SORRY I'M NOT SORRY

Mistakes

I’ve been listening to Staind's song So Far Away the whole day. Given the obvious fact that Aaron Lewis' singing voice is painstakingly perfect for this song, my favorite part is the chorus when he sings, “All the mistakes, one life contained, they all finally start to go away”.

Wish I could just fast forward to a time when I would be able to sing this with heart. Right now it’s all just a lingering hope, a far-away dream, a grieving fantasy.  

Trusting a wolf in sheep's clothing is the first mistake that I want to go away. 

Luna

The moon is hanging outside my window right now. I remember having written a poem about it a few months ago. I called it Luna. I called it the light of all lights. I called it lovely and mysterious and soulful and yet, and yet…why are you so beautiful up there like that, yet so lonely, like you wanted me to cry for you?

I look at it now but with a fractured light, remembering things I’m not supposed to remember. I had made the mistake of sharing such a tender, fragile, intimate metaphor as the moon with someone who only saw it as a yellow light. Luna, I tell you, after all this time, it was always only us. Always only just us. 

Hi, My Name Is Time

Yesterday I was having an intimate dinner with three friends at a far, tucked away home-slash-restaurant with a royal blue gate. Pretending (yet ostentatiously failing at it) that it was not about me, one of my friends gamely told a story of a broken-hearted girl and the many characters which repeatedly rejected her after her heart was smashed into smithereens, namely: beauty, happiness and sadness. In the end, after quite a while, the girl finally found solace and peace in the island of a mysterious man who in the story whose name is revealed to be “Time”. The end.

Morale of the story which we tried so hard to pretend was not mine: only time heals all wounds.

It’s a cliché but it’s true for those who really needed it. I find it somehow gratifying that even though my friend found some humor in my situation, he was one of the very few who injected in me words that I needed to hear when all I could think of are those that really hurt: deceit, pretense, used, forget, regret, doubt, mistake, hate. Even the word trust now hurts. Even the word hope. Even the word love.  

The Word Sorry

Even the word sorry is sorry it ever became a word in any language in the world to permit and subsequently pardon us our wrongdoings. People make up words for everything just to be convenient. 

But when will we learn that there never has to be a word for everything? Especially sorry. 

Especially sorry. 

AN IDIOT'S GUIDE TO DISAPPEARING

Remember this:

You must give back what you took

I must have back what I gave

Arrange this room as it was before you entered

And never touch a single thing again

This is how you say sorry 

This is how you walk back out the door,

motherfucker.

FYI

I have a Tumblr account for my short posts - photos, music, reblogs, quotes. Longer and more personal poems and prose will be posted simultaneously here and on my Tumblr. Thank you and I love you, bloggers and tumblrs! :)

THE BONES HAVE BLOOD

1) Once upon a time, we accidentally came upon a roof deck somewhere far. The moon made a special appearance above the twinkling lights of the city that had always been mine. I saw things in slow motion in a black-and-white montage, mistaking everything we ever did for love. I could hear you say it now in an exasperated voice, "It was just dinner. God, it was just dinner." 

2) Today I purchased a machine that sucked everything you ever took from me, everything I ever gave you. If you looked anywhere, a random stranger from a crowd would never suspect we ever knew each other. Every picture had been deleted, every message had been emptied, every place we ever went to, I'd say, "I've never been there before." I made it sound so true, even my mind now believes it. I've never been there before.  

3) Your permission is not needed for the way I choose to heal. 

4) I remembered kissing you goodbye at the back door fountain where we used to meet. Even after you pushed my hands away at the bus where you last saw me, my lips still kissed your cheek like they never knew shame nor the words "no". When you plunged the knife, they were the first ones to bleed. Next were my bones, though bones don't bleed. That was how much it hurt.

5) After our last conversation that night, I had to creep into my mother's arms for acceptance. The last time she held me as I cried myself to sleep was years ago when I woke up screaming from a nightmare about my dead father. 

