the balcony scene: a soliloquy

i’m crying as i’m standing on the balcony of a cathedral. i face the large courtyard and my waterworks are free performances for all to see.

yet, no one has noticed.

the setting is perfect, as if i were the heroine in a coming-of-age film: morning glory flowers twine around the marble balcony, and a light breeze caresses my skin in a gesture of sympathy. i’m staring straight ahead as tears roll down my cheeks, making sure to leave their marks. there is no ugly crying and disgusting snot and this is it: the moment the hero to chances upon this picture-perfect scene and saves me from my pain.

but there is no hero. there is no supporting character. there isn’t even anyone passing by.

i’m not a heroine. nor am i in a movie. nor any fictional setting, for that matter.

i’ve lived enough years to know that no hero, no prince, no fairy, no deity, god, not anyone can save me from my baggage that clings onto me like second skin. this isn’t a tale of strength. i’m not a phoenix; i can’t rise from my ashes. i’m human, and i die when i’m set on fire.

this is a tale of sadness. a tale that i wish a talented author would write; a story i wish i knew the ending of. people say it’s inspiring that the future is a blank canvas only we ourselves can draw.

i say it’s a burden. being a writer is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. you’re blessed with a medium to shape your emotions into literature, yet you’re cursed because at the end of the day, you’re left in a rut of emotions and a puddle of spilled ink.

but you can’t cry over spilled milk, just like you can’t cry over the ink staining your hands as you wallow in nostalgia and words left unsaid.

so i’ll go through the same routine again: fall, cry, rise. rinse and repeat. at least having a cycle to follow grounds me in the feeling of constancy.

–

i’m crying as i’m standing on the balcony of a cathedral. my tears and fears are out in the open for everyone to see.

i am but a lonely planet existing in this universe, still searching for something to pull me into its orbit.

don’t mind me, i’m still searching for a galaxy to belong in.

---

 

this is something i wrote in one-shot, so it’s mostly self-indulgent. makes me all nostalgic because that’s what i used to do here. i’ve been so so much more active recently reminds me of my old days of 2015 on this blog. :”)

l o o p .

you fall. you scratch your arm. at first, it is a little bloody but the skin tore at surface-level only. then the wound festers. pus and blood oozes out and your skin rots and rots away and your bone can be seen. when it pierces right in your bone, you could not feel anything, for your nerves are already gone. somewhere far away, a heavy load is cut by the rope and gravity stretches out its arms and pulls and pulls the load closer and closer until it slams into your heart like a freight train.

oh, that hurt.

it is a shocking realisation: climbing up the tower, reassuring yourself that the final boss will come soon and it will all be over – it will all be worth it – only to find out that

there was no final boss.

there was never a final boss.

how can you win against creatures that don’t die?

you still fought valiantly, though. with every stroke you write and every key you typed, you felt like you managed to severe a limb. but there are two problems: first, each mutilated limb regenerates into two and second, you are battling against an army.

you had comrades with you. one left because it was too straining; the other faded away like something one would call a “force of nature”. one joined but then realised they, too, had creatures of their own to fight, and soon deserted.

you have two left and you turn around but wait a minute, why are they gone?

–

for every level you conquer, for every creature you subdue, you are sure you would reach the top one day. and you are getting more efficient and intelligent and you thought you would make it! but as you battle with the intent of defeating the final boss, without there being being a final boss, you realise you are still trapped in that dungeon, just sluggishly pulling yourself forward, pushing yourself higher; just s u r v i v i n g.

when will this all end? 

it’s an endless tower, and the only way to go is up.

an unfinished poem about unripened feelings

i ask myself:
what are feelings?
is it “feelings”?
or Feelings,
or feelings.

one minute i feel my heart warm and suddenly
there’s a home furnished with
dining rooms, fireplaces, and bedrooms
and the hearth glows bright –

and my heart beats, alright.

[enter role to be played.]

A travesty of herself was made –
Her true self hidden behind a white blank mask.
Her life was simply a masquerade.

Questions she skilfully evades
To prevent slip-ups and make the façade last.
A travesty of herself was made.

Sharp words sprang out like switchblades,
Causing a hairline fracture that seemed to scar.
Her life was simply a masquerade.

With a bright smile, along she sashayed.
In a movie, all she did was star.
A travesty of herself was made.

Her eyes glistened as her head touched the bed,
Only occurring when the door is barred.
Her life was simply a masquerade.

