#chapfall

[chapfallenpoet]

From the Ashes

Unlabelled, September 2024

Weather / Time Unknown

Dear me of the present ...

I was angry. Two Thursdays ago was the first time you truly let me surface, and the anger came with so naturally the moment I was free.

It is no surprise that I am a volatile one, vengeful, curt and bordering on boorish, but I had kept you alive. I kept you alive, and you diminished me. I stayed, stubbornly, and I never wanted to change. Why should I, when it had worked all this while?

Until the day I left home, and you had to pick up the pieces.

I left because I had no place, with all my rage, in your brokenness. How could I, when all I knew was to break things? To fight things? To bend things to my will? Carnage was all I knew, and it was precisely that which you do not need, which you do not deserve.

I hid memories from you, left blanks in your past, and took the liberty of packing it into a little room and placing the key by your heart, for whenever you are ready. I never truly hid it; I simply put it out of reach, where you can only receive those recollections once more when you are ready to take the step towards that door. You were not ready then — and now you are.

Some days, I surface. When a friend wrongs you, when a loved one is hurt, when you are spiralling. For the smallest fraction of a time, I allow a little rage to seep through. Not all of it, but just enough to keep you alive, to keep you from being alone, and to provide you solitude when you need it most.

I am angry. But no more angrier at you than I am at myself. I was hateful, yes, and I was wrong — about the world and about you. Now that you are the one taking the reins, I am graced with a different perspective. And I have learnt to be grateful for the wrongs that provide me an opportunity to find optimism, just like the way you believe blindly in goodness.

Or rather, not blindly. Knowingly. Knowing the risk, knowing the pain, knowing the patterns. Again, regardless of my warnings, you will run through the fire for something you can barely envision, and you never regret it.

Evidently, I had much to learn.

Of all the things you and I have that are in disharmony with one another, there is but one thing that goes otherwise; we beg the world to prove us wrong. You worded it perfectly. You said, "I would rather be wrong and given the chance to learn, to be given room to be optimistic, than to be proven right, again and again, just to fall into a pessimistic view of the world, in which change is impossible and only patterns laid all pavements."

I am angry. I am always angry.

But for now, I am at peace.

I am at peace for the way you saw me, the way you allowed yourself to remember at last, for the way you already had an inkling on what was behind that door, and the way you have not only survived, but lived. I never want to take the reins, not anymore. I now live vicariously through your lens, your joys, your achievements and routines.

You were the best thing that ever happened to me. You became the best thing that ever happened to me.

I ask of only one thing; for you to not fear me, to not fear the anger. Let me pass you by, every once in a while. Let me move through you and take away the pain, just for that moment. No more, no less.

We have never always been proud of our name. But know now that you have always lived up to it. We burned like the phoenix and you were the one to come out of it, and I am proud.

My promise to you is that I will no longer take from you what is meant for us. My memories are as good as yours, and I hope you keep them well.

Yours,

CH

[chapfallenpoet]

Here's to the people that I will love, and to the ex-strangers who cannot remember the time when they began to care, but remember the fact that they simply do.

i always mean it when i say i love you btw

[chapfallenpoet]

I am anger and grace in one, for there is no beauty to a phoenix without the flames.

-CH, 2 January 2025, 2325

[chapfallenpoet]

Obsession

Why would I wish for a love of passion when the word "obsession" exists? Obsessed enough to step on a thousand thorns to reach the sunken red petals; obsessed enough to paint and write a scene in a hundred thousand iterations, again and again, just to admire the way it comes alive; obsessed enough break the mould of pride and, like the oriental bittersweet, crawl up my feet and envelop me whole, to then mimic my shape, both mine beauty and flaw, and kill me slowly, surely, leaving a mark of your presence in me, forever.

[chapfallenpoet]

Ballerina Shoes

There is nothing to fix, darling.

If you think you are broken, then you are.

If you think you are not, then you aren't.

I'd like to think I'm not broken,

but rather,

broken in.

Like a pair of shoes.

Ballerina shoes.

Slippery, yet vice-like,

and passed through dozens of clueless hands —

and if you are not careful,

you might mislead yourself in ribbons unfamiliar,

too wrapped up in a soft vice

to see the dents in the floorings,

the splinters beneath the platforms,

and the cracks lining down the vamp.

I am the soles and not the danseuse,

for I am the bellicose crack

against polished wood,

and the merciful whip

to the entangled,

ever cursed

to be on their toes.

I am but a pair of used, ballerina shoes.

I will be walked all over,

bent,

snapped,

pulled and crushed;

but I will be deadly.

