⚠️ Mention of sh, blood and contemptibility.

July’s sun burns my scars,

renewing their pigment, and I’m yet again sinful.

Your name’s stitched between the layers of skin I had cut;

it’s the only adorned thing between them.

I’ve always never understood the meaning behind them,

behind why I thought they’d keep you closer.

But then I remember:

I thought the red of my blood would show you how human you’d made me feel,

that maybe if you saw that I do feel pain you’d also realise what I felt for you.

But I was a coward.

We all bleed red,

and I wasn’t special for that.

And the only way you’d know is if I told you

and laid it bare for you like I had with my skin.

But I’m a coward,

and I bled red.

Tick… tick.

I feel like I’m always waiting.

I’m always listening to the clock tick.

Everything about life seems to carry a watch on its throat,

ticking away.

Tick… tick.

But I’ve never been one to bare a watch.

Everyone’s following the timeline,

pacing with the clock’s handles,

and I’ve yet to climb into the case.

But again, it doesn’t wait for me.

Tick… tick.

I’m still waiting.

I can’t tell what for,

but I’m never in time.

Tick… tick.

(from the pic of my mc Sicilia)

Wilted willows and basking women;

I’m a paradox of grief.

I’ve been plagued with a mournful

heart made of timidity and aggravation.

I bore, between the crescent of my being, a jest of reigning deceitfulness.

I exhibition oneself as a pretentious, egoistic heir –

a heir that’s commendable to the masses.

I hold the mirror of their interception with a clawed grip.

I illuminate her against the apricity of the sun, to hide the darkening animosity woven between her reflection.

But even as I do so, my hands’ grip weakens,

and the mask of frolicking fallacy, hidden underneath the folds of my words, slowly unfolds its wrinkling dissonance.

I keep fantasising about a day where I’m not left bereft and sunken –

a day where my feelings don’t sovereign my every fleeting thought.

But even the thought is so far and fragile,

and I try to make amends that I’ll never overcome the beast of myself.

And I tell her that the reflection of her gaze might answer her scrutiny.

And she gazes at I.

We gaze as I.

Dissent paints the sockets of our gazes, and the pungent feeling of pity from my own reflection wasn’t a feeling I’d wish on not even my mother’s foe.

I have learned many things,

Yet not how to commend affairs —

Not that of my parents,

Nor my own.

Maybe that comes from my lack of

Culpability,

Or the fact I was merely a child.

I have learned many things,

But yet I hold no sentiment to none —

Not to my mother,

Nor myself.

Maybe that came with my heritage,

Or my father’s anguish.

I seek for knowledge in the palm of my mother,

Yet all that’s splayed on her are my deceit.

So I venture far to other regions,

And scratch platters for more.

I have learned many things —

But I…

I know no knowledge of myself.

The being in the mirror is a stranger.

I’m sat in a loop of coiled yarn, strapped neatly against my ribs, yet I’m not upside down, nor am I in a hurry to see things at a bullseye view. It’s a cycle I’ve woven with my very own palms on a feverish summer night, and all I can remember of it is the haze of sea-felt tears.

The same set of knitting needles I had at ten are now in my grasp seven years later; their bumps still cut at the skin of my palms, and my scarf doesn’t seem to have grown any longer than it had ten years ago. But I keep clashing the needles together, waiting for it to fall into place. And just as I had before, I get tired and leave it abandoned in a treasure box under my bed, for me to visit in the near future – because I know I’ll always come back to see if the scarf has magically knitted itself.

But the inevitability of it ever happening always grows a home under the folds of my consciousness. Still, I’ll always come back with my fingers twisted extra tight, in hopes of finding out I was right about it – that people do come around, that my father is still the man he was ten years ago, and that I’m just blindsided by the wrinkles of time.

I want to hold onto the hands of hope, but she’s always a step ahead and leaves me to trail behind. I plead for her to spare me some sympathy, but all I’m met with is the quilt of my own pathetic gaze in the reflection of the past walking beside me,

But I nonetheless keep knitting.

⸻

Sometimes we’re so immersed in our heads, we don’t realise how small we are. We’re so very tiny – specks of dust, atoms at most – yet we think we’re so big-headed, and our problems feel so very big, when really, they’re just a seed you grew by watering it with arrogance.

