selfishly I want to live,

selfishly I want it with you.

I want it with the pretty garden we’ll have,

I want it with every bouquet you give me,

with the kisses on my cheeks,

with your hand over my waist and

your voice with the sound of my name.

Perhaps I am late in life,

to this feeling perhaps even more,

but I am irrevocably, insufferably just as doomed, in a way not just romantic,

but also in the way, I want you in “forever”.

I love water but I cannot swim.

  What a tragic way to say

“I love you but I cannot survive you”

I lie, far more than I care to admit. Perhaps it’s in human nature, but I’ve gotten simply used to it.I lie about homework left untouched, about nights I spent tossing and turning, about slipping out of classes and a hundred little more lies.

But my greatest lie? It lives with me, inside my soul. It’s tender and sharp all at the same time, it twists and makes me feel all too much in the dead of nights and the brightest of days. I only just pretend it no longer reaches for me.

How could I ever hope to unremember him? He was a spring breeze, the kind that carries daisies to the rivers with secrets and wishes unheard. I lie and say I barely remember his voice, but I sing like the ocean waves at the sound of his voice. I know that every time I get a drink with limes, it's because you used to love it. Every time I lose my way, I end up at the spot where you always stay.

I recall only in silvery dreams, fragments drifting like dust over a neglected shelf. Just two children, sneaking into the pantry for snacks they shouldn’t, on a Monday afternoon, the time they should have been napping. 

You barely towered over me then, yet your pride had you reaching the top shelves for the chips I always liked better. Was it your fall that made me laugh, or the flour that dusted us both? I don’t recall the scolding we received; only the way you smiled so brightly. It was like the sound of wind chimes caught softly in a summer breeze, a sound I still adore and look for everyday.

Though I hated admitting it, you were always the better one between us. Studies, writing, poetry, music; whatever the world put out, you always came on top. 

Always the sporty one, weren’t you? Always teasing me for sniffling through yet another cold. What happened to your grand promises? The “Oh, I’ll stay healthy and strong so no one dares bully you for being sick all the time”? Where did the boy go,the one that swore to shield me against every harsh word?

That day in summer might just be my most precious memory. You led me through the quiet garden, flowers beginning to bloom. One by one, you taught me their names and meanings, pressing a carnation to my palms and saying it suited us. I remember the warmth of your hands as they brushed against mine, the sound of your hum, the scent of your hair and in that moment; the world felt so perfect I wished it would pause.

I told you I wasn’t scared but I lied. Fear coiled in my throat until it broke into tears and hysteria, because the thought of losing you felt like the end of everything, every good memory I had. I cried and I begged, falling asleep in the dead of night with red eyes still brimming with unshed tears. Then, every morning, I put up a smile and went to visit you anyways. 

Weren’t you such a gentleman? Breaking apart pomegranates for me, even though your hands could barely hold them properly. Carrying my bags for me even though I could do it myself. The you I remember was one who would never show any ‘weakness’ to me. After all, you always want to be strong enough for me to rely on you.

There’s a letter I found inside a book you left me, it reads —

My dearest,

If the winds carry a whisper today, let it be my voice, tracing your hair and brushing your cheeks. I leave you my heart in every shadow, every sigh of the trees and every wave of the ocean that will find you before I can. Until I am with you again, remember me in the spaces between your breaths.

Forever yours,

redacted.

We weren’t lovers, not really. 

We were people so well engraved in each other’s souls that even after four springs have passed, I still can’t move on from you. I look for you in every person I know, in every painting my hands attempt, in every drink I lift to my lips. I ache for your presence with your favourite camellias in my hand. 

Won’t you call me ‘sweetheart’ again in that soft quiet voice of yours? 

Won’t you come running to my house, the rain drenching you, just to lend your shoulder to cry on once more?

And just like that, I find myself standing at your grave again. Butterfly weeds bloom by it, and some part of me wants to rip them off till the Earth lies bare. I desire so violently and I wait so patiently. 

Sometimes I wonder, in another universe, are we laughing about how in this universe we are apart? I have loved all your talents, all your flaws, except one; your absence. Your absence is the one thing that haunts me so deep that I feel my soul crawling out to disintegrate itself. To this day, perhaps the reason I want to die isn’t because I hate this world, it’s because you’re no longer in it.

I’ll adore you, as the drowned person does the seas, as the moth does the flame, as the poet does the wound that makes him write. For true beauty lies in the people we lost, the ones no longer in our lives.

It was known I craved your presence. Desirous, devoted even, to the idea of you. A late spring day, the flowers blooming all too bright, all too light. I wore my prettiest silks, blushing ribbons, smiled the softest smiles and sang endless ballads that ached in the throat to you.

Love , a soft orb of sunlight, no? The one that soothes the ache of dull bones? Yours gleams like gold, yet in my hands it burns a tender red. The red of pomegranates staining my hands for you, of spills from wines you enjoy, and, from my lips as I drink the poisons meant for you.

Had you ever asked for an offering, I would carve my bones into goblets for you to use, blend scents from every flower till my hands ruin themselves, my skin to weave you the softest blankets. Perhaps I would perish but if you smiled, I would not notice the blood at all.

Everyone has their sins, whether it’s addiction, violence or simply the act of lying. Weirdly still, we pick and judge each other as if we are saints.

My sin, perhaps, is that I feel too much and I say too much. I think too much, and then I pretend that it didn’t bother me.

I laugh and praise my mother, but then writhe and cry over how a 2nd grade girl had to learn how to do her hair all alone because her mother couldn’t be bothered to do it for her in the morning. I praise her again while swallowing my thoughts of how she told me she’d get me surgery when I turned old enough to look “prettier”. I was barely 7 then.

Perhaps the reason I never care to remember mother’s day, her birthday or get any gifts for her is because I never felt the presence of a mother.

I brag about how much freedom I have, how I practically have no curfews, how I can go anywhere I want but then again, I know deep down that it doesn’t come from love or anything, it comes from neglect. She doesn’t stop me, not because of trust, but because she simply doesn’t care.

Or maybe, sometimes, just sometimes, I think she might be hoping that I do not return. So she can hold a pretty ceremony with crocodile tears, then go back to her life.

After all, that’s always been what she’s best at. Living her own life and not caring about her child. Whether it was when she was so absorbed gossiping over the phone, she didn’t even notice I burned my face or when she was too busy going out with her friends to notice the 104 fever I had.

Even when I was in so much physical pain that the only relief was lying in bed all day and sleeping, she was too busy going shopping. When I fell off the cycle and fractured my ankle, it was my grandmother who took me to the hospital and get it healed.

I grew up learning everything myself either by making mistakes and figuring out the right way, or just youtube where strangers were kind enough to teach it all.

I tell people I have always been a sickly child, but if I was to give away a secret, perhaps my mother’s neglect has always been behind all my sickness. There are far too many instances in my life for that line of thought to be dismissed.

Then again, perhaps I’m simply being dramatic because at least now I know how to do everything myself at 19, right? At least I am extremely self dependent and unafraid of anything, right?

I speak so much, I speak up for others when they are treated unfairly, when their rights and happiness are taken away. But maybe it comes from a deep rooted desire that someone should have stood up for me like that once too.

My mother’s love has shaped me as a person who values her freedom over everything else, as a person who can cut off anyone for her mental peace, and as a person who would speak, and speak till the last ray of light reaches my face.