Makeup After Party

The parties are the best part:

Diving into a champagne flute,

Rising high on gold bubbles

That laugh out of her mouth.

Back home silence paces the room,

Sitting in front of a mirror, she smiles,

One heartbeat, second, third, fourth…

Smile fades like the setting, drowning sun.

Her eyes are art of the blackest kohl,

And lips a shimmering red invite,

There is a hint of applied blush,

Above a foundation that never shakes.

She glances at the cotton on the dresser,

Then at the fancy makeup remover,

Her gaze travels up along the black dress,

From hinted cleavage to her silent, brown eyes.

She raises a hand to her mouth

And rubs the lipstick from side to side,

A cloud of red explodes around her lips

Like she has devoured a living heart.

She rubs her eyes and the darkness spills

To form bruises and dark circles underneath,

And no matter how hard she tries,

The black cloud does not fade away.

She watches her face now,

Wondering if there are answers

Etched somewhere in the mess

That would make parties unnecessary.

She thinks of her bag of compliments,

Filled to the brim…

Bursting at the seams…

And wonders why it still weighs so empty.

Oh I can be sad, but never enough to want you back.

I’d rather mourn your absence

Than forgive your presence.

Defacing Walls

It was never the lovers whose names
were carved as scars onto my heart.

It’s the friends,
The colleagues,
The mentors,
It’s the people I loved,
In a way that the world
Sees as a pale second to romantic love,
Who keep carving their names afresh
On the walls of my mind,
Each time they’re scrubbed clean.

Who Broke The Sky?

I’m leaving the three behind. Folks and baby sis. Flying back to base.

One would think it would get easier with time, but it doesn’t. Maybe I deal with it better but that tear happens each time and the pain always sits pretty on my chest.

It’s raining, thundering too, like someone dropped the sky and it broke in half. Through this broken sky I intend to fly to a city that no longer has my heart.

The World When Horizontal

The world when floating in a pool is very different from the world when standing upright on ground.

The sky is the next frontier when floating, hedged by branches of trees around the pool. The many leaves on those boughs look down at you, or just right at you since for them, down is straight ahead.

I see clouds like sighs of the wind, and a tall building arrogant enough to try and touch them. The water in my ears numbs sounds, all I can hear is my own breath: in and out, in and out. My arms are wide open, without tension, as if to hug the sky or to let it frisk me, either way complete surrender. The gentle lapping of the water around my body is a massage. And I focus on the tips of my fingers. The water rises to submerge them and then falls down to leave them in air. I close my palms to catch it because it feels heavy and solid but all I hold onto is the feeling ‘cool’.

As I continue watching, the sky is covered by white clouds, with one, rough hole in the middle showing the blue sky beyond. I have this urge to rocket out of the pool through that hole to the sky, before the clouds fill up that gap. Is that how we take most decisions? We see the gap closing and we run, not entirely sure whether we really want to be on the other side or not.

It’s hard to forget about the people watching me, but for a few seconds I do. It’s just water pressing upon my ears, willing me to hear nothing but my own breathing, and the new world of the horizontal in front of me.

For The Little Girl

My dear girl,
You’ll come to realise,
That a lot of times,
In order to be
Your own hero,
You will have to
Be their villain

What Would She Be?

She is a wound,
That makes its own salt.
I bring her medicine and she refuses.
Because if not a wound, what would she be?

Why I’d Never Be A Fangirl

Today is a day of travel, or as Instagrammers like to say – ad nauseum – a day of #wanderlust. I’m on my way to Phuket in Thailand with my family for a vacation. Although it isn’t the best time to be travelling to SEA, what with the Coronavirus in full swing, and Thailand having some cases too, but apparently I’m the only one in my family who is worried about it, everyone else is pretty chill. Story of my life.

