On Writing - Blog Posts
#135 - Contrapuntal Poem #4
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#134 - Contrapuntal Poem #3
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#133 - Contrapuntal Poem #2
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#132 - Contrapuntal Poem #1
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#131
A/N: Inspired by this Tumblr post
I was the architect of my own hell, crafting each fibre of that damned palace with such meticulous, devout, ruthless precision it could almost be seen as love. But perhaps love is insanity, and perhaps it was. Perhaps I was in love with my own damnation and ruin, as fascinated by it as one would be with a monument or wonder, or someone drunk on their own demise and downfall.
For only such maddening dedication can create a wonder built off of tears and blood, each slab of marble and every intricate carving covered in a layer of crimson it was nearly invisible, and yet always palpable; always noticeable. Like a shroud covering each stunning piece of art, holding my emotions so tightly imprisoned in a vice the only way to get out would be to slit my own throat. That was the way to freedom, I realised.
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Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings
#130
A/N: Inspired by this Tumblr post
“How I wish you could understand me.” How I wish I could understand myself. It seems as if each passing day only brings me further away from the person I was meant to be, or perhaps from the person I was.
Do we create ourselves, or do we find ourselves? That is what I have ruminated over for as long as I can remember.
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Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings
#129
I do not know what I feel; only that I do, and that it is painful and aching and that I cannot rid myself of this foreign and incessant gnawing at my heartstrings no matter what. A tug and an odd sort of melancholy seem to cover my tracks with a shroud, veiling it in such an immense worry and gloom that it seeps into everything else. And it is peculiar, but known and knowing, as though I have experienced this strange, trance-like feeling another lifetime ago.
Perhaps I have, for desolation is not an emotion bound by time nor by soul. Universal and yet utterly damning it is, a disease for the soul; to feel isolating and burdened and heavy with the weight of a thousand lives and lies.
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#128
A/N: Inspired by this prompt list
Firsts, they say, are to be romantic and memorable. But how do I describe the feeling of my first bleed? For it was not the blood of my womb but rather the one of my tongue, bleeding and trembling as it fought to keep quiet lest it damn me. Begging to speak, to defy, to cry out, it was suppressed. I was suppressed, until the emotions bottled themselves up so tightly inside me, until I could feel nothing but the visceral rage I fought so hard to keep at bay. Rage andn anguish and pain and guilt all warred within me, until they were I and I was them. You are not your emotions, they say, but what if I am? For if my feelings do not make me, then what does? Is it the people I choose to surround myself with? For that was futile. Nothing and no one had managed to coax those words out of me, those thorns and bloodied wound that lay festering, not after I’d bottled them up so the only escape was to crack the jar itself.
A simple solution, and yet an irreparable one. A part of me longed to crack it, to feel the glass piercing my skin and the shards embedding themselves into my flesh, my body bleeding as had my tongue, as it continued to do so. But what about the pain? They asked. It was deserved, I told no one in particular as I wallowed in self-despair. Maybe it was something else. Maybe my self-preservation had gone out. Maybe my luck had gone out.
But whatever it was, I’d lost it, and I wouldn’t be getting it back any time soon, not after my filthy ichor had eternally stained my tongue crimson.
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Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings
#127
Aggressively, completely, obssessively pouring myself into my writing until I am the words and the words are me, until I can tell no difference, until there is no difference, until all that is left in my mind is a blur of smudged ink. Until all my journals are filled with such unimaginable agony that it bleeds from the pages, until the white parchment turns crimson from the bleeding of my heart. Until all I can think about is the desire to write and write until my wrist snaps, my hands cramp as the keyboard is dented and cracked, until I am breathless and wide eyed from having wrriten so much, from pouring so many shattered, broken fragments of my soul onto one paper. Until I can think of nothing but the agony it took to get here, the pain and regret and longing that fuels this cursed obsession. For it no longer remins a hobby; it is but a burden and a blight that haunts me both waking and asleep. I am forced to live by it, a drug and an addiction that I cannot get enough of, that I cannot live without as it ruins my life, my mind, my psyche, ruins the very essence of all it is that I am, unravels me so thoroughly and meticulously that when I look back, I do not know when I unraveled myself and when it broke me.
I do not know what I am or what I have been, only that it has snapped some integral, essential piece of my that it is impossible to recover. It is gone, it has been consumed by whatever monster dwells inside my, whatever ghastly creature pounces and preys on my downfall. Perhaps it is the Devil himself in disguise, perhaps it is the guilt and malice and hatred in me that has manifested into some creature of nightmares.
