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[ceramicteapot]

you lay in your bed and watch everyone move ahead, get better. they’re better sons, better daughters, better students, better employees, better siblings.

and you’re just you.

and how do you make peace with that? how do you close the gaping hole in your chest and tell yourself that it’s okay. that it’s okay if you’re not the best. that even if the world tells you it’s a competition, it’s not. things happen for all of us differently.

how do you convince yourself that you’re not intrinsically flawed and doomed to be mediocre?

so you sit up, make the short walk to the sink, feel the cold water glide across your palms and wash your face. life doesn’t have to be like this. maybe there’s something else out there for you. maybe you’ll get better in time too.

[ceramicteapot]

does he like poetry? surely he has to there's sonnets in his eyes stanzas in his laugh metaphors fall from his smile there's prose in the way he says my name does he know how hard i have to try to put him into words when no diction can express the symbolism hidden in his voice

~he simply cannot be confined to paper

[ceramicteapot]

i’m the brother in christ

writers and artists will go "this isn't good enough." my brother in christ, you're creating something new out of nothing and expressing yourself creatively. your productivity and unrealistic standards of perfection do not define you or the worth of your art. you're doing great.

[ceramicteapot]

and if you saw me again, what would you do?

i still remember how my heart stopped for a few seconds, how my breath hitched, and my knees nearly gave out the moment i realised you were not going to be around anymore. that you had found other people, better people.

i had grown up listening to my mother’s critiques of people who left. dearest ones, closest ones. i never believed it would happen to me- not at least when it came to you.

a phone call a day turned into a phone call a week, a phone call every 2 months, a few texts on festivals and birthdays- all of it initiated by me. we are yet to get to the point where we don’t even do the last bit anymore. i don’t even remember the sound of your voice. i only watch other people’s versions of you. it seems like my own got deleted.

memory traces decay with time when not fed into.

so sometimes i like to wonder, ‘for fun’. what if we were coincidentally in the same part of town? what if you saw me among the crowd, or sitting stressed out in a chair trying to keep my life from falling apart? will you still come to me? will you say hi? will i matter enough?

or will you pretend to not know me (years of caring for each other spiralling down the sink)? will your face twist in disgust? will you run away? again?

if you saw me again, what would you do?

[ceramicteapot]

the calendar app has become your favorite one on your phone now. you're counting days. every single moment that passes, brings you the assurance that perhaps, this time, a better life awaits you.

you're passing time, dragging yourself second by painful second. the clock is merciless but you have decided that you will see this through till the end. you have pulled yourself nearly to the finish line. you can do this final stretch.

so you persevere. you wipe your tears, sign a truce with your guilt, and with a cup of strong coffee in hand, you try your best to believe that you'll survive.

[ceramicteapot]

for science

[ceramicteapot]

the clock ticks and you resist the urge to grab its hands in your fists and break them apart. you didn’t want it to move any further. you didn’t want the hour of departure inching closer towards you.

every time you finally start to feel the smallest semblance of peace, time rushes up on stallions it seems. you close your eyes and pray to a deaf god. you beg for calm, for serenity, for a few moments where you didn’t have to worry about how to survive.

but he’s a deaf god. and before you know it, you’re back out there- struggling. crying. dying.

[ceramicteapot]

you sit in your bed, turning the pages of a book you've been trying to finish for the longest time. this used to come so easy to you- reading. in a matter of days you'd gobble up hundreds of pages and not feel tired in the slightest.

getting to the end of a single one feels like a chore now.

you miss the middle school you. not in its entirety, but in the bits where you were the most productive you had ever been, where you had been relatively unscarred and full of naive hope. where you could read like it's the only thing in the world you could possibly do.

sometimes you think if reading is best enjoyed when engaged in as a form of escapism? is that why every time an exam or an important work task rolls around, the books abandoned on your nightstand suddenly look absolutely enticing? is that what you've done all of your childhood? escape?

[ceramicteapot]

they need to add two extra hours after ten pm where time doesn't pass so you can do some nice reading before bed

[ceramicteapot]

the light spilling in my room is not artificial for once. it's the sun, orange and shy. the sounds i hear when i wake up are not the blaring alarms on my phone, but birds and squirrels playing by my window.

is this what disney characters would have felt like? is this why i loved watching it all as a child? have i always been after this- nature, peace, consciously chosen solitude?

[ceramicteapot]

i sit at my desk and shut my books closed as i physically cannot keep myself from crying anymore. the clock ticks away without a care in the world. with knots in my chest, it dawns on me- I'm alone.

i'm alone and the world won't wait for me and it won't be kind to me. people will always find a way to say something mean, be mean. the clock will always tick away. everyone will keep moving, even if i stand still in the same place for the rest of my life.

so i clutch my pen tighter. i scream into the empty room, empty house. the good part about being alone is the space you get. the good part is that you don't have to hide to not be seen.

i pick up my brush and untangle the mess my hair has become. it goes up in a bun after ages. so what if no one waits for me? what if they're all mean and I'm alone? i can keep moving too. i can keep being kind. i can be the figure i never had.

and maybe, just maybe, one day i'll meet someone like myself. or maybe someone better. and everything- every tear, every wound, every remark, every failure- it'll finally have a witness. it'll have acceptance other than the one i can give to myself.

i'll have someone who loves me better.

[ceramicteapot]

I cannot believe you to be vile.

Deserving of love and mercy, yes, but not because you were once vile.

Even the best dogs will bite when threatened.

What may seem selfish from the outside is often an act of self preserverance.

Take it from someone scared of everything, you've never made me feel uneasy, never left me frightened.

Let me come closer, friend, let me inside so I may try to change your mind.

Please, let me try.

You're much too gentle, much too kind to be vile.

[ceramicteapot]

i want to do some sort of writing challenge so i can be consistent but idk about any :/

[ceramicteapot]

it’s a late evening and you’re curled up in a blanket you haven’t let go of all day. it’s strangely comforting to know that it won’t leave you on its own. that you will have to be the one to put it aside, to fold it up, to abandon it. you’re warmer than you’ve felt in weeks, both inside and out.

there’s something like insight sitting at the corner of your brow. you’ve realised, finally, that no one’s coming to save you. that you find your own comfort, hold your own hand, and fold your own blankets.

and it’s enough. you’re enough.

[ceramicteapot]

i sit at the table, eyes glued to the back of your head- watching as you move about the world, hold people’s hands, kiss their foreheads, pull them into your chest. longing has made a duplex inside of my heart at this point and i know you don’t care. you never did.

i’d like some of you too, and i know that if i tell you that, i’ll lose whatever little i do have. so i’ll sit in quiet corners and read books about love and spin a fictional end for us in solitude.

we’ll meet somewhere. even if it is in my head.

[ceramicteapot]

everytime my father tells me i have disappointed him, i tie a knot inside my heart, only to unravel it later on paper. long ago, way too soon in life, i realized that the only way for me to survive pain was to make it look beautiful. to make art out of it.

so i let him ramble. i let him say things no one should ever get to hear, especially not from a father. and i gently pick the shards of my esteem up when he's done and sew them together with love, beauty, and charm.

when i say writing is therapeutic for me, i mean this. it is a way to pull myself together. it is a way for me to breathe again when life knocks the breath out of me.

it is both survival and grandeur.