. I stood on the stone path, dandelions tucked into my pocket, hair a thrall to the wind; and I broke my promise. 

But never in front of you; never. Only when the door shut and the sun set. Only when the room was empty and the bed beside mine the same. Only when you couldn’t find me in the most hidden of corners in this world. Only then did I break my promise. 

I promised I wouldn’t cry. I’m sorry I broke that promise.

I promised I wouldn’t fall in love. I’m glad I broke that promise.

It was worth it. 

To hold your hand on your first day and your last. 

To be a part of your future your present and your past. 

To see you beautifully grow up so fast. 

To have you born and lain amongst soft grass. 

I’m glad.

I’m glad I broke my promise. 

I am a mourner; I attend funerals. 

In this little life I've been given, I have spent most of it attending funerals. 

I attend the funerals most others do, the ones where one says goodbye to someone they loved and wishes them a safe journey past the gates they can’t cross; the gates where one reverently holds frail hands and relays the warmth in their heart to another heart that has burnt down to it’s last embers. 

I kneel and hold their hand for no more than a moment before standing up and taking my place at the back of the room. 

I also attend the funerals most others won’t ever think to; I attend funerals where one says goodbye to things that they wish to have never ever said hello to. 

I attend funerals where I kneel and look up into the eyes of a veiled named apathy and remain unsurprised when the veiled reveals itself as regret underneath. 

I attend funerals where the digger’s sweat mixes with the soil as they drive their shovel in deeper and deeper, hoping to bury that one wrong thing they said that one long time ago because the affect of those careless words are now carved permanently onto someone else. 

I attend funerals which end with the reincarnation of the dead wrapping an arm around the mourner as the mourner’s eyes cloud over in resignation and they learn to accept that the feeling will never die. 

I attend funerals where i couldn’t take two steps in any direction as the graveyard was so full of tombstones and the air hung heavy, pushing me into myself as if the wind were hands that begged to hear the words i was too afraid to say. 

Oh, to love, to love so harshly that the cuts made by any else  is overpowered by the gashes another heart -that beats similarly to yours- makes. But fear not for the blood that has bled will paint the white roses red  and the youthful love the white rose held is soaked in the blood of two who loved. 

For other forbidden lovers, they are forbidden by family and sea,  but us, we are not, but we are, but by one,  our families stand in between but there’s a train that can erase that distance. Or a bus if we want those extra moments. 

There are beaches we haven’t laughed in and there are beaches where we never will. There are words we have said, there are words we have written,  there are words we have screamed and there are words we have swallowed.  But I think the most pitiful words are the words we’ve forced to drown.

The words that dreamed of flying high and shining bright that we cradled in our palms,  we threw those same words outwards towards the dark ocean and hoped they stayed sunken. Those words that would not have survived on land, that would have been ripped to shreds,  were now given the chance to either be heard by the waves or be reincarnated into a world that accepted them. 

As a poet, you were made of words,  you were made of the lines of poetry you read, recited and remembered.  As a singer, i was made of voices, I was made of voices that sung, spoke and stunned. 

As lovers, we were made of yearning, We were made of gazes, grazes and gates.  As suicides, we were made of freedom, We were made of love, hope and choices. 

Oh, we’ll love, we’ll lose but love, we’ll live. We’ll ride at dawn, off work we’ll skive. We’ll eat cherries that turn lips red. And we’ll keep our hungry love well fed. 

We’ll carve poetry into some tree that you found. When the night was too quiet and your thoughts too loud.  And you’ll whisper the stories you came up with and I’ll write them down. And I’ll fold it into origami and have you wear it as a crown.

You’ll whisper affections and scribble them onto notebook paper and ask me to turn them into roses. And I would take them and fold them and tuck them behind my ear, your written affectionate proses.  And I have a box I made, especially for your paper flowers, that I keep at my bedside. And every night I run a finger down your handwriting, every night, myself I remind.

Remind myself that the seasons may change,  that the tree we met under may bloom with flowers that leave when the season changes.  But the love I have for you?