I severed my affair with the dark when I realized that these hazy dreams have blurred into nightmares. Even the smoke of a well-lit secret can’t keep away the ghosts from my mind. Why does the present seem so far away? The past isn’t supposed to be haunting, but I guess God forgot about me when he handed out forget-me-now pills. Sometimes, when the moon masks its glow, I get down to the knees and beg for demons to take over the shadows of my mind — at least they wear their sins on their sleeves. People ask me who I am, but I forget what I am doing and remember my mistakes instead. People should really just leave me alone. Stop trying to romanticize nostalgia; nostalgia would be a gift compared to what bleeds through me. These marks are supposed to be battlescars, so why do they seem like tallies of how static my life has become? There is nothing to save me, but I don’t want to ask to be saved. When did truth become a fluid lie, and when did these blonde wisps curl into jaded piercings? Eighteen lights blow years into the night, but I only see eighteen lightyears until some door opens, and a hand grasps mine, and I hear a voice say “Sweet Caroline of mine, your adventure awaits.” But I am not a champion of light, and the nocturnal world has shunned me. Sometimes I beg to return to the honeymoon days, but even I know, as I am blowing out the candles, that I already swallowed the pills that took away nostalgia.

What were we? It feels like a flash of a memory. If I was a bit more lucid, I’d think I made you up in my insanity. That era was one of chaos. I was breaking apart, so forgive me if I can’t believe you saw me whole. You had my curiosity; I had your attention. We talked about the world, but how come it felt like I never knew you? I had your lips under the oak tree on a summer picnic blending with autumn leaves. Your friends pressed themselves against the hotel room door until you dispersed them. We lit our matches, winking away the difference of age, and it still brings a smile at the absurdity of distance, when those moments were the opposite of. But this fire ended too soon; the rush to blow out the candle and scurry up three floors before curfew hit is the wind to me now. We flitted between business casual and casual business like nobody’s business. I have been avoiding your consciousness of late; you know I’m leaving, you know you’re staying. Everything ends, but this flicker didn’t just blow away, it burned your name into me. So accept this lighter, and I’ll take the air away on a paper leaf.

 

Look at you, dancing on your pedestal, trying to seem like you know it all without seeming like you have it all. I see you spilling your guts under hidden text and code names. Accusing people of privilege before looking them in the eye. How can you, when just jeers peer down below? To me, there is no coherence of the lines, nothing that stitches you to your fantasy, and in the end … it’s just abhorrence. Your arms prickle with savagery; can you do anything but tear people apart? I have seen your truths in the glow in the dark nights of silent reconstruction. You observe and analyze but keep denying that you feel. You can’t have the best of both prejudices. Don’t pretend you’re beyond the pervasiveness of human sin, while wondering why all those you beguiled don’t love you beyond your tapestry. Look at you, a tragedy tripping over your own feet. And there is just silent destruction as you fall to those you scorned in your elitist ravaging.

Ravines pull you under and shake you down to the earth, with the aspiration of making you more than you are. You fall from your sun flight, and give up your ambitions for the stars. Mother needs you so much closer. Parenthood reeks of Stockholm’s Syndrome, as genealogy weaves trees of requirement into love, writing in gold leaf, “proximity breeds intimacy.” The world quakes as you build rockets to escape, it melts if only to convince you to stay. The gods already forgone their allegiances to the material, and in doing so, have transcended into the divine. Humans are not so easily torn away — for what would they say about the children who did not care? Space distances itself further and further. Soon, all the lights in the sky will be too far away to see, and you will have given up all your dreams for a spinning rock who screams when you leave.

I see you walking past us, all alone in your self-rightedness. Here we are, hustled together, laughing over our follies. There you are, alone. You trudge back, trying to hold your head up so high, your eyes become blind from the light. But in the darkness, I see the cutting edge of our apathetic hatred; we’re done with you. Please, we have no pity; you thundered through the halls, lording over everyone with your tantalizing portrayals. You fucked them all up, you destructive hurricane with your petty needs stemming from attention seeds. And in the aftermath, you ruined them all. So find yourself a corner, and turn your self-deprecation into change, ‘cause darling we’re not falling for your next disaster.

