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[the-sunlit-child]

all that you said

meant a lot to me / it echoed like a lullaby from when i was young / it felt familiar but strange / as if i was almost already there / they say words cut deeper than a knife / like when my looks were scrutinized by a boy whom i loved / i used to treasure the scars as if it formed the word love because i never knew how it was spelled / l-o-v-e / i knew nothing about words except when i write / i knew nothing about love until you came / y-o-u / means a lot to me / it echoes through the chambers of what i am and of what i will be / now love looks familiar and comfortable / and words flow like a river calmly coming back home.

— Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

to silence the voices in my head, i keep shuffling the playlist, fumbling among titles i never encountered before. i keep the tv open, blabbering some news about another disease we should be careful of. i keep the lights on, have more than three pillows beside me hoping their company would ease the thoughts in a way. i keep writing then deleting, and write some more. i keep making excuses not to go outside, and regret it afterwards. i keep looking for new sentences that sound the same as the voices in my head. i've been living with them in such a long time and i have managed their reoccurrence. i am used to them, quite capable of taming their vices. however, as the universe kept pulling her cards in this game, i know i'm going to lose. the tv, radio, the poems, and the pillows will soon go down the drain. like thunderstorms reverberating in a grief-stricken sky, the voices will awake the monster and probably, i'll give in.

by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

I still see you in every nook and corners of this house. Your usual fabcon scent wakes me up every two am just to witness your absence. Our morning routines all went unattended and I found myself eating last night's leftovers. I didn't bother to cook because I know I'd still get fragments of you from those passed down dishes you've taught me. I didn't listen to any music playlist on my phone because I know I'd stumble with the one you've made.

I couldn't fathom seeing myself stuck in here because of what was gone and will never come back. I couldn't take to witness myself crumbling in the ways ancient civilizations did. I couldn't allow myself giving in to these thoughts of you like how I hated secondhand smoke but now seeing the ashtray nestled cigarette butts.

Perhaps, this is the price of being left without a word. The ghosts of what had vanished remained to haunt the empty rooms of this body. The spaces longed for a new tenant but here I am, in the middle of this void, accommodating flashbacks and replaying memories as if I wasn't still ready to let you go.

words by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

How does one escape from succumbing to excessive sadness? I smile a lot, read books, have adequate food on my table, and sleep in a comfortable bed. But still, I wake up at two am with underlying thoughts of the black hole wrecking my emotions like a whiplash of a storm. I still have frequent reminiscence of the struggles I've won. Instead of being proud, all I see is an invisible knot tying me inside my own chaos. Perhaps, along the way, I unknowingly died with my happiness and here I am, realizing that I was once lost and will never be found.

by Lei Angeline

follow me on Instagram: @daydreamlovenotes

[the-sunlit-child]

Perhaps, I keep writing about things

I know I'm bound to lose.

Just like you, love.

Like you.

— Ai Entero, AiBreathe

Losing you should mean I'll stop writing about you. But now that you're gone, my hand kept fumbling for words and phrases of longing from when you left. I still leave a page for fabricated dialogues and framed scenes where I utter your name in silence. I lit up candles and face the altar praying for you to come back.

Perhaps, I keep writing about things that will soon wave goodbye. Yet this time, the death of our love fuelled my pen for more paragraphs to spend. Darling, our wreckage became my ink and I couldn't stop it from flowing.

— Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

If you go, leave me a song to listen. Give me your favorite book and paste your childhood photo on the last page of my journal.

If you go, leave a post-it note at my door. Write me your most sincere and honest letter and put your leather jacket inside my closet as if it was a present.

If you go, don't leave me empty. Place a piece of you atop my wooden table, mark the floors with your heaviest footsteps and bring me flowers I could watch as it wither.

If you go, fill my cup with your remnants. Hand me your fragrance and the leftovers of the person I once loved. Give me your biggest smile and the most reassuring hug. Let me hold your hand as you walk me home for the last time and kiss me, even with your whitewashed passion, under the final drops of rain.

If you go, give me all you have even with half-meant truth and white lies. Let me savor it until I get the courage to cut this compact with utter acceptance of this unprecedented volte-faced occurrence.

If you go, turn off the lights and let my head rest on the spaces of your shoulder. Leave me in deep slumber and plant a goodbye kiss on my forehead. By then, bid me a silent farewell as I sleep under dozy dreams. Walk away as the sun rises and let me wake up facing your empty side of the bed with the flickering embers of our un-kept promises of forever.

And when that happens, leave me here with your memories but never ever come back.