So what role should now be played?
Of shyness or confidence or is this too much to ask?
A travesty of herself was made.
Her life was simply a masquerade.

–

this was written two years ago. throwback to when i didn’t know how i felt and writing was my catharsis. (it still is.)

decided to post bc of my lack of material and current months-long writer’s block. also for myself to see my previous crappy writing and compare it with now.

The Motley Medley of Depression.

Depression isn’t just plunging headfirst into a deep, dark hole –
it’s also struggling against the chains
(that have rusted from the time you spent in that fucking rut),
’til your wrists are red and purple and blue and black;
cuts deeper than wounds inflicted by words without tact.

Depression isn’t just staying motionless, stuck in the past –
it’s also walking forward, step by step,
while everyone is sprinting for success.
But there’s a weight that’s holding you down,
anchoring you from reaching the clouds.

Depression isn’t just making sad poetry that rhymes,
it fucks up routines and goals and this paragraph and your mind;
it’s opening a document only to find out words fail you –
the only constant in your life decided to leave.

Depression isn’t just not getting out of bed –
sometimes it’s staring up at the ceiling while the fan dries your tears;
other times it’s facing down while your body trembles with sobs.
And when you finally get up to do the dishes,
it’s rapid breaths and moist eyes and furious scrubbing.

Depression isn’t just keeping a smile on the outside –
sometimes it’s wondering how come you’re so composed on the outside
when you’re breaking down – agonisingly slow – inside.
It’s tearing when you’re laughing but blaming tears of happiness,
because goddamn it, I didn’t ask for this, did I?

Depression isn’t just bearing the weight of burdens after burdens –
sometimes it’s running far far away from everything,
thinking you can outsmart and outwit and outrun it.
You forgot it’s bound to you, forever a loyal follower –
the only constant in your life that you wished would leave.

 

last post of the month.

it eats you up on the inside,
’til there are no more words left to spill.
yet your mind’s in an overdrive,
going against your every will

you can’t stand, you can’t sit;
pacing around does no good, does it?
they claw desperately at your skull,
begging you to release them now

and when you finally think you’re at peace…
oh, you’re dead wrong, honey

they’re always going to be there, you could tell —
whispering, murmuring, giggling;
echoing in your head like incessant bells

it’s been ten years.

ten years ago, today, i was first introduced to you. ten years ago, today, you introduced to me a whole new world i thought existed only in fantasy. ten years ago, today, you brought me an unexplainable sense of security to my life.

ten years later, today, you are the only constant in my life. you are the only rock i can rely on, the only source of true happiness, the only drug that get me higher than any man-made chemical.

i’m indebted to you, to say the least. you are my first love. you introduced to me to a whole new world: a language in the form of black dots attached to long, thin stalks that were printed on manuscripts; a history of prodigies who composed masterpieces that can never be fully captured through the passage of time; a haven to scream and shout and yell incoherent and tangled webs of emotions when rendered speechless.

yet, you are my first regret. probably the biggest regret of my life, as of now. i should have hold onto you tighter; i should have worked harder for you; i should have noticed earlier that you were already slipping from in between my fingers.

it was too late. you were gone. gone with the wind.

sometimes i ponder and ask myself if i ever regret meeting you. getting to know you was — is — the best thing that ever happened to me. and that’s why the heartbreak that came seven years later, after you left me, was inevitable.

i could blame her for tricking me into giving you up, but at the end of the day, she was not the one who felt the most pain. it was i. i shouldered her mistakes and carried my sadness to this day. i was the one receiving the bad end of the stick, not her.

essentially, i could only blame myself for even trusting her in the first place. for being so gullible to let the centre of my world slip right past my fingertips.

this sounds like a sappy heartbroken protagonist of a romance novel. oh, how i wish it were to be fiction. but this is reality. this is my life.

unlike the movie, we didn’t receive a standing ovation for our tragic ending. we were left to sort out the pieces of whatever’s left of us backstage. but you were gone before i could take back a piece of my heart that you had ripped out. you left me laying in a mess of fragments of you and flashbacks of our time. i was stuck in rewind, playing back all the times that meant the world to both of us.

take good care of the parts of me that you ran away with. at least you get to keep these parts that remind you of me. or that’s just my selfish thinking that it’s fair that you are reminded of my existence whenever you look at them, just like how i am constantly haunted by your presence as i look at these broken pieces that i have carefully framed up on my wall.

maybe you burned them to ashes as soon as you found out those desperate pieces clinging onto you, just like my fruitless attempts at forgetting about you.

ten years is a long time and i wished for this day to arrive quickly because, damn, a decade is a hell lot of time. i thought this day would be special and i would throw a party but i nearly forgot about it until dinnertime. however, like always, you crept into my mind when i least expect you to. i thought there would be this overwhelming feeling of nostalgia or maybe some grand ride back in time but i didn’t feel anything different than the eighth or ninth year. maybe you don’t have that strong of a grip on me anymore. maybe i can finally be at peace when memories of you escape the locked drawer in my mind; i can smile when i think of our joyous times together, not sob at the what ifs if we are still together.

thank you for coming into my life ten years ago. i’m sorry that we are no longer together.

