She stares at the brown papers of her notebook. Her hands rest on the table palm first, her breathing is rhythmic as if she was the drummer. In she breathes, pauses and out the air goes. She reaches out to her pen, "i am ready" she says. She flaters and the rhythm stumbles. She pauses starting again. Inhales holds it in then lets go. She starts writing

Hello, it seems that introductions are needed. Why? Because most days you are a name with out a face, tip of the tongue moment in my mind. Most days you are silence, the long sigh that comes when words are stubborn. Did you know that you are the 10 songs i removed from my playlist and the other 10 i added to replace them. You are khaki trousers, old school compounds, dark brown skin tone and kind eyes: everything that lures out tears from eyes. Most days you are negatives of vacation pictures in a chest- charcoal drawings of happy clones that look like me. Most days you are lump free throats, and tear-free smiles. Most days you are blank pages of a poet's book. Most days you are gone. Most days you are forgotten, hidden. Most days you are a life with out a soul. It is amazing how many lives a person has until they lose the one.

I stare at your picture, trying to pin your transient face down to a time, a moment, a story, a you, a noun. Death feals like a dress you wore out of you grandmother's closet. It doesn't fit. Most days you feel more real than me, as if i was the one who didn't exist. But most days your name is a burden upon my lips. Weighing more than your memories. Most days you are stale air. I breath and i survive until the days my lungs slip and i am at sea, gasping.
See, these days you are a name and a face, the 10 songs you loved that i now hate and the 10 more i forced myself to like. You are the yellow trousers you gave away, footprints in grounds you would once have walked on- a projection of your unlived past. You are a page long introduction. You are sadness in the form of a smile- longing, lonely. These days you are loneliness. You are fear. You are the tears i lost to, the fights where i never stood a chance on- you never did either but you fought anyway. These days you are 3 wet dots on a writer's paper...

She pauses to watch as the paper bleeds in deeper shades.

...a story on your own. I gasp. These days you are everywhere. You are the tumor on my throat; it is just air but it is as real as you are. And i fight, because that's what you taught- to stand as goliath even after you have read the bible. You are a solider in a lost war- still fighting. So i am fighting growing islands in my throat, seas in my eyes, waves to my legs and pain - indescribable pain- just to remember. So you can be more than hospital gowns, dark IV bags and shaved head. I am an amnesiac trying to remember. So yes, introductions are in order.
Hello, you are a name of warriors, teach me how to be a solider.

To the one fan who nags me to write

Did you know i am reaching out from the end of a pen now. No more pencils. This is a confession. It will not have edits - the writer's lies- honesty stricken out in the name of artistic censorship. This will be a first. Firsts are always misplaced, mislabeled mistakes. Don't expect words here, these are nothing but sweats of my pen in the face of a page left empty. But i am not sorry.

To the one fan who asks me why i don't write

Did you know i picked the pen before knowing its name. Writing was a song i never heard but sang somehow. No, it wasn't an original. I took the slim instrument and played the notes of withered melodies. I was a prodigy, acclaimed for my stumbling as stylish. I was a cheat. I wore a skill i never honed, I was a sword that was never forge. Don't expect explanation, i don't have any. Accident never do. Neither are they sorry.

To the one fan who wonders if i will ever write

Did you know the pen was a gift i left at the return desk only to find it on my door step. Writing was a forced gratitude. But an offering imposed is no better than insult. My words burned as a sacrifice for a god who never asked. See, i was already blessed abundantly with a curse, given babylon for a tongue. I speak, only words that hailed from lost cities. I write, only to voice uncertainties. And for this and only this, i am sorry.

#gift

It's no wonder, dear,
For it is my curse to weigh every dead skin the face sheds,
To heft the heaviness of slimming hearts.
I am beholden to smiles saved for rainy days:
That one overcoat no one ever wears

It no wonder because i had long been called for distant wars,
Foreign corpses of old friends and unmarked graves behind enemy lines.
I had long been burdened with the overlooked.
My eyes made to gaze the blackness in between thousand suns, the dark we learned to thread through.

So yes, it's no wonder, dear pain, that amidst a sea of worthy muse,
my ink chose you.

