i...

i wonder where you are and if the universe has always been cold.

now, that line might not be adjacent nor congruent with each other. but our heart has always been perpendicular because we love in parallel lines.

funny how we let the barbaric ink terrorize our veins. now, we are in an idle state when rivers should never unlearn the ability to flow.

how could distance violate the law of proximity when poetry claws us by its hand and unweave the cloak of pretend.

we were defenseless.

and here i thought, you and i will never fall for the same trap. but i just did. yet i know you were much stronger. he has a tongue that could crack any armor and he strikes you where he could hurt you the most - the part shielded by arched bones. then he leaves you with the truth that lines could never curve into infinity.

well my case was a lot gentler. this is about a boy i met who told me he would love to stay as a boy when i wanted us to grow like vines reaching for the sun - intertwined and knitted.

when he turned away, he left no queries unanswered. yet, i felt that departure brought a feeling of loneliness home and bruised backbone can't help but curl into a question mark.

why do we have to see what was once beautiful eclipse into an estranged memory?

so Luna, where are you and has the universe always been this cold?

pray tell me how to forget. 

His velvet fingertips 

Follow the full moon

Reflecting stimulation off

My bearing hip imperfections

Vulnerability encouraging

Rides on his soul exposed

And it bounces like tears

Off my stripped translucent flesh

My submitting tattooed back

Naively seducing virginity

His promising strength

And he folds enveloping

My post-ossified shoulder 

Into him I blend blues

And resigning childlike

My emotional throbbing 

Empathy unconditional

His perfect ancient lips 

Brush like down feathers

My exposed neck witnessing

With my tangled hair 

Whispering responsively

My follicles steady

Sing moaning cello chords

His culpable fast demons

Let blood spill from history

His shielding pores tightened

Fallen angels

A mother's kiss

Love exploited

Wounds gaping

And carefully between us 

Here in this floral patch

Exposed with a razor's edge

His deepest ethological needs

His ugliest, most sinful desires

And floating heartwarming dreams

He is abstract art romanticized

Safe in this quivering space

His broken heartache healing

A crimson splattered crime unveiled

But my used body inspirits

Sheltering him sans expectation

Protectively we are whole

Together juxtaposed dancing

In this gray rabbit hole bed

My darling brilliance illuminati

Loving hands hold

My mood is indescribable. Tightly folded in the bottom drawer of a little girl's vanity. A downspout of misguided rain freezing overnight. A complicated mountain folded, its peak sheltered by sensitivity and fog. Its hardened crust evaporating into sadness. My desolation comforted by his imaginary love. Pain is romanticized inside my mind. Love and delusion reflected in a streak-free mirror. Literary connections found in pulsating  isolation love me back. I am disconnected from the norm. I admire the faithful but I only sleep with questions. Relieving cuts pour bleeding onto my canvas blank. I offer explanations unintelligibly through matte abstracting art. I am complexly overwhelmed by simple movement and my mascara smears like a passionate whore. My legs spread wide, knees bent, my aged hips crack with temporary satiation. Heavy sighs are my aphrodisiac into oblivion. The warmth of the sun on my face is my mother. Nature hugs me with its bark folding into rings. Gasping with emotion, my eyelids bow at the thought of him. Moved to tears when Mozart's final notes appear tangible. A grin too wide and too toothy silently churns my stomach to the tone of laughing clowns. Names spelled wrong hanging on the air make me dizzy. Contradicting comfort found in metaphors and algebra. Pages folded into triangles increase my focus. Abhorrent shock at mass blindness ruminates into psychosis. Despair dropping into a bucket of mud in my chest when I think of my image of love. Despondency covers my shoulders, my grandmother's shawl, when the chill of  loneliness arises. Inner epiphanies debate over desire and reality. I stand still and stuck from fear, my existential ability questionable. Independence challenges my need. I know my bravery exists, but it is tucked between the folded linens. And I hate to disrupt the familiar aroma. And so, I keep the closet closed.

Drinking in the memory of deep sweet molasses lips

Eyes soulful as the cloudy winter moon

Heroin passion promises main lined straight to the chest wrapped in gypsum taken from the night

Breathless with anticipation you ride the dark horse through the sky in sweet release

Black leather and Zeppelin cries landing and bound into my loving arms eternal

The magnolia waits trembling for our worlds to collide in final resolution

All the lies and fear brought to light cleansed by the holy water of truth

I thought of you today

in  million ways

I thought of holding your hand

warming it with my palms

I thought of being with you

even when you've never expressed

such desire.

