incoherent

my silence betrays me; for too long i would rather give the polished impression that i have it all together when i really don't.

stay awhile, be mine. maybe we could pretend for an hour or two...you were you are am i are you? i don't know where we go. i want to hold you. i want to run away. i don't want to feel. you twist within me. i want to feel you. i don't want these tears that slip down my cheeks. i turn to be alone. arms of coldness. words denied. so far we have come, so far apart together, yawning distance growing wider. your eyes smile. you are warm you call me and i huddle within myself. weep icy shards of warm tears. hold this cold heart against you. embittered empowered impassioned the paths we walk together away from all this? i don't know. i don't understand. i can't fathom the way this works, or doesn't. sincerity cuts. i am numb and speechless. overwhelmed. helpless.

has it been a year since dreams were birthed? almost.

unpolished

[squiggle 100305]

i'm a bitch.

maybe not always, but often enough. too often anyway.

the dryness of the heart parched and longing. the wetness of the eyes raw and bleeding. what point growing up if it only serves to tear someone else down? how do you know that you really are growing? why the hell does it matter if i remain less than i was meant to be, if that could allow someone life and freedom and happiness and real real love? who am i to be an obstacle to another's rightful joy and liberty? why grasp for temporal satisfication and completeness that might be an illusion that so easily shatters in...

silence?

why so much fulfillment in sacrifice? why the necessity of pain? the throbs of pain inflicted and borne, the stranger sharp stabs of afflicting pain upon another.

it is true that some things can be learnt only in relation to others. but sometimes i question if it really is worth learning these things at the expense of another's heart...if my learning to love and give is worth the streams of anguish that must bleed from a precious soul.

could i be
human
and frail
beneath beneath beneath

all these dreams
crafted
fall fall fall
apart and away asunder

selfishness
my choice
my bane
my curse

indifference
cloaks my pride

and i wish i could care

they say life isn't worth living without love. that pride is nothing in the face of eternity. would i really miss it...that abundance of life if i never come to know it?

[/excerpt]

[snippets]

[snippet]

The air-conditioning is chilly. Airports always seem bare, bright and sterile – not the most welcoming of places. We grab a bunch of steel trolleys and load up, forming a baggage-laden laughing train and amusing people with our random antics. It seems strange. The last time I was here – well, the second-last time, really, was to see you off. I could sit in the very same seat where I clutched your hand and prayed; I could stand in the very same spot where I held you tightly, trying to delay the moment of parting. Instead, I join the rest in setting up camp.

.......................

I sit on the low metal bar and lean back against the glass barrier; the clear surface is cold on my back. I hear you speak, but I do not know what to say in return. Instead, I steady myself on the railing as I pace back and forth on gleaming metal. I suppose my eyes too would gleam with unshed tears if I could look into them. Unlike the surface I tread on, love has done much to melt this steely heart.

I wish that I was flying to be with you.

[snippet]

Walking through
The frigid rain
Yearn to see
Your face again
And the cold
Wouldn't matter
Because with you
I'd be warm –
I'd be safe –
I'd be whole.

I don't feel
So much anymore
It's overwhelming
You're distant;
Vague among new
Yet I do not
Belong among my
Own –
I belong With you.

Heady emotions
Meant so much
Now they are
Duller
Yet the truth
Is fuller
And I know
Things now
That I hadn't
Known before.

[snippet]

I want to spill myself. I want to be poured out and to soak you through, till you drip with melancholia and liquid sighs and throbbing anger, the heat of passion and the placid calm of my measured breath. I want to be the distortion that grates through your ears and rings like a drug into your head; I want to be the melodies that stir your soul. I want to be more. I want to be light. I want to dazzle and blind you and send ringing laughter vibrating through your atmosphere. I want to be touch. To drape skin to skin like velvet-soft hangings, to send ripples through warm flesh, to trace sweet shivers down your spine. I want to be in you, and you in me. We could collide and our beings would coalesce into an argent teardrop quivering on the face of time, sparkling through the refining fires of heartache. A thousand heartbeats refracted and shattered into prisms and rainbow splinters that pierce my soul. Echoing over oceans, this voiceless groan...it brands my heart with promise and pain. Stretch me beyond myself to find myself. Hold me taut and hold me tight, watch me quiver at the brink of breakage, yet still yearn to reach further than sanity would allow. But in a way reason was never a reason.

