literarygoof

[literarygoof]

you would rise before the light even came out, watching the dim earth slowly brighten with the arrival of a bleeding sun. sometimes i'd wake to find you there, gazing out into an unraveling world long before the air even learned its name.

i wonder if you were waiting for something this world cannot ever give—that if I stood long enough beside you, i'd understand how you think. i wish that i had lingered, that i had asked you more questions instead of fading into sleep. but now the world wakes without you in it, and the light falls cruelly just the same. softly it lays itself down like an offering, gently it touches the walls, touches the skin—and still i shiver. you can bury a body but their soul finds a way to remain, for what is love if not the pressing weight of what has been missing? and so i wonder if you are here somewhere between the dust motes and the silence. are you somewhere inside the light itself?

and i could polish my litanies to make it ache a little softer but grief is not something i can simply bargain with god—to rid myself of it is to rid what makes my heart a heart. to forsake the ache is to gut the house of its walls, to forget the hands that once patiently held me—and call it mercy. but I do not want this kind of mercy. so let it stay and let it gnaw. let it carve me into something worthy of having loved you at all.

[literarygoof]

[literarygoof]

and perhaps we find it hard to write because it requires utmost confrontation and shameless undressing, while there is too much security in containment. you have grown to revel in the calmness of your melancholy, as though the absence of your words means the absence of chaos while something unnamed faithfully ravages you from the inside. you think that to entertain one shadow of terror is to summon the darkness itself—which might also mean to say that you do not know how to shine without setting yourself on fire.

what is writing if not the insatiable need to pry open a healing wound? it demands a brutal honesty, forces the heart to work up the courage to see the ugliness for what it is, and it exhausts the mind by its attempts to make sense of the pain, devoting hours on analyzing each terrible thing you did to deserve such reparations. and so you try to hide in metaphors both too abstract and sometimes too pretentious because you are too full of love and too full of rage—too full of things you could never say.

[literarygoof]

if we are granted a life outside of this one, i hope I never get to meet you. somewhere in this universe, there is a world where i am not waiting. somewhere, my tongue will not recognize the shape of your name nor will my eyes remember how your hair burns like fire under the sun. my ears will not recall the melody of your breath, nor will my pen carve repetitions of you. my words will flow freely, no longer tethered to the echoes of your name.

there will be a life where you don’t exist in mine, and I, in yours. the world will be big enough for you and i.

[literarygoof]

[literarygoof]

All I want is someone to know me so deeply, like nobody ever has.

[literarygoof]

you are not afraid of being forgotten. you are no stranger to the tongues that never bothered learning how to say your name. you just want to slip quietly through the edges, never lingering too long in the world. you can run from yourself yet even death leaves no room for escape: the body you abandon imprisons the remains of your decaying soul.

you will leave in the same way you entered the world: all bloodied skin and folded hands, only this time you are no longer innocent. you can rot into the bones of the earth, believing that you can hide your way into eternity but flowers will grow between your ribs and the world will give you a name. rest in peace, they will say, while they parade your bones on display.

you have faded away but still, you are speaking. raven-haired delilah from long ago, you leave the kind of loneliness that even heaven could not hold.

[literarygoof]

beyond your reach, child,

lies the dome where your gods play

where all burns and all ends,

where all is but a graveyard of eternal decay.

you, with your ancient bravado

and your icarian reveries,

would burn your tongue and kiss

the sun just to feel that you exist

but down here, child,

lies the world where you belong:

celestial blinking, earthly dreaming,

in prairies wild and oceans blue,

heavens crying, lovers dancing

to the great replay of your father's old tunes.

here is little atlas, with his hands so small,

holding up the weight of the cosmic call.

here lies glory, here lies debt

here is life, here is death.

[literarygoof]

A body is a memorial to things we never dare forget. From the expanse of the shoulders to the intricacies of the thighs, to rearrange its bones and make it a pyre of something holy. In the crooks of our bodies, we build our own temples. On the lips of our beloved, we exchange a hundred prayers.

[literarygoof]

here in the fathomless black, you plead all the litanies your heart can pull: for there to be hope in the light of distant worlds, for tenderness to be waiting on the morrow. to sleep and wake as no more than a fistful of dust, to live no more like a prey ravishing on sorrow.

[literarygoof]

In a dream, I am laughing with you under the kindness of the afternoon sun. We hold hands and you talk to me about your wonders and your joys, and I do not hesitate to tell you that you are one of mine.

In that dream we are both honest and brave, tender and unafraid. In that dream, I love you, and I am loved back without shame. In a world beyond this one, we defy everything we have ever known. I do not plead for any litanies except for a world where I don't have to worry about missing you for I am always with you.

In that dream I love you, and in this life I really do.

In that dream, you tell me you love me, but in this life, you never do.

[literarygoof]

There are some things that are too raw to be surrendered into admission. To be vulnerable is to invite the witnessing of a monumental breaking–a near act of summoning another's scrutiny to the wreckage. Old wounds do not take the face of a freshly cut flesh but it nonetheless indicates the pouring of a blood that was once there. We do not dare speak of how hard it is to mourn alone for things that most people consider as alive, or to yearn for a touch that is just a few breaths away. I craft eulogies for people who have never been dead; my longing makes the brain funny that way. The shame eventually crawls but you cannot outrun it even in its slowness; it is the price you pay for being honest.

In the weight of pain, we vow to preserve what is left of our secrecy, but love has always made honest men out of us. Watch how the words fall from the gates of your tongue, both the hesitance and the slow surrender. Watch how they tumble and flow from the safety of the stream and into the waiting arms of the ocean. You could only hope you do not lose what you cherish. You could only hope you do not drown what you love.