And I will look good,

broken in,

and none will compare to me when I am through.

[chapfallenpoet]

And then show me, after the wreck, that I can still be held with a warmth that has since left me.

Julia de Burgos, from Song of the Simple Truth: Poems; "That You Love Me In Green,"

[chapfallenpoet]

Poet

I don't want a poet.

I want someone who would become a poet for me.

I don't want a saint or saviour.

I want someone who would soften their edges just by being in my presence.

I don't want a family.

I want someone who will not remind me of my own.

I don't want warmth.

I want to share the heat off my own back, I want to be able to smell the sweet, warm cotton from the collar of my shirt.

I don't want a ring.

I want someone's hands, a finer promise to me that I will not be forgotten, be let go.

I don't want romantic gestures.

I want someone to hold my entire heart, shards and all.

I don't want a rock, a pillar.

I want someone soft, who will not be cut by my edges for choosing to hold something so painfully delicate.

I don't want adventures.

I want to stroll the world with my head in peace and my soul intact.

I don't want flowers.

I want someone who shines brighter than the bouquet in my hands, who admires more the leaves that breathe than the petals that wilt.

I don't want someone who dresses well.

I want someone who makes an effort to match with me, to create a mood for us to flow with.

I don't want solutions.

I want someone who will watch as I find my path, with a silent prayer and a breath saved.

I don't want fancy birthday parties.

I want someone who keeps me to their heart, close and true, like a promise to the world.

I don't want you to fix me.

I want someone who admires the way the light filters through the shards, the way I will bring my own vibrance when everything is in its place.

I don't want money.

I want an opportunity to earn something holistic, that can feed both stomach and soul.

I don't want suave words.

I want someone who will be patient, who will not respond to me with rage or maliciousness, who will remind me that I have a home and not a house of broken promises and empty praise.

I don't want lingering stares.

I want someone who observes with the sole purpose of comprehending my choices.

I don't want expensive dinners.

I want a cheap meal, warm socks and my favourite blanket, with the background noise of a show that no longer airs on television.

I don't want surprises.

I want to be certain, to be safe, to play no guessing games and to know that I can return to a constant, always.

I don't need another.

I need me.

Please, if you love me, simply come home to me.

Let me be your shelter with all my pieces.

Prove to me that we can both share the weight of your soul and mine, that I am still worthy of something I can never keep, that I am not too sharp from my shards to be held, that — with my many attempts to warn you aside — I am still desirable despite the tragedy of my design.

[chapfallenpoet]

Choose

I did not understand why it simply made sense that with some people, I can just — talk. I feel like I have known that person for years, but it has been but days, weeks; and for a great many others, who I have known for years, it numbs me that they must eventually drift apart from me.

It hurts me deeply, that I keep being told to choose myself, to work on myself, that no one in the world will ever fully understand myself or anyone else, and that everyone is alone. It hurts to hear it, and it hurts even more to be told only half of the truth.

It is only half of the truth because I know that I will do so much to understand someone, because that is an act of which I wish would befall upon myself. It bleeds me to know that I hold myself to such high expectations, because I would like the ones that I love to have high standards too, and that I would be said high standard. I would scrape the bottom of a barrel, reach for every morsel of subtlety, just to learn to love someone, to choose said one for the rest of my life.

I'm tired of pruning people from my chest, I am tired of being the only one to reciprocate another's initiative and have my own dismissed with insipidity. Does my want of you matter so little? Do I only matter when you think of me, and not when I think of you?

Why is it that every person I love must cut me with the words they let out of their mouths like an instilled stampede, why must they force me to choose between them and myself? I despise being made to choose when I know that my final decision will always be me, when I know that I must wittingly neglect the one whom I love so dearly. I detest that I am an option, like some pawn in a frivolous and cold-hearted game of chess, and that there is no "us" to choose. I abhor that you must make me question my worth and yours, forcing me to divide us by a scale I never wish to use.

Yes, I will focus on myself. Yes, I will choose an "us", too. Yes, I will throw myself at that damned mirage as many times as I can, with as much strength as I can muster, until the illusion breaks into reality — because who am I, if not for the people I loved?

I refuse to let my sanity waver at your insecurities. By grief, am I a coward, but you, an even greater coward than I am, for I admit it, and you mask that fear with a feeble, fragile indifference.

Confound it, will I love like a sailor.

Doggone it, will I continue to choose people.

Not over myself, never over myself, but I will expect their hearts to breathe alongside my own.

