Resettling Roots

I’ve set my roots and let them grow deep into the core of the earth

My flowers bloom and turn to face the sun

My leaves outstretch from the stems that grow firmly from beneath

I sway with the wind and dance to its rhythm, all the while keeping up with my pivot

My core helps me remain upright as I graze the beauty of my surroundings

Day and night, the beauty of this city enlivens me, and its familiarity envelopes me in a blanket of warmth

Its fast-paced life and ambition inspire my roots to expand further and my leaves to reach out to greatness

I thrive…

When my roots got a sense of you, they became a lot less attached to their environment

My roots, my stems, my leaves…my core is ready to pick up and leave to an unknown world with you

To begin anew and set roots in a place that my flowers haven’t witnessed before, where they can’t get around with eyes closed

With you, my core is willing to sway and weaken only to be stronger as it reestablishes in unison with you

We thrive…

Foregone Demons

Swords slashing my soul, tracing my arteries and the outline of my skin

I separate into pieces as the images burn holes in between my ribs and up my throat, out through my eye sockets

The weight of the world on my arms, like blocks of concrete that I carry across the globe

The words get stuck in my throat, mixed with the tears that form an overflowing reservoir inside me

My heart can’t handle the pressure, the rupture will be upon me if I take a wrong breath

I attempt to run away from it, but I remain in the loop… like looking into a mirror with another mirror right behind

Every day I love you more and every day it burns me more

I scrape away the demons but they latch on to me, the leftovers growing like tumors under my skin

Help me make them go away, I’m drowning in desperation

What’s real? What’s not?

All my attempts are in vain, it persists

As the waves sweep me off my feet, the salty water burns my throat, choking me

I see it coming but I can never suppress its blow, I can not run away

My soul whispers to my heart that it is approaching

My heart tries to tell me it is going to be okay

When the day comes, I wake up with an invisible force holding me down

Getting out of bed feeling like the floor will collapse underneath my feet

My soul sways from side to side and my brain loses consciousness

My outer shell takes on the day like it is any other

I am put together, they have no clue

The shield held over my reality is as strong as ever

Suffocation

It burns me, pinches my insides and ties knots with my intestines

I feel the tightening in my throat

I clench my hands to the side of the chair and my entire body starts to swell

I stop myself from breathing to help block it out, to stop my heart from rupturing in the event of another movement

I can’t fathom the reality, I try to cancel it out: this must just be a figment of my imagination

My heart begins to pump faster, I take apart the skin on my thighs

The veins on my neck swell, my blood is gushing, I am overwhelmed, overpowered, unheard

It’s the most sensible thing to do, they say

I have to go, his blood runs in my veins

She needs a vacation, an escape from her own reality

I might regret it later, our time here is not infinite

They ask me to do it for her, for him, for them

But my absolute self-destruction is swept under the rug

If it is so right, why does it feel so wrong?

Vinyl Shatters

Photo: Rupi Kaur by Carlota Guerrero

You live in the moment, enjoy every new tune as it starts.

The moment is all that you’ve got, there’s no promise of tomorrow, and no point to sulk over what already passed.

But do you ever come across a feeling when you plead for the chance to erase those slivers of your past that you wish weren’t a part of you?

What if deleting them alters who you are?

It pains me to think of all the times I’ll have to recollect and look back to tell and frown upon my misconducts, not wanting to look truth in the face.

I’d love to bloom in your hands and show you every corner of me but some pieces are so dark and I’m afraid it’ll swallow you, destroy what we could’ve been.

Not all parts of me are pretty. Maybe you’ll decide to turn back and I don’t blame you, it’s as great as it gets and it’s all good at first glance.

I’m a rollercoaster ride and I don’t know how much of me are you willing to take.

Everyone says the same story, the same melody plays in different words, I’m too familiar with the tune.

But will your record break like all the ones before you?

The End of the Beginning

I’ve become a lie. Maybe you would prefer to call me a “memory”. I’ve faded into the past but spread through your needy shell. You still need me to breathe.