I know I must not matter much to you. Which is odd considering…well I guess it must not be a surprise that you do not matter much to me either. You claim all these lofty titles, yet you can’t hold a candle to your words. I have let coal burn me for so long, but no longer. I have been a chameleon, and I have blended my colors to suit your mixture. I am not a secret, god damn you. Slaves hold higher privilege than me, but I will reclaim dignity and aloof my beings. Once more, I will uproot myself and find promise somewhere else. This is just heathen. You are Death, stealing time, but I will be Life, making more. Do not act as if I call treason. My barred gates have grown block after block, slowly. Easily torn down, if noticed early enough. So be gone, and take your manners to the streets. Leave me be, hiding beneath the curtains of torn sheets.

Untitled bones rake in the new year with wishes and kisses. With sovereign hopes, they battle the flesh. What do we remember more? The skin or the skeleton? Dawn waxes the bullet, and the shot takes a lightspeed approach to encircling the world. What do we regret more? The past or the future? The war cries for a surrender, bleaching flags white in the hopes that its suicide would be of some use. Alas, the body burned in more ways than one, as the charred marrow kindled the pores into leather. In that moment, war realized why all the hotlines said that was never the answer, never the solution. What do we want more? To live or to be never wrong?

There is an abuse that goes beyond recognition, in nail beds that cannot stay steady, that cannot hold still. The taste of undiluted fiction trickles in, as you shift heavy breaths from believing yourself to doubting yourself. Abuse that cannot be found in the throw of a leg or the punch of an arm. It smiles. It hides in lavish gifts, in gaudy promises. It pulls you close, then closer. Denial trips, beyond illusions of hallucinations. A person can be both a poison and its antidote. Double meanings that puts laughter in slow motion. Deciphering becomes exhausting, leaving wrinkles older than anniversaries or birthdays. When you falter, when you fall, is when you shiver into a sliver of understanding. The silver lining is, that at least, now you know.

i will search through all the envelopes, and use a slightly sharpened knife to slice away the wax seal that refused to let go of the paper. i will open the letter and let the crinkles echo and echo. i will find it empty and i will crash to the ground, while it only falls. i might cry, but i am not sure yet. i haven’t have had enough time to make all my decisions. but i know i will do something grand, something full of gesture, of gusto, of bravery. i will no longer be the hospice, sought in the rain but abandoned in the sun. i will be the tyrant, and i will destroy the dictators with all my will. i will, i will, i say with the resolution of bleeding red ink.

We paint brushstrokes on the past with the ease of crayons, blurring the lines of truth with wishful thinking. We pinpoint the extremities of our lives if only to prove that we are not drudging the years away in somber lack. Our memories disintegrate with each memorial we celebrate. Our mourning overtake facts, and I too often have called upon lies as evidence. People’s betrayals only ever come as a surprise because we have tricked ourselves, blacking out the red flags they staked, murmuring halos and pedestals that they never asked for. I have come up with a saying to combat the mind’s rustic nostalgia: know everyone, befriend some, love few, trust no one.

Social media strikes hard, slaps you in the face with the reality that people can move on without a second thought. Check ins and selfies destroy your hopeful illusion that everyone else is wallowing in despair as much as you are. The lachrymose waters run risks, as you tether between drowning in knowledge and swimming into ignorance. You swallow the emojis when you ache for oxygen, fresh air that removes the loneliness that settles in off gold’s envy. Comments on pictures that could just easily be graffiti on the ocean floor, saying “quite frankly, no one gives a damn.”

 

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” 
The door creaks open and he’s there again, lurking in the shadows, his voice echoing in her bedroom.

