Weep.

weep until you're gasping, clutching
for breath
asphyxiation 

weep more.

because that was all you could manage.

before someone came around 

frantically trying to clean up

the pulverized glass and crystal shards

and your manic disillusionments 

but there's blood on his shirt now

and tear tracks leave salt trails and 

permanent pockets of resentment

and resounding disappointment

weep because you loathe dependency

more than the stretch marks on your thighs

yet you thrash wildly for an apathetic

turn of the head in your direction

the slightest dimple or roll

has you in hysterics and you

weep.

Word

I wish I wrote the way I thought

Obsessively

Incessantly

With maddening hunger

I’d write to the point of suffocation

I’d write myself into nervous breakdowns

Manuscripts spiralling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing

And I’d write about you

a lot more

than I should

Benedict Smith

My biggest fear is that eventually you will see me the way I see myself.

Things I never told you

I fall in love a lot.

With the decadent spreads of monochrome and slivers of steel and spikes on glossy magazine pages.

The introductory synth-pop or moody, dark-rock guitar riff of a song from another Phoenix or Wye Oak

The fleeting gazes met with the beautiful whilst scanning through a sea of foreign faces.

But my eyes could've, should've known better.

When I finally overcame my cowardice to look you dead in the eye without faltering I may have fallen in love again.

But this time, it is no multi-second, estrogen-fueled infatuation. It is no exaggeration on my part despite my flair for the art of it. It is no romanticism. It is no attention-seeking statement, only a promise; a truth. 

I love a lot of things,

But among all I love you most, better; more fiercely than I ever thought possible.

I wonder if this happens to everyone. You meet someone, and you don't understand how you settled for anything other than this. This. You will your brain to summon back every memory, of conversations that lasted more than they should have. The fuzz in your gut and then you suddenly find yourself in the awareness that you've bared even the most offensive parts of your soul, and you didn't even have to try. Of course, you didn't bare all of it. There's that part where you've developed some sort of attachment, affinity towards that someone. You can't tell them that. You won't admit it, even to yourself. You have all these feelings and they stupefy you, confuse the hell out of you. You're nervous, anxious, for what? You lose some sleep and you talk to friends, even try to tell yourself you're lapsing into the dreaded state of over thinking and disillusionment again. But yet, you feel the rush and the excitement that is the glimmer of hope that something might conspire in the near future. You're talking to them and they're breaking out into that unconstrained laugh that takes over their entire body and soon the infectiousness of it all gets you too and you're bent over in stitches. Amidst the giddying laughter and mirth, you find yourself wanting to be the cause of that amusement. You put a momentary halt to the abdominal torture and there's that thing when your eyes meet for an excruciatingly long time and you look away because it feels like you've been scorched by the heat that is the red in your cheeks. You're embarrassed because the thought of whether those lips are as soft as they looked crossed your mind. 

Then there's that one night, one of you is upset and the other flies to their side. Fears are allayed, soothing words muttered and tender ministrations given. This person, this amazing person you've come to know, who has weathered through every funk you've been in, is standing before you and before you know it, those feelings you've questioned, brushed off, developed, bottled up, are out in the open. 

And the rest is history.

Things you need to know

what if soon the day comes that I can no longer present you with the words you crave because my craft I no longer possess the dexterity for and I cannot seem to say the right things that will accurately describe how the dusty pink of your lips and the tiny scar marring them have now established some kind of permanent dwelling in my head, what if I tell you I don't wish for you a home in my thoughts, but you are all I think about.

i tire of life, more than most, it's hard to live without a sense of belonging but then I met you and then I met longing; a foreign, tumultuous ache. The kind that stripped me bare and kept me up, wide-eyed, on the most vulnerable of nights, the same ones the holy grail came to me in the form of lit-up dialogues on  radiation-emanating cells clutched in the kind of earnest and excitement that could only belong to someone in the throes of the beginnings of infatuation.

sink in

atelophobia

This place has served as nothing but a jaded outlet for the belligerent dialogues between the devil and god in my head and I apologize for the complete disregard for it the past few weeks. I am not proud of how I can no longer seem to write as fluently as I used to be able to, be it the simplest of day-to-day mundane trivialities I hate to bore people with to the blow-by-blow descriptions of what you do to me. I am tripping too easily over my words and that happens on lucky days, most of the time, I can barely choke out a lackluster sentence or two. It is with, I daresay, disgust that my fingers do their own robotic dance and before I know it my brain is disdainfully frowning upon the rapidly forming pixels that poorly reflect the barrage of thoughts it has been conjuring as of late. I cannot stop them, though.

Spent the entire week being ridiculously hypersensitive, especially to the patronizing compliments I get for my recent haircut which are far worse than the wordless stares shot in my direction. A slight frown, the skeptical purse and contortions of lips wanting to deliver brutal truth. Say it. I much rather you do, than tell me I look cute when your entire face is giving away your fallacy. I liken this current tragedy to bludgeoning the already hopelessly insecure person that is me further into the abyss of self-hatred. 

Apart from struggling to be the perfect daughter, student and friend, I've been driven albeit mad by the idea of the perfect girlfriend and what it might possibly entail, and where I stand as one. There is no pressure, not at all, but yet like always, I feel the more than pressing need to deliver. I am lacking in so many aspects; patience, time, looks, courage. Instead, there is an abundance of worry, fear and atelophobia. Talking to Maxine always leaves me with new feelings of enlightenment and sheds light on so many grey areas that crept past my line of vision, and I can't help but think. Why me? A part of me swells with happiness and gratitude and the other part tells me I don't deserve the half good things that are happening to me now. 

But I forgot to mention I am also lacking in spine and I need you, the best thing in my life thus far.


I can only hope I am enough.

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?
Well I'm here with you.