Twc Prose - Tumblr Posts

December 15, 2019

23:30

Hey, it's me. We talked before. Now I am back again to tell you more stories like I promised. My clock reads 11:30. I'm in bed, drinking my third mug of coffee. I am reading your favorite novel. It's silly but I feel nostalgic as I read it. Every chapter reminds me of you, my darling Ana. Your rawness, your beautiful flaws are all engraved in the words stained in each and every page. But before I totally lose myself in it, I feel it appropriate to ask first, how are you doing tonight?

How are you doing there, in your time? Are you in bed reading too? Or are you in your desk writing the first line of your poem? It's something about him, isn't it? Oh don't worry, I know.

I know that you think about love more often than you should. And you stain your notes with things associated with it. I want to tell you it's okay. It's okay to savor the moment. It's okay to fall in love. I don't know what age you are now. Maybe 16? All sweet and innocent. You know I fell in love for the first time when I was 16. Got my heart badly broken six months after I turned 18. It was a lot to go through but I survived. After that I stopped writing for a while.

They say heartbreak makes a poet. Well it made me numb. I never loved again after I got my heart broken for the first time. I watched my shattered pieces,millions of screaming pieces bleeding on the floor. I spent years trying to mend me. But wholeness seemed evanescent. Lovers came and went, I taught myself to pretend. For years I rolled thousands of I love you's on my tongue while I felt so empty. So empty I wondered if anything could ever fill me up again. For something in me has died that day he ruined my faith in love and destiny.

But he's a lovely memory. I never regretted loving him. He taught me how to sway in gaiety and laugh with the daffodils. He has to leave all right, and life was never the same. I began drinking when I was 19. I theorized liquor could drown my feelings, wash them all away. Since then I couldn't stop drinking. I took shots after shots as the crowd applaused me until I pass out cold. I was young and broken and stupid. Above all, I was numb.

At 23, I became totally cynical. I took love for granted. Love took me for granted in return. I played fire like a fire dancer. I got burned but never minded the scars. I slept with lions but never feared death. Those moments, I was gladly signing my death sentence. At 25 I was totally addicted to loneliness. I began dining alone. I began doubting promises. I began driving people to the wall. I began breaking hearts.

Are you still there? I hope I am not scaring you with my stories. If I disturbed your poem writing, I'm deeply sorry. I just want to feed you tales. Tales you will search in your mind as precedents, before you make a decision sooner or later. Before you catch fire and burn. Before you catch cold and die. You know they always say, look before you leap. Well I say, listen to all these tales I keep. They waited years to be told.

I was 27 when I realized it's time. It's time to lower my guards down. It's time to trust love again. But that one person worthy of everything that I am never came until I was 28. And you know, when I caught a glimpse of him for the first time, I fell dazed. The familiarity was striking. The smile, the voice, the scent, oh it's him. He's the one I've been waiting. I looked at him and the world around me stopped. Everything else stopped. All of a sudden, it's just him and me. Even the cacophony fell silent to hear my heart drummed erratically. It was surreal.

We've been going out for months now and it always feels like the first time. It's crazy but I am head over heels in love with him. And you know what's even crazier, I actually got drank one Saturday to tell him what I feel. Oh, don't laugh at me. It's a clumsy move I know. But I was too nervous like a teenager. Too nervous I can't even act cool when he's around.

Anyway, I hope you're happy my darling Ana. But if you're somewhere trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, don't fret. Whatever it is that you're facing in your time, trust me there'll be better days. Tears are temporary. You will feel whole and loved again. If you're currently tearing yourself apart, don't revel too much in the pangs of brokenness. But if you have to, remember it isn't the end. Love will find you, slowly, eventually...

Sorry I took a little of your time to tell you things you will later discover. You can go back to your poem writing now. Write about him, your love at the moment. Pour all your emotions, ink your diary with words that describe him. You will read them one day as I do now. And you will smile. But I would like you to know, your masterpieces will come years later. When you're 29 and start to write passionately about the man I told you about tonight.

Wait for him. He will come.

All my love,

Your older self

katie, 16:14

I did the dishes tonight while humming a Taylor Swift song. I know it's nothing huge and that some of you may be raising an eyebrow. 'She did the dishes tonight and she's writing about it. As if we care!'. Yes, that's the thing. I know you won't care. Not a bit. But I am writing about it in the same enthusiasm as you writing about your cat, that walk you took in the woods with the friend you secretly love, your dreams, your bucket list, the tasks that you need to accomplish, your pet peeves. 

Eight months ago, I wouldn't have minded the mountain of plates and mugs piled in the sink. I would lie in bed, stare at the ceiling and be somber. I would imagine myself wandering in an unknown forest. And that's it. That's all I could do: Imagine. I would fall asleep and forget about the bath I was running at the tub. I would wake to a drenched bathroom floor, clean off the mess and lie awake until 5 am. An arduous battle would commence between me and my mind. I would lose as I always do. Then I would go back to bed.

At 9 am, I would be too lethargic to get up. My cellphone would ring and the name on the screen would make me smile. Him-the only string that ties me to sanity. We would talk for a while, about everything and nothing. He would tell me about how sound he has slept and I would lie. I would try to make my nightmares seem like beautiful dreams that stole away my sense of reality for a night. I would make a cup of coffee and forget about breakfast. The conversation would become romantic, the kind that I indulge myself into so I could believe life is still worth living. That the sweet nothings worth every pain.

I would sit in my living room, try to make out the shadows prancing like restless sojourners from another lifetime. They would remind me about how I don't fit in this era and I would fall deeper into melancholy. This time, the heaviness would force me to mount the stairs like a wounded animal. I would lock myself inside my room, turn the music really loud so I could drown my heart, my emptiness, my exhaustion. I would cry a little. The effort would drain me. So I would lie on the floor, scroll endlessly on my phone. I would try to deny that I am depressed. I would try to deny that I exist.