[snippet]

There is this waiting. Sometimes it saturates me, like yeast through so much dough. Then time oozes along in moist, glistening trails of rising suffocation. Other times I could almost be free, and the yeast would be but bubbles rising through my being to pockmark the surface with little bittersweet twinges. So I fill the waiting with tunnels of doing, stepping stones on the way to a dream...and yet each stone is a universe in itself.

Oh, the little empty pockets of life that I fill with worlds of wondering.

[snippet]

I am full. I am a pool beneath the stars. I am dark and secret, silent and waiting. I am light and laughing, a bubbling spring. I am deeper than you might ever guess – yet none desire to plumb the depths. They are satisfied with the ripples that dance over my surface at times – how quaint; how entertaining; how forgettable! They are drawn to motion, lights and sound, and thus my stillness bores, for it belongs to the mundane. Only you could know me in my silence – and love what you knew. Drink deep and be refreshed, beloved. If you leaned over and looked into my soul, you would see your image reflected in me and understand how we are one. And if still you looked and gazed deep enough, you would see the heavens shining beyond us and within us, and know that we have been given so much more.

walking tightropes

“It’s all about balance”, I quip sagaciously, one hand gesturing in the air, the other holding my half-consumed blue-paper-wrapped McDonald’s Fillet o’ Fish.

Sarah eyes me and eats a French fry.

“Y’know. Balance...I mean, you can swing to either of two extremes. You can get super-depressed and languish over absent love and just give up on life here and mope around...”

Sarah chokes at the thought of me downing tubs of ice cream, bars of chocolate and assorted sugar-laden comfort food every day.

“...Or. Or you can go the other way and just get caught up with the immediate surroundings and decide you don’t really need that kind of relationship anymore. You can live without it. So...for a long-distance relationship to work out, you need to find the balance between those extremes.”

"Mm-hmm," says she. Not like all this really applies to her. I'm talking to myself, really.

-----

“Balance. You need balance”.

Another day, another friend, another restaurant. My bowl of iced sago and honeydew melts slowly into a green-tinged puddle.

“I guess you need to work out the balance between different aspects of your relationship – emotional, physical, spiritual...can’t let any one dominate, or any one be neglected. Like, I mean, some degree of physical interaction isn’t a bad thing – it’s good, even, but it can’t be the only thing.”

I sound so wise, so knowing, so...

Ish. I hope I remember all the stuff I’m babbling about, I scoff in half-sarcasm to myself.

-----

So. What is there to say, really? It’s been a fortnight and a bit. Half a month already, since you took flight. I’ve somehow found ample time to be wistful, even though I don’t really have the time to spare. I wouldn’t say I’m balanced – perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I’m trying to embrace both extremes; be obsessed with a love halfway round the globe while concentrating fully on the necessities of life here. Needless to say, it leads to exhaustion, somewhat. Flurries of extravagantly long emails, hours spent on Skype, aching ears resulting from ill-fitting earphones, scrawled smudgy postcards, all intermingled with the other necessary things like driving exams, never-ending college applications, packing luggage, farewell dinners.

Emotional tightropes? So we inch along in a delicate balancing act, seeking the perfect tension between both ends that will enable us to stay high in the air without falling.

So we're not quite there yet, but hey.

No one ever said you couldn't enjoy being dizzily in love.

:)

the clod & the pebble

“Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet:
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight;
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

-William Blake







[Yes I will write something original soon ;D]


[I remember Jien reading this (and a lot more assorted poetry) to me when I was sick - so sweet eh.]