All I know is that it is my enemy, but that I am losing. Every day it takes something as payment, some other part of me as though I am giving up pieces of myself to stay alive, to merely survive. I feed it another morself of my withering soul in the futile, fragile hope that it will keep away. But it does not.
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#126
A/N: Inspired by this Tumblr post
“I gave you my heart”. Not as it remains, cracked and dried, waiting for you to come back.
I only know that I yearn. What for; for whom, I do not know, only that there is an ache and a longing in me. I do not know what it will be satisfied by. Perhaps by you, or something else, or someone else entirely; perhaps nothing at all. Perhaps I have been destined to have this ache in me and suffer in agony as I bleed out with my name on my bloodstained lips, crimson like the finest wine, my hands pale and cold as Death fights to claim me.
What it does not know is that true love will make the right person go mad. Not entirely mad, but just so. Mad enough to fight back the claws and talons that Death extends; to fight for you and to fight for your soul.
For mine has already been sacrificed, but I will not let yours be consumed. Not by hatred, not by pain, and certainly not by the thought of me.
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Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings
#125
A/N: Inspired by this Tumblr post
“But nothing makes a room feel emptier than wanting someone in it.” Ah, but then it is not empty, is it? It is merely full of want, of ache, of longing, of desire, so much so that it suffocates everything else; sucking the air out of it until nothing but the cloying scent of a forbidden love is left, and the haunting, eerie presence of something that almost was, but never became.
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Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings
#124
Is it so bad to want someone to cradle me, to hold me, to hold the fragments and pieces of me? For them to whisper honeyed nothings into my ear, even as we both know they are false, but we pretend, we continue to pretend. I would like to continue for some time more.
Whoever said that the ugly truth is better than false lies was wrong. I would much rather be comforted than be made to face the ugly truth over and over again until it haunts me, until it embeds itself into the very seams of soul and splits it apart.
Is that a supernova? That explosion, so dark and yet powerful and graceful with the force of a thousand suns, one which we will never see but only see pictures of as it happened. A glimpse into the past, into the soul of a star, into the soul of a spirit who was once here.
Ethereal, and yet eerie as we glance into stardust through the depths of time. We are drawn to it; as we are drawn to destruction and demolition and wrath; emotions so completely damning that all there is left in their wake is ash and dust and an empty feel that never abates.
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#123
Your body is a temple, they say. But what if my temple lacks a god? I want to ask. What if it has all the properties of a temple, save for the deity Themselves? Does this so-called temple now become a cave? Is that what I am destined to be; is that my body’s fate? To exist not as a sanctuary, but as a growing, dark hollow, gathering cobwebs and dust as I am forgotten by Time.
To exist not as a temple, but as an opulent, heavily decorated cavern, whose heart has no beat, whose veins do not run with blood, and whose mind is beginning to decay? A lesson in fate and silence and discarded glory, then. That is what I am.
An antique cave, yet new, too. I was new when it was made, when I was healed. But the person who built it for me abandoned it, despite all the work that had been done to finally, finally, fix it and make the temple whole again.
Antique in the sense that there were hordes of memories in every corner, every speck of dust and every small artefact that decorated the altar. Young in the way that it had never been visited, never had a God dedicated to it. It was simply a building, hollow and empty and dark that people saw as a temple from far away, but never bothered to investigate for the fear of awakening the horror within.
Perhaps I am that horror, or perhaps that horror is me. Maybe it has always been me, simply feeding off what little nutrition my body absorbs, growing stronger day by day as I am choked in the darkness, limbs bound and mouth forced shut lest any sound escape me; lest someone hear my cries for help that grow fainter with each passing day.
Until they are nothing but echoes in the cavern above, a death having overtaken the premises. My pleas for salvation haunting the structure, my voice echoing in the halls made for prayer.
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#122
I always leave things unfinished. Crosswords, games, puzzles, relationships. They are all half-worked-on fragments that seem like they mean so much, but when I look back, I realise that they do not mean very much at all. For what does a half-baked relationship mean, a love that is only half-given, money that is only half-spent, ingredients which are only half-used? Why must I live my life in fragments and parts and shards of glass so sharp and vicious they cut anyone and anything who dares approach? Why must my life be an ugly exhibition, a vile, feral combination of all the artefacts and proofs of love I received but squandered? Lost, like a fool, and gave them away for what I believed was a greater reason. A selfish want or the need to fit in; or maybe it was my own blackened heart’s desires from the beginning that only intensified with time; that morphed me into what it is that I am today.
