the memory burns

you know you're fucked when you're not that worried about the searing pain of a new wound but thinking of the healing process fills you with so much dread. how long will you flinch at trigger words? you don't even know half of your trigger words yet. how long will it continuously tattoo itself on your skin? how long will you scream it in the pillow? how long will you wish they choked the life out of you instead? 

you know you're fucked when you used to struggle to recognize yourself in reflections back then but now you do and you don't like what you see. you spent years removing the corrupted parts of you but watch that polished statue crumble before you in seconds. you couldn't believe it, but oh it's happening. fuck your pretty face. fuck your intelligence. fuck everything good about you because you are not good enough. 

you know you're fucked when you remember the clothes you were wearing, because that means you vividly remember how you fell on the floor too. every single ghost you thought you've long outran all caught up that even your limbs couldn't hold you together anymore. why are the walls not collapsing? why is there no cracks on the floor? why is everything the same and i'm not? you want to burn everything, but the memory burns instead.

the rot is in the thread  

stupid girl spent years before a mirror sculpting your existence into something palatable only to end up so much worse. you were a fool to think you could be pygmalion and galatea altogether when the rot is in the thread. you see, the worst part of being good as dead is you aren't. you feel. oh you feel too much. so close your eyes, create new seas, you're only worth something when you're suffering. 

stupid girl you have become the women in the mythology you loved so much as a child. you never truly win. you think you're pretty and you're marrying the best of the greeks but a dagger is the only thing that awaits you on the altar. you can reinvent yourself all you want but the rot is in the thread. so scream your desperate prayers, entertain the pantheon, you're only worth something when you're suffering.

written on my stone

"it's time...i didn't think of you at all...i'm losing hope...i'm not sure if i still do...i'm sorry..."

i still hear it, unceasingly, in overlapping whispers that turn into psychotic screams. it comes uninvited and never truly leaves, it conceals itself somewhere in my skull only to rattle as i was falling asleep. you know i'm no stranger to the pull of the depths but this time the salt reached my lacerated soul. i'm an impossible bottle ship being tossed around by real, wrathful waves with no sight of the shore. truth is, i can't forget about the daggers i didn't know you had. you said the lookout exorcised your demons and we can go home, but it's not as simple as pulling them out and pretend it was all a dream when i walked around for two weeks with your weapon of choice in my chest. i left trails of blood only i could see. i rivaled the damned with my misery. my body have become my own grave and your words will be written on my stone.

venus on the shore of cyprus  

i'm not seventeen anymore and i haven't been seventeen for a long time, but there are days when the memory of what it was like suffuses my whole body and the soft ache fits right in. a purple fever dream, standing doe-eyed on the brink of a long, sweet rot. like venus on the shore of cyprus but in place of a gilded seashell is an obsidian sea. something shifted within me that felt final. a sigh. a glare. a head tilt of a young woman who saw through the spell for the first time. there was a promise i didn't know i was making: that she will live on. ironically, because the abyss gazed back and the notches on my bedpost aren't what you think they are but i've learned to forgive myself for that. and though the moons have rendered it an atlantis, the skin simply never forgets a holy revival when it felt one. one more year stretches between us. it's a beautiful and terrifying thing.

you're only angry because you couldn't admit how sad you are

in a clearing, a wounded doe is curled up by a fire, dreaming of sunbeams trickling through the maples to the rivulet where she last bent down to drink, before a man in a wolf pelt pulled the trigger. the moonless night is bent on enshrouding her little body, but in vain, for a formidable sentry stood by her. a breeze blew over the grass sheathed in early frost, she shivered and the fire grew warmer. the tranquility of the scene was interrupted by a snap from behind the trees. her eyes flew open at once. groggily, she lifts her head up and stared at the direction of the sound. the fire is several feet taller now, waiting, brimming with malice. whatever steps out of the shadows will burn.

seeing nothing, the doe turned to lick her wound. she does it with full attention because it's all she have now. she couldn't even remember the life she had before the bullet. one thing that is certain is nobody that threatens comes close without getting burned. many trees were damaged through the years, and they have countlessly begged to be spared, but the fire listens to no one. its sole purpose is to protect the doe. the whole forest will be in ashes before anyone can harm the sweet creature. no one knows how long the doe has been there or who built the fire for her, but if you ever stumble upon her form and your stomach grumbles—listen to the trees, listen to the trees, listen to the trees.

modern frankensteins

i thought i heard a telephone ring. muffled, as if coming from my sister's old room. i faltered at the door but quickly snapped out of it. it's just one of its tricks, the hurt doesn't stop just because you turned your back on it but you know better now. it is an empty house, a space of susurrations, a graveyard for the last strains of our voices. it's dim and musty, all seven of its big windows are boarded up. the washed-out aquamarine paint had chipped of, the doors creak at the slightest wind, cobwebs and water stains blemished the ceiling. it's a dilapidated house after all, with mold and rot and rust clinging to it like a skin disease.

