"asshole" i try to call you with all the conviction i can muster. how dare you tell me about her? I hate you i repeat and i repeat it till i'm sick. will saying it enough make it true?
her i don't know who she is, but i know you've got a new her now. do you make her laugh? or worse, does she make you laugh? is she just as cynical as I was or is she just as bright as you are? you told me you got into college and all I could think was, does her hair curl downwards too? (congratulations) does she read and leave little notes in books or does she actually watch studio ghibli movies with you? god, do you guys fight? fight about whether everything you have is just a well balanced chemical reaction, about everything and nothing at all? are you happy? how did you move on? why do you still care? It meant the world to me when it happened, was it really just another sunday to you? I hope she's everything you actually deserve. no I can't possibly wish that for you. I can't hate you. I miss you terribly. I can't keep talking to you. I wish we were still friends. I wish we could be friends.
How can you not expect me to get attached when the first thing you said to me was, 'oh you've read that book?'
When the rocks seem miles away and the shore steeping and breathless, the desire to keep falling and falling overcomes the cause, when the sky flew faster than you, all the light was just blinding, never golden and when you lay by the riverbank, scarlet red seeping into clear eyes, scarlet red from where carnations grew, only does your breath turn tragic, turning poetic, when love struck jewels emerge, careful fingers touch the rubies, and this is all the power I have, to only lament words I cannot fathom and trace the fall over and over till only golden ichor flows anew.
"i never see you getting angry, when i was your age i used to be so, so angry"
perhaps we're more similar then i think mother, i don't think I've stopped screaming internally since the 7th grade, the amount of violence it took to convert my tears into deep-rooted anger, but i listen to your sad past anyways, unflinchingly, all my anger directed towards my grandmother, and her grandmother, and hers, a long line of cruel women, who in turn built crueler versions of themselves. i can't tell you about how each time i look into a mirror, i see not myself, but all the crueler and harder versions of me, and i see you, the woman i swore not to be when i was little.
i cursed you for sacrificing so much, but I'm older now mama, now i feel the same rage as you do and i curse at how you are all i could be in the future, with the same screaming daughter inside.
I promised I'd start journaling next year, this year i mean, that I'd fight the urge to cut my hair, I'd fight the impulse to stare for far too long down the road, lying with the time ticking in reverse unable to quite picture how you'd laugh, that I'd stop numbing the ache by forgoing to muse, stop craving the cough syrup, stop biting my nails, learn a new language by the time I'd have to wish you, so that my smile for once wouldn't be brave, my typing not repeatedly erased, I'd promised to stop loving you the very day, the clock hit today,
Silvery sands we walked over,
Footprints smitten but never forgotten,
Quite deftly destroying the perfect arches.
And how long shall we climb the ridges for?
When the light warms the time held in our fingers,
Running through steadily, yet fast,
Shuffling of only the crushed thorns,
Our bare feet sink into the
dissolved, ghostly essence of the past,
And we sit with the light, reminiscing the fall.
my mind is like a goddamn river. not serene or calm or peaceful, but every thought rushing by too fast and gone before I can fully understand it. I, myself can barely remain afloat in these deep waters. so do you really want to break down my walls, the dams I've built over the years? will you drown in these rushed waters too? and if you manage to swim, would you bring me to my shores with you?
We yearn for immortality, yet dismiss the ones who've danced with the elixir as mad.
(hi) (...)
i finished watching our conversation topic from a couple of months ago. the entire time, you were like a spider traipsing along my thoughts, quietly marveling at the silks you laid, carefully tucking in the corners of the bedspread I never learnt to spread. could you tell me once more, that I don't need to be right all the time? I think my compass is way wire, you haven't been singing for quite some time. my wrist still burns from when you dragged me to wonderland, the quickest film drawn out in painful hours only inside my head. We’ve been here before, the tunnel that won't end is yours, can you blame me for being afraid of heights or futures i can't quite graph on my hand? Won’t you let me scribble over your blue hands one last time? I won’t do it in permanent marker I swear, this last time.
but what if i interpret it wrong? you always called me out for being too cynical, so maybe the freckles on your skin spell out my name in braille. maybe the veins and arteries curling in my wrist trace the paths we are destined to walk. we have already happened, are happening, haven't happened yet and will happen, so what's the point in letting a stupid calculation error determine our reactivity? what if the stars whisper not warnings but twinkle in adoration?