tender as a bruise

my darling god, i’ve known so much darkness; yet your name, a litany muttered over and over again, could have ceased all the violence in the world. you turned any lingering hurt to honey. our breaths intertwined sparked celestial conversations. to love was something like a prayer and i knew no better than to raise shrines and baptize stars with your name. you caressed every soft part of mine, called it wrong, rotten, tried to shape me in your image. as you were my religion, then i hope you can hear this blasphemy: my darling god, you’ve taken and taken until all the light was blown out. i will cast you down. sharpen my teeth on your flesh, then call it communion. you were supposed to be holy, but turned away to choose greed. left me to decay in your shadow. i stare at me and think of atrophy. here’s what you should be looking for: a splintered mortal, coming to break down your altars. a heretic who once traced the curb of your spine, a cathedral bending like a cage. touched that mouth which has preached too many lies, believed it was divine. remember this: you were sacred only because i made you so. gods were meant to fall and these shackles are mine to break.

in the middle of our youth, we realized rot has begun to bloom in our bones. we wanted to latch onto life, take it in like the first warm day of spring, but still feel so distant from hope. when someone asks how we feel, all we can think of is disembodied. we’ve run so far from our home, only to find out we’ve been bruised to the core all this time. this is the way we love: half afraid, half crawling, never able to fully be ourselves, yet always willing to give and give. we have many names for hunger, but it aches the most when we stare at other people, reaching out like a kid yearning behind the toy store window. love is everything we are denied. love is everything we whisper about in corners drenched in darkness. our hearts are merely broken arrows , powerless, incapable of aiming right. we became even too hesitant to hope. longing is a knife waiting to be sharpened and we have already cut ourselves. year after year, we wait to be kinder, braver than before. we’re only decaying back into our older selves, the used skins we swore we would never return to.

i hurtled myself into the mist of being alive. i tried to draw in love, soak it like a sponge, but i was left emptier still. kept breaking my heart hoping it will open. i became even more horribly aware, less trusting, just a shadow of a person haunting her own house. my attic is crawling with ghosts. when i move in this cluttered, obscure place, there’s always glass shattered, bruises when stumbling across furniture. water is leaking from the roof and my legs dwell in a muddy puddle. all around there’s a smell of stagnation and rot. i laugh with defiance in the face of darkness, try to hide my wounds under carpets and floorboards. the house keeps on creaking and howling, keeps on muttering, ‘you’re not even inhabiting this body anymore, don’t you feel sickened?’ it is true, but my sickness reveals itself as a blurry fever i have learnt to live with. sometimes, i’m threatening to burn the walls to the ground, be nothing but scorched, ravaged earth; but more often, my heart builds new places, touched by no ghost. i can kneel in a room that hasn’t known violence, a room where i’m loved. someone always waits for me at the window , helps me forget the loneliness stuck inside my throat. i remember how to be soft and open. i try to stitch my wounds before they haunt me. i’m patching the cracks in the roof. there’s hope. maybe someday i will even meet my ghosts and forgive them.

The crashing of waves, it’s woven in my being. The way they hit the cliffs , embracing the rock with a cold, abrupt sound. I think salt and water have mixed up behind my skin, made me a creature of the sea, longing for the grace of the tides.  The echoes inside me never stop ; I’m like a shell rewinding the memory of greater waters.  I have the entire sea overwhelming me, and this body of mine is too shallow, too small to contain it. My heart beats for the endless depths of blue and shadow. The chant of the sea, the seagulls screaming their melancholia, it’s all around me. Whispering in my ear. Maybe that’s why people are drawn to it.  Wilderness and harmony merging together, unrestrained. The smooth breeze drifted across the sand. At that moment, the sea and the sky were entwined, like they came from the same fabric. I deeply inhaled, letting my thoughts pass by, carried away by the salted wind.

i’m reading my old writing, back to when i thought love was softer since it only was a figment of my imagination. yet, without having met you then, my words embodied your presence, they foretold it. when i’m remembering you, i keep feeling like a fugitive, caught between hiding or trying to run away from something disgraceful, though almost forgotten. half of me reaches for you; maybe this is why i fail to build anything lasting inside me. parting our ways uprooted me, since it was only you saying your goodbyes. i wanted to show you every frightened thought i’ve ever had since. i was understood only to later be discarded as worthless. this is all our history unless i distort it. i’m prone to doing that since my free time involves overthinking. a lover staying away for the sake of the other, but still painfully in love? sounds great. yearning and suffering that i can dismantle on paper? sign me up. i just want all the hurt to mean something. the bruises must be justified, the mind fills the gaps. anything is better than being a breathing wound. anything is better than whispering ‘I forgive you’ and welcoming my chains back.

