sleepshere

[sleepshere]

the first and last one about you

I tell my friends you don’t cross my mind anymore, been there, done that, and when they ask if we’ve spoken recently I tell them I deleted your number. or was it that you deleted mine? I think about being held. I’ll close my eyes and wish it was your fingers entwined with mine instead of a tall stranger. I think we must be outside because I feel cold. or maybe it’s the storm brewing inside of me and the rain is almost ready to drown us all. I’m lost in my own heart, I don’t know the way out. you find somebody good and you want to hold on. shift and adjust, cross your legs, stretch out your arms, heads on shoulders and lust in eyes. absent-mindedly tracing your name on every surface, not unlike you tracing it into my mouth, like a branding, I belong(ed) to you. asking myself how long it’s been since I lifted my fingers after writing a word and it didn’t burn. if you were wondering about the definition of shame, it looks a bit like this: a lover that can’t leave you alone, a lover that offers you warmth from wasted hours, and whispers of absolutely nothing. could have and would have and should have. this specific shade of shame demands an audience when it walks in, and here we are, every one of my selves. 

I.A.A.

[sleepshere]

the sounds of survival

sharp ridges of anger, I can feel them in my skin along with the ebb comes the flow of disappointment I am raw, not because of the death, because of the legacy I am energised, not because of the noise, but because of the sound I am in pain, not because of the war, because of the liberation the truth and morality, hypocrisy of democracy, a vacancy lapses into an inarticulate desperation, a soulless rhetoric, dry the river, just streams of blood remain. banks of boats and birds, the enemy building a home. no state, just a tenderness, coming in sporadic waves. mouthfuls of forevers, gargle gargle spit  they called me a student of the teachings of love, I still don't know what that means, but I know the universe is bright and swimming in my pupils, just a footnote in the book of life I suppose this is it, right? the revelation, brown eyes in the light, a battered and bruised heart.  I would like to start again, I will start again, I am awake and still whole   the mist starts to clear and I will be ready I.A.A.

[sleepshere]

w/c 13/2/17

monday: black hole of unrequited love tuesday: me, speaking in tongues & summers wednesday: what year is it? thursday: does longing ever fade friday: bribery saturday: dusk sunday: remorse

[sleepshere]

local attractions #1

[sleepshere]

lust and found

there's a lot I wish I could tell you about, like how I am disappearing once more, like how I'm starting to understand why I'm here. I am seeing that this is a heart and these are emotions: normal. ordinary. the glass is deep, but I don't notice it anymore, my fingers still tremble though, small trees in a lightning field. I am thankful for the way your eyes feel when they follow me around a room. light upon light. dismantle every concrete foundation you see, I've buried love letters between the cracks. a hidden station of veins maps the whole of London underneath your skin, and the roads of my city are filled with the architecture of you. words were created to lie with, descended from the seven heavens and harmony, found in groves of cool shade and running springs I think of swimming in my motherland, my dad behind me laughing. me, wanting to show him what I’ve learnt kicking my legs in circular motions, an ode to the turquoise waves, biting into the flesh of a peach and it feels like that summer again. I am red with love.

[sleepshere]

daily routines

choking on your own cries for help because you’d rather do that than let others suffocate on your constant need for some kind of warmth. when there is nothing left to burn, you have to set your pain on fire. ring ring. no I can’t come out tonight I’m counting the layers of hurt on my skin. yes, I’m really sorry. no, I don’t think there will be a next time. put the receiver down, click.

we break stable things and we never learn. *lighter flickers* *lighter flickers* *lighter flickers* *lighter flickers* *lighter flickers* *lighter flickers* *lighter fli

[sleepshere]

notes 10/01/17

[sleepshere]

w/c 1/1/17

monday: a new week already? tuesday: salt on melon like love on bodies wednesday: tropic of darkness & soot thursday: flaking gold bars friday: ring ring, pick up the phone saturday: still no answer sunday: feel like it’s raining inside me

[sleepshere]

another way of seeing

measure your success on the amount of hearts you've broken and love letters you've ignored. let me place my hands on your hips and try again. find poetry in the way our hands find each other long before our eyes do. siiiiiiigh. this wasn't supposed to happen again. your lips are coated in some kind of drug and god when did I become such a junkie? hold your tongue like you would a child. I can't hear it. I don't want to hear it. I can't think right now. peel off my skin to find the stars you've been looking for. but I'm not sure that's what you'll find. now, you see, the difference between you and I is that one of us is alive. but which one? a two minute conversation that has my heart racing at six in the evening. put your hands around my waist and whisper “is this enough to convince you?” and my body will hum along to yours. this is the purest form of art you'll ever find.

