portmanteau.

across the universe, you and i. Zoe. 17. MNL.

[caffeinewrites-blog]

there comes a point in time when you have nothing to give away to the searching hands wandering, dancing over veins and joints that are barely there. they will ask for parts forgotten, areas destroyed and you will hand them the rubble only for it to be swept away. there comes a point in time your soul will hunger and thirst for things you can no longer feed it. it will cry out for you like a newborn baby but you can only pass it rice grains of promises that fate will be kinder to your already broken body. you put your soul to rest, and pray for sweeter dreams you will lose your spine and find vertebrae in letters, bottled up and sailed off, sent to long lost lovers. your palms are empty, reaching for bodies sleeping in beds that are no longer yours. cold gasps settled into the fine lines of song lyrics, impossible to return back down to your lungs. you will have given everything you have to the universe, letting them go into the expanse of space. all you have left for yourself is space rock and asteroid dust, but for some reason, you never ask for more. you leave it up to hope that gravity will pull your fragments all the way back to you.

on loving and losing

[caffeinewrites-blog]

I'm really, truly sorrrryyy...I don't want to cause you any inconvenience, at all. I just hope you'll respond to my request on giving future humss students some advice and tips hihi :)))

not at all, love!!! i’m always open for chats about anything! all the best to you and i hope you have fun!!!

[caffeinewrites-blog]

Hiii! I'm an incoming grade 11 student and I noticed that you're from the HUMSS strand which is the same strand that i'll take. I'm extremely excited about it!! But, i'm slightly nervous of being ill-prepared for the strand, I'm hoping you can share some tips and advice for future HUMSS students. It really means a lot. Thanks!! xx

Oh hi there!!! I have No Idea how old this message is but hopefully it still finds you well HAHAH

my number 1 tip has always been to get used to writing and expand your vocabulary. a lot of our projects were papers and reports so you should really take the time over the summer to write a lot and at different lengths! you can write about ANYTHING: what you did today, politics, your favorite show; make poems, write a story - just do your best to get yourself accustomed with how to write both academic and non-academic papers.

tip 2: you don’t have to be the best at communication but you need to know how to get your point across concisely and clearly!!! we do a lot of talking but if you’re not the most outgoing person, that’s totally fine! the key point is to make sure you understand your topic/s and you’re able to talk about them well. you don’t need to use big words; just make sure your audience will be able to understand you.

my last advice is definitely be open-minded. to me, being in HUMSS was one of the best decisions i made in high school. you’ll learn a lot about the world and people and in that learning process, you’ll realize a lot of things. don’t be afraid to recognize if your personal beliefs or certain norms are skewed because this will help you grow into a better person. keep an open mind to ideas that you may not have thought of at first, hear people out, and make the judgements for yourself.

good luck!!! <3

[mintelli]

[caffeinewrites-blog]

hey there! it's been a while, huh? just wanted to update everyone that i graduated high school last week!!! super proud of myself and my batchmates because we made it aaaa ;; it's been a wild ride and i can only imagine what college has in store for us i never expected to graduate high school with that much of a ~bang~ but i did and really, a lot of hard work went into it so i am proud of myself because if anyone knows, i wasn't in the best place academically before 2015 but junior and senior year really got me back to where i've wanted to be so i'm really happy with the results. also, since i'll be going to college now, i started a studygram !!! it's been something i wanted to try out for the longest time so i decided what better time to do it than now? i'm @.studypint on insta so feel free to hit me up and follow me there! new piece up soon!!! cheers, guys! hope you all are well /hearts

[caffeinewrites-blog]

I am so tired of writing about you. Sue me for using Juan Miguel Severo's words against you but I hope this is the last time I'll ever write for you. I'm so sick of the thought of you. So sick of you sitting at the back of my head, carving marks I'll never be able to erase into the walls of my subconscious like a 10-year-old boy vandalising bathroom stalls with "A was here" To be honest, I miss the times my poetry felt like mine. Now, when I hold it in my hands and mold it into shapes, I can feel too much of you. Can touch the curve of your waist in the bends of my stanzas. The words slip off my tongue and taste like the Krispy Kreme donuts I gave you for Valentine's. But I don't blame you. I hate myself for it. I wove you into my words, dotting my i's with your fingerprints and making my vowels out of your initials. Your laugh was my white noise playing on loop while I wrote out word after word, verse after verse until they sang a poem that sounded so much like you. Thinking of you became a habit and the habit turned into vice when you became a reason for my writing. Every love poem had you under emergency contact and was tied up with a string that said "if lost, please return to the girl who smells like baby powder and Downy. She holds my heart in her fingers, please remind her not to drop it." I'd like my love poems back. It's selfish for me to call them mine when I wrote them for you but I still want them back Because I'm so done with writing about you. If I could unravel the threads that stitch these words together and start all over, I would. My poetry reminds me too much of you. Of how you call me love. How you put your arms around my neck and my hands go on your hips. They read of how much I loved you and how I still do even when I know I can't have you. But even if I can't erase you, I'll just start over. Stop writing about your smile and how it reminds me of the sun and just write about the sun. Stop looking constellations in your eyes and look up to the sky instead. I'll dot my i's with my fingerprints and bring the life into my words from the pulse in my wrists and not the thrum of your heartbeat. I'm taking my poetry back. It's time you do the same.

enough

[caffeinewrites-blog]

hi i was jus going through the prose/poetry tags rly late at night for some inspiration and through link and link and link i made it here and omg!!!!! i absolute love your prose/poetry. it's hard to find stuff i actually love anymore and the way you write is so beautiful. i'm just so stunned anyway i love you i love your work have a nice day <333 ily

oh man this is so sweet of you thank you so much!!!! <333 made my day aaaa i love u too !!!