I thought of loving you

Yeah... Of loving you

Even if i think

i already have

since the day i read you.

I thought of giving my heart 

for you to tear apart

and i thought

Of making you feel my love

amidst your refusal

to love me back

I thought of the warmth

I love to have

a piece of sunrise

and a million sunsets

in a jar of you

I thought of how 

oranges and lemons

blend well

and how you would love the taste

I thought of telling you

all the fears

and all that i desire

and how you make me cry.

I thought of you today

and how this feeling

never sinks with the sun

never goes half moon

and never withers like leaves

And i've gazed up a lot of times

hoping some drunken god

is crazy enough

to rearrange our stars.

Author Notes:

from salt, lemons and poetry series

The land was barren, the sky was black, despite that a brilliant silvery film shone through the thick silent darkness and over the glistening wasteland of pristine white. Sub-zero winds echoed desolation but managed to moan between iron thick frost. The ice-kissed world served as a moral reminder of death, it had kissed our now frostbitten lips and fingers yet, as dawn drew closer blinding through the silver lustre; the sky and earth seemed to merge and melt together. The horizon was boundless and seemed to have no end...

This new beginning served as an epitome of life and lush fertility..

Hope was once and for all - ignited.

Dusk always left wavers of crimson shades that bore resemblance to denouncement. The halt of light and diminished ignition of life, like scarlet velvet curtains drawn on the illusionists final act. It was the sacred sun that when rose kindled energy in our bloodstream and very nerves like a queen embellished by her beehive. The shone sun, lent hands to sunflowers that swayed obediently like monks who chant mantras with angelic faith while we painted clouds with our fingers to adorn the sun.

It is we, when blinded by the saintly sun at noon..

It is we, when the candle in us is extinguished by the faded sun -

who soulfully weep.

It is we, who cradle evanescent fireflies that glow freckles in the darkness as we choke on salt consumed by the heavy air..

and wait

and wait

for celestial zenith.

I do not know exactly how she must have felt 

when she arrived home and realized 

that the house looked like naked timbers

with saggy, baggy cheeks

that dripped like loose curtain, 

waiting for her to notice

that her cabinets hold more spaces 

and her mom's collection of lipsticks were gone.

Silence reached her 

to wrap itself from fingers to toes

making her curved into a C-shape on the hollow mattress

that seemed to transform into a crib

where smell of tears and stains of fears accumulated

And how she wished she could cocoon back inside womb

transcend time and reestablish the purpose of a navel. 

Back to the time when a jelly-like cord

connects a small heart and a big heart 

but time had passed 

and the meaning of connection got lacerated long time ago

with sears of trashed expectations

and cascaded lies. 

when she gets too drunk

and inhibition tucks itself to bed, 

that's when she'd scream

and find refuge into my slender arms

and she would ask her questions

with tightly close eyes, 

she'd ask me to enumerate the reasons

why people leave their children when they reach 20?

Or why sacrifice for 20 years 

and tread towards comfort and security?

Why do people get tired and become selfish?

Why did she become weaker after 20 years of battling wars

between deceit and distant truth?

Why count all the bleeding wounds

and not the  possibility of victory?

Why break all the promises 

and leave all the dreams we've built

for a so called, "better" man ?

Why walk away when you have 2 sons

and a daughter looking up at you

Hoping you won't let them drown 

on wild rapids of too much agony and indifference.?

Why?  why ? why?

Weren't they enough? Weren't they enough? Weren't they? 

Then, with a fierce flame burning in her eyes, 

she said, "I guess we weren't enough."

For a moment, i am tempted to tell her 

that someday everything will make sense. 

But what kind of comfort can future present to her? 

Someday can take days, months 

or even hundreds of years 

and the questions 

dangling like the fake galaxies

inside  her wooden crib

needs to be stopped 

from eating her faith in humanity

as soon as now.

But no matter where i look,

no matter how many pages of self-help 

and inspirational books i scan,

i still could not tell her the words 

that will remedy her cancerous rage 

or the gangrenous despair

feasting on her soul. 

My friend, after 5 years 

i still do not know the answer 

and maybe even if another 20 years had passed, 

and you throw those questions again, 

i'll still find myself a scavenger

trying to unearth sensibility in garbage cans,

unable to vocalize any single letter. 