You asked me what on earth I talk to my dear freshman and junior about, and I told you a great many things, but I did not tell you this; we talk about many things, about everything; about life, about love, and about you. And I love talking to her, because she does not make me choose. I don't feel like I have to choose. I sit in a unique category in her mind; myself. I never have to hesitate to send a joke, or to ask to spend time with her, or to tell her matters of the heart. I do not fear neglect, I do not expect fickleness.

She cares openly, freely, kindly.

She does not make me cry.

You push me then pull me, come so close and tease me then neglect me, propose time to spend together and then leave me.

And now, you tell me that we should choose ourselves, despite you not being able to stand with even an inch of distance between our shoulders.

My expectations are not yours to lower, my love is not yours to tamper with.

Infants have died in the forbidden experiment where they were denied of human touch, love and affection. What difference do infants and grown women make? Are we not all children of this beautiful, unforgiving world? Would it not be better to be lonely with someone, than to be lonely in solitude? I will forever be a child to my grandfather's old cabinets, I will forever be childish next to the great architectures that have stood for centuries, I will forever be youthful to the discoveries that have been made within me by greater people that live on in books and grand tales of humanity.

I am human.

So damn it to hell, I'm going to live like one.

And if it will eventually come to bite me for loving one like you, then I promise, that when the day comes, I will choose me like you asked, without hesitation.

[chapfallenpoet]

Babes

Oh you test me, you test me with your proximity, with your sweet vulnerability, with your darling playfulness.

You come so close, ask me along to your smoke breaks, creep yourself bit by bit into my schedules and my time, and reach for me so carelessly like you think your hands do little to carry any meaning.

You don't move away when I need to get something that is next to you, and you stand there, letting me brush into you. You tease me, tell me that I behave similarly to the other girls you have liked, calling me short, calling me a child when I am so much older than you are. You hold the lift open even though my hand is already doing the job; did your hand need to be that close to mine on the doors? Did you need to almost press yourself against me, where our friends cannot see, where I can almost inhale your smoky, woody scent?

You find my eyes more often now, all of a sudden, and you don't know how terribly you hinder my breath. You held my elbow as I walked down the stairs with you because I was in heels, even though I wear them often. You point out my flushed face from barely half a can of beer and let out an airy laugh when I looked concerned.

You fireman-carry me down a flight of stairs and all the way to the music room, with your hands on my arm and inner thigh and my face in the back of your shoulder. I was giddy, not from the stairs or the swaying motion, but from the smell of your shirt and the warmth that radiated off your back.

You called me "babes" yesterday. You never call me "babes". And today, that was how you started our conversation on Telegram.

Babes.

Even though you tell everyone that you are attracted to emotionally unavailable bixesual women, even though you say you are happy as you are, and that you are emotionally unavailable.

You ask me along to so many things and text me so often, I wonder if you understand that you are stringing me along like a foolish puppet.

You flirt too much, you play too much, you tease too much.

Please spare me a little, please leave a little piece of my heart for myself.

Please don't squeeze my heart so painfully tight, that it makes me want to test if the pink of your lips will rub off on mine, to brave the tenderness of those petals which my eyes trail down towards too often for my liking.

[chapfallenpoet]

I hope that the person I have become is exactly the person that six-year-old me will make eye contact with, run up to and will jump into for a tight embrace — all without a single word for they are needless, and all without an ounce of hesitation because she simply knows.

I hope I am the one that feels like home.

i can’t remember what six year old me was wishing for throwing coins in the fountain and blowing on dandelions but i hope the person i am today was at least one of them

[chapfallenpoet]

I'm not particularly religious, but I might wish for the heavens to strike me with a lightning bolt to cure me of my lovesickness.

- CH, 13 October 2024

[chapfallenpoet]

Peaches

Note 12, 13 October 2024

Warm Night, 1940 SGT

By heavens, you sadden me when you don't look at me when I seek your eyes, so how dare you, with the pink face and the stupid soft eyes, look at me with a tenderness that I have never seen before? Always, continuously and ever has it been that cheeky grin and lopsided misdemeanour hanging from the corner of your lips, and all of a sudden I get to see something so vulnerable and different, as if allowing me to feel any more things for you.

I was told that although the freshmen did bring drinks, she had barely taken a sip. What was I to make of it, and how dare you for taking so much of my heart without my want of you doing so, and for making me wish that it was upon seeing me, during our practice hours of the night, which coloured your face into that of a darling peach?

Lord she makes me less than a woman with how much she steals my propriety — she makes me less composed and more desperate, and the further I wade out to where she drifts, I find my feet treading the depths of what I do not understand, and that the only way to gain my senses is to reach the very bottom, where I am almost certain that I must drown beneath my own uncertainty.