the house regonizes me. even in its slumber it made sure to let me know my presence didn't go unnoticed. i see blear figures move out of the corner of my eye, manifestations of memories half-remembered, vanishing behind moth-eaten curtains whenever i turn to look. the remains of resigned sighs pool at my feet as i go further. dust hung suspended in the bars of light thrown by the little windows above the kitchen counter. i didn't linger long in the hallway that leads to the rooms which doors were left ajar. it looks like an entirely different space now, eerily inviting and at the same time driving me out.

a few years ago, i had my fingers wrapped around a crowbar, pried out one of the floorboards to see what lies under and found the bones of the words that didn't make it out of the mouths of the women who lived here. i never indulged my curiosity about this house after that. but looking at it now, stripped of us, i see why this house have never felt right ever since. the skeleton is horribly disjointed, evident that it was built only to hold but not belong together, like body parts of six different corpses sewn together by a madman.

it's alive, and in its deathlike agony it drove the men mad, reminding them of what their fathers before them had done, coaxing them to do the same. it's in there the women saw the silhouette of rage for the first time in their lives, but no one risked another step to see its face, consequently dooming themselves to pine for their young spines forever. and the trembling children, they would become like the house. solitary despite society, possessing disfigured souls that momentarily extend to their limbs when you look long enough, and when you snuff a candle and the dark claims the tendrils of smoke as its own, their names take the shape of the monster that made them.

haven in the hollow

ethereal and spellbound, the song blooms golden fairy dust springs out, spirals, soars sweeping away all that belongs to the sublunary slowly the walls fade away, shimmering as they go. now pulled into a realm of ineffable beauty of rolling hills and lush valleys filled with delicate mist and mossy stones. an endless stretch of fragrant green speckled with wildflowers here and there of majestic cliffs eternally reaching for the stars scintillating faintly in the firmament of castle ruins crowned with gulls flying in echelon white as the surf-worn shore below. the song crescendos, gossamer dress billowing in the wind, running toward a forest of pines where perpetual twilight reigns. the scene shifts, sunlight falling through cedars strikes upon a spinning figure with soulful eyes barefoot, arms stretched out like wings face ablazed with unbridled euphoria. the ending unfolds, flying over a gleaming fjord kissed by a sweet-scented wind beneath a peach-pink sky lulled by the haunting, unceasing murmur of the brine, promising to pull me back.

antihero 

i am only a husk of the sea-soaked girl that did not hesitate to sink her teeth into her worst apocalypse. veins pulsing with reckless abandon, shoes soiled with mud cutting through foreign towns that briefly held my head above water. mine were the eyes that soften only at the sight of sunsets. you should've seen how freedom gushed down my chin like nectar venom after the great escape. i stood there, nearer to the stars with the charcoal waves waiting below. i have never been good at keeping myself from the edge ever since. but i was seventeen and hell-bent on reinvention, all i ever wanted was to step out of my skin and burn it like bloodsoaked clothes. and yet all i did was stain my hands with quiet storms and head for the hills as if i wasn't taking with me the scene of my own crime. 

it can't kill you if you giggle during armageddon 

put some shoes on those tender feet, leave the periwinkle glasses on the nightstand. the house is lodged in between the teeth of a rabid dog but you have a sanity to keep. abandon the hope of waking up because this is not a dream, a long way from the halcyon days of nonchalantly watching the sky burn from afar, sitting at the bottom of swimming pools so you can deny the truth a little longer. 

the four horsemen are on your porch. tall, imposing figures you couldn't get away from. they're in the same car as you, you see them on the television, they occasionally slip into your dreams, you feel them in the cadence of your friends' voices. in fact, they've been here forever. when you were eight, when you thought you saw them in your soup, it wasn't pareidolia, they were really in your soup. 

so grit your teeth. bring a knife to a fistfight. build a temple for medusa and then slit a horse's throat at the altar. watch how your blood mingles with water in the white sink. pretend your heart didn't break over the roadkill. waterboard yourself with the bitterest coffee until you're sharp enough to see through the mist. you've lived through many apocalypses, darling, might as well walk this one off.

girl with no exit wounds

i know this feeling deer in the headlights, misplaced brontë heroine existing, but only in fragments screaming at the sky for a deus ex machina this bespeaks six years ago a girl with no exit wounds seeking new gods in coastal towns where the hours don't pile on top of each other but gently and deliberately weave itself into aching bones as she daydreams of four-leaf clovers and sparkling opiates but the moon swam across the summer sky patches of blue blurred by i've been wearing this rot for years now like a second skin, i thought i would soon shed it after countless nights of sitting on unsullied sands to meet the glare of midnight but then who am i without it? it tears me asunder how i feel but rarely understands as if there is no daylight between this hurt and the soul that bears me my mother said it didn't rain the day i was born but i have always felt like it did.

it's not fair to feel like fading while remaining perfectly solid in everyone's eyes, to be as lifeless as a statue in a dark room while the party goes on just outside the door. that's why in this life there will always be trains i will run after, misty woods i'll dream of running into, and birds i'll stare longingly at until the clouds consume them. i scream these all in papers with a maddening frustration until my temples ache. i hope you know i don't wish to play god, i just want to stop burning.