my hair reeks of ashes and war , but you still rest your head against mine. i want to be held in somebody’s arms until i forget i’m rotten.  my body is a distant thing , my mind bends itself to be likable. we dance underneath the full moon with waves crashing at our feet until we both believe there’s nothing except this moment. i wish this could be love, i’m trying very hard to make it be love. i can, if i keep my eyes shut. as i spill my worries to the stars, music pours into uneasiness. mouths pour into one another as the surroundings fade into a blur. i can’t see any traces of me left; my heart is dying of thirst and anything is better than being on my own. my sweetness is a sewn thing made out of loneliness, but at least i’m not collapsing into myself anymore. sometimes, kissing and stitching a wound have the same outcome. the sea is restless and we’ve forgotten about the graves in our chests. this night, aching stands across the street. it’s watching us, dancing barefoot in the sand, and waits. i shut my eyes tighter.

summer isn’t as long as it used to be. june, july, august – all dissolved in the blink of an eye, ashes of their former selves. when i was little, i thought of summer as an all-powerful being, almost mythical. it covered me from the people who wished me harm. yet now it feels sickening. a hemorrhage of heat passes through the curtains. birds nestle at my windows, singing only of grief and ruin. my heart speaks of the same ghosts as them, incapable of clinging to something stronger than hurt, louder than loneliness.  i’ve never known to be anything but bitter and nostalgic. this summer i left behind scrapes of writing like a trail of faithful scars. i wish i could say i’m trying to become light, as i always wanted, but i’m drifting away from that sky. words break me so easily, ah though i’m made of glass, begging to be thrown away and shattered.

recognition, this is what makes us tremble in front of another. you are almost like a mirror, except you show me how even the most rotten parts of me can grow. you approach with nothing resembling hesitation and i blossom under your hands. you teach me only kindness, it’s light engulfing me. it feels so soft and comforting that it goes right through me and undoes every wrong thing that harmed me.    tenderness means knowing that someone believes in me. as i look at you, i’m assured my gentleness isn’t lost, merely buried, awaiting to pull myself together again. the fact that love could overcome grief makes me want to forgive my darkness: an aching vine always threatening to strangle and draw out all the air. i have to keep the light in me even though i know that, at times, it’s impossible. but sometimes i catch you looking at me and you say: “you make me wish to help the world be a better place” and i realize i have risen from worse disasters.

love as undressing skins, revealing softness as well as sharpness. the heart hopes to forget its mourning. the light was always there, unreachable, but now it warms up everything like the morning glow. the heart is yearning for a new religion, praying to be understood, not worshiped, not eaten to the marrow; yet your hands in mine are more soothing than any litany, your voice more sacred than an altar.  kisses like running on knives, playing both the hunter and the hunted. the craving consumes and builds back. lips are brushing against places that have never known touch before – the back of the knees, the back of the head. places that shiver the most, the ones that will hold on to every trace of your mouth.  touching as reading in Braille, caressing every word.  bodies are deciphered like languages, names sung as if in a choir. but a name is larger than a language. it’s a muttered secret , an uncharted star. no matter the voice, there’s never the same inflection to it. hearing my name in your mouth breathes new life into it. i’m recognized. i’m seen.  a love so warm i would not think about how it would ruin me.

i’m not really good right now, more like a forgotten fruit, left to rot on the kitchen counter. ache is throbbing in my gut, burning, and the smell is threatening to scatter around, in a house where such petty things aren’t spoken of or tended to. here, grief is dismissed with sharp words and disdain. your bleeding must be hidden, swept under rugs like dust, because your sorrow has no value when compared to another. i’m still tired, but i’m trying. trying to get over this pathetic excuse of a heart, always on the brink of crumbling from the slightest inconvenience. i keep wearing sadness as a second skin, convinced that before me there isn’t anything but a bleak, loveless landscape; yet i wish to be kind, to let light light flow from within and through me, cleanse my marrow, restore me. i still blame myself, scolding until i’m molded into something smaller, helpless, aching for my voice to be heard when i’m not even listening to myself. how do you swallow your old selves whole? how can you even refrain from picking up your old skins just because they feel familiar?

you told me you were afraid of loving. i should have told you i was afraid of not being loved. oh, the wounds we carry from the ones who know nothing of tenderness. leaving was one thing, but you should have stayed gone. every time you come back , something inside me keeps spilling out: meaningless words, petty words, but comforting nonetheless. you’re an altar i do not wish to worship at anymore, a holy place i picture going up in flames. yet i sit here, matches burning into my blackening hands. i was meant to be the arsonist, not to turn into cinder. you heart is a dagger. my heart bleeds, stains, mostly at night – and there goes everything, a ceaseless hemorrhage of things unspoken, unadmitted, but still felt.

