eye of your storm

less than an hour goes by before i have to stop and steel myself over how i feel. for two weeks, we had a chance again, because you wanted. and now at the end of it, i’m left battered again. so are you, but this was your storm. your back and forth, fickleness, your insecurities, your pain. i stood in your rain and tried to put up an umbrella for once, but that incurred your heavenly wrath. now that i’ve decided to walk out, i find myself sick to the stomach. and even now some lightning bolts from your storm still find their way to me, in words you carefully craft but i don’t know whether are true. i don’t know what’s real anymore. i’m walking away but the water is in my lungs and my bones and i want to keel over and die. 

last ride home

i met you today. part of me feared how it would play out, but it was far better than i imagined. both of us have calmed down and reflected a fair amount, and managed to communicate our pain and love adequately. through that we were also still able to clearly see and agree that we wouldn’t work out now even if we tried. 

i felt so happy being able to chat with you about the everyday of the last two months. i felt so glad you were coping with it the best way you could, healthier than i imagined in my head. a huge weight has been lifted off my chest. 

i felt so thankful you offered me a ride home. i don’t know if you brought your extra helmet for me or because you already had it from sending your sister, but i didn’t ask. it didn’t matter. this last ride home was rainy but i felt warm, and i felt safer than any time i rode myself. i tried to commit to memory the feeling of your jacket in my hands, your helmet and its scratches, your messy braid. the way i learnt to dress for riding from you. i hope i remember it forever.

today i hoped to help you, but really it helped me too. i have so much love for you and i always will. thank you.

crab claw

in a world that wasn’t gentle to you, i was the harshest. i’m sorry. 

battered

i got past what would’ve been our seven year anniversary. i know you did too, but did you remember? it’s sad that even now that we’re over, i’m still hung up over whether you remember important milestones like this or not. i had a scheduled message that i set long ago, that was sent to me in january, to remind me of a present i had thought to get you for either our anniversary or your birthday. but instead it just reminded me of the heartbreak and loss. the book i’m reading now tells me people like me think that putting in all our effort in is necessary to keep relationships going. it implies relationships don’t need a 100% effort to keep going. i still can’t accept this. i put in 100% and i wanted 100% from you. isn’t it worth it? wasn’t it worth it? it was worth it for me. i would do it again, even now that i know putting in 100% still gives no guarantees. 

black

i’ve come to accept, but maybe not yet embrace, that i can feel multiple contradictory things at once. i can feel a tightness in my chest, but laugh in the same breath. i can cry in person but be joking around in text. i can miss you terribly, but want to protect my peace. i look at photos of us and one picture can feel both sweet and bitter. i remember arguments that feel inane but also significant. 

i think i can feel upset and disappointed and angry at you but still feel the love and care and happiness you’ve given to me. i can need you in my life and out of it. i feel free but empty at the same time. time is slipping faster than i thought it would, but still hurting like a slow knife. 

spectrum of emotion

i watched a video and laughed out loud. then i really wanted to show it to you. then i remembered i couldn’t, and a wave of grief drowned me inside.

grief is love with nowhere to go. 

2,557

today marks a full seven years since i first met you. 

it was the chinese new year period then, and you came in a denim shirt that i eventually stole from you and i now still have in my wardrobe. it was in the old benjamin barker cafe we would have our first hellos, me ordering a water for you before you arrived, but i no longer recall what we chatted about. 

it would be in taka, at the escalators beside where the taxi queue was, that you’d guide me with a gentle hand by my lower back, and i knew i’d love you. and at least two more times in later years we’d take the same escalators and i’d remind you of this simple gesture you did that became a core memory of us for me. 

then there’s the scape skate park. we took away riverside indonesian bbq rice and ate them on the big steps. here we probably spoke of our hopes and fears and pasts and future. a shared future that would last nearly seven years. the big steps are no more now, and neither are we.

at the 313 taxi stand, we reluctantly said our goodbyes. i remember giving you a hug before i boarded my cab. thinking about it now, it seems similar, us sharing one last hug before i boarded a cab downstairs of your house, our final goodbye. a hug to mark the end of our first and last days. 

visitors

i suppose what’s toxic about me is - once i’ve made someone my home, it’s hard to move out. to move on. i think that’s the concept of ghosts - if they were once humans, it’s hard for them to let go of the place they used to find safe, and hard for them to accept it becoming something else. so they stay, grounded solely by the memories. after all, they called this place their own, and to them, it always will be. 

hurts

tired, tired, tired

i don’t want to say bad things about us

the longer time passes 

the worse i feel

and i want to be wrong

healing feels like a burial

making a molehill out of a mountain

perhaps i’m just rotting from the inside

like wood, slowly

only when it bears a load

or when a match is struck

i’ll break

and i won’t burn

the wood weeps for the tree it once was

and the forest it has lost

praying

i’ve always been religious. or perhaps i should say ‘spiritual’, since i don’t follow practices which make a religion. i’ve always believed in a God. it’s purely instinctual, perhaps a mental/emotional crutch, or perhaps a sixth sense humans can’t explain with science or logic. 

in these tough moments i have to lean on God. i think He’s real; and maybe i need Him to be. there’s no one who understands otherwise. and no one i want to explain to.

fever

food makes me sick and i constantly feel lethargic. i say things i don’t mean and i do things i don’t like. my soul feels outside of my body. a box of tomatoes made me cry and run home. it feels all very pathetic.

one final plea

kill me, said the jester. take my life and body if it may so please you, the jester said to the king. may my hair dip in your finest inks to paint you a classic, may my sturdy bones hold the weight of your dreams while you sleep. my blood could wash your robes a burgundy satin. my heart, still beating, you can sail to foreign seas, a testament for all to see, the loyalty a mighty king commands from me.

twice bitten forever shy

this is the second time in my life i’m experiencing such pain. the last time i attributed the severity of it to having to keep it all down and buried, but this time, even being able to share and having loved ones by me and loving on me, it hurts. it feels like a part of me has died and been lost forever. and every person i tell is another nail in the coffin, a shovel of soil, the tightening of the noose around my neck. the pain shivers my core and aches my bones and there is a silent scream i can’t silence and i can’t handle it. 

i don’t want to.