I do not know what I am. Only that I am here and I exist and that it is painful. Only that I wish for a way out because I feel trapped and suffocated and smothered, only that the cracks in my facade are beginning to show. I do not know how long they will hold before the entire fortress comes crumbling down like a house made of cards swept away in the wind.
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#121 - Letter #2
My Dearest [name],
I cannot believe that we have nearly known each other for a year, and yet it feels like so much longer. They say we no longer have the ability to accurately perceive time once we find those we love. Perhaps I, too, am guilty of this, though I do not regret it at all. If anything, I have learned how to be eternally grateful.
We have known each other for just short of a year, and yet so much has changed.
You appeared in my life like an angel of some sort, perhaps a saviour, and I felt compelled to know you. Not simply know you, but befriend and grasp your very essence; know all those lovely details like the tiles of an ever-growing mosaic that make you who you are. What brings you joy, what makes you contemplate. But most importantly, what draws that radiant smile of yours out; and that laughter. I hear echoes of it when I am lonely, I am reminded that no matter where I am, your presence will hover over me; a thing of calm, lovely beauty. It rings in my ears as the clear chime of a cathedral, signalling that a new era in my life has begun.
You floated in like a dove, elegant in a way that set my heart ablaze.
Even if we lived in a hundred separate lifetimes, I would choose you, over and over again until fate tried to pull us apart. But I would have fought for you like no other. I would have waged war so that every other hero in history would have been put to shame; Achilles and Patrocles would stand no chance, Romeo and Juliet would turn away in embarrassment.
And though this letter is a feeble attempt at poetry (and forgive me for this), know that there is no real way for me to convey my adoration of you. Gifts will do you no courtesy, so these words will have to do.
I hope that the threads of our friendship never fray.
Fondly, your admirer. Keep burning, my eternal flame.
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#120
Do not consider yourself so special that you think you will be the first to be struck by immeasurable agony and suffering. All pain is recoverable, and all longing can be healed. You are not the first, and you shall not be the last. There is beauty and a certain humbleness to be found as we get fade into the passage of time, another unknown, nameless, faceless person. There is peace in anonymity, knowing no one shall judge us for simply existing. After all, how will they condemn a ruined empire and scattered ashes on the wind? We cannot be convicts if the evidence of our failures and crimes has long since disappeared.
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#119
The stars which reside in the heavens have made a new home in your eyes. Flecked with starlight and emotions I cannot begin to decipher, I am enamoured by them so thoroughly I shall be haunted by the enigma that is you for the rest of my existence. Awake and asleep, they are all I can see, until I am certain I shall go mad with the vision God has either graced me with or cursed me with.
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#118
Perhaps my aim with my writing is to write so much and so abstractly that it will disappear into a void of anciet, long-forgotten void of writers, artists, and anyone who has ever loved. Perhaps it will disappear into the thousands of pieces of grief, and sadness, and longing, and heartache, perhaps my work will find a home at last. For the hole in my heart has never been a home. It had been a place, yes, but never a home, not for the unspoken, shaky words that filled me up.
Perhaps there is no point in writing at all, when I know every emotion I have has already been written, spoken, or drawn about. But there is something magnetic, something beautiful, something charming and so utterly alluring about the futility of human expression. Our circumstances may be different across eras, our people and cultures and beliefs not aligning, but our feelings will never change. We have all found a way to convey our emotions. Neither language barriers nor our access to writing devices stop us. Etching on walls and scribbling by firelight, doodling in notebooks by moonlight. We have loved and grieved and fought and lost from the beginning of time, and shall continue to do so until the end of it. It is, after all, what makes us human. Nothing shall ever stop the human desire to express its burdening feelings.
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#117
I scream into a void, wishing no one and nothing but the darkness absorbs my sorrows, my grief. It only grows, fueled by centuries of screams and agony through the eras, through time itself. We are lonely in our sorrow, and yet united in our suffering. We are all tired of life and desperate for something more. What we want, even we do not know, but all we know is that we want it. We know this world has not satisfied us, so we do what any person would: we build our own.
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#116
Pour so much love into me that all the cracks in me are filled and I become whole once more. Heal me, fix me. I am tired of living as a shell of a person; I am tired of being a husk. I crave for your love, not because I think I deserve it, but because I pray that your holiness may wash away my sins; those black, dark stains on my soul. Perhaps the light will seep through until that is all I am full of, until it replaces the rotting self I have become acquainted with.
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#115
A/N: Inspired by a Tumblr post with the line below which is in quotes, but I can’t seem to find it
“Love isn’t always pretty.” But the abstractness of it, the chaos and life and joy that it seeps is what keeps us alive. It doesn’t have to pretty to be adored. It just has to sustain us.