“Please…please….I don’t…I can’t…”
But he doesn’t listen, he just steps in and closes the door.

people talk about love as if it can save you. as if it can float you away to a semblance of fantasy. as if it can pull you from the abyss and draw light in you. but let me say, love doesn’t save anyone. love instead pushes you off your high regard and lets you fall, becoming hercules thrown off olympus. how is that the touch of a savior? you always told me i was your savior, but i couldn’t saved you. how did you expect me to? i still haven’t saved myself. people think love is presence, but let me tell you, for me, it was always absence. i mark my days by how long it has been since i’ve seen you last. distance has spread us so thin that black tallies line my skin, tattooing themselves into my bones. people talk about love as if they have felt it. but i look at you, and i know that no one has felt anything like this, that no else has ever been in love. maybe angels need to be pulled down from the skies, maybe the only way to reach salvation is to break open the heavens. life’s sandpaper arms roughen my soul, and i do my best to imagine that i am good enough, but my imagination isn’t good enough, and i know my teeth hide a silver tongue, but my mouth is a jailer, and my jaws have never moved in the right direction, and my lips have never touched yours, and they have never said the words. people talk about love as if it is the best thing in the world, but i know that the universe is the best thing in the world. it is just that you are the lighthouse of my universe, when you’re not there, everything is just a little bit darker. people talk about love, but i talk about being in love, and i guess i just want you to know that i am in love with myself. the ocean was never a place i liked to visit, but i have fallen off my high regard, and water always played the line between savior and destroyer. you have always been the whirlpool, destroying everything that circles and circles and circles. we circle. i have always been the black hole, pulling lighthouses into my grasp only to destroy their identities. maybe we are distant for a reason. i am scared to grow sandpaper arms, my legs don’t have the strength to climb olympus, and there are no more wings since the angels became the demons, but i just wanted to let you know, i have learned to swim; i would rather drown than collapse in the whirlpool of you, and i don’t need your lighthouse anymore to make my way to the shore.

alcohol runs rivers through my veins, and i feel flooded. i make absolutes about me, but i only have absolute control over my thoughts — but my body and my heart are beyond my control. i still cannot put into words how i fell for you, but here i am, fallen for you. this can’t be a mistake if i am still thinking about you. i am dying to do something, but to do something would be pretty reckless, but hell, i’m pretty and i’m reckless. though any progress feels lost in blackout memories. i barely know you at all, i know nothing of what you think of me, but whatever it is, it’s not good, and if it’s good, it’s not good enough for me. boys try to fuck until they run out of luck, but i have already ducked out of the way. they blur into a conglomeration of not-you, not-you. sometimes i wish i was not as ludicrous as this, either loving passionately and unconditionally — or not at all. i am begging myself to not love you at all. it was never something you earned.

oh i met the lonely souls that thought they knew me. time ticked by and i thought i could only be equal to the bread crumbs they threw me. but i grew tiny wings that you cultivated with feathers, and now i am making my own air; so i guess the winds have changed because i can feel again. my heart seemed like a vessel of nostalgia and well thought memories, but your friendship cultivated the best sort of insanity. i try not to repeat metaphors or analogies, but i have found imagery to be so much stronger than statistics, so when i echo your words that i see streaming down my lifelines, know that that was the old me. i will rewrite my body with shadowed ink, the ink that bleeds with darkness and silence. make me dreams that aren’t nightmares anymore, and i will free you from those that never knew that rainbows are just the skies’ mustaches. if you can’t, then i will forget, for it’s not your duty. but i will smile if you do. i’ll feel again if you do.

 

 so make me something more than i am because i have been gone all my life, i have been asleep all my life. the world is beautiful, but it’s not for me to live in. i have been breaking bones to get to where i am, so deny me the pleasures of existence and bring forth narration instead. they tell me there is much more to experience, but life is immediate, sex is art, and love is truth.

 She looked at her friends, shocked. “Of course I will die for you. But that’s not saying much. In fact, I can list a whole lot o’ people I would die for, anyone really. Who wouldn’t? Humans are enamored for self-sacrifice. Courage and valor and such and such. And in all honestly, dying is nothing new or important to me. It’s sneaking down the stairs at three a.m., keeping quiet so ma doesn’t wake up and tell you to go back to bed. And as you tip toe down, you miss a step and there’s a jolt through your body that quickly ends once you reclaim your footing. I think death is like that, and once you die, you just keep walking to the fridge to get that snack. You know you’re going back, but in a bit, this really is quite delicious. The afterlife is munching away, savoring each bite, but also wondering what would happen if you just stayed in bed and waited to eat in the mornin’. See? Nothing scary. There’s a lot more I would do for you than die, things that I’m frighten of, things I flee at the thought of. But if you really want to ask me to do something, you would ask me to live. To live for you. That seems like a mighty fine request. But no matter how much I love you, I can’t, I shan’t, I wouldn’t, I won’t. I’m sorry, but I already put in a reservation a while ago. I’m the only person I would live for. So, you might think I don’t care about you at all, and if that’s the case, there’s not much I can do. 