“a scrap collection”

by Lei Angeline

photo from jah thea provichado

[the-sunlit-child]

That night, we came to a sudden dénouement. As we sat under the bed of stars, we wrote the conclusion on the sand where waves could easily wash the blots away. We drank our beers for the last time with lumps on our throats. We couldn't talk nor speak nor create another dose of make-believes. We packed our things on wooden boxes with the memories we swore we would never recreate again. We locked it up before putting it on a trash bin and eternal deletion. We stayed there under the majestic reflection of the moon above the waters. The ocean is calm yet contrary to the chaos fuming inside of us. We managed to act like everything's going as planned. We managed to act like we were really on this dénouement together.

But this was never outlined. This was never visualized. We promised little infinities with our pinky swears, mumbling it over and over on rougher days to ease the pain. We swore always and forever until it faded with time.

Darling, this is our epilogue. The universe we created came crashing down like Roman Empire. We didn't manage to stand atop the cliff and jump into the depths of the sea. We stayed here, immovable and stagnant. We didn't chase cars nor painted our love yellow. We remained tinted in red lights and stop signs and so tonight, we halt.

Darling, this is our tragedy wrapped in beers and boxes of unfathomable regrets. The very next thing we knew was keeping our goodbyes to ourselves as we walk two different directions away from our sand castles and drowning eternities.

“how we wrote the final chapter”

words by Lei Angeline

[follow me on Instagram: @thesunlitchild]

[the-sunlit-child]

It was in your silence that I found the answers. It was in your trembling voice and uneasiness. The way you avoided my gaze and the way you chose to look at the horizon whispered another mile of distance between us. The gap were filled by confabulated words and fabricated tell-tales. You made me fall for something that was long gone. Your smiles were mottled by lies and I couldn't grasp the epithets you've offered. I asked you for so many times and you'll answer me with blank spaces and empty stares. I tried to decipher your actions. I fumbled for ways to squeeze out the truth from your deep covers. I wanted to know what was pulling us from each other. But you'd  reply with another idle alibis. So I stopped and let you talk. Yet, you never did.

It was in your silence that I found the answers. You were long gone with your words and I couldn't reach out to your hands anymore. How quiet it was when we started parting our ways and how eloquent the calmness was for allowing the shattered to meet but leave at the end of the day.

“the day he offered me his solitude”

by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

My collection of childhood scars had increased sluggishly as years go by. From the times I stumbled headlong to the ground because of running to the moments I was so sure of the balance not until I fell, knee-first, from my training-wheeled bicycle. I was wounded from my head to the spaces on my toes. My life had been a back-and-forth of toppling down and treating cuts.

My assemblage of injure embroideries never stopped there. As I was growing up, I found myself scratching my delicate dry skin until it bleeds. This happens while I get very uncomfortable, anxious or just merely drowned in my circuit of thoughts. My hands will find its ways to my damaged veneer and scrape it to death. I wouldn't mind being scarred because self-inflicted pain meant nothing to me anyway.

I've been fond of peeling off the outer layer of my recuperated wound. Giving them a little squeeze here and there before throwing them off. I would even love the way I open the bandage and see what's happening inside. Is it healed or egressing blood? I need to know.

My scar stories didn't finish there. I wanted to say more about the wounds at my back or the frequent cuts I get from clumsily using the knife. But then, the most valuable collection among them was the one which recently appeared. That one wound, even with bandages and first aid kits, continuously gets bigger, discharging no liquid but pain.

This damage left me impaled. A scar I couldn't even learn to love. Something that reminds me of a memory I wish I could eradicate. This scar isn't as small as the closed wounds at my feet or the stitches on my knee, it clinches itself inside my calcified bones. I couldn't scratch it to death so it clings there for life. It nestles between the neurons of my brain screaming to me in full-blown speakers of negativity. It inhabits my body as if I'm just a futile place ready to be manipulated. A scar controlling its owner, coexisting with my robotic movements as if I had no clue.

This scar found a home in me but all I wanted was to get rid of it. I don't know what to do but it already took a space at my peculiar collection, taking the biggest and heinous record.

When will time heal this wound? I wish it'll be sooner before I reach my due.

“the demons running wild”

by Lei Angeline

painting: “Zertretene” by Kathe Kollwitz

[the-sunlit-child]

Every now and then, I can still feel the pinpricks of the past associated with the way we ended. The shards of our memories seldom tarry at the front of my door, leaving post-breakup notes and unanswered calls. They continually skulk behind the crimson curtains, whispering scenes I wish I could never remember.

Every now and then, our love still haunts the rest of me. The ghost of the time we once had had resided in the alleyways of my mind. The hollow coves of this empty heart were filled by your remnants. As the gnomon dictates another second, you were there, waiting for the other hand of the clock. Whenever it strikes 12, those hands will eventually meet and I'll be walloped by another surge of your spectral coming.