But we can also make it pretty. We can make it pretty by first healing ourselves so that we do not become rabid beasts the minute we are shown a morsel of affection. We do not treat it as an alien, foreign thing, but rather learn to love affection as we are loved.
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Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings
#114
I may not have ever seen the horrors of war, but I am well-acquainted with the aftermath; perhaps too much. For a war inside oneself is nothing short of destructive, life-altering, mind-numbing experiences that leave one gasping as they struggle for air. Clawing, fighting desperately, broken and bloodied and crying, hoping someone will notice and come to help. No one does.
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#113
Why must I lose myself in my obsessions to feel nothing at all? Where has all this apathy and numbness festered? It cannot have disappeared, for I still feel it. I have always felt it and will continue to do so. But then, where has it hidden? Why has it decided to be cowardly and hide away?
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#112
Why must I be hurting to be able to create? Is my value only in my cracks? Am I only useful when I am broken and still giving? Is that what defines strength and courage? For if it does, I choose to be a coward for all eternity. It is better to preserve the rotten husk of my being than face damned ruination again, when after all I will have nothing to show for it save the scars and pain I will be forced to endure under the false name of nobility.
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#111
I am afraid my love is too much, too strong, all at once. I hold on for too long. What if I suffocate that which I love, adore? What if I crush a heart the way one might crush pomegranate seeds, their red staining the space around them and existing as a haunting, ever-present halo? No matter how many times I wash my hands, I will not get rid of the blood I am guilty of. It drips down my chin as my fangs are coated in the crimson substance. Devastating in its glory; carnal, sinful, and yet so full of tragedy. How have we come to romanticise that which kills us; the poison that will one day be our fatal demise?
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#110
-As if a creature has grown and festered in me, devouring all it is that I am and leaving nothing for me. Until it became me; until the rabid beast and my being merged into a chaotic, messy, thing. We are inseparable; not as lovers would be, but fire and ice. One ruins the other, as the devastated craves destruction to the point where it begins to go insane. Addiction or foolishness, that remains to be seen. I try to push and fight, but my cries are torn my throat, my body, my mind, my voice not my own.
Melancholy, grief, and sorrow are all I have known. Perhaps this nameless monster is simply their physical manifestation. Deep, aching, longing fills me no matter what I do. I do not think I can survive without it. I cease to be myself without it; I cease to exist. Without it I have no purpose, no mission.
You cannot extract me without ripping me apart, for I cannot live without the monster. It hates me, but I love it with every fibre of my decaying being. Even as I lay dying, my last thoughts are of the creature in me.
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#109
How much love, and desire, and passion, and longing, and lust can one gaze hold? Brimming to the edge with feelings unsaid, a plethora of emotions swirling in those deep pools that are the windows to the soul. Emotions that the voice has yet to convey, or has decided against for whatever reason of its own. Perhaps they have decided that they are better off buried in the crypts of the mind, never to see the light again; its fate is only to be condemned in the deepest hollows of my rotting, decaying brain. Gathering cobwebs and dust of memories long-forgotten.
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#108 - Letter #1
My Dearest [name],
How I adore your presence. Your smile, your laughter, your energy. Enamoured by them with each passing day, I simply cannot understand how a person so sweet and kind and caring could even have existed.
Always so open with yourself, your emotions, your true authentic self was what truly struck me. Never shying away and open to a challenge. Your appearance; a lightning bolt, sudden, and yet stunning. Welcomed. It was as if someone so integral and deeply rooted in my soul was missing, and I had not known the craving of something I’d never had until I met you.
I am enamoured by how the light never leaves your eyes, no matter what may happen. How they glisten with mirth, with mischief, with a hint of something that tells me I am about to be surprised like never before. You are a kaleidoscope, a blur of colour, a meshing of feelings and a thrill of exhilaration every time I so much as look at you. A rush of adrenaline fills me whenever my eyes drift towards yours and they catch, and suddenly, everything is right in the world for that fleeting moment.
Your dry humour is so enchanting to be a part of. Jokes that only the two of us know, jokes that mean more to me than jewellery or clothes. Memories are a different kind of wealth, one that I hope you will continue to have for however long it is that we may know each other. I am praying that it will be a lifetime, but we are all aware of how utterly unpredictable everything can be despite our best efforts.