And now it thinks it can coral itself all over your little figure, and you don’t realise it,

but that plant really is just your own arms, confining you in between the crevices of your ribs.

And you’re staring at your heart, but she can’t hold your gaze.

Sometimes, although it may sound insensitive to say aloud, most of the problems life throws at us are really just the size of our hand – but we describe them as some huge boulder that toppled down everything in its survey of your life.

Your refrains are mental. You can either unknot the knots or fasten them tighter – it’s up to you.

Being happy is a decision. A decision that needs to be followed with actions. And only you can pick up your limbs to make those actions. But the biggest obstacle is the thought of how much you’ll have to clean up from all the things you’ve let pile up.

But to reach an ending – a reward – you need a beginning, a drive. If not, you’ll sit stuck. And the longer you wait, the harder it’ll be to dig yourself out once your anchor’s out of reach.

Sometimes I think I hold onto things for the sheer reason of its familiarity.

I hold them in my grasp simply because I don’t know what to put in their place. I have no replacement, and I can’t bear the thought of having an empty grasp. But then again, I realise I’m such a fool – because I’m digging myself deeper into this hole of myself, because I’ve gotten used to the darkness that’s consumed me, and my arms don’t ache anymore from digging.

I don’t realise I’ve been digging for something I will never reach, and I’m simply losing the rope that anchored me out of this pit I’ve dug myself into.

And at times, I think I’m rather seething with pretentiousness, because I constantly seem to think I’m above happiness – that being happy, and allowing it within my vessel, would just make me seem gullible and naive.

Because the ones who seem to have the shining end of the stick we call life – they’re always perceived as weaker, insensible, a liability to most. No one seeks them for advice when they’re deep in ruins, or ask them for a map to comprehend the rough trails of life.

They only go to them when they want a little lightening up, a chatter of unrealistic dreams. And even then, that conversation is forgotten as soon as they’re back in a slump of themselves.

And I think, at times, I get scared that I’ll not be taken seriously, So I convey myself as an “old soul,” an “overthinker,” and all the other terms we use to simply call someone miserable – for the mere reason of hopefully seeming less pitiful.

And then that spirals down to a reality of me being nothing but pitiful and pathetic, no matter how hard I try to squeeze myself between the two valleys of wanting to be neither.

I think I’ve grown to realize that I only ever need to preserve my own company –

that no matter where I am in the world, I’m with me.

So, I’d better love my own company more than any other.

All these years of loneliness have allowed me to become accustomed to myself – to know my own antics and quirks, to notice my own patterns.

No one will come around,

so I should stop pondering and start putting one step in front of the other,

because if I won’t,

no one will lift my limbs for me.

But even as I’ve realized all of that,

even as I’ve spurted through the shell of loneliness,

I still yearn for it.

I still prolong my steps, hoping that maybe another pair will accompany mine

and maybe the weight of my limbs will start feeling a little less heavy and little sprouts of hope will fill my leaking gaps and my soul won’t echo with a widows weep.

To know yourself, you’ve got to lose yourself first. You can’t identify what’s inside a fruit if you don’t skin it first. And you don’t know someone until they’re in their most vulnerable. state.

So what makes you any different?

So…

I’m grateful to my father.

I’m grateful to my mother.

I’m grateful to my lover.

I’m grateful to all my heartbreaks, whether it may be my first acknowledgement of my father or scraping my knee on my grandmother’s carpet.

I’m grateful to all evil,

to all the corruption,

and to all the remorseless beasts that roam my inhabitants. Because if it weren’t for them, I’d be oblivious to my own repercussions, and I’d be bewildered by what lay forth.

They may have been cruel and unruly, but without them, I’d be an immigrant to i and a virgin to life.

Sincerely K.

I don’t wish to be a legacy of grief.

Nor do I want to be forgotten.

I just wish to live and love,

Without the consequence,

Of living and loving.

I don’t wish to die out of anguish,

Nor do I want to live to exceed myself.

I just wish to be acknowledged,

Without being a pathetic bimbo seeking validation.