"Loneliness is a fire."

Loneliness is not.
It makes a not of you-
A forced substance to inexistence.
It is a familiar laughter of nothingness,
While you, an unfitting hug,
Spill yet again from his empty arms-
Blessed with the inability to be held in.

Loneliness is rejection.

I went to see your mother today, her sadness could be felt from a mile away. She has become so thin that she reminded me of your last days. I never noticed how alike you looked until today; you are her splitting image. The color of your eyes match so, when I looked into her eyes, I felt like I was looking into yours. Even the wrinkles on her face reminded me of you; your face looked older than it should have been. For a moment, I shut off my brain and pretended I was talking you, I almost believed it. Almost. I told her I loved her, because I know how much it hurts not to be able to say it anymore. We talk for a while, and I notice how much she has changed. She wears her pain like a second skin now, like an old cloth she once discarded but hasn't grown out of yet. I have never seen a more illustrative picture of sadness, or a soul stronger than hers.

#color

Some days I sit and read beside the empty sofa you left behind, everytime memories of the days when you used to occupy that empty place assault me. We didn't talk much you and I, we just had a silent companionship. You, lying down, listening to your body or your thoughts (I could never tell whether you were awake or asleep, but now I know) and me immersed in a fantasy world of some author's creation. I know I say reading alone is my favorite pastime, but secretly I will always miss your silent company.

#color

It is funny isn't it? How we never learn to appreciate what we have until we lose it.

#color

She lost him because she couldn't love a person as flawed as her, and so she couldn't believe he would either.

#color

I guess I found it harder to believe you will never fulfill the promises you made me.

I miss the memories we never made.

#color

It's a gambit dear, an old deal between time and love- that one should prove the other a fraud.

You are the kind of person that comes once in a lifetime (or maybe it just seems like that to me.) I don't think I will ever find a person who will give me even a fraction of what you did.

However short our time was, I count myself lucky to have loved you.


#color

It's amazing how easily my feet learned to walk backwards. It was as if desertion was a childhood love i never moved on from. Ironic, how loyally i run to it.

"If it's your will, let this cup pass from me"

I wonder how long we will prolong eating the meal we have prepared for ourselves, for how long would we wait before we munched on our words. I wonder how long we would anticipate the bitterness of each passion we will crush, each moment we will break.
I wonder, dear, for how long shall we stay in torment before breaking the curse we vowed in haste.

#a_shot_at_spontaneity

It's sad how your mind never gets used to the idea of appreciation. It is like you are always waiting for the shoe to drop, flinching away from blows that has long stopped coming. As if this world you are living in is an illusion you are expecting to drop any second. Perhaps the only person that still counts your flaws is you, perhaps you need to give the girl in the mirror a thumbs up, pat yourself on the back, and tell yourself "well done."

#color

To my noble pursuer
Dear,
I shall make my home a step too short in the garden of roses. I shall make my bed by the ravine. I shall wear mirrors for dresses and blades for jewelry. I shall be the drizzle in the summer, i shall be the sun of the winter. I shall be a midday blaze. I shall storm like a hurricane. I shall smile. I shall show you everything that's mine. Oh my dear, i shall make it hard for you to love me. I shall force you to leave.

I will choose silence because the truth tastes like betrayal in my mouth. I am sorry for the house i built in the sinking sands of my heart. I am more sorry for letting you make a home out of it.

Somehow your love tastes the like luke warm chicken soup i made last night: a product of desperation and unoriginality, like my mother's recipe i tried to recreate from memory. It is a poser, a little more than a failure trying to pass off as success. I gulp it down with self told lies and wash it away with excuses. But what the mind and tongue willingly forget, the heart will taint with the remembrance of bitterness and guilt. Your love is my half eaten chicken soup because my tears made it too salty. Your love is the marring of memories, i no longer crave it.

I am a guest among my words.
Funny, how time made a stranger even out of myself.

Some days another heart sings the words
my soul wanted to scream
and my heart aches.
Not from solidarity but envy
Anger from the knowledge
that even my pain could be shared,
That this scar isn't reserved to be just mine.