Thailand is also the land of my fangirl idol, Lalisa Manoban. So it holds double significance for me. I’ve been wanting to write about my secret, shady fangirl life for a while now. But it’s so complicated that I don’t quite know where to begin.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I don’t fall in love easily. I don’t even have crushes on people easily. After my 1st relationship, it took me three years to even like someone enough to go out with him. Even among celebrities, I have liked about three. That’s it. I don’t get star struck even with them. If I was at a coffee shop and someone told me Chris Hemsworth was right outside, I’d just about crane my neck to see if it’s true but that’s it. Even if he wasn’t mobbed, which he would be, but say he wasn’t, I would not go take an autograph or a picture. The idea of acting like that is cringey to me. I’d prefer to meet someone in a setting where I’m not a fan but an equal.

This is why it’s insane that I became the fangirl of a twenty three year old, Thai K-pop rapper, singer and dancer. If you would’ve asked the January 2019 me if there was a possibility that I would make fan accounts on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, she would’ve dirty laughed at you. There was no way.

There are many reasons for why things happened like this. It wasn’t an overnight change. It was a gradual process with something core to my personality driving it.

But that’s for the next one. For now, I just wanted to set the context of how if there was a fangirl culture I’d be practicing the one opposite to that. Fan-of-none culture. Okay I’ll stop. Basically I was the last person to be doing this. Until I wasn’t.

The Ocean and the Sky

I wrote this story for a dear friend once:

At the beginning of time, there were only the ocean and the sky.

Both loved each other deeply. The sky would send winds, light and playful, to reach out and touch the ocean and the ocean would with waves send love back to the sky. But the sky was well aware of the inevitable distance between them and did everything to erase it: he summoned winds from near and far with the dark intensity, the hurricane passion of his being to form tornados so the ocean could rise up in strange and terribly beautiful forms to meet him. And though it wasn’t easy for the sky, as each time took great determination and power, but to him the effort was worth it. And in the beginning that was enough.

But, as the years wheeled by, the sky became increasingly unhappy: why did the ocean never do anything to decrease the interminable separation between them? Was he not important enough to her? He asked her and she replied that she wanted to reduce the distance between them but couldn’t. She was water after all, she was who she was and there was no changing that.

“If you loved me, you would change,” he replied, hurt and angry.

The ocean tried everything to bridge the gap between them: from storms to tsunamis, but nothing seemed enough for the sky. Seeing his anger, his hurt and sorrow, she withdrew and began to think only about what she could do to change herself.

One day, after many such days, she told him, “No winds today, let it be absolutely still.”

He was bewildered and frightened by this request. Had she had enough of him? He did as he was told, all the while tormented within, for there was nothing worse than the fear of losing her.

After a day, and another and another, a strange thing began to happen. The water on the ocean’s surface due to the uninterrupted, unmitigated heat began to evaporate into the air. Soon the volume became so high that for the first time there were clouds everywhere in the sky.

“See?” cried the Ocean, “I have changed for you.”

The sky was ecstatic and could not believe that the ocean had sacrificed her form for him.

However it was not meant to be.

Because as more and more of the ocean became vapour, the heavier the clouds became until despite all her efforts the water poured back down with glad intensity into the form that was its home.

The ocean tried to change who she was, but couldn’t. And could…

Because from then on a part of her was always in the sky, even as she retained most of who she was.

It was enough for the sky. Because in eliminating ego, and trying to change she had in a beautiful, glorious way shown she was ready to do anything for the sky. And the sky, wiser through her love and sacrifice, realised he didn’t need anymore than what she already was.

The hotel guest

Is it all right to admit that you still wander the corridors of my mind?

Like a guest at a remote hotel, the kind you find and forget,

A sudden, grey apparition along a road as dark as charred wood,

That guest who refuses to vacate his room, or pay his dues.

And each time you tread at leisure through these hallways,

The yellow lights flicker as I try to lock all doors in futility.

Your atoms remember mine, even if your mind forgets,

Do you let me out of the suite I occupy in your head?

To wander free in your hallways as you wander through mine?

To run my hand casually along the shifting colours of your walls?

Or do I sit on the cream sofa, waiting for you to unlock the door,

After you’ve loved your pretty painted dream of 5 days for years?

Oh, but you try and you try, to erase this room,

All records of it you try to burn,

You pull down the words, poetry that shaped you,

You pull down the connections, social media block.

But what will you do about the room, dearest friend?

Because the strange thing about us is,

And has always been,

When you are in my head

I know I am in yours.