Young Hearts

I want to fall in love again. This time, with a boy instead of a man.

I don’t know much about the young hearts, but I dream of giving it another try.

This time, while I am forced by life to ripe to a woman of questions and doubts,

I remember of being just a girl, a princess in my own palace with jewels and hand-woven flowers

Whose hands are clothed with gloves of care and warmth and awe

Whose purple dress, glistened from far distance, far enough, but close to onlookers greening eyes,

Whose auburn plait flies freely behind my back, combed with glass-bristled brush

Once, I fell in love with a boy

I found his letter tucked beneath my armchair, glued with a molded bubble gum

Whether he chewed the gum, I was never sure. 

But even if he did, knowing his lips kissed the corners of his letter?

I might as well be pleased.

I remember of the songs he crooned to me,

Of orange and lemons, of angels and babies,

And of characters we made up from clouds and fairies 
But we never got to get too close,
Like fairies, like dreams, things ended in a flicker and a hiss

 

Then, I fell in love with a man, whose soul is almost intertwined with mine

We traverse the mountains, cross the seas and the rivers

But no matter where we go, we never get to go too far.

We would always stumble, fumble and fall back to where we started.

No matter how much we try to walk, our feet would always tire easily,

Our hands, which we would always lock up early, would often loosen and let go. 

I want to fall in love again. This time, with a boy instead of a man,  

So I could fly again as Wendy in my own Neverland and with my own Peter Pan.

Then I will dream of his tiny dimples, his sun-kissed cheeks,

the single point near his well-sketched lips.

I will see his awkward eyes when I catch him stealing glances

I will free the butterflies from his stomach in a glimpse of fair chances.

I want to be stared the awkward stare

To be loved secretly in more than one little way.

So, maybe, after all, I really don’t want to fall in love again.

Not to a man or to a boy.

Maybe, after all, all I really want is to be just a girl,

To be the princess that I am, and be forever kept as one

- 9/24/13 

Bitter jell.

You wanna know what jealousy is?

It is when the people you love are happy without you, when you cannot be without them.

It is knowing that those people’s worlds are theirs, when you, they are your only world.

It is whichever axis you wish to rotate, you want to traverse with their hands locked to yours.

While them, they are drawing, sketching their own lines, forming their own orbits, 

in a galaxy away from yours.

It is wanting to swell up the river with both your tears combined, 

than fill up a happy ocean with only them laughing from across the shoreline.

Jealousy is not forgiving others because they live 

while you die, alone, with ripped heart, your body buried six feet below the cold ground line.

Jealousy is not not having the best stuff others qualm about,

 or being obscured  and being pushed aside while a star is stealing your spotlight.

          

Jealousy is that stabbing pain that does not only pierce your heart, but that breaks your confidence pole and trusting rope.

Jealousy is me dying while living “ours” and you living, just living yours.  

Let me be

Leave. I don’t want to talk. Not now.

This surely will pass, but for now, please, just let me be.

I thought you only want nothing but happiness for me,

 But you refuse to grant me the tiniest comfort and security.

I need to learn to love myself first, before I expect others to love me as me.

I expect that my self love, will exude, heap out and spill over

 Until others around me will feel shame not to treat and do me the same.

Being in love is different from being loved.

Loving and caring are two interchangeable words

But they are never the same.

You can figure to love a person, but never feel care for her.

You can busy your life with things you deem important,

Yes, they are important to you, but they will remain as things,

You can never be as important to them.

Go away, leave me alone.

I was named after an element, not of an apology.
 So, would you please, stop calling me, "Sorry"? 

 Sympathy, compassion, loyalty; the three things I need most but from you, I never had.

I tire of your post-remorse and bribery.

 I long for sincerity and compassion.

I long for passion, passion that you had long since lost and forgone.

- 09 / 18/ 13 ; 7.40AM

  

  

Reunion

So, I met with my friends from college.  It was not planned, a guerrilla meeting as we called it. We spent the night eating, drinking and laughing our hearts out with all the quirky stuff of whatabouts.  