Sometimes I am told by the poets that hope is found by looking at the sun, and I find comfort in believing them. But sometimes, the sun is just the sun, and hope is a thing buried in the marrow. I have never been good at unearthing what refuses to be shown, but I may have honed patience in the art of waiting for them to unravel. I have lived long enough to know that the calloused palms can sometimes be the gentlest, and those with immaculate hands can have the most evil hold. I know that a whole life can fade into dreams that become half-remembered–how the absence of something is proof that it existed because we long for it. There are certain truths that we all share but they are lodged in the silence of the waning light, and we do not dare speak of it. Still we rise. Still we remain.

Tonight is for falling asleep, and we fall asleep, not knowing.

[literarygoof]

just beyond the jagged lines of the horizon, the sun, ever so full and bright, gazes at us in perpetual light. what irony is there when we are two-legged mortals sitting in front of a seemingly immortal sun? what beauty could heaven hold that cannot be found on the palm of your hands? what litanies are left to plead when salvation is found in love? when the little joys in mellow mornings gently nudge away the atrocities of the dark?

there are questions that linger, and there are hurts that dwell but there are also a thousand suns to chase, and a hundred moons to gaze at. many are the moments when the anger rises up and the sorrow swells, but the heart understands that it was meant to feel and not to flee. you have laid enough punishment for yourself; you have made one slave out of misery, but the terror is enough and there is no more need to be cruel, no more need to keep hurting. you do not have to be a saint in order to be loved. even sins give birth to hope and redemption. you are hurt but you can still be kind. the world can be cruel but it can be beautiful.

[literarygoof]

More than anything else in my entire life, I want to have the privilege to understand you.

[literarygoof]

i know I haven't always been faithful to God but sometimes I want to ask for his forgiveness because my tongue only knows how to plead. I want to hold his hand and apologize for failing to thank him for the trees and the rivers, for the giant mountains and the tiny hills that he has meticulously carved on different corners of the earth. I want to thank him for blessing my evening with the lunar gaze of that silver platter in the cosmic space above, for making my mother laugh yesterday, and for the little rain that has kissed the deep brown soil. I want to tell him that when the sky weeps and lays itself on the bosom of the earth, I can almost hear it sigh in relief. I want to say thank you to the ancient sun who never rests from the celestial duty of illuminating the lands. I want to talk with god without asking something from him for once. I want him to know that sometimes my desperation gnaws on my bones that I sometimes become blind to the creation that slips from the cracks of my greedy hands.

[literarygoof]

i wish to speak of the hurt and the neverending sorrow that eats at my soul—to engrave it, make a name of it, to lay it bare so i can make sense of it. it always hides when i come to look for it, yet it never fails to remind me that it lingers. i think that's what makes it nearly maddening, to know that you are hurt but not be able to locate the very source that inflicts the hurt upon you. i think i am always in despair about everything. friendships, family, myself. i try so hard to be happy and strong and defiant, to not yield into despair so willingly, but i always find myself being succumbed by it. i feel like i have a missing limb, something that most people have except me. i feel very different in a very disparaging way, and i am most certain i can never be fully understood by people, and i do not think there will be anyone who would be willing enough to devote their time to understand me. it is ironic because i also don't want them to try because then they might come to find that maybe there really is nothing worth looking at deep within me. so i give the scraps without ever really showing the rot, but god, for once i just want to unfasten all the anger and sadness that have been buckled up upon me, reveal what i have always been in front of eyes that do not condemn me. i would like to have some hands to hold. it must be beautiful to be understood by someone who isn't always angry.

[literarygoof]

Anatomy of an Exile's Body

Time gushes from the unknown deep, and it is cunningly gentle, river-like, yet silently aching like crimson blood liberating itself from your young wound. It caresses us only to cut us open. It engraves longing into the sinews of our bones, only to make us an exile from the homeland inside our ribs.

It is much too difficult to be pittilessly torn without knowing how to put ourselves together again. We polish the incisions of our flesh with the pretense of normalcy; we possess ourselves with the light of a thousand small suns and only bare the nakedness of our truth under the ebony of the boundless sky.

A body is a memorial to things we never dare forget. From the expanse of the shoulders to the intricacies of the thighs, to rearrange its bones and make it a pyre of something holy. In the crooks of our bodies, we build our own temples. On the lips of our beloved, we exchange a hundred prayers.

The mouth is a cathedral where we take our communion, where the pastor asked us to spit out the wretchedness and to fold our hands to make tender worship out of our blackened fists.

Communions are quite simple: you just kneel despite the shame; you surrender to be loved despite being cruel.

The mind is a fire raging without knowing when to stop until it invades what lies untouched, until it devours the little good that is left. Delusion is a theft I commit from the drawers of borrowed time, a price I covet to exist in the world as a mortal dreamer. I confess the sin, but I do not offer the guilt. I pour without leaving it empty.

The teeth will carve roughness within the crevices of our skin, like the hand of a god sculpting his own sharp-edged stars, like merciless water ravaging the fissures of the earth. But I will remain tender, and beware, for mercy is a capricious thing. It is a luxury I cannot afford to give.

The tongues may pierce the blood with venom and intimidate my silence to sleep, but although hope is a bird that may descend, my courage will always try to rise up from the bottomless pit of wanting.

And look, the earth is spinning under the barrel of the watchful sun. I will lay target to its cosmic scrutiny, but I will not offer my fear nor submit the remnants of any shame. I have already ascended from the tiniest of deaths; I have resurrected into the heavens of my own making.