Perf

The acrimony

If one day we part, if it happens at all

If they ask why

Tell them it's because

I could never learn how to stop giving

You were you.

And that is all. 

It takes me forever to fall asleep these days. I keep telling myself I can't revolve my entire life around one hour in a day. I tell myself I can't be selfish, I tell myself I should. I wait around all day for his name on my screen and it's borderline ridiculous, but I don't ever stop. I don't ever stop picking up before it's even had the chance to ring once. 

It's selfish but I want, I need more. I need more than phone calls that can last between a minute to thirty. I inwardly flinch at the pitch he drops to when he tell me he loves me, or at the silence when he doesn't until I do. People are nearby, and maybe it makes him uncomfortable.

I make excuses for him.

I tell myself it's really hard being in his place. 

I want to tell him everything, the stories I keep behind my teeth that just about fall out if not for me clenching them so hard because I should listen to him talk about his day first. Most times, they never see the light of day. I want to hear his stories, I love the excitement in his voice as he tells them, but I want to tell mine too. I want to go to bed feeling reassured and loved, but I only feel empty. Empty because everyday I'm collecting experiences I can't share and they're shaping me into someone he may not know anymore. This love is far from dead but I need to feel it, not assume it's there because I shouldn't dare to doubt it. He tells me he loves me everyday, but I've never felt more alone.

Bad faith

I love how you slip into silence

Like one would into a cashmere sweater

Languidly, almost dragging out the seconds of non-friction

Because it's always loose lips and white noise with me

Too much static, only to get lost in the airwaves from time to time

I love your stubby fingers for their strong hold on beliefs, for

Mine are long but crooked and bent

In more ways than one 

Almost everything slips between them.

I love your lips,

the parentheses of your smile.

What they lack in width they make up in height of the words you speak

Vowels seem taller than they normally should,

Especially those in my name.

Mine are too full, and I bite them

too often as if it were penance for how empty I am inside.

I love your teeth for what they promise, that I could induce happiness even if I may never conduct it

I love them, even if they might draw blood.

I love you, even if you might walk away.

science-fact

For 2 years, I had memorized the principle of superposition. That when two waves intersect in a medium, the resultant amplitude would be the vector sum of the individual amplitudes at that point. With that I learnt that there would be days where the lightness of your being would pile high on my shoulders, and yet a certain buoyancy could be felt in my footsteps. A kiss would threaten to lift me off the ground. Days where the two of us coalesced.

A constructive interference. 

Lessons on neutrality taught me that there would be days where we’d liken our relationship; the mutual pairing we called love, to a barren ocean, not a single ship or light in sight to guide us home.  We’d walk, the distance between our elbows growing with our weariness. I’d open my mouth to speak, only for a weak sigh to escape before I purse it shut. A dark fringe in our interference pattern. 
A destructive interference.

I was pushed onto a track, they called it the road to success. Perhaps they used the name of science in vain, because it legitimized this form of bribery, and switched pennies with university places. So while I stood there, mixing chemicals and anticipating precipitation, I thought about how if I could somehow process the look on your face; as you walked towards me that twelfth night on Emerald Hill and captured my face in your hands, into photographic evidence would they believe I discovered love? Because, you can’t time the exact moment you brush fingers with somebody and realize the faceless person your dreams wrap around was them. I could describe the spike in temperature when you’re mere inches away as an exothermic reaction, but I could never soak up the angry words you sputter at me with litmus paper and call them acidic.

I don’t need a margin before I begin writing the steps to exploring every crevice your body promises. I don’t need evidence of your affliction marring my neck and hips to make me feel wanted. I don’t need the toxic mix of chemicals to make me crave you, and perhaps someday try to forget you. I don’t need an explanation for how the planets behind your closed lids came to be. I want to draw the tiny feathers on your lips, colour in the veins running through your wrists and paint your sunkissed locks of brown, but I was never taught how to. I want to write about you, down to the littlest detail in flowery language and see if it’d score me an A. But I couldn’t. And there I was, just a science kid, and so were you. And just like that,

we superposed.

I must have woken up at least a dozen times,
those instances layered with our goodbyes,
as I dreamt about them at least eight more times
but as soon as you left I fell into the deepest slumber in the past few weeks
maybe not as sound as in your arms but
better than that night I spent contemplating the weight of the world on the frame
I wished I could call tiny
I dreamt about a girl, who
would spend subway rides observing people and writing their stories,
there was that subservient-looking office worker in a chiffon dress and white patent heels,
who she imagined to be returning home to a middle-aged insurance agent and a single child
on some days when, her skirt kept riding up or,
she felt her top stretched too tight over her abdomen,
the girl would take the middle seat
the only one that wouldn't allow her the sight of her reflection
on other days, she'd stand
her crooked frame leaning against the glass panel;
the only thing separating her from an absolute stranger,
it made her think about how that stranger could be;
her future boss, her arch enemy, a shoulder to cry on
one Saturday evening when love decides to let you down and familiarity settles into
an unmistakable fog in the air
This girl I dreamt about,
was as much me as I was her.

Niceties

I get scared when I don't feel like writing anymore. A once vicious longing is now a dormant ache, and I'm clueless as how to reign myself back into the momentum where; words ran with the fluidity of running water of which I cupped with eager hands and lapped from with a voracious thirst. Words now run dry and I am parched in what seems to be an eternal desert brought on by time's insistence on my moving forward and sometimes losing sight of past goals.

The coming year looms with my apprehension of how difficult it might pose to be. Zk's enlistment, A level results, university life, I'm growing up, and so are those around me. A good half can hardly wait to plunge into the welcoming arms of a new year that promises a clean slate, and I mean, I'm sure there's something everyone wants to purge in the past 364 days. As for me I reside with the other half who probably had a relatively awesome year; Perhaps baby showers, marriages, engagements, divorces from unfaithful spouses, welcoming a new pet, a promotion, starting a new relationship, and feel a twinge of sadness at having to let it go and delve into the unknown. Where people, influenced by the flipping of calendars, somehow feel the need to change aspects of themselves and in the same fashion we slowly start to lose them. Maybe the day, year, will come when you outgrow the adorable expression of mock shock and hurt at my mock scathing words, and in time you'd deem the act of covering my face in tiny licks childish. Or maybe friends who've drifted away will find a way back, maybe some will find hope in a fresh start.

I guess all that's left is to wait and see.