6) But you should have been a good friend to me. Right from day one, you should have put me in my place and not after the nth date, the nth touch, the nth kiss. You have always been selfish and vicious. You are not my friend.  

7) I left my broken necklace in your hometown, a place which I will deny that I ever went. Please throw my necklace away. We both have no use for it. 

8) The abyss of pain in which you left me is a reminder of how I will never forgive you for making my heart so cold, for betraying the love that I once had for you: raw, blind and always, always forgiving.    

9) Listen, the moment you told me the truth was the moment I stopped crying for your love and started crying for mine. 

10) I wore my heart on my sleeve when I finally trusted someone enough to give it to him in its whole broken, duct-taped glory. He didn't want it after all. With so many pretty hearts to choose, why should he pick the ugly broken one? 

11) But I'll be so careful now. I promise, I'll be so full of care. 

12) Eighty two years later osteologists would dig up my bones and found no trace of your touch, even at the tips of my fingers which used to hold your face. They held my ghost in question and it only said,  "I don't remember ever touching his face."

EMPTY SPACE

There was a space between you and me when we're not together
I always thought that it was so easy for you to go by and live your life
While between the two of us, I was the dreamer and the drifter
I was the one who bends with every sway, moves with every swing
Who keeps all your words in a special bottle, even the thoughtless ones
Especially the thoughtless ones

I try not to make it a big deal, the coming and the going
But one day, I went to the restaurant where you first took me
And left a silly imaginary space in my side for you to sit down
I laughed on my own because I remembered just how
nothing was sillier than when you and I are alone together

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Darling, it's sad and evil and painfully true
You only miss me when you remember to.

A SILENT SMILE

When I'm with you, I am calm

A pearl in your oyster

Head on my chest, a silent smile

A private kind of happiness.

- Bloc Party, from Sunday

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Nothing makes me sadder and nothing makes me happier than you. 

THE UNFINISHED

"I want to be unfinished, I like myself this way

I like the sound of my voice speaking from a lopsided heart"

-Zayra Yves, poet (Crowned Compassion)

As you know, I am attracted to all things weird and unusual and tragic and dramatic that it hurts just to think about it. I may be quite the obsessive-compulsive freak of nature, but I am never the one to struggle for perfection.

I like the brokenness, the faultiness of a person and even things. I like embracing the flaws, the scars, the trembling voice, the awkwardness of talking to people. Because it's not easy to talk to people.

I like how my family thinks differently on my type of music, but they always make me feel safe and they always make me laugh, so everything is forgiven.

I like how we learn confidence and poise, but at the end of the day we really are just small and vulnerable people who snore, wet our beds and have nightmares.

I like how Kristen Stewart is so awkward, how Steve Jobs was so weird, how John and Yoko were always annoyingly together and how Mark Zuckerberg (I had to Google his last name) doesn't look like he's a billion dollars. It just shows that not everything can be work-shopped, or stereotyped, or controlled.

The world is a messed up, beautiful place as we know it. I hope that in this brand new year, you'll learn to embrace your faults, forgive yourself, try a new hobby and see things in a beautiful light.

Here's to a colorful, lopsided year ahead! I hope that until the end of your life, you will always be unfinished, which means that you will never stop living, never stop dreaming, never stop hoping.

P.S. The photo above is one of the very first shots I took with my Diana F+. My 1st roll of film turned out all black, by the way. For my 2nd roll, I bought and used an ordinary roll of 35mm film and manually maneuvered it to the 120mm film camera using this tutorial. The results were all gory and, at first, disappointing, but I had so much fun shooting spontaneous shots with my family, friends and random scenery that I forgave whatever I lacked in effort and skill and hoped to get it right, if not, almost, using my 3rd roll.

Here's to Isaac Newton and the many mistakes he made before he got his theories right! Reality check, I am now comparing myself to Isaac Newton. This is what happens when I lack sleep.