Spillled Poetry - Tumblr Posts

Oh and what it is like

To wake into a world

That expects your existence

The gentle ache of exhaustion

Is so much heavier

The moment your feet

Kiss the bedroom floor

And you inhale the scent of another day

That you have no choice but to waste

Tie another knot

In my worn thread of life

Double wrap it around my wrist

Tuck it under my sleeve

And hope today is not the day

It will choose to come undone

Hope I will notice the slipping, the loosening

Though I think i know

I wont

There are only so many things

That will absorb your sadness

And so I resort to leaving melancholy fingerprint stains

On all the happy things too

As though i cannot help it

But I could if I  wanted to

Its just so much easier

To have a full cup of grief

Than one a quarter full of something less heartbreaking

Look at beautiful things you can't have

On the walk to the bus

Wish them all well

Wonder what it might be like

To exist beautifully

Outside of theory

~Soft September Sadness~

how many poems I have tried to write about

my sister

the dying star

but there are some wounds still too fresh

for poetry to attempt to draw beauty from

all the recollections draw is blood

is regret

is guilt

is guilt

is guilt

my sister

is young

she has always been young

I have only recently developed the fear

that she will forever be

young

I spent so much of my life

hating her

wishing her gone

what I would do to wish her back into

life

I do not deserve her

or her forgiveness

I wonder often

if I would have healed faster

if I could have shown her

how to recover softly

my sister

witnessed my breaking up close

my sister the dying star

my sister watched me

tear myself into oblivion

and be yanked back from the brink

chained to life

until

I learnt

to want it

my sister

my sister

my sister

my sister the dying star

and isn't is sad

how so much light can exist no where but in the vacuum of darkness

I have this dream

in which my sister

wakes

and retches butterflies

all over the hospital blankets

and they melt into sunsets

leaving sticky sky stains on the sheets

but it is all alright

because she is better

by better I mean

she is not longer a threat to her own existence

by better I mean she ceases believing

she does not deserve

happiness

by better I mean

she has the potential to be happy

and keep it

(more vent poetry! I completely forgot that sometimes you don't have to write to create something pretty for other people, its been so long since I just sat and wrote about how I actually felt without worrying about it being beautiful, so I know this is not a piece of work necessarily meant for the world but its mine <3 )

I broke a heart once. Twice. A few times. It is not what one might expect. Because I assure you every promise I have broken hurt me as much as it did you. Every night you cried yourself to sleep I was granted no such relief. I laid awake in bed, tossing and turning. Feeling the fragments of your heart sprinkled and caught in the bedsheets. They cut me every time I moved, breathed, blinked. Raging a million paper cut wound revenges. And I, bled out into the blankets without resistance. Thinking maybe you could use this blood sacrifice like glue. But you have never been the blood thirsty type.

~I never thought I would break a heart

S o m a t i c R i t u a l

Wait until it is raining. By raining I mean pouring. I heard once, that a sign that your repentance has been accepted is rain. A gift. So go outside and let yourself be drenched in forgiveness. Wait until the mercy seeps into your bones and into your socks. Look up and inhale the possibility of the person you could become absolved of sin. Run your fingers through your hair and savour the knots, the barriers to perfection. Exhale your guilt and run away so you do not run the risk of inhaling it again. Keep running. Down the street. Down the path that takes you anywhere but here. Anywhere but where you started. Until your fingertips are numb and your chest is warm. Run your fingers over your lips and ache as your breath heats the cold of your palms. This is about contradiction. About oxymorons. About how opposition exists in your own body.

Look up at the grey of sky and ask it if mercy is a gift if you must beg for it, make sure there is no malice in your words if you want the clouds to listen. Think about why you are sorry and repeat the words to every puddle you pass until they mean nothing. They are just words. Excuses. Say them until your voice is hoarse and you are tiered. Do not come back until you are tiered. This is important. Trudge home in your wet clothes and soaked soul. Listen to nothing but your heartbeat. Listen to your heartbeat. Listen to your heartbeat. To nothing but your heartbeat. If someone stops you or looks at you oddly or asks you what you are doing or asks you if you are okay, remember their face. Remember their words and the way their life flickers in their irises. Remember them so you can include them in your poem so they can be forgiven too.