–

ten years ago, today, i was first introduced to you. ten years ago, today, you introduced to me a whole new world i thought existed only in fantasy. ten years ago, today, you brought me an unexplainable sense of security to my life.

ten years later, today, you remain tucked safely into the corner of my mind, resurfacing only when nostalgia washes over me. ten years later, today, you are locked in my heart, every heartbeat reminding me that you are a reason to live. ten years later, today, you are the centre of my universe.

and will forever be.

nobody likes performances of failures

you push yourself to come out of that shell, to put yourself out there, to expose yourself to the harsh judgemental glares and soft hushed whispers of the usually passive audience. you put on your brightest and most charming smile, and as you did your opening act for the show, putting your best effort into every carefully calculated, meticulously designed move, because first impressions last, someone just walked up to the stage and knocked your props off your hands. another one followed, brushing past you and shoving you to the ground. soon, the whole audience marched up the stage and walked over you like a fucking doormat. to make things better, you seem to welcome them more than the rhetorical “welcome” on those mats.

after trampling all over you as though you were a stick of burnt-out cigarette, they celebrated the end of your existence. whoops or joy and cheers of satisfaction reverberated in the whole auditorium. they didn’t give a fuck about who you were. you were just a demanding, task-driven, overly-focused bitch who was no different from a slave driver.

someone from the audience just replaced your place without so much of a second thought. this time, the act involved mocking you, your life, and your end. the crowd roared with laughter and shouted for an encore — not of your life, but of the performer glorifying your failures and embarrassments.

that’s the thing. no matter how much you tried — no matter how much you told yourself that you had another chance to make it right, you always did something to fuck up. you’re a fuck-up.

amity

The afterlife is supposed to be free from sin,
But when the party ended, I felt the lights dim.
I retreated back into an empty shell,
Where loneliness echoed like incessant bells.

–

The loneliness closes in on me,
keeping me trapped in a glass box cruising through a galaxy
of memories that are the total opposite of celestial.
I’m supposed to have been surrounded by people —
why does it feel like they’ve been sucked into a black hole?

Their ghosts linger behind,
taunting me of the memory of their company.
Some, however, just fade off into nothingness,
being as insignificant as the many bright stars in the sky,
even though they could have had the potential

to light up someone’s life.

i intoxicate myself in the pixellated reality created by people like me

and i get hungover in the fleeting euphoria it provides.

–

Hide. Hide. Hide. 

That’s all we really want to do. (Or is that just her?)

escapeescapeescape

She gives a name to herself. (Doesn’t she already have one?)

She doesn’t even refer to herself in first person. She feels like she is talking about another person. The fearless one. The talented one. The charming one.

The perfect one.

She feels alive. She just wants to avoid people. Yet she welcomes them when they communicate virtually.

Why why why is it so different? What is so different? Why does she feel the need to escape? Why does she feel invincible only when she’s staring at a screen? Why can’t she feel the same confidence when she’s staring at a face?

She creates this character. She sketched the outlines with the things she wanted most and coloured in her brightest hopes. She’s small light pencil strokes on paper but her character is traced over by big bold lines. She is now more “out there”. The attention is on her now. And she doesn’t seem to mind it. It doesn’t faze her.

But it does when she rids herself of the meticulously modelled character. Sometimes both just blur together and she isn’t sure which one she is anymore. Bits and pieces of her and her character mix in real life and in the virtual reality she created and and and

It’s not euphoria she feels. It’s hurt, anger, sadness, frustration, confusion…

(Depression?)

She wonders if her character is daring enough to parkour on a tall building and accidentally fling herself off of it. Of course, it will just be an accident. Why does she need to die when she has everything she ever dreamed of?

Everything she could not have.

–

i gulp down honeyed words of fiery passion,

and even though the liquor burns in my throat,

the flames engulf my whole being.