Nobody tells me if it's okay to be sad all the time

You. With your old scars and new stories. Rain on the roof and Robbers playing on repeat. You, setting in your sadness like every sunset you have missed. You and your watercolour dreams. A rumour and a dead rose; your heartbeat is just an erratic breath. Half-smoked memories on the pages of your own history and half-baked excuses that you weave. Tear stains on your pillow and the little diary that you hid. You, with the boys, misplaced and misunderstood; a loner on the fields. Hemingway quotes etched on your wrist and the lies that you believe. Maybe, we should talk. Maybe, we should forget about it.

On most days, I feel undeserving of love. Of the good things in life that do not come in calloused hands. All I can do is ask, Why? What have I done to be treated with hands that do not want to bruise, by words that are cocooned in warmth? I will never be deserving enough. I will never be good enough. I have done too much, seen too much and let people do too much; and I can't just forget. How much more days will it take to push guilt aside and accept the love that is given away to me, without even having to ask for it? //Somedays, light is simply an illusion and the further you walk into your darkness, the more you believe that you belong there.//

Some days, you're a song someone listens to. A book someone reads because you told them to. Sometimes, you're just you. A memory tucked in a warm corner; of good days, coffee and cheesecakes, postcards and thumbtacks. Sometimes, the memory is ugly. You're you. Angry and upset; sharp words and tear-tracks, a melancholy stillness, unspoken grudges. Broken glass and fixed portraits. Sometimes, you're a wish. A promise. A little happiness pressed between pages. The reminder of sunshine after a rainy day. Some days, you're forgotten, to forget the pain. Somedays, you're poetry etched on a smile, hidden away. You're not all good and you're not all bad. //And if they still love you, why can't you do the same?//

I think it's amazing how we move on from pain sometimes. That very thing that seemed to rip out our hearts and claw at our skin is now just a little ache pulsing beneath fingertips as they type out "I'm fine"s to people we don't want to bother. Some say, loneliness is better than pain while some others would tell you to go out and get your heart broken because sometimes, that's beautiful. I don't know if the fixing is beautiful too. I don't know whether a broken heart hurts the same way as a broken spirit and if a broken spirit hurts the way a broken bone does. Sometimes, healing is a one-way process where you take and you take and someone calls you out for it. Maybe, that's why we are more than willing to hurt longer the next time. Because we don't want to be called out. But then, are we giving instead of taking or are we simply pushing the pain into corners and hoping the darkness swallows it whole? //things you don't forget//

Nowhere feels like home, no place is a safe haven; twilight sky over weary bones and skin, sings to me of gloom and memory; supressed sleep and misunderstood tragedy, calling out to agony; is this how we go in deep, surface to unspoken reality? For if my dreams call out to me, I shall take one last breath; before I give in to my misery.

A home and love are, at the end, almost the same thing. For some, a person to turn to and for some, a place to come back to.

There is this empty space in my stomach. It's always hungry for love. It's always asking for acceptance, assurance, a lot of other things I don't know the words for. I try to answer it. Try to tell it that sometimes, we can scrounge for things that we want, that we need but we just might come up empty-handed. That sometimes, all we can do is starve ourselves until we are just a hollow shell of bones and skin scarred by life. I wonder if this empty space will stop calling me pathetic. There are a million other words I trap in my mind. A million reasons that I give it for a moment's peace. But the empty space just gnaws away. At my fingertips.

You were a piece of blue sky stitched on a grey heart; sunshine skin and moonshine hands on rough edges, forgotten poetry and a Bukowski quote scribbled in chalk underneath college desks, whitewashed brick walls crumbling and pages left untouched by all but time; you were bookmarked sad notes and that vintage car you always wanted to own, thunder and lightning and lightning and thunder and the storm too, laughter etched on the face and tear tracks on bruised cheeks. You just were. Lonely and your own.

Here I am, sitting down to write a poem for you.

I think a lot about how it ends but never about how it begins. Does it end with tears and broken promises and whispered goodbyes? Does it end in ways that I can never ever repair it back? What if it ends and I never get to say the words that I always wanted to say? There are so many what ifs, so few answers. But it ends, it always ends in my mind. There is no beginning. Never a beginning.