I was the key that you held in your palm, but you dropped it too many times. Pieces of it chipped away with every fall and scratch until finally, it didn’t fit into the keyhole. It was the evaporation of all your dreams. The crack of whatever sanity was left within you.

Your name still smiles at me from your handwritten letters. Gateways into a past of fields of flowers that all died at once after a murderous fire. I stopped looking back. I’m growing my own field now, I can’t allow another darkness to envelope what I worked so hard on forgetting.

The reins of my trust have been tightened once again. It was them, now it is you. I felt like a mounted mustang that wouldn’t suppress a gallop no matter how hard you tried to force me to a halt. My willpower was strong until you tore through me too. You didn’t kill all of what’s within me, but you pushed me to enclose myself in a vault so much stronger.

You carved me until I was a thin crescent in the night sky. Almost missed out of sight by the regular human. But being a crescent meant that the chance for a new moon has finally come. A form of reincarnation. I coincide with my closest distance from the human eye.

The show must go on.

His Flower

 

Photo by Baljit Singh

“Come here, my flower”, he says as he pulls me into bed.

Crisp, clean, white sheets. But I can still sense the invisible stains of tears etched within the fabric.

He brushes a few hairs behind my ear, an excuse to feel me just a little longer.

Soft, strong, manly hands. Despite the warmth they radiate, I can’t erase the memory of their wrongdoing.

“Why are you so dense?”, he asks as he rubs my shoulders.

The same exact spots. He traces all the scars. His fingertips glide over the rough bumps left over from my self-hatred. It burns.

He doesn’t know how to hide it, I can see that he likes it. The memory of my pain is his pleasure.

I pull away but his grip only tightens. I feel entitled. I shouldn’t feel the need to pull away since “he’s not like the others”.

The Price of Womanhood

Photo: Rupi Kaur by Naomi Wood

When that pain first hit me, I was completely oblivious. It was a strange, unknown sensation that I questioned but dismissed. I thought it would diminish, but it only grew.

I had to get it checked. “Appendicitis?”, questioned the doctor as she pounded my lower abdomen once. It wasn’t. But that blow definitely awakened an excruciating monster that I felt would be the end of me. It was worse than what I came with. It spread throughout my fragile body and I almost couldn’t tell where exactly was I hurting because it seemed to spread to every last living cell.

The nurse walked me to another room where I was asked to lay down for an ultrasound. The fear began forming a layer over all the pain that I felt. My hands began to sweat. My body began to stiffen. As the cold gel was massaged over my abdomen with the transducer, I could feel my heart thumping even louder in my chest. I just hoped that it wouldn’t be what I thought it was.

“That cyst is so large that I can’t see your ovary”, she told me. Automatically, the waterworks began and my emotions weren’t going anywhere. One after the other, the tears rolled down my cheeks. I was terrified. The last time I heard of this, someone’s insides had to be scooped out. A hollow womb that would never again go through the rewarding excruciation of bearing a child. But I was only 15, I couldn’t have that taken away from me so soon. I didn’t want to move.

She told me it wasn’t a big deal. It would’ve been worse if it was discovered on my liver, pancreas, or kidneys. But I was ready to give away any organ at that moment for the sake of not experiencing the fear of infertility. I sobbed all the way home. I couldn’t contain myself, I felt my whole inner world deteriorating. It was burning me whole.

I spent the next few weeks in and out of the hospital. Needles one after the other penetrating my pale skin. I couldn’t wear what I wanted because it hurt. I couldn’t eat what I wanted because it could make it worse. I couldn’t leave the house because walking too much would awaken the shooting pain. I was intertwined within a routine that was supposed to make it go away, but which killed all the other parts of me slowly.

I wanted to be a mother, I still want to be a mother. And because of that, I had to fight that battle no matter what it took. And I won. It’s been almost two years now, but every minute hint of a similar pain still sends me into a short stupor. Is it happening yet again?