l’appel du vide

ii. and they told me that to love, you must burn. set an agonising fire coursing through your veins and watch as the world around you is ablaze. but we chose to keep the ashes for another time, and now the love i find in you, is the warmest embrace.

iii. i was taught so many lessons about love but they never told me this: love will hold your hand as you stumble and pick you back up even when you fall. love will put out fires in places where your heart burns and set ablaze the corners that have always been dark. love will be the lesson you want it to be, the miracle you want it to be, and the blessing you always prayed, no, begged for. love will be everything, as long as you find a way to give a little bit of it to yourself first

they had to pry whatever was left of us from my tightly clenched hands. all that’s left is a streak of blood scarring my shaking palms. i hate myself for thinking our endings would be grand. would anyone believe me when i told them how this actually died a quiet death, in the corner of the room, choking on its own breath?

i want to scream why why why why why. like the broken record player next to your bed. but don’t we know that this is how it was always supposed to end? boy meets girl. boy loses girl. boy doesn’t find girl. she’s nowhere. reduced to ashes by the flames of her own despair. i could’ve survived on scraps of love while giving you all of me.

i. you are trying to unwrap the caution tape i’ve tangled myself in and i can only hear sirens in my head. i’ve never wanted anyone to stay more than now but i’d rather let you go than hurt you over and over.

ii. i stay in places that will kill me and run from those that have given me life. as i aimlessly walk around town, i see MISSING posters of a girl who looks a lot like me when i was young, but this time, you can barely see the rage in her eyes. 

there’s so much to be said about daughters who have mothers and mothers who have daughters. from swing sets to graves and bedtime fairytales to daytime nightmares, all the blood shed in between, you are home and the ghosts that haunt it. i want to hear the love through the violence, the comfort shining through the dark, but each time you step close to me, i picture you and i, miles apart.

so tonight, i’ve locked myself in the bathroom, staring at a reflection in the mirror that looks more like my worst fears than it does like me. it reaches a hand out of the frame, caressing my hair with a gentleness i haven’t felt in years, “darling, i know you’d stay here even if it killed you. sometimes, i think that’s exactly why you do.”

i met persephone in a dream last night. i followed her across sunlit flowerbeds into darker tunnels, until i was no longer her shadow that could be seen. the soft murmur of petals metamorphosized into the ghostly whispers from crypts repeating over and over, "there goes persephone, there goes our mighty queen."

my footsteps got louder as the goddess of spring turned around, flowers falling at her feet as she held her hands out before me. after all, they do say "surrender is common nature to a damsel", and one question rings through my head, "is the mud under your fingernails from all these graves or the garden, who do you really belong to, the living or the dead?

here’s what they don’t tell you about nostalgia, here’s what they don’t tell you about the feeling you miss every time you look at an old polaroid. that your memories will seep into your lives like ivy growing through a brick wall, even the troubled ones your younger self wanted to avoid. and now we dream about metamorphosis, we dream about rewriting history, we dream about everything we promised each other and ourselves we would be.

so ‘vienna’ plays in the background and a closet full of history falls apart at my feet. there is something so powerful about the love we hold for those we survived the darkness and embraced the light with, can’t you see? flowers pressed between books, sleepless nights set to the playlist my best friend made, the road trip down unexplored ways, and all the summers we spent together too.

i clean up the mess as billy joel asks “when will you realize, vienna waits for you?” and the music comes to an end. but the most wonderful thing about this broken record player is i get to relive my favorite song over and over again.

"you're not my homeland anymore, so what i am defending now?", asks the voice in my head and i'm trying to shut it out but all our memories replay instead- the hazy forest we called home, the devotion i felt through my bones, the blood on your knuckles, the castle we built from all the rubble, all the times i found a town i never wanted to run from in your eyes, all the nights i no longer felt like i was in my own disguise.

this was a love that could've brought the mightiest empires to their knees. at least we'll leave our legacy behind in these sycamore trees. i never thought i'd have to see this film again, i hope you know i'd give up my crown just so we could rewrite the end.

and there’s only so many words i can write before the ink starts looking like blood. there’s only so much i can say before the teeth i’ve swallowed start to hurt. there’s only so many summers i can go without drowning in an invisible flood.

haven’t you heard all of it? i think you’re sick of the same story by now. how this grief is a family heirloom. how only the worthy are loved. how i spill my guts every time i’m alone in a room. how girls with white dresses stain the surface beneath their skin with mud. how i’d rather be haunted than be lonely.

but how can i stop writing when this wound is no longer a wound, but a million stories woven together? and how can i stop writing when i know you’d always listen to the same story a million times, as long as i told it?