Wring out your sleeves and heartstring at the door. Politely decline the droplets offer of redemption. It's rude to decline a gift. But is mercy a gift if you must ask for it? And what does a sinner care about being polite. Go upstairs and crawl under your covers. It is okay if your bedsheets become damp. Take this as a practice in being grateful. You can apologize to your blankets later. Thank them for their sacrifice. Take a nap and dream of your sins. And when you wake write about the promises you have broken and the mistakes you have made and all the terrible things you have ever done. On the other side of the paper, write a letter to yourself about being deserving of second chances. Change your bedsheets and strip yourself of your guilty garments. Put them in the wash. Take a shower. Let the remnants of your hate and sorrow wash down the drain. You have paid for your sins, darling.

And is it not the brightest stars

That burn out the quickest

That birth the most beautiful destructions

- Supernova unbecoming// All the stars are already ghosts// And in this way was Starry Night not an obituary

What a privilege it is to ache so violently.

To bleed all over the bedroom carpet and not worry about the stains.

How costly it is to hurt so recklessly.

- you must pay for what you break// even if it is a heart// even if it yourself

I haven't been sleeping well these days. There is catastrophe blossoming beneath my skin. I live in fear of the person I am always just one mistake away from becoming.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

I don't know much of my mother tongue, but what I do know has come from conversations with my grandmother. Usually about food.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

Which means "eat until your stomach is full". Or something like this. And in this way she feeds me. She sustains me. She tells me it is okay, to take until I am satisfied. Demands it with a stern voice and plate full of offering.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

I'm 15 when my uncle's gaze tells me I shouldn't have another slice of cake. My grandmother plates me a second piece with a overdone wink, shoving it into my palms even when I say no. Even when I want to take up less space. Even when I want to disappear. She does not ask. She is demanding I exist unapologetically.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

I am 17 when I have my four wisdom teeth removed. Spitting up blood in the sink, trying to replace my gauze, I come to the kitchen for a glass of water to down my antibiotic pills. She asks me if I want to eat. I roll my eyes. Try to manage through the cotton in my mouth, that I can't. Assuring her I won't starve in the hour it takes for the numbing to wear off. She dosen't sound convinced. She keeps trying to feed me. I think she does not trust the world, not to devour me while I heal.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

She is telling me to eat before I leave. What if there isn't food there? Eat. Eat, just in case. You'll be hungry. I don't want you to be hungry. I think she does not trust the world to sustain me. To give me what I need. I do not blame her. I do not trust it either.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

She always sends me home with tupperware full of leftovers, enough for at least three days, every time. Even when I tell her there is no room in my fridge. That there is no space at home. She makes me promise to ensure my mother eats. She tells me "layja". Take. So I do. I think she does not trust me to sustain myself. To take what I need. I do not blame her. I do not trust me either.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

She says eat. You look exactly like your mother. Your mother never ate. Your mother is looking thin. What she means is, my mother hasn't called her in months. Your mother never ate. What she means is your mother never took. What she needed. Your mother never ate. What she means is: your mother never ate my food. My cooking. She never let me sustain her.

But my mother eats. She takes. I know she does. But never until she is full. Just enough to survive. My mother tells me the story, of calling her my grandmother at a train station in the middle of the night when she was pregnant with me. She asked for spicy foods. Haleem. Pakora. She asked for food. She asked for other things. She asked to come home. And my grandmother told her no. My grandmother turned her away. My grandmother said: Take less. Be small. Be good. Your satiety is conditional. It comes after that of your husband. And his father. And your child. You eat last. You eat what is left.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

I think my mother never outgrew this lesson. I think, yes, my mother is looking thin. I think, yes, my mother never eats until she is full.

"payt bhar kay khalow"

I think my grandmother understands now. And so she tells me

"payt bhar kay khalow"

Eat until you are full, child. Take until you are satisfied, girl.

- There Is A Difference Between Taking And Taking Enough

You taught me a softer way to love. Which is to say I have always loved like wildfire. Always loved vicious. All or nothing. Overwhelming and unbearable and so hard it hurts. Always loved a war of desire leaving my heart a ravaged battlefield with thick scar tissue in the shape of words they never said. But we burnt out. Which is to say I fell out of love with you in the summer sun in the middle of a movie theatre parking lot and it had nothing to do with you. And I did not realize this for years in the aftermath of this heartbreak. It had nothing to do with you. For you had always been you. It was me. For it is always me and the moment I am disillusioned regarding exactly what I am deserving of. Regarding exactly what you are offering and what I had misinterpreted your open palms and open smile for. Which is to say I fell out of love with you to save myself. In an act of self-preservation. To keep loving you would have killed me. So I stopped. Which is an oversimplification of the process of withdrawal but I did. I fell out of love with you. And I am better for it.