My man, who had known me as a drab with no bone of fun and temerity, questioned how I ever ended up with such a group. A group which he thinks is too conspicuous, and is, on the surface, more likely at the other end of the spectrum he has presumed I had been in. But that’s actually it. Our differences, their extreme weirdness and blandness are what probably had made us come together; what had apparently, brought me to them.

They say of words I never had enough guts to utter and stories I know, I can never tell. And they do these as casually and as sincerely as one can ever be without worrying what other people might think of them. They make it feel like it is okay to ever laugh so loudly until the people from across the streets would sssshhhh you to shut up or look at you with piercing eyes of hate and bile disdain.

Meeting them, I had to wander about, lost, on my four-inch wedges for hours. Contemplating, laidback and tired as I always am, I could not help but asked myself why I had to do all these when I could have just gone home and snuggle up in bed. Yet, there was I, waiting, tiring and braving as the night dies with the threats of strong winds and heavy rains, for people I never had clear affiliation with.

It took me until the night’s end, when I was already complaining of a jaw that had locked in agape and tears welling up from laughter, that I got the answers to all of these apprehensions. I knew then, it was not really them I had waited for. But I was actually waiting for myself, for my own time, for a release from the leash I long inflicted myself with.

They make me come out of my shame shell. They are living the life for me, so I won’t have to. They make it feel like it is okay to not be “okay” in the standards of the okay and of the acceptable, within the doctrines of conventional femininity.

From their machine-gun talks, the nonsensical thoughts, to the most in-depth and little more personal stories, all these helped me reconnect with my long lost self. The self, I know, I have all the while deep within me, just waiting to be knocked about but I know I can never be, in my own self-restricted sense of reality.

 9/ 15/ 13

August Hush

Of sea, sand, stars, singers and fire dancers

It was to be the climax of my August.  We strolled by the shore and took a dip at sea. We allowed ourselves to steep in the course of the ocean’s calming dance. We laid on the wallowed sealine facing the deep blue sky that shimmers with silver white peppers.  And we got lost, in habitual silence that lay between us, soaking in every wonder that night had us to offer.

We arrived in Tagbilaran at 7 o’clock in the morning after an ear-popping 34,000-feet ride. The memory of the ride was a blur to me. I was distracted by my ears that wanted to explode from the air pressure they had not prepared for. That time on I promised myself I will not fly again. But promises are always meant to be broken. Or are they?

After another hour ride in a three-wheeled cart, we arrived at our respective inn, the Chill Out. Its name spoke for itself. Indeed it was a great place to chill and bum about.   The way to our room was paved by bamboo shafts nailed altogether to form an unlikely bridge few inches up from the grassy ground, draped with vines as curtain laces. The landscape was bliss. The greens were pleasing to the eye, as much as the two-storey bamboo rooms structured in a homey stance.

Our first stop was the beach. The beach was laced with diners and coconut trees lined alternately, and sprinkled with different skins wandering about.  The ground was too soft a ground. It was actually, a milky land. There were cocktails and coffee, massage and henna tattoos as well as green mangoes and porridge being offered in handouts.

We let the time passed out until the sun was low in the sky.

The night was young so we decided to walk on by.  We wound up at a spot with white chairs and tables lit by mini candlelights. There, we ate our supper of mixed squid and shrimps, and a steaming pink fish with bits of onion, ginger and unnecessary spices. The food was not as great as the experience.

The serenade could not be any better. It was from a man who had a laudable vocals and a more laudable courage to take on songs whose words he had never seemed to have met. But we sit there, with an unspoken agreement not to discuss further about it.Or him. Good thing, there were fire dancers who made up for him.

In spite of, it was still a blissful night dabbed with music, although awkwardly sung, that smelt of food and gentle nightly breeze.

“A good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Although, not necessarily in that order.” 

 - Jean Luc Godard