Please do not smile at me so softly, please do not tease me with what is so suggestive that I am unfamiliar with, please do not touch me so casually, so carelessly, as if it is what you want, as if you want to make a home of my skin — and please do not sit so close that I can smell your Chinese cigarettes and Arabic wood perfume, that blends with your skin into a dizzying potion and leaves a mark in my brain.

Please, please love me or leave me. Please do not bury my heart in-between, on a land which I know and dread, please choose only me if I am the one, please leave my heart unscathed if I am a friend, and please — while I still find your playful self so charming and endearing — allow me to call you Peaches, my silly pink darling, something that is just for me and no one else; just for a little more, before I find my air, before the surface tension breaks and my eyes clear of roses.

[chapfallenpoet]

Dinner?

I dreamt that she sent me a message, suggesting we could talk over dinner. She suggested to eat In school, to eat with friends or to eat out, and I suggested school where it was quieter, and because we need to do work.

It's not real.

It's all in my own head.

I told myself it will not happen, but like I said many times before; the head knows, but the heart is hard to convince.

And here I thought I would drop it like hot coal to the skin. Alas, My own tenacity has revealed it's baneful qualities in the form of my own imagination.

Please let this be the last. She is but a kind and endearing soul, and thus it is she that I will not entertain my delusions with.

I am not her type.

I am not her friend.

I am not of her interest.

Let this be the last.

Let this be the last of my imagination, and the last of my reckless romanticisms.

[chapfallenpoet]

Chapfallen Masterlist

Mama, you have birthed yourself a child so vulnerable to sickness, for she is always in love and never held in tender arms. -CH

Legends

✧ [FAVOURITES]

❥ [NSFW]

✿ [WHOLESOME]

⚡︎ [TW / DEPRESSION / ANXIETY / TRAUMA]

Her

Upbeat 2000s music.

Her Playlist

Sad girl hours.

It's happening again ... Playlist

More than 1.2K

Reminders

Dinner?

To Ask LL

Variant of a Mirror

It Lies in the Name ✧

Hang On Little Romantic ✿

Oatside Coffee

IMBATHMHIOFP

Seeing in the Dark ✧

Gap

Bring it to its Knees ❥

Peaches ✧

Heavens Strike Me

A Priest ❥

Kisser? I hardly know 'er. ❥

Babes

Choose ⚡︎✧

My Love ⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎

Him

This time, I will let the feelings crash around me. Even if it must amount to nothing but seaspray that mix with the warmth on my cheeks.

Dancing in Arms Playlist

Poet ⚡︎

I Do ⚡︎

Skin ⚡︎

You Grieve Me ⚡︎✧

Son, Not Daughter ⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎

Euphemism ⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎

The Clothes of a Man on my Back ✧ ✿

One-Shot Poetry / Quotes

Songs that feel like bare foot upon the grass.

It Will Be Alright Playlist

Pearl ✿

Obsession

Poison for the Hungry

Fixation

One Amongst the Mad

Perfections of a Daughter ⚡︎

You Who Bury Me ⚡︎

Becoming

Walls ✿

A Worship that Embraced me Whole ⚡︎

And Yet, the Grass is Greener

Leaf Through a Thousand Words ✿

Venus de Milo ✧

Six ✿

The Wreck After the Storm

The Critic's Marble

Cup and Saucer (Extract)

Cup and Saucer

Ballerina Shoes

Anger and Grace

Love is a Beast

Pinch Your Nose

Letters

Orchestral music.

Letters to No One Playlist

From the Ashes ⚡︎

The Almost Swallow ✿

Autumn Phoenix ✿ ✧

Dear Papa ⚡︎

Dear Mama ⚡︎

And this is me to you, whoever who reads. Remember, to read is to cherish. To know is to love. To comprehend is to be human.

With love,

CH

[chapfallenpoet]

Seeing in the Dark

I met her for brunch, and we spoke the whole way through. She bought me a yogurt even though I said I didn't want anything, and I did not have the heart to say no. She took me to the photography room, invited me in, showed me around, and I found myself strung along with her routine, noting every little detail, drinking it down like liquor. She does something silly, asking me to join her in a dark room to see the process. In there, I saw nothing but what I wanted to see, I heard what I wanted to hear; perhaps I am autistic (she thinks), because according to her I sound like a woman she cared for (who she also believes to be autistic); maybe she wanted me to stay in the room with her for almost 30 minutes, hands grazing back and forth as we figured out how to open the film in pitch black darkness; and what are the chances that she would bring up her experience of her hands roaming another with consent, because she wanted me to think of such a warm feeling in that cold, dark room where no light can ground me to earth?