Which is to say when I did, touching you ached less. Your name in my mouth didn't sting so much. Every time you talked about someone else it never cut deep enough to leave a mark. And then it stopped cutting at all. And then I started being happy for you. And now, all this time later, I suppose when I call you my friend I mean it. Which is to say I never text you first anymore and it isn't even on purpose. Which is to say we talk when we have time, usually when you are home from school for the break, and I laugh like renewal, but never with enough joy that it threatens to rip my seams. Which is to say I have not fallen in love with anyone since you but I'm okay with that. I know I could. Which is to say I do not rearrange plans when you call and I do not particularly care about seeming intelligent to you anymore. Or beautiful. Or talented. Or worthy. I don't worry about keeping you coming back. Because I know you'll return for us eventually. And we'll pick up where we left off. Like we cannot help but meet again where you last left the person I used to be.

But every time we are together for more than a handful of moments I am in love with you again. And my heartbeat syncs with yours. And when you look at me I want you to keep looking. And when you touch me I want you to keep touching. But you never do. And I am practiced in this. So this time you walk me all the way home and it doesn't even get my hopes up. This time you sing to me at my doorstep and I do not flinch. Remind myself it is not your fault your kindness works like this. That this is just who you are. Because I will walk inside and peek out the glass for you to look back and you won't. And I will remember in the reflection that I am no one special to you. And I will fall out of love again, just like I have done a dozen times before with you. And I will go upstairs and take a shower humming the lyrics to the song you last played me and when I step out of the stream of water, my desire will be washed down the drain. And I will cease loving you until next time.

You taught me a softer way to love. Because I think you taught me there are some people we will never fall all the way out of love with. And that can be okay sometimes. As long as you are not destroying yourself with longing. Some things cannot be helped.

~ #3 : reflections on falling out of unrequited love with him

Which is to say I fell out of love with you to save myself. In an act of self-preservation. To keep loving you would have killed me. So I stopped. And I think this is why you were the person out of all the persons I've ever loved that I got to keep in my life even after. Because loving you was growing up. Was realizing just because you can't have the entire good thing doesn't mean you have to deny yourself the piece offered. That a slice of lovely doesn't have to be the end of you. Was learning to make do with what I was given with a smile and a thank you. Was learning to be grateful. Because we don't always get to have what we want. And we can't keep throwing tantrums by having panic attacks in the bathroom over accidental glances and unintentionally broken promises.

Loving you was growing up. Was realizing some people are nice to everybody. They have a talent for making people feel wanted, but this does not mean that they want you, and that is okay. That is okay. Their kindness is not their fault. Loving you was growing up. Was realizing people are busy. People's lives don't stop because you have chosen this inopportune time to become madly infatuated with them. They don't text you back. They don't love you back. They don't think about you. They forget to ask about your day. They say things that hurt even when that wasn't what they meant to do. And you grow up. You brush it off. You realize this is not a reflection of your self worth. You stop expecting people to fulfill what you dreamed them up to be. You let them just be them. And you learn to let this be enough.

Because loving you was growing up. To keep loving you would have killed me, and I realized for the first time how childish it was to disintegrate into a hurricane of self-destruction when rejection was so softly gifted. To ache until I tore like it would change anything. And I suppose growing up doesn't have to mean wanting to live, but it at least meant trying. Which is to say I fell out of love with you to save myself. In an act of self-preservation. To keep loving you would have killed me. So I stopped. Which is an oversimplification of the process of withdrawal but I did. I fell out of love with you. And I am better for it.

~ #4: reflections on falling out of unrequited love with him

(Original excerpt removed from '#3: reflections on falling out of unrequited love with him')

I want to shout at every passing stranger

Every person who thinks they know me now

Do you know

That I was soft once?

That I had long hair and

A small body

And a heart that could have loved you

Do you know that

I could have loved you

Once

I wait for someone to tell me

That I’ve changed

But they do not

And I mourn for the loss of me alone

She will never get to fall in love

When I do, it will not be the same

When it ends it will be an Antarctic winter

Perpetual darkness

Night amongst night

It will be a small dead star long dead

The ones that fade forgotten

In the oblivion of space

She would have done so much better

Her heartbreak would have been spectacular

Would have been Tsunami and supernova

It would have been beautiful destruction and art

It would have been art

It would have birthed revolutions even in her misery

It would have meant something

And even in the absence

Of condolences

I know she did exist

I only ever wrote for you after our end

Which meant every poem tasted too much like an overripe obituary on the tongue

But when has guilt ever stopped me from doing something I shouldn't

What has poetry ever done but turn me selfish

Let me repaint everything in shades that complement the tale of my own tragedy

For what is the heartbreak of an artist

If not another poem the world could have done without