// title ideas needed!

they say “your body is a temple”, right? or was it a cemetery? does any of it matter when we’re all on our knees? “salvation will be ours”, we weep as we rip open the muddy earth with hands that bleed. 

what do you beg for when you think no one can hear you? what do you beg for when you think god can?

we write poetry in the backseat, with ink the colour of the night sky. i want to show you constellations from the parking lot of the mall. ignore the blood on my hands, i spill my guts in the name of art on the bathroom floor. oh, the things we do for the hope of it all.

summer built a home inside of us but we haven’t seen the light of day in years. so much for summer love, so much for facing our worst fears. let the wounds burn. let the end hurt down to my very bones. let me bleed myself dry at your rusted door, it means i’m finally coming home.

// august

we were raised not to fly too high, run too far; we were raised to die a million deaths in the name of only living once. i might be older now but you say “love” and all these reflections still scream “violence”.

oh what are we going to do with all this bad luck, broken glass splitting open our brittle bones? crawling through a cruel maze we have begun to call home.

i have memorized the ghost of my childhood and it keeps chasing me down these shiny walls. look, there you can see the sun, dripping wax from icarus’ fall.

in the end, the shards sticking out of our broken ribs are what will take us down. in the dark lake of our merciless memories, bit by bit, we will drown.

// empire of mirrors 

a reordered version of the series i wrote on the seven deadly sins complete with its own playlist :)

i. pride, the most imperious of sins

heads held high and tainted glory, scar tissue covers our brittle bones like befitting armor. they tried to make us ashamed of ourselves, but we were destined to return home more imperishable than ever. the blood on our hands was worth reclaiming our priceless land; didn’t i promise you that fateful night we would last forever? long after the rivers dried out and the fields were covered in decayed heather. you might have betrayed us before but this time, with newfound viciousness, we’ll do it better. “your arrogance will kill you”, they tell us, as if we won’t get dragged to hell together.

ii. greed, the most desirous of sins

lush silks and blinding gold, we have empty castles for hearts. even eternity won’t be long enough for those of us grasping at exploding stars. we don’t want much. just glory without all the blood that comes with it. just pearls in our crowns and immortality slipping through our palms like sand. just empires to be rulers of without the curse of eternal damnation. just power and impenetrable fortresses without the promise of ruination. we don’t want much, just love without any teeth. but you know better than anyone that there are some things even gods aren’t allowed to have.

iii. lust, the most scandalous of sins

stolen kisses and forbidden touches, we’re leaving behind a legacy of lipstick stains on the holy grail. the veiled whispers and unending rumors reopen old wounds that made us frail. everywhere we go, our longing hunts us down like we’re a hungry wolf’s prey crawling along the forest trail. these rustling leaves sound like a lover’s sigh and the summer breeze is a warm embrace. we live in a cruel world with a craving for violence and always get told that it’s our own “morbid desires” that will be our fall from grace.

iv. envy, the most covetous of sins

eyes turning the color of a lush rainforest and steadily rotting hearts in our burning ribcages, we will always want what we can’t have. insatiability has carved a home deep into our brittle bones, we learnt eons ago that there is no salve for a jealous soul. clawing our way through royalty, yearning for what will never be ours is when we’ve felt most alive. don’t you remember killing our gods for their fortune on a stormy night, when the sky bled its bloodiest hue? this green-eyed monster has chased us deep into the menacing woods all our lives, don’t you think it’s time we bared our razor-sharp fangs too?

v. gluttony, the hungriest of sins

royal feasts and lavish meals, all the riches in the world can’t fill our gilded platter. there were times when our frail bodies and trembling hands weren’t weak enough to matter. now we hold banquets that make up for years of thirst and relentless hunger; wiping the blood off our mouths after tearing apart ancient gods with every bite. we’re here to take back the crown, and when it comes to those of us who are younger, we will never go down without a fight. won’t you let me be a sinner when we both know i won’t be enough if i starve myself tonight?

vi. wrath, the most vengeful of sins

burning battlefields and swords sharpened against ancient wounds, we’ve spent a lifetime praying to gods we made up on our darkest days. now, here we are, stronger and louder than them anyway. it’s our rage that makes us holy, the bloodcurdling fury behind these fragile shields that makes you stay away. the fire in our veins will burn the throne down and paint the streets you once ruled, ash gray. “your anger will destroy you”, but don’t you know we’ve bled lava and cried acid long before this tragic day?

vii. sloth, the most indolent of sins