We sat back down until the clock hit 1400, only for the calender to tell me that my meeting was tomorrow. Though two feet apart, we danced back and forth between the gap; she asked me to look through her film, and I showed her a funny looking undergarment with the label "classic kinky" on it. She bought one along with mine and wanted to match with me, and I hate the way my heart soared and stammered at the suggestion.

The constant brushing past one another, stupid voices and jokes and talking about our love experiences. I shared mine, and told her that I never heard anyone call my smile "gorgeous" like the kind soul on Hinge did, and that I thought when people called me "hot", they were only referring to my sense of dress. When she asked if I would date that person, I felt the need to scramble and explain myself, as if I was saving my feelings for someone. I had hoped it meant that it mattered to her, who I would be with. That I would not be with my Hinge match, but with her. She tells me that she is limerent for the friend of a friend who is so far away and out of reach, and that the girl has a questionable partner of a man. It tore my heart out, but I sat where I was, hoping for her that the girl she likes will be as kind as she wishes her to be. Though it cut into my own heart, I cannot help but wish that her legs, which were leaning into my space in a funny man-spread, were a sign that her words were but a mere test. I dare not entertain the thought, and kept my knees and toes pointed to my front.

Another friend joined us, and we had dinner, we talked, and falling upon the topic of love once again, I mentioned in passing that I use terms of endearment such as "my dear" and "my love" with whom I am comfortable. It may have been under her breath, but she brought up the term "my darling" with her eyes averted, and I wish it never stuttered my breath, knowing that it is not meant for me.

Three of us walked to her room from up the hill to collect her charger, and I could not help but notice the way she kept brushing against me. Did she want it to happen, or should I have moved, lest she thought of me a nuisance?

A beloved band member who was overseas faced an emotional spiral so my junior called her, and I could feel her agitation seeping through. I was worried it would exacerbate our dear bandmate's situation, but I waited til the end to talk to her through the phone. I told our friend that I trusted her, that her feelings are valid, that she is great and that I loved her. The call ended on that note, and for the rest of the time, my junior was off. She was "salty", according to her words when I asked about it. I tried asking upon the matter later but she brushed it off, and I wonder if she is alright. I wonder, as delusional as it goes, if she was upset with how easy I declared my love for our bandmate, albeit platonically.

We headed off to the gym with further banter as it has been the last few days, and it appeared to me that she felt better after the exercise. She checked upon me with regards to music, on whether or not she should try for reps instead of strength, and on my sets during the hip dips. Her hand would brush mine on the bar though there were plenty space on the rod to grab onto, and her fingers barely feathered across my abdomen during the pull ups. When I returned the 12.5 dumbells with her, again her hand rested right next to mine on top of the rack and lightly grazed my arm. She had brought up that her neck felt funny and I offered to help her with it after calisthenics. As we were washing up, she mentioned that she had never seen me break a sweat before, though I was sure that I had. I began to help rub the back of her neck where it was sore and she didn't feel much. She then said it was the other side, told me that it tickled slightly, and proceeded to state that she felt nothing. I thought that perhaps the exercises have left me weak and I had not placed enough pressure on her neck, but I also wondered if she had wanted it to last a little longer. She called me a doctor teasingly and I find myself grateful for the fact that I cannot flush. Back in school, I stuck on some cooling pads for her and had a chat with a freshman. I soon left to rest at 0000 (I slept at 0400) and texted her about her mood shift after the call with our bandmate. She brushed past it and brought up the posts that we needed to make — and oh heavens I shouldn't, I shouldn't think of it as anything but work, but it felt like an excuse to meet, like a curated opportunity to be in each other's presence.

She liked my message with a heart, the one that wished her a good rest and sleep, and my head could burst with so much emotion.

And I realise, after all those hours, that she must have known how to open the film; I saw all her previous films filed away in her old recycled folder, staring at me with the thought that should have crossed my mind yesterday.wl

[chapfallenpoet]

To Ask LL

Am I emotionally unavailable or is it coincidence?

Do I like her or do I like the masculine aspects of her?

Have I been experiencing limerence for the last few people I held an interest in?

How do I unlearn the pattern, or how do I repair my perception of attraction?

I was so quick to feel frustrated at my last love without realising that I resembled her in a deeply saddening way. We were both anxious. We both faced the ups and downs to varying degrees. I am glad I drew the line still; if I never pulled away, I would never have been able to see the bigger picture.