Every now and then, I tried my hardest—to forget and forgive and move on. I tried to get over with your remnants, the sound of your voice in the morning or the letters you wrote for me. I tried to take on the challenge, to make it through despite the loneliness.

Every now and then, I still wish for your return, I still sit by the door with this lonesome yearning for somebody else's love.

Please leave your message after the beep.

“whatever it is, I need to forget you”

words by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

restless days and overfatigued mornings,

dozy eyes eager to sleep,

blood-stained skin and scarred wrists,

scattered shards of broken ceramic plates,

taking fluoxetine to detach from this grief

yet i choke myself on this wobbly belief,

they say it was only my thoughts,

it was mere illusions of hatred and distrust,

that i just chose to suffer myself,

creating a crestfallen scenario in my head,

the psych ward says, i'll be okay if i take medications,

to give in to some distressing explanations,

words felt like a down in the mouth,

focus, focus, focus—

until listening itself is tiring to my glum,

my father once said how hard this world is,

he took different pills every night with names i never heard of,

he often stayed behind his room with doors closed,

unwilling to take me into his lap and lull me to sleep,

he was suffocating from this inconsolable madness—

the tv was never turned on again,

the dishes were never washed,

he vanished before my eyes

as i stood there waiting for him to open up—

i teetered at the edge of my consciousness,

trying to stay awake despite the nausea,

i locked the doors of my room just like what father did,

all was pitched black; zero visibility,

i held onto the rough rope of my drowning entirety—

today, i did my best,

took my medicines and tried to speak up,

but the storm's now taking over,

carrying my body to the deepest

trenches of a mournful sea,

away from the polluted shore,

the ephemeral waves are pleading to me,

but tomorrow's too distant to come,

i'd say bon voyage and set myself free

“borrowed grief”

words by Lei Angeline

follow me on instagram: @thesunlitchild

[the-sunlit-child]

The bags under your eyes left a space for more suitcases of worn-out shirts and outgrown pyjamas. Barbie dolls were lined up above the empty closet of the weary past. The bed was neatly organized, your favorite Doraemon blanket sits idly at the top of your favorite pillow. The television now blurts out news from all over the globe. Speaking about drastic changes and tantamount issues of countries you have never heard of. By then, you remembered how life was easier with walkmans and cassettes. How the world spins so fast that you totally held onto anything far from what was expected you to have and put the things you once loved at the deepest dungeons of your mind. The mixed tapes were thrown out now and there's no way you could retrieve it back. Just like how you wanted to read Lolita again but the pages were faded and words were already hard to understand. The attic that was once the best place to play with your favorite cousin have grown cobwebs and dusts from the moments you have forgotten. The living room, with sofas covered in stained white draperies, have its ears shut from the faraway screams of your siblings and the constant blabbering of your mother. The house that was once home became utterly hollow, devoid of colors and stuck in loneliness. You have outgrown the child in you. That one small being of innocence and playfulness became a person of experiences and healed wounds.

There are days when things spinned so hard and the weight of the world felt like breaking you apart. You thought that life was a mixture of all emotions swirling in your system at once. You thought, life is a battle you will never win. The tears and swollen eyes had been your witness and the tiny room of childhood remnants became your solace. The days felt so awful that you wanted to die.

But looking at it now, with your trained mind and loaded palms, you realised how those days were merely a speck of dust in your entire lifetime. The house that was once a home is a memoir of a child who became as strong as its solid foundation. You got through those days and you will get through anything that comes in your way. You are strong and always have been brave.

To defy time is leaving and outgrowing things behind but bringing along those significant memories it imparted to you. You must be proud of how far you've been to and the places waiting for you in the future. You have conquered mountains and now, you are all equipped to take on the world.

Keep going;

“vacancies and maturity”

words by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

phantasmagorical stories held at the rock-bottom stayed unnerved,

with no keys to unlock; sealed information,

judged for misunderstood words,

sugarcoating the truth with unripe lies,

spitting inks on egyptian walls with characters difficult enough to decipher,

coffee-stained shirts and a make-believe forever,

drinking a glass of venom to avoid explanations,

i provide my truth with a hint of alcohol,

i gave life to a pyramidal maze of words,

i don't want you to find out more,

let that iceberg stay in a deep slumber,

i spoke up until it was mistranslated,

dubbed into a whole new theory,

my voice was once heard—

a passenger of titanic believing that freedom is everything,

until i saw my reflection upon the ghost of the coldest sea,

my screams were trivial enough for anyone to come save me,

i am a sunken ship hiding underwater,

retrieve my body and the wet letters,

the dénouement should echo the stories i long before swallowed to sleep.