It’s nice being showed you’re cared for, but you surely don’t need it. You just know when someone does. I won’t tell you I love you, I just expect you to know it. Pardon me, but I have an unhealthy habit of assuming others notice the details as keenly as I. If you don’t pay attention to the actions that clearly demonstrate my emotions, I would never condemn you for so. But I also won’t say anything to dispute your fears of my indifference. Saying what I feel and showing it are quite different indeed. You’ll notice I rarely weigh in words, and you’ll notice the blatant irony in such.”

 My parents were engaged for five years, and married for twenty-one, but they never whisper sweet nothings, or go on their second honeymoon, instead they create arguments when the house get a bit too quiet and sleep in different rooms after a fight over nothing but my mom always smiles when she says we have driven her crazy, and everyone tells me the love letters my father wrote her every day she was away. Maybe they never say I love you, but my dad calls her the queen of his heart and more than once I have seen them dancing on new years to no music. My favorite word has always been you. y.o.u. But my dad says his favorite is jaan, which means, when translated, ‘the most important part of a heart.’ and I have grown up being called my father’s jaan. Maybe they never sat me down and warned me how cruel the world could be, but the way they watch Pakistani dramas on the same sofa and the way they gang up against my siblings and me in every game of carom board has taught me more about life than anything else ever could. They told me you know when you love someone when you miss them in their absence, and their echo is the sound of every inhale and exhale you take. And this has resonated deep in my bones and plucked wings from my veins. So know that I will go to sleep tonight and dream of the maroon red petals of the roses my father brings when my mom comes home from her job in Wisconsin, and know that my fingers will reach for the folds of the rust orange leaves that my mother presses into her diary from their annual trip to see the fall colors, and know that I will trace the word jaan all over my heart, and know that I will smile despite being in a constant state of missing you — y.o.u.

Crossroads. Crossroads. They dare me to choose, they decide my fate in a fraction of a heartbeat. You shudder and you shake but I have found solace in you, only you. I shift my keys to opposite directions, in the hope that somewhere along the lines, I would meet my match and cause an infinite catastrophe. I shudder and I shake and I fall through every loophole. I think I have been so caught up in my own misery that I haven’t for a second, really thought about your own toils. Would you want me there to help you through every mess? I wish I knew, but I found you heartless and cruel and caring and kind. The years come and they go and I run from my ecstasy. I shelve myself into the dancing light of glitter water and I wonder if the bubbles would pop my insanity. Will you, the one that doesn’t believe in anything, meet me, the starstruck wisher, in the shallow grave of destruction? Can I count on you for this, if not anything else? Please, I need a guardian, I need a savior, and if you’re not him, then I don’t want anything else, I don’t want anyone else. I’ll make my way by running through this world, trying to hide my attempts to turn water into ice.

I used to cite infinity when I measured the depth of the sea. But now...what is now? A hazy line between yes, no, and maybe. Time and time again, I have washed away flaws in the hope of something better. But my forgiveness and compensation have dried out — is it so much to ask you to care? I fear I was right never to take a chance; if we cannot even be friends, how could we ever be anything more? I planned so many things to say to you — and I thought I was done resorting to writing out my words. Yet, I can’t spill anything out. I will sew my lips shut, and I will cut off my fingers. I will be a mute to you. You will count my silence as compliance, and when you take a knife to my heart, just don’t say I enjoyed it. Crushed by the ambiguity of lies that can’t match the puzzle pieces of truth, I don’t know what’s real anymore. The shore has been a lifeline, but the tides are too strong now. They drag me from the only form of sanctuary I have ever found. I screamed as I drowned, but by then, I have had become a mute, and by then, you have had be-come so deaf to my words.