you should never have loved me

i love you the way old joints hurt
aching and grinding into each other
as if they want to merge
and meld together.

i love you
but i would wear you down to dust
if i could. 

this is what tanha is all about

this skeleton aches in the absence of you;
weeping too hard, shivering too violently
these phalanges creak in desperation,
trying to grasp something that is
simply not there.

dear A,

you are the fissure between two eternities:
an intermission between plays,
a deliberate comma between protracted phrases that had
long since lost their meaning.

in your arms time wilts, shrivels and dies.

and in this stretch of timelessness,
we are expanding bodies of nebulae,
fed and sustained on the delusional idea of each other.

but this will never be enough.
and we will always be incorporeal.
and we will never be complete.

A Song of Chopin

(in four movements)

back ramrod straight; arms poised in mid-air:

and the notes would drop like snowflakes,

crystalline and clean and ephemeral.

one.

there are ink stains on her

wrists, cheekbones and chin - 

they spread vein-like over her translucent skin.

people try to hide their secrets

but sometimes, secrets are exactly what they are:

dirty.

two.

the sun god apollo fell in love with daphne

who was a nymph, with lead in her heart

she couldn’t love him (not with a heart of lead)

and begged to be free of him.  

her skin transformed into bark, her outstretched arms the branches reaching into the sky

and her hair was the leaves whispering in the wind –

but even then Apollo loved her and kissed her root-turned-feet

and granted her immortality.

three.

he knows that writing her love letters everyday

would not make her come back.

she loved him once, twice even,

but she never loved him the way he loved her:

as if she was a gaudy, orange-colored life buoy floating

in a sea in which he is perpetually drowning.

four.

alice alice where are you

because she is always looking for alice.

she checks the rabbit-hole underneath the vervain bush

and the looking glass behind the mantel place

(the mirror smashed into smithereens as her finger made contact

with the glass and the rabbit-hole is covered up in dirt).

she didn’t think that

she would see alice ever again.  

this is what love feels like

 There are huge gaping wounds on my body

Where you dipped your fingers into my flesh

If I close my eyes I wouldn't have to see
the hideous scars; like black, yawning, abysmal
mouths, but I can still remember
your shaking hands
sinking into me and gripping me
by the bones.
And at that moment I understood
what being in love meant.

Just Dropping In To Announce That I'm Not Dead. Yet.

L'Irréparable

I meet you. I remember you. Who are you? You’re destroying me. You’re good for me. How could I know this city was tailor-made for love? How could I know you fit my body like a glove? I like you. How unlikely. I like you. How slow all of a sudden. How sweet. You cannot know. You’re destroying me. You’re good for me. You’re destroying me. You’re good for me. I have time. Please, devour me. Deform me to the point of ugliness. Why not you? Why not you in this city and in this night, so like other cities and other nights you can hardly tell the difference? I beg of you.

- Marguerite Duras

it's never about wrong and right

It always comes down to this: sadness. An unending, halcyon ocean of aching sadness; never overwhelming, or unbearable but persistent and perennial. This melancholy is a hanging sentence I had plunged into, without knowing when or how, only to discover that there is no full-stop - only innumerable ampersands.

There are secrets that clot the arteries in my heart and weigh me down in this truculent ocean, while I thrash and kick and splutter, only I lied - I didn’t. I didn’t fight this grief, instead I surrendered myself whole-heartedly to it, because in a twisted, morbid, masochistic sense, I like it. I like it because I deserve it, because I can never be completely sure that I exist, that I’m not a reflection or a dream of a doppelganger in an alternate universe. I like it because it made me feel, and it hurt and you know what they say - pain means you’re still alive.


But these secrets, these thoughts are choking me up from the inside and these knotted words I cannot utter. These malignant sarcomas I would carry in me and they would eat me up slowly, poison my blood and my lymph.

Perhaps someone would understand, perhaps if I whispered to them the contents of these little tumors they wouldn’t flinch, or judge but even then I wouldn’t. They are mine to bear and mine alone and I have come to be possessive of them. So even when I’m squirming with the need to confess all, to scream it out at the top of my lungs, to purge my soul of the grotesquery, I wouldn’t. Not really.

Sometimes I wonder where all these anger and frustration and resentment and sadness sprung from. Well yes, I suppose I do know, but the knowledge of its derivation only served to sadden me further since it suggests that this is not merely a phase but a pervasive disposition that had been molded from all-too-many factors dating back years ago.

And it depresses me that you, of all people, don’t understand.

Pantun Patah Hati II

dengan penuh ghairah

aku berjilam

bibirmu yang bersalut madu.

oh sayang,

pelukanmu umpama lautan

yang melemaskan,

cintamu bagai gelombang hangat

yang menghempaskan.

badan dan jiwaku bersenandung

euforia,

tanganku meraba-raba tulangmu

yang berat dengan

hawa nafsu,

aku mencium rusukmu

sambil menggeritik

keinginan.

Dear Cesare,

I was perfect. I was bloody perfect until you showed up in your cardinal robes (fuck you no one's supposed to look sexy in a cardinal robe dammit) and strutted around my carefully planned out schedule. I was an angel gazing peacefully down at the chaos in the human realm and I was sadistically happy until you ripped off my wings and I plunged into the wilderness.

And in that madhouse of disorderliness, I spent an entire day watching movies; well watching you and your fucking tight ass and your beautifully sculpted back and shit you shall not distract me!!!

Damn you Cesare Borgia, you devil.