“façades”

words and photo by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

I have loved people inside different spectrums of time but you are my favorite.

We grew up relishing moments under the sun. The wildflowers rest on your eyes as I scribbled my imagination to life. You would lie there with me whilst I read another dose of postsummer poetry into your ears. You said that I would be a great writer in the future while drawing circles against my pallid palms as you visualize a home where my words will be personified, where my stories will live in a paperback, and where bookshelves hold numerous books with my name engraved on it.

Sometimes, during our sunkissed occasions, you leave me speechless with your knowledge of the world. You enlightened the barren spaces of my mind with stars and constellations I have never heard of. You brought me to places even just being beside you. Tell-tales of history had played itself in front my empty psyche library where the past and the present collided with the way you narrate such great and significant stories. You brought me to B.Cs and back, giving me textbook ideas and even your own. You talk with so much amazement and awe that I couldn't get enough of it all.

We spent our days loving the sunrays hitting our skin. We loved the way that ball of fire lights up half of the planet with no efforts needed. We adored the manner of its rising and the time of its rest. How it unleashed the colors of happiness painted on our small talks and laughters and songs. We have fallen so deeply affectionate of the sun that whenever it sets, we couldn't wait for tomorrow to come.

You, mostly, brought the light in me. The way you were devoid of everything but still gave your all to the people around you. You are the personification of that ball of fire and I had you. I held you. I loved you even in the smallest ways possible.

If only I had my own version of pomegrenate seeds where I could be with you despite the limits of the clock, I'd eat them without a doubt, in a millisecond, in a blink of an eye. If only I could live forever under the sun, then maybe, you will choose to stay. It would take a lifetime of wishes, I know, but a wish doesn't hurt me more than living with only the thoughts of you.

Send me more of those sunlight and let the sun kiss me until the twilight arrives. If forever truly does exist, I'll spend another spectrum of my time waiting and waiting for your golden arrival.

“to Apollo”

words by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

I made a playlist of flowers blooming at the end of May. Curating a garden of wistful memories, dancing in the ballads of musicians we hardly ever known.

I started with daisies remembering the look in your eyes. The blank stares and innocent smiles marked itself into its petals as we talk about the most mundane topics we thought was interesting enough to keep the conversation going.

From there, I saw an ivy blooming into a genuine friendship of two childlike souls covered in clad of yellow tinted spirits and carefree dreams. We were dainty and young and just teens in stages of happiness.

Lilac skies enveloped the vast ocean of clouds as little sparks of light breaks through its crevasses. We held hands for the first time and you took me into your arms, lovingly caressing my back—you offered a home of security made with gentle touch and soft words.

Lilies of the valley had blossom, opening our hearts to each other’s youthful gamut of ambitions. I offered you fragments of myself, the depth of my secrets. You showered me with understanding, accepting my blemishes as if they never mattered at all.

I received a book on my birthday with a tulip hidden inside its golden pages, it was fresh and lively. You wrote a note beside it saying you have never been so happy until you met a soul like me.

It was an epitome of a daydream playing inside the realms of reality. We were the best versions of ourselves together. We were the stars of our own little garden until a quince had sprout.

I told you to cut it but you never listened. You said it deserves a spot in our universe, be given the same love like the others. I trusted you and I gave in.

But then, everything wasn’t enough. Our love derailed from its path and the pansies had died with us.

You left me with your roses as I struggled getting the shrubs out of the garden. You said sorry but it was half meant. You walked out of the door bringing your unsaid goodbyes behind your tongue.

Our flowers wilted as I laid there devastated of everything.

No matter how we tried to make it,

No matter how we tried to nurture it,

The seasons will change and we’ll be damned if our love isn’t enough to fray the storm.

“the withering”

words by Lei Angeline

[the-sunlit-child]

drops of crimson liquid had syringed its way to the narrowed streets of the 1800's,

bleak and cold— it wears nothing but naked truth,

they run in uniform motion; languid and gradual,

taking steps in an unsure but safer manner,

dancing in hymnals of the dead,

occuring in several blockages but never making a stop,

right turns and left; looking for a bay to rest,

it was an unforseeable present—

days spent under blinding lights in a Cimmerian desert,

windswept; I wept—

uneasy and restive as the crimson liquid on an arterial maze,

it was deafening to hear the pounding on my chest,

frightful but unwavering—

I couldn't seem to hold onto something palpable,

the drops of Mars had slowly clutched into my roseate palms as I laid steadily inside whirling thoughts of Le Prince,

I know I had to do something—

but then, life got ahead of me,

blood had searched through the darkness and found a home,

I am now loaded with novel wonders of two different souls with names hidden behind the word unknown

“what happens in transfusion”

words by daydreamlovenotes