[sleepshere]

More reflections

A two minute conversation that has my heart racing at six in the evening. Put your hands around my waist and whisper “is this enough to convince you?” And my body will hum along to yours. This is the purest form of art you’ll ever find.

[sleepshere]

Reflections

I thought I would be fine. I wasn't in too deep, I was careful. But each day I mourn a little bit more. I was almost too careful, goosebumps before words even left our mouths. You showed me I should be more good to myself and I'm grateful. I'll roll over and ask what did you expect? That I wouldn't break your heart? Because I know myself, I'm different now, and I will break a thousand hearts before I will think about breaking my own.

[sleepshere]

tell yourself: listen

I know you spent your whole life waiting for a poet, but what you need to understand is that you are already poetry. tell yourself: my name is the stem of a rose that cuts open the palms of your hands and bruises your mouth when you utter it. strive to rip them apart and smoke the remains. (and love yourself, always love yourself). you will run in circles and you will get nowhere. you will claw at your thighs and hold your breath and everything will change. upon each of your tongues flows nectar and silk. this is a new feeling for you. like you are breathing, really breathing for the first time. what fools we were to not give life to what is already within us. look in the mirror: drink in the warmth of your eyes tell yourself: it is enough.

[sleepshere]

on remembering

One day you’ll offer me a lift back home and I will say no, because my parents taught me not to accept offers from strangers. In some way, we will never be ignorant again. The words “I love you” used as a form of torture, and I could count on you to rip my skin apart and replace the blood with soil and soot.

The way your body can still remember the things you try so, so hard to forget. I’ll still remember, even when everybody else forgets, even when you forget. My body will know. My eyes are open but they don’t see anything. I am the type of tired that sleep will not fix. Put your head under a pillow and scream tired. Repeat, but like you really mean it this time tired. The last thing that I remember is your wide blinking eyes.

[sleepshere]

monday: are things still the same? tuesday: like when you look at the sun and you’re blinded for a second or a hundred and all you can see is light wednesday: rain thursday: rain friday: rain saturday: rain sunday: I thank God silently

[sleepshere]

Mid-February

it’s not me. it’s you. it wasn’t me when you said you wanted me (which me, exactly?), when you wondered what would be at the end of the road (you just don’t like bullshit, I get it), when you asked if I could handle it (you’re asking that to the wrong person). I know it’s not me because it was always about you and that was your first mistake.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that this could still work.

it’s not me, it’s you, I have to keep telling myself that with a deep breath and on bad days, another. that was my mistake, but not the first.

this will work, this will work. I’m tired of talking. lose an hour, gain an hour, it’s all the same. we were nearly happy, you know.

this will work, this will work. this will work.

I know better than to fall for boys with half-mouthed grins and creases in their eyes and boys who think too hard and feel too hard for girls like me who feel too little and too much all at once. (deep breath). but you’re not a boy, are you? I’ve been warned so many times and I know, God, I know. and God, I still let myself. and God, please forgive me for believing that he would bring me to closer to you, but I guess that was your plan all along because here I am now.

I have eyes that see the best in people and that’s a curse more than a blessing because I should hate you but I can’t. if you asked me yesterday, we weren’t anything, but ask me today and we were everything. still, I’m not convinced.

I didn’t know what to say before. I guess I still don’t.

[sleepshere]

be at peace, not in pieces, people say. but what if that’s all i know? what if that’s all that’s written for me? pieces and pieces but never a whole. deep breaths and false starts but never an utterance. i’m scared that’s the current me and the future me because it was definitely the past me.

i’m not finished at work and i want to go home but is that just because it’s how everyone else feels? because he told me he doesn’t want to go home. it’s too much of a hassle and i wonder what does he mean by that.

later when i get on the train i know exactly what he meant. i think maybe i feel like that too.

i know it’s hard to believe but december carries the heat of us and what we could be, but more importantly, what i could be. for a long time i never knew the worth of my silence. eyes closed and repeating alhamdulillah in my head, i’ll keep accepting apologies i don’t deserve because they still owe me. i’ve only just begun to realise that.

[sleepshere]

i live for the girls spelt out in all the colours of rainbow (the ones we can’t see).

consciousness as a disguise for how they really feel.