Waiting

Sometimes, staying alive is the most you can do.

Some days, trying to utter ‘happiness’ feels like metallic tongs in your throat holding you from within.

‘Love’ sounds like fingernails on a wall making you wince until you shut your eyes or look away.

‘Laughter’ makes your bones ache not with the tickle or the vibration but with the weight of expectations.

Sometimes loving and laughing and even living are too much.

Sitting or standing, even sleeping is too much.

Being is too much.

On these days, the best I can do is wrap my arms around myself and just stay here a little while longer. I can’t laugh, I can’t stand, and I surely can’t love. So I’ll just try to be. Hoping that these expectations will go away, these voices in my head will quieten, and hoping that when it’s all over, what will remain here will still be me. 

The Soulmate Thing

I don’t think I have a soulmate

I don’t think I had a lover in a past life

Who completed me

Or broke me

Or left me with a promise to find me in this life

In this existence

I feel as though I had a hundred of them

A hundred lovers

Or maybe more

Who took parts of me

And promised me

That they’ll keep them safe

Until we meet again

And I ask back for myself.

I think I’m running here from one lover to another

Back and forth

From one friend to the other

Once, then again

In circles

In spirals

Opening each lover

Dissecting their love

And then cutting myself in front of them

Asking them to help me find

Which piece of myself

I left in their custody. 

I’ve cut myself open

Too many times for too many people

And I’ve tried to fit wrong chambers in my heart

I've been mistaken

And have sometimes given pieces of myself 

That have left a hole in me

And sometimes I've refused 

To let myself bleed yet again

I've refused 

To have lovers search my darkest corners

Because I'm scared of shattering

The pieces I've formed till now. 

This lover who lays by my side

Tonight

Is not my soulmate

He’s not going to complete me

He might have a few building blocks

That he gives to me each time

He looks into my eyes

The lover I lost was not my soulmate

He gave me the pieces I might have

Given to him in a previous life

Or several lives ago

He snatched a little bit of himself

That I might have been carrying around for too long. 

I’m still going around with open wounds

Hoping that along the way I’ll find someone

Standing with a gauze

To help me heal and help me breathe

He’s not going to be my soulmate either

Perhaps I'm not looking for one soulmate

Perhaps there is no such thing at all

Because all I can think of

And all I can look for

Is to complete my own self

Collecting pieces one by one

Maybe, I'm not supposed to wander around 

looking for my other half

Maybe all of these lovers

With all the scattered love

Can only help me in parts

And maybe it is only me

who can make me whole.