// excerpt from sleepwalking

fifteen minutes in neverland 

so that's how a chapter closes when no one's looking, when the high wears off and we find ourselves in a rustic cabin tucked in the mountains. warm string lights gracing the sapphire air. the incessant sound of streaming water. wooden floors creaking beneath our feet. silhouettes of the landscape that seemed to constantly shift. the empty pavilion lit by a single fluorescent bulb. out of sight, but the embers died out one by one as your stories spilled out. i memorized your faces, aglow with bonfire, as the cashmere darkness tried so hard to press itself on us. we know we'll never see each other in this light again, so we chain danced in the pool just to know we were still there.

the night deepened. the sky shed the tears you and i couldn't. we kept on talking, clear-cut in the sound of our voices that there was so much more we wanted to say, but none of us are cut out for it so the words remained at the bottom of the plastic cups. huddled in the kitchen, i was mystified by how much faith i have in the solemn glimmer in your eyes. hours before you were only strangers whose quirks i know so well, but when you unzipped your skin i realized you're still the same people from four years ago, touched kindly by time.

in the room, as your chests rose and fell, i was frozen at the feet of september. i've always been so bad with endings because i know a part of me will stay in those places forever. but look, i told myself, this is our last fifteen minutes in neverland, none of us are going mad, because what we had was good. it's okay. i willed myself to stop thinking about it. i watched the sky take on light instead, tossed and turn, flitted between sleep and dream until october drifted in.

a wisp of smoke

the summer when it dawned on me that i’m no longer thinking of you, i was sitting on the balcony of some hotel watching the wind ruffle the surface of the charcoal sea. it felt strange, almost like committing a cardinal sin, to find no traces of you in me. i remember the grief, the solace that came shortly after, but most of all the guilt—because where do i lay to rest the habit of using every lovely thing i see, like the gentle waves breaking softly towards the shore below, as a metaphor for you? 

melancholia

the sink overflows swiftly these days, my own words have become tiny paper birds eluding me before i can write them down. the mist must have crept into my eyes from gazing too long out the window— a fading moonflower dreaming of dawn. vague visions dance among the real, is that the past or the future, flitting like moths beneath a solitary streetlamp? my lungs still keep the fragments of the panes from my childhood home when they shattered and hurtled toward me like arrows, glinting in the bright flames of orange-yellow. sometimes i feel as if they’re trying to shatter too. the burns heal but the smoke permeates the body, often i find myself lurking about the scorched ruins, often i find myself breathing the air from that day. desperate for exit wounds, i scream inwardly for weeks on end, rivaling these november downpours. i sigh this all-consuming melancholia into midnight skies and dark waters, living in hope of seeing my face again.

i. the end

i finished university on a random tuesday afternoon in july. i didn't think much about it but it was disorienting, bittersweet, and tragicomic. i felt it all to the bone. i sat there with my laptop closed, wondering what do i do now, took a thousand steps back but it kept bringing me back here on the desk where i spent most of the time getting through. now you're telling me it's over? just like that? 

ii. the end, but rubbed in my face

i caught myself spiraling as we walked out of the university for the last time as students. i'm so bad with last times, even more so when i'm utterly aware of it. it was long lines and cursing the heat, bustling crowds and a lot of walking. i want to tell my friends i love them but i chose to stare at puddles instead. i wish we were clueless first years in the carnation pink haze again, when dreaming was easier and tomorrows aren't that scary, and when you ask me what a nightmare is i'd tell you it's tripping on the brick road near the gate.

a letter to hecate

the hellhounds are back, phlegethon in their eyes, snarling and viciously clawing their way out of my chest. the room is filled with the ghosts of the lives i had to let go to live this one, a gothic horror where the haunted is doing the haunting. the future, looming and shapeless, circles high overhead like a vulture. the city at this hour resembles a grand tomb, eerie with the silvery glow of the moon. skin and bones in deep quiescence, some buried six feet deep in thoughts about the unforgiving road ahead. the old wound festers on, the walls close in, i pace around to feel in control.

crossroads aren't particularly fond of young adults with feeble lamps, tripping over their own feet with mouths full of apologies for being themselves. so much for burning too bright as a child, refusing to be pigeonholed, now i am a forgotten mirrorball in the back of the storage room, occasionally reflecting the light that came for something else. i am the worm at the rind of the apple my mother thinks i am. i am the idea you bite and spit out. i am a far-flung dream lost in a concrete jungle infested with bloodthirsty sharks. i am the child who needed more time but was denied. i can see it's over now, dark-eyed goddess, but it's going to be a long, long night. all i ask is a glimmer of your torch, that of which that found the stolen spring, to make it despite myself.

excerpt from apology to november's moon

[text id: "and the gods can have my raw, mortality-stained words"]