We are all so utterly blessed to have you, and to know you as intimately and profoundly as we do. I hope that you will never forget that. You are loved always, by at least one person. There will always be someone who admires you. From the smallest things like your hair to your smile, to the way you articulate yourself and your unique personality. If you ever feel insecure and think that you are unloved, that you cannot do this, that it is too hard, that it is impossible, that for some reason, you do not believe; remember: I will believe in you enough for the both of us. I will always have enough love in me for the both of us, no matter where I am, who I am with, or what I might be feeling. You are doing wonderfully. Please, never stop. Right now, it may feel like you are miles behind everyone else, but that is not the case. If I am honest with you, it is the contrary.
I truly do not know if anyone has told you this, but know that you deserve to hear this every day of your existence. You are amazing, a stunning, ethereal gem of a person, and I truly mean it without an ounce of exaggeration.
What I have tried so desperately to say here is, [name], how much I love you. I love every single aspect of you and your personality, the sunshine radiance that seems to emanate from every fibre of your being.
I could keep going, but I am afraid the world would eternally be short of paper. I could keep going for eons and the world would be much better off for it.
Yours truly,
A friend, who wanted to write you your very own love letter. Know that I will always cherish you.
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#107
I do not know how it is possible to be enamoured by someone with an increasing, obsessive madness with each passing day. Every night as I go to bed, I think, my love for you cannot grow; it is impossible. Then you wake up the next day, and prove me wrong. In matters of love, I adore being wrong. I adore being charmed by you, by your presence, each day that I am blessed with you by my side.
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#106
Ever so doomed and utterly damned,
I beg you grasp onto my hand.
Grab it so we will go together
So that we will be united forever.
But maybe fate hates us,
Or maybe we were reviled.
Perhaps it is not in our cards,
To be given a long while.
A lover so broken and entirely ruined,
Was always in our stars, a freezing wind.
One of blizzards, one of storms,
It has chilled my heart in all its forms.
The lovers gaze down upon the ill-fated,
With heavy hearts and eyes that never were sated.
As much our fate they do revile,
A part of them screams they deserve to smile.
They are allowed to laugh at another’s misfortune,
Their throats choke up as their voices hoarsen.
Hoarse from screaming for eternity, for that is what they are condemned to do.
Pain engulfs them whole as their eyes fill with unshed tears, a dagger pierces through.
We received Death’s sweet kiss, even as we were born,
I wish to spit upon His face, and I shall scorn
Every being who wishes to harm
Me or you, I am incapable of calm.
So wretched and cursed were we,
Perhaps more than all the others, as we flee.
More so than Romeo, more so than Juliet,
Even Icarus pities us as he sees us wrecked.
As he watched from the heavens, our sins are our own.
They may wish to help, but it is us who are forced to carry them lone.
Frowned upon by those who refuse
To understand our plight or horrible muse
We were made to be, of death and destruction,
Decay and ruin, we embody the precision
Of how something can be so wrong and yet utterly right,
A lone heart takes off into flight.
High above the skies as it soars,
Searching for its lover, it roars
In agony and pain, and something else,
Something only a lover can quell.
A raging fire, a rabid beast,
A blizzard of a storm, an empty feast.
My heart could not be described any better
As I look for healing, its existence, no matter
That it is not real, something I never can have,
A picture of my fantasises, sick hallucination.
Instead I smile through plastic joy, a laugh
Of pain and misery as I struggle to my destination.
Only you can fill that void in my heart,
A screaming hole,
One so utterly dark,
I have no role.
Not in my life, or in any others’,
Certainly not yours when I am undeserving of an angel.
Instead, I smother and snuff out the flames
Of love and passion, of these deadly games.
Once and for all they are completely doused.
The smoke rising from the wood, nothing will rouse.
Not an ember or a spark, not a single crackle
Will come from these dead pieces, I grapple
With the complexity that is you,
And you alone,
The stunning awe of your presence, I flew
As quick as I could, I shall have to atone
For my sins, one day, in the Palace Above
For I will be questioned, one day very soon
For my actions and words, and I will have to unlove
And provide Him with answers for which I have no clue,
I do not know which are true.
Perhaps some are, or are simply a ruse.
I told myself as I was dying
Every day I was pining
For the chance to see my love again,
A glimpse of her, a glance of her remains.
Etched in my soul, embedded in my mind,
I pray that I will one day find
Both of our happiness as we run away,
To a land that is far and stunning by day.
Perhaps even more alluring by night
For that is what she loves, as well as a light.
Little does she know, she is the light.
But one cannot see the bright
When one is the illuminator,
When she is the light, and an eternal glamour.
My senses she does shroud,
Like a blissful and calm cloud.
Covering all that enrages me,
Highlighting all the good I see.
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