When the inspiration strikes, I would type a poem. Another poem for me, for him, for someone I do not know but is feeling the same pain. I would imagine him somewhere in the wilderness, gasping for air as he sinks in his own misery. The poem will grow longer than intended as words gush out in a long queue of ghosts demanding to be inked for posterity. I would not hold anything back. I would type until my fingers become as numb as my barely beating heart. I would kiss my fingers and beg for forgiveness. Then my eyes would wander off to the window, lose my concentration into the pouring rain, and I would cry again.

Eight months, I was hiding in the void. If I came out at all, it was for me to immerse myself in the crowd so I could remember how it feels to be alive. Eight months, I never bothered to clean the mess in my dreary apartment. The dusty furniture, the cobwebs, the half torn curtains became my only company and they watched me suffer series of breakdowns. The bathroom witnessed how I struggled against taking my own life. The cold dinner table heard issues I refused to discuss with anyone. The bedroom watched me intoxicate myself as sleep became evanescent. Alcohol became my confidant. It became my lithium. And the window pane? It knows all of my secret longings. It stood by me as I waited for someone, anyone to drop by and perhaps, stop me from cutting my wrist.

Eight months, I never thought of doing anything normal. Eight months, I forgot I was human. Eight months, the sink resembled my life—disorganized, filthy, hideous and despairingly lacked future. Eight months, I stretched myself too thin, I broke like a thread. Eight months, I was luring death to take me. Eight months, I never did the dishes.

And so tonight, I want to write about how I stood before the sink, slowly picked up the sponge as Cardigan filled the background. And I hummed and hummed until the dishes were clean. It may be nonsensical to you, but to me, it was huge. It was me crawling my way back to redemption. It was me relearning forgiveness. It was me giving life a second chance.

It was me embracing FREEDOM!

-katie,

12th of June 2021, 18:25

Image: https://pin.it/6bVgzsz

the past is an old apartment

i try to visit

everytime i feel the need

to be reminded

of the times

love and happiness

were my roommates

-katie, 31st of July 2021

"May the heart, in its exhaustion, remember to rest and indulge into the sweet memories of love songs resounding from its yesteryears.

These are the soft rambles that filled your mind as you lay awake in bed at the early hours of dawn. Those austere longings that snared your heart, relentless as the wind blowing on the trees, swift as the waves kissing the sand, tenacious as the rain chiming in with the beat of the music coming from your stereo, they are here—neatly scribbled and compiled into an anthology. These are your stories. The love notes you hastily jotted down at the last page of your high school textbook, the poems you composed during your weekend getaways, the letters you struggled to ink on stationeries while ardently wishing that one day, the love of your life will find and read them.

They are finally here. The long walks on the beach. The late-night conversations. The sultry kisses at the back seat of your car. The lingering glances. The love songs. The promises. The sweet nothings! They are all here, captured in prose and poetry. So, dear reader, bury your nose on the pages with utmost gusto. Whether you are a sojourner, a bold and willing settler, or a classic runaway in love, you’ve had your own share of sweet nothings, I am sure. Allow yourself to remember. Allow yourself to rediscover your youth, relive the love stories that ended, make peace with the pains they caused. Above all, allow yourself to breathe and celebrate the love stories that won over the years and stayed."

-Sweet Nothings,

Ana Grasya

Avail a copy through the following links:

Google Play - https://books.google.co.in/books/about?id=-xhmEAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

Ukiyoto All Versions - https://www.ukiyoto.com/product-page/sweet-nothings

Ukiyoto Philippines (for those in the Philippines only) - https://www.ukiyotophilippines.com/product-page/sweet-nothings

"May the heart, in its exhaustion, remember to rest and indulge into the sweet memories of love songs resounding from its yesteryears.

These are the soft rambles that filled your mind as you lay awake in bed at the early hours of dawn. Those austere longings that snared your heart, relentless as the wind blowing on the trees, swift as the waves kissing the sand, tenacious as the rain chiming in with the beat of the music coming from your stereo, they are here—neatly scribbled and compiled into an anthology. These are your stories. The love notes you hastily jotted down at the last page of your high school textbook, the poems you composed during your weekend getaways, the letters you struggled to ink on stationeries while ardently wishing that one day, the love of your life will find and read them.

They are finally here. The long walks on the beach. The late-night conversations. The sultry kisses at the back seat of your car. The lingering glances. The love songs. The promises. The sweet nothings! They are all here, captured in prose and poetry. So, dear reader, bury your nose on the pages with utmost gusto. Whether you are a sojourner, a bold and willing settler, or a classic runaway in love, you’ve had your own share of sweet nothings, I am sure. Allow yourself to remember. Allow yourself to rediscover your youth, relive the love stories that ended, make peace with the pains they caused. Above all, allow yourself to breathe and celebrate the love stories that won over the years and stayed."

-Sweet Nothings,

Ana Grasya

Avail a copy through the following links:

Google Play - https://books.google.co.in/books/about?id=-xhmEAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

Ukiyoto All Versions - https://www.ukiyoto.com/product-page/sweet-nothings

Ukiyoto Philippines (for those in the Philippines only) - https://www.ukiyotophilippines.com/product-page/sweet-nothings

i am still known

as the girl who

writes poems

though the truth is

i can barely come up

with a line

that could have

made you

change your mind

-katie

i guess it's still in my blood-

the ability to bottle

all my emotions

like they won't

suffocate me

sometimes i wish i can

open up to people

but then,

maybe you can't really teach

an old dog a new trick

afterall

-katie