i try to pull the knife from my back but it sinks further , delving from wound to wound until the only shape i know is scarred. i want to talk, but my mouth betrays me, lips twisting in apologies when i just wish to feel like i belong. i want to speak, but there’s a terrible nothing inside, a blank vagueness. no form, no sound, except anxiety, always eager to get out, to taste the sinking knife. i melt into nervousness. i mutter how sorry i am, ashamed of not being able to see if there are any parts of me still working properly. parts that could be touched by hope or softness. i reach out , searching for warmness. i have only known caress in the brushing of a blade. if someone shows me kindness i start crying. but most days, the tangle of aching nerves is mine, just mine, weaving threads of rage and grief until nothing is recognisable. i survive in this cruel lie. i dread the day when i’m going to grasp at the knife and realise it has become one with my body.

i have grown up with fairy tales about girls with skinned knees, brave enough to face demons; princesses prickling their fingers on thorns and waking up with a kiss after one hundred years of slumber. about how it is dark inside the wolf and you cannot tame, only vanquish it. stories with strains of sadness woven in them, but with goodness always prevailing. yet in these stories nobody ever told us about the monsters inside us. about how sometimes we become so entwined with them that we no longer recognize ourselves anymore. more than we’d like to know, they win. they take many forms. mine is anxiety. i’ve been laying in bed these past weeks, sleepless, heart pounding so heavily i couldn’t breathe. in the morning, i’ve opened windows, waited for some kind of light, only to be left with the same panicked emptiness. fear is captivating. most people would rather surrender to it , stay in its wraps instead of fighting the wolf. they linger in that strange warmth, occupy their lives until their fear subsides in a corner of their mind. and i understand it. how could you fight darkness if you cannot see it ? you’d rather stay in a comfortable numbness. but i don’t want to bury my fears and half live. i wish to see behind the wolf. maybe it’s not bringing only darkness. maybe it wants to be tamed and understood.

in my stories, there are no loose ends, there’s always a lesson to be learnt, a bruise to be justified, a wound that can heal. i tried to hold love, soak it, open my heart so it could blossom right in the middle of the room. being with him was like looking in the mirror, except he walked away from the glass. came for a last kiss, a mouthful of thorns, then sunk gladly into other arms. he left and the story became vengeful and ruthless. what have i done wrong ? i asked, but he denied me every right to a confession; instead, wrote me i was one of the most wonderful persons he met. not the most wonderful. just the second option, a place he could return if he couldn’t bear the loneliness. the narrative splintered into a soliloquy. it dwelled miles into my sleep. the heart tried to make sense how could my hands find themselves homeless again.

to wish – to be more hope than scar tissue, in a night that has never hummed with such fervor; the sky pouring like a cup full of wine and our lips pouring in one another. the blackest, most remote parts of me asked for softness. in my mind, i tried dressing you with light. you came to pray and believed my mouth was an altar. i thought, maybe this love wouldn’t break the windows and dismantle the door. maybe this love would be kind.  i’d hear my name spoken and i’d recognize myself. but closeness meant restraining. you tore the door down, made the walls tremble and forgot anything about praying. yet this time i was brave. this time i spoke. to bury  - that’s what are words best for. is it better to grieve because you’re lonely or because you haven’t met anyone that made you feel that way? you’re a blank canvas, but sometimes people see something in you. people imagine. people weave entire stories, although they don’t know anything about each other’s griefs. maybe this is why i stopped trying to convey who i am – the world prefers you to remain devoid of color, an emptiness left to be filled in. realizing that, it’s wrong to say that no one made you feel lonely.

i kept having that dream where you found your way back to me. you talked about how the timing wasn’t right then, about how it would be to have the same sky sewn in us. touch starved, i still moved away, a trapped thing, not yet hurt, striving to get out. you surround me like i am the last chance to redemption. your heart became a clenched fist since i last saw you. it’s not love i fall into this time, it’s fear. fear to be tied down and overpowered, pieces of me torn, shining in your hands. fear of having to grow my body again, whole months, learning how to use my voice from scratch. you never had to go through that, not with me at least. we thought we’ve never been more ourselves than when we loved another. we were in with all our hearts and it wasn’t enough. love scooped us bare.  we did it clumsily, almost afraid, fidgeting with bandages even before there was a wound to heal; we wanted to help, but neither of us needed it. we were our own persons, yet we wanted so much out of each other. but scars sometimes have a pulse of their own, don’t they ? you’d rather live with the ache, putting one human on a pedestal above anyone else than see that person for what he is. in that dream, i learned to be like water. it flows, surpassing every rock, every limb of earth. it was always a choice, i just had to learn to stand for myself. you tried  to take a grasp of me and i slipped through your hands, unharmed. you only knew how to cram yourself into another person out of the fear of being alone. but i know no wall, no man, no confinement.