love

One step further

I look at all the poems I’ve written about him.
All the broken times I said was going to be my last poem of him.
I moved one feet in front of the other.
I am going to get through this, I told myself.
It’s midnight and I’m reading about all those midnights spent awake,

eyes staring blankly on the ceiling.

I ask myself,

who was the girl who wrote all those poems about him.

April

When I open my eyes

there are no more arms enveloping me.

There is no more additional body warmth.

Now it just feels colder outside.

And more than anything, inside.

I see the empty space beside me.

She is the first thing I think about.

There are so much traces of her in my everyday.

The food I eat, the music I hear, the memories I remember.

I should’ve known it was a lie to believe

that she would leave.

Not different from all the other lies.

I see her in my everyday.

It almost feels like a lie that she left.

And so I write.

I can tell you of a time he asks you to guess something and you say like “bananas!” and you both keep on laughing in your class your Professor will have to scold you.

I’ll tell you his dimples show when he smiles, his curls don’t uncurl with the wind, his eyes glow when he sees you, and his voice has a hint of perfection. This is the guy you met. This is the guy you know.

I can tell you that you will go on road trips, eat in fast food chains and Chinese restaurants, enjoy Korean food, and watch western drama. You’ll have the whole world to yourselves. I’ll tell you then that you can ace your classes and inspire each other. As if you are almost invincible.

I’ll tell you, to be fair, I’ll tell you what people don’t want to tell you. You can lose in a battle against time. You can grow together yet change differently. When the day comes, stupidity hits when people insist to put a question mark where there is already a period. Perhaps of all the things we get right, we hurt all the more for a share of wrong. Like a 59/60 feeling in a test, a tinge of regret. He’s the missing 1.

Now I’ll warn you about the after effects. You feel the hurt once and the pain comes back again. Like an earthquake with the aftershocks, and you feel damaged and hurt in more parts of you. There is no Physics in love when it says the distance an object goes up is the distance it travels going down yet it seems people crash further when they fall. Isn’t love illogical?

First date

On the last day, teary eyed, I asked him to choose between me and her.
The previous midnight I insisted people are not built with two hearts.
How very ironic that just about a month before, it took all my strength to pretend I didn’t know.
I had to hold my own curiosity, anything to delay myself from confirming he was falling in love with her while saying I-love-you’s to me.
On the last anniversary we celebrated, I would have done anything to reaffirm we once loved each other.
I burnt parts of myself to keep the fire alive, holding back my own logic.
How do people manage to wrestle down their own thoughts but not their emotions.
I still remember very well like the way we never forget what we look like after looking through mirrors.
On the first day we met, he asked if I wanted to join him for some coffee.
Of course I went. I figured I needed coffee to keep me awake later that night. And in a way it had kept me awake even the nights after.

In between the door

Right there, when he turned,

something was written in the air between me and him,

memories flashed in black and white

and a little part of it already blurred

These half blur yet vivid memories

they slam the door while my heart is in between

crushing it half on his side half on mine

Half wanting to leave these memories

stacked in a room and locked behind my head

The remaining half wanting to find the keys