guarded

i always felt guarded

first,

my parents over sheltered me

second,

my elder sisters pulled me back

from tripping on wrong choices

third,

i built myself a castle of ideas

that sacrificed their walls for me

fourth,

i met you

and i felt unsafe and exposed

until you showed me that people

didn’t need castles for protection

they needed homes

and for so long

you were my home

i never thought i’d ever shed your skin

from mine

so when you left

i waited for a

fifth,

but there was nothing

with twenty years of filtering life

and letting people and faith surround me in

walls

i was naked;

standing on mountains of air

falling through the clouds

and still

i’m accelerating

waiting for my neck to break as i hit the ground

but all i see is another layer of air

no matter how fast i fall

i can’t find anything

to protect me

from myself.

believe

i talked to myself way

too much today

i tried to find my way

through

tears

and

anger

and

confusion

i had to bury

you

today

i had to

plant faith

instead

i had to believe

that if this was meant to be

i would find a way back to you

the right way

that i didn’t need to stress

over how much i’ve lost

to you

that i needed to let myself breathe

that i forgave myself for what i let happen

and that it was turn

to forgive you

because i know

you meant no harm

mistakes aside,

i have faith

if the terminal stop

is this

then there must be another way

there must be a railway that

either ends at your feet

or simply parallel to yours

in any case,

i know my tracks

are straightened

that any train that treads across

will be the right one

because i know

i believe

in something that is more wholesome

than one moment of regret

every night

you broke me

in two

how can i stand

and claim

this feeling of

pain

when all it does

is remind me of my failures

i wish i had let god

make these decisions for me

instead of telling me the truth

and asking me to utter it

 

the embrace

it’s like my forehead

bursting with beads of sweat

changed color

bought the entire world

to a halt,

seemingly the world

opened its arms

embraced me

even when i failed to wake up

and open my arms to god,

he has opened all other arms for me,

because even though the believer

did not ask for help,

the person did,

so god would not deliver the heavens,

but he would deliver me the world

-all the people who texted me out of nowhere

 

tell me who to be tomorrow

there were only 3 possible ways of being,

one,

i could pretend that it had never happened,

suppress the guilt until it becomes another stranger i do not address,

two,

i could accept it, allow myself to transcend it, and continue my journey

with the virtues i have solidified my whole life,

or three,

let it change me, become someone accordingly vicious and vile,

forgetting i was ever myself.

— i was looking for faith in all the wrong places

 

what happens when you stop praying

How does one start writing about something different?

When you’re still you.

It feels impossible to shed this skin.

I am the past, future, and present within.

I’m afraid of what I’ve become and what I would do next.

 

spare my soul (today)

A poem is very different from the truth

It hides behind broken lines

and ill-fitted words

It’s about hurt

Yet it appeals to the soul

But hurting isn’t

appealing

It’s smudged

grey

and cloudy

Sundays

It’s running out of ink

and faith.

It’s going to sleep at

four

in the afternoon

because the void swallowed

your day

and you had to wallow

in the warmth of a

blanket

instead of a

hug.

Because hurting lures the lonely self;

isolates it.

Then feeds off thoughts of anarchy

and meaninglessness.

the myth of waiting

everyone around me

thought

that i was avoiding the inevitable

that i was being evasive

but i promise you

sometimes there’s a difference between

evasion and not being ready

and the criteria for both is smudged with all

boundaries grey

and all opinions

skewed

and until recently

i did believe it was foolish to wait around

for some mystical sign to guide my path

but sometimes

we are not ready

and i have no idea what would make us more so

-the myth of waiting and why you can’t disprove it

 

Meeting You

You first come to realize you’ve met her when you acknowledge the stillness of your life amongst the busy traffic of others’. It strikes you as peace. It may be even confused with loneliness. But your beautiful soul is merely shrugging away the thought in denial.

You have met her every time you begged to differ with the reality that you have not changed. That you have remained a changing mixture of the same components. That you have remained enclosed within yourself. Untainted by exposure. And similarly uncontaminated with life.

You fear the fog so much you stopped walking in the beautiful mist. You were afraid the world could touch you so much that you have created your own remote world. And believe me when I say, you have met her every single day in every  corner of your mind. For my dear, how can you meet her when you are her. Every single glance at the mirror you have become manifest in her and she in you. You were one and the same in the instant where you stopped believing.

When you wouldn’t touch the world.

My dear,

you were failure for so long

you forgot what it meant to meet other people

and become others.

 

Before the Happening

I sat across her on the bus.

Wrapped in a black scarf. An enchantingly long navy blue coat with buttons along the middle rim and a black satin scarf wrapped in layers that fall over one another melliflously yet remain intact with pins carefully placed at the top of her head.

Her face was so bare it couldn’t have been more beautiful. Her eyes widened like those of a child coming to life; becoming aware of the external reality. We glance each other not with hatred nor with any likelihood of friendship or assimilation.

She takes her blue-bead rosary from the side pockets of her bag and she starts muttering the words in an attempt to find ease in the nervousness of being around other people. She looks more scared than most women feel inside as they walk dark alleys lit up with only strangers’ grins; more afraid of trauma than hurt.

I am astounded by her faith but I can see the uncertainty at the corners of her eyes. She is almost always on the verge of tearing up. Either that or her eyes glisten with some remarkable sparkle of a mystic in the making. It was not so much her white skin as her entire aura that held me. Touched by her yet to be broken faith and yet to be corrupted mind, I can’t help but recall a time when I was that, both; naïve and innocent.

We’re so afraid of spoiling napkins we forget that’s a defining characteristic of what they are.