But this i know, 

there's this comforting warmth in you

that encapsulated me 

in a way the sun can never outdo. 

Do not let the storm

blow the comfort your soul radiates. 

It WASN'T your mistake. 

And i'm still here.

Mori,

I am sitting alone in this cafe and I swear my head is crowded with thoughts of you. Whether I am alone or in another's company, I feel there's no way to breathe but to drown with the talking moments we shared (even if they weren't too much of them lately. I'm not complaining - yet.).

I roll my eyes all over the place and all I could think of was the time when we talked about how you'd like to own a bistro someday. We agreed on what shape the tables would be - round. I told you that i love round tables for they make the people closer and everyone sees each other's eyes whether it's sparkling like Armand de Brignac Rose or as lonely as an empty bottle of beer and how you tried to crush the exuberance I showed when you told me that you like round because it saves space and not because of the stupid sentiments I just poured out. You reiterated how simple minded you are and how dramatic i was. I let your practicality escaped into a cascading laughter. I know you were trying to tell me how your bones have been bleached out of romance.

 Let me tell you now, I know how "unromantic" you are.

I know the thought of romance causes allergic reaction to your skin. Remember when i told you how the word hello was invented? Without hesitation, you told me that Graham Bell never really liked that word and how he preferred "ahoy" over the name of his girlfriend. And i smiled because no kind of discouragement can change my mind, my dearest. Believe it or not, happy ever after is something i have in abundance within the confines of my soul. No kind of "faith crushing" can ever make me hope for less - especially about us (even if you don't think that way - well, i do.)

I also told you i like to fill the place with wind-chimes made of shells, bamboos and anything that can breathe out sounds. I love how it saturates the room with its rhythmic melody when the wind kisses its tresses by the window or how it sings when the door swings every time someone comes and leaves. I believe a person's arrival and departure should be taken notice of as a sign of his existence - a reminder that he has been here. Sometimes, memories become so surreal that she starts doubting if they have ever happened, if they have really talked, if they existed or if the conversation was real - like how shooting stars disappear in the sea quicker than the blink of your eyes. You were quiet while i told you these nonsense I was beginning to think i was making you feel bored. It made me think that if ever we were face to face, you'll try to hide every yawn, the itch to stretch your limbs and the urge to turn your other cheek.

I imagine too much - i know.

Then you'll tell me to stop thinking stupid things like you leaving or you finding another prettier girl with 2D breasts (whatever 2D means because 3D is overrated). You said, you don't treat me as an option and i swear if a heart can melt, mine would have evaporated to join the clouds. Yet, i never told you how i felt about those words.

Instead, I told you that i get jealous about you laughing more often with other women and you told me that you laugh the most with me even if my jokes were so overused and nonsense. And i realized how much i needed to hear that to feel better.

The feeling of jealousy was suffocating that it was easier to breathe after.

And I hate your busy days so i try to be busy too and i try to forget you but when i pick the pen, i scribble your name all over the pages of my notebook and i remember the bistro you want to have someday. I listen to my favorite songs and i hear the growling of your metallic music blending with the supposed to be soothing melody of my much preferred choice of music.

You invade the privacy of my thoughts every now and then and I hate how i don't hate it.

I really think it's you who I want to talk with about jealousy, about my stupid dreams, about my love for sweets and how coffee makes me dizzy. And, I want to tell you that I'd love hearing anything about your life even if it's all about flipping pages of Accounting books, watching 2D breasts, smoking and coffee, your bizarre taste of music, your imaginary 8 packs abs and how many times you wrinkled your forehead.

I want you to know I am interested - so interested.

Dearest Elijah,

Neptune’s tide aligned with Pluto’s moon.Those nights, constellations formed an emblazoned peacock and my fingers found comfort in granulated crystal I dyed a pale pink and blue – I imagined it was stardust.

Was it the daze of the kaleidoscope that I confused with a gaze into a telescope? I cannot tell. All I knew was that dolphins were swimming in a galactic milky way and that my fingers’ wounds were undergoing the tribal healing process of sugar coating (with stardust).

The tap dancing of the rain on sunflower petals, somewhat brought me joy. The sheer connection of the sky’s clouds with the Earth was magical, almost as if they were in love; love that conceived the spring I was surrounded in. Love, that brought forth the scent of hyacinth flowers through the wet air.

Elijah..


My heart is a crater.

Ariela