[Poetry-appreciative guys are kewl. ;D]


[So mm. We've been speaking through other's words for some time now, but I'll sit down and write something properly soon. I will I will. :) For the time being, you can read this post on my personal blog which I debated posting here, but didn't.]

apart

“Love is an act of blood and I’m bleeding a pool in the shape of a heart”
-Dream Theater, Space-dye Vest

the pain is subdued – it would probably bubble to the surface and spring forth in tears if i let myself, but i won’t. i can’t afford to indulge grief, instead, i shall have to adapt. i was hollow that night after you left – i left a few tearstains on your pillow, perhaps, and tried to feel you with me as i huddled beneath the blanket and lay on the bed – your blanket and your bed, but you were not there. that was when my heart ached most, lying alone in the dark as i tried to conjure up a semblance of nearness and illusion of your being and the warmth that we shared once upon a time, an eternity ago that was mere hours past. i suppose it was because i was in denial and knew it, which really spoils the whole point of being in denial.

i left for home soon after waking late the next morning (sleep heals somewhat) – it seemed pointless to mope around in your house (which felt empty somehow) and dwell too much on the past, when, after all, the past is past and there were other things to get done. i drank the last can of nescafe latte that was in the fridge – our drink – and nibbled some chocolate while sitting on the floor of your bedroom and i was quiet and still with my heavy heart for a while, and then i went.

it was an unconventional parting, unconventional like every moment we spent together, and hectic from the start. i suppose it was somehow apt that a whirlwind romance should end (well the honeymoon period anyway) with a whirlwind of sorts.

the whole two days are somewhat blurry now. the images fuse and entangle into shapes and colors and sounds – grocery shopping, running around from shoe shop to shoe shop searching for the perfect pair of budget slippers, washing wet lettuce leaves, cracking eggs and pretending to be useful in the kitchen as you conjured up some sort of carbonara for dinner, the prayer meeting which i snuck out of halfway, sitting on my own on the swing, talking to god and watching stars and the night sky, the last mamak session and the roti bom we shared, meandering the streets past midnight onwards onwards onwards and sleepy-eyed, redesigning your pencil box with liquid paper and marker pens, watching the sunlight glimmer on the waves in pd as you gave me a piggy-back ride splashing through the shallows and feeling the white white sand soft and cool beneath my feet and gritty on my legs and how we waded hand in hand back to the shore trying to follow the sandbar from the little mangrove island in the fading light, two delirious lovers in their own little bittersweet paradise, ever attempting to push aside the knowledge that we were soon to part.

my heart blanked out on me as you ran around in a last-minute attempt to finish packing, because i didn’t want it to be real. the ride to klia was a dream, and the ticketing complications and last-minute scares were enough to push aside the reality of parting for the moment, because there were problems to be solved and things to think about other than love and leaving and leaving love. emotion finally surged back into my numbed heart as we prayed together and i babbled with wet eyes and clutched your hand tightly, not quite knowing what i was saying, only sure of what i was feeling.

and then it was time for you to go.

i didn’t want to let go, as we held each other tight one last time, but i did let go eventually and so did you, and i was crying inside and you knew it, as i gave you my wan half-hearted smiles and we looked into each other's eyes but we knew we had to take this path and so you disappeared down the escalator and across the vast empty cold hall and through the little gate, a small figure turning to wave and i waved back and it was vast empty and cold and i was an insignificant patch of empty coldness that filled the entirety of my world.

and then i turned around and walked away, away, away, as our entwined lives stretched in opposite directions, and distance faded into the burning ache in my heart.

i slept in the car on the way back, because i did not want to feel.

i wanted to write poetry, but i cannot. i have not the words. everything is yet too raw, and the reality of it all has not yet mellowed into eloquence of sorts and i cannot yet sufficiently express the beauty of this pain, the wounds that love inflicts, how we are embracing it all. i am sure that gems will be birthed out of this trial, but i cannot see beyond the silence of my heart, not yet.

i miss you.