[caffeinewrites-blog]

These are some things to remember. Sticky–note them to your wall, scribble them down on your palms but please, keep them in your heart and in your mind for as long as you can. One. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never please everyone. It’s cliché, I know, but it has to be said because we're takings risks, breaking our spines from bending over backwards too much. Two. It’s okay to not know where you’re going, what you’re doing; who to be, what to see. Even the greatest minds didn’t have it all figured out by the age of – Three. You will get your heart broken. Not only by boys, not only by girls, but by places, songs, faces you’ve never even met. Like your dream university, the one you built your life around entering, thinking that one day you would bleed the colors blue, maroon, yellow, or green. Your favourite animals going extinct. Not meeting a minimum to stay on top. Life isn’t smooth sailing but listen to me, Four. Your failures don’t define who you are. The scars they leave are there to make you human. It’s natural to feel like shit on days when it feels like the universe is against you. It’s okay, your feelings are valid. Cry when you need to, get angry and yell, but never – please, never put all the blame on yourself. You have tiny shoulders but big dreams and never, ever let your failures crush those. Five. Listen to the chocolate bar and take a break because – Six. You deserve to treat yourself every once in a while. A pint of ice cream, a movie marathon; you’ve worked hard so reward yourself with what makes you happy. Seven. The small things count. The way the ocean always returns to the shoreline, the bass line of your favourite song, your pet being excited to see you come home to them. The smell of freshly laundered sheets, the flow of traffic-free streets, the feeling of getting the crispy chicken skin. Remember the little things. Eight. Some people, no matter what they say, just won’t give a fuck. You can hand them the world on a silver plate and they won’t even bat an eyelash. They’ll take your world away and lock in a chest, throw away the key and make you start all over again. That is why you never leave planets and comets in the bones of another. Don’t make a body your gravity because if they leave, everything will fall like an apple from a tree. But I promise, Nine. There are still people who care. The friends who will listen to you cry past 11PM, sit with you on stairs, and hold you throughout all of it. The boy or girl who will love you for all you are when Nam Joo Hyuk is too far away. The family friend who you can take to prom because you’d rather catch up than make awkward small talk. And most important of all, the friends who will stand with you through all of it: through the bad, the good; the beautiful, and the really, freaking ugly. These are the people you can anchor your boats to when the tides are too high for you to keep sailing, and they will never let the waves sweep you away. Lastly, I hope, Ten. I can be one of those friends. Remember you can lean on me, tell me all your stories, and I’ll keep them locked in my heart only to return to you when you need them. Ten, we can take baby steps to get through everyday together, be on trainer wheels for as long as we need to until we’re ready to just go, and go, and go, but we’re also ready to come home. Ten, I’ll try to make you as happy as I can because I can’t see my universe without you.

a gentle reminder

[caffeinewrites-blog]

love. noun. an intense feeling of deep affection. love has eyes like starlight. they twinkle and sparkle brighter than sirius and polaris. the crinkles around love's eyes are like the lines that connect constellations together: linking, bridging, creating something beautiful. love has a smile that could rival moonbeams with how glowing it is. love's gravity pulls me closer and closer until all i can do is bask in the tides of their beauty. even the rarity of halley's comet has nothing on the way the curve of love's lips takes my breath away and leaves me awestruck. love has a laugh of spring, of tinkling bells and water flowing. 5AM dew resting on blades of grass and the light breeze of early morning. love has a laugh that reminds me of the calm before every storm, the sunset before the darkness. love has the sun's warmth on a chilly day tucked into their heart, not too bright and sweltering but just enough to give light and a sense of cozy. love holds a corona in their hands and i crave for those fingers against mine, spreading the fire that makes them glow like nothing else matters to me. love is the rainbows i wish for after the showers. they are a plethora of color in the sky and i can't help but snap a few photos because love is such a beautiful sight. love is one of my favorite things nature has ever been able to show me. love is colorful and simple yet powerful. love is the stars. love is the cosmos. love is spring. love is heat. love is a rainbow. love. noun. him.

i want to pick and gather all the beautiful words for you

[caffeinewrites-blog]

where do you study :o

come off anon then maybe i’ll tell you bc that’s a little private? sorry ;;

[caffeinewrites-blog]

oh you're 16!

I AM THE WORST AT REPLYING TO MESSAGES I,M SO SORRY

well i’m 17 now HAHAHHA

[anyway-skyway-blog]

'la'

la. remember the musicals we used to watch together? you always fawned over how the orchestra would tune their instruments before the show and how they always played beautifully after that. will we ever be that beautiful again?

lantern. remember how we used to sneak out of our dorms? you always waxed poetic claiming that we had a love that Shakespeare would write about. i never got to ask though, were we Romeo and Juliet or living a midsummer night’s dream?

label. remember how we didn’t need to know what we were? you always said you were content just to be us; there was no need to call us anything as long as we knew what we had was special. now, i know there was an us but were you ever ‘mine’?

lady. remember the promise we made when