There are huge gaping wounds on my body
Where you dipped your fingers into my flesh
Because you told me that you need to be covered in
my blood – like war paint – to be
in love with me.
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 means.
you are an event horizon,
a perfect black body
of gravitational monstrosity.
and i would never
be able to escape you.
you are a stellar black hole,
into which i
fell
and
f
ell
and i’m
fa
l
l
i
n
g still.
i am alice spiralling into
a twisted dream
from which i’ll never
wake.
you are the arcane, impenetrable fissure
in the spacetime continuum.
trapped in you,
i was ripped into shreds but
upon reaching
spacetime singularity
i have transcended
universes.
and so i offered you
my arms and say
slit my veins
and let ink replace
my blood.
untukmu yang berlegar dalam
fikiranku,
badan bertelanjang, zakar
menegak;
kamu merabit hatiku
seolah-olah aku langsung tak bermakna
apa-apa di matamu.
badai di jantungku yang menggelora
merebahkan dinding ventrikular
dan hatiku
berdarah
tak henti-henti.
namun,
namamu aku memanterakan
walaupun kau
takkan kumiliki.
i need to destroy and you’re indestructible.
i sometimes wish i was born in the desert sea,
under the harsh, unforgiving glare of the sun, during
the worst of desert storms.
i dreamt of rising like a cobra from the ubiquitous sand,
with the trickle of golden grains sliding down my body.
once i was a king
but that was before caesar.
theirs are a tongue i would give anything to speak.
rich and thick and creamy like the scented cones propped
upon ancient egyptians’ heads they rolled out of their mouths
like a lullaby.
even the words smell like
za’atar and cumin and cardamom.
the evening air tastes like baharat and the waning sun.
they say that only the strongest survive
but what is never born
may never die.
*me ranting on and on about workload*
him: i understand your pain.
me: then kill me.
him: *pew pew*
me: you completely missed! it whiffed past my head!
him: “bullets make u-turn*
him: and head shot.
me: *brains blown apart*
me: but why am i still aliiiiiivvvveeeeee???
him: you don’t know that you’re dead.
me: hmm, probably because i’m listening to chopin.
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/always/
is never a good word to be used
in love.
do not reassure her with words interlaced with
‘always’. she will be soothed and appear to be assuaged but
it will be a word that would come back to haunt you
like a bloodhound. it will sniff you out years later,
aroused by the dwindling affection you feel for her, the
utter dissatisfaction and insipid detachment in your relationship.
and it will devour you.
i will always love you,
will become the most fearsome boogeyman
under your bed and in your closet.
/always/
is for the use of immortals.
there are people who understand love (these are the immortals)
and there are people who vaguely grasp it, but are
too afraid or too ignorant to penetrate it
further. to delve deep into its core, and yet
never lose sight of the starting point,
to never forget what your heart might have forgotten.
and even then,
it must be a word that can only be written; it must never be spoken,
for the spoken word, even when whispered, can be devastating.
It has become a routine that has to be done daily - a ritual, almost. She stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror with a basin of water in one hand and a small towel in another. She forces herself to look into the mirror and suppresses the disgust and utter horror as she wets the towel and dabs at her face (if it can still pass as a face).
The softness of the towel on her skin is delicious. Slowly, gently and with a deftness that could only hint at regularity, she removes the flakes of skin from her purulent flesh. The pinkish, raw sinewy muscles on her face contracts when she opens her mouth. The foul-smelling pus that flows down her throat is carefully cleaned.
She lifts up a rubber mask from her dresser and puts it on, careful to secure the edges. Make-up is applied to make her face more realistic, more natural. At best, she looked as though she had had a bad plastic surgery, at worst the bleeding is too profuse to put on a fake face at all. She looks at herself proudly, admiring the face that her own hands had produced.
He wouldn’t recognize her now. No, she had been beautiful once and he had been the devil. If she had known better she wouldn’t have made the deal with him but he had been so charming, so alluring. Let me love you and let me be with you and I’ll give you anything. Anything. Well, he did. He let her love him and let her be with him and he wanted her face.
But you know what they say, a deal’s a deal and he got her goddamned face. She hopes he does it justice. Pretty faces are hard to come by, after all.
I
She had become a phantom. That was it. Standing in front of the mirror, her hair unkempt and eyes deadpan, she could see it – that she had been fading away for the past… what? Five days? Three weeks? She had no idea how long it had been since she was in this catatonic state. Her mind vaguely registered that this should have been alarming, should have warranted a larger reaction compared to this idle curiosity. And yet she found that she could not have summoned the energy to elicit the appropriate emotions even if she wanted to.
Her eyes skated over the image in the mirror with the same mildly curious look: over the pallid, sallow cheeks and the once-luscious lips; along the gentle slope of her slumped shoulders down to her arms hanging limply by her sides. But it was her eyes that captured her attention. They stared back at her with the same indifference: one eyebrow minutely raised as if in mockery or as a challenge. The look in her eyes was dead. There were no other words for it. It was pure and utter blankness.
They say it happens when you wander too long in your own subconscious mind.
II
“We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
III
Mad - em. ay. dee.
M.A.D, as in:
Morbidity – the batshit crazy cat lover who is so poor she couldn’t even feed herself. She carves out chunks of her thighs for her hungry cats.
Agony – the sweet twin sister of suffering. She is forged in the womb of humanity and born from the marrows of desire. She is the blood pumping through our veins and the breath we hold in our lungs.
Despair – the poison that spreads through your mind like the Black Death. It ravages your soul and eats up your hopes and your dreams. And when you’re cold and dead and gone, it will shit on your corpse and dance on your grave.
Madness. The satire of humanity.
I feel like I’m waiting for something.
And I don’t know what that is.
The only reason I’m not losing myself to insanity is that I’m clinging on to this fragile thread of hope that there is something better on the other side.
I don’t know where the other side is. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. And I don’t know when that is.
I hate the way that nothing is ever certain in life. I hate that I can’t see beyond the fog into the future. I’m used to being know-it-all and I can’t stand not being able to know my own path. I don’t like surprises. I hate the what-ifs in life. I hate the I-could’ves in life. I hate the why-didn’t-Is in life. I hate the I-don’t-know-and-never-would-until-it’s-too-lates in life.
I hate being unable to hate life despite everything. And I hate not knowing what I’m waiting for or if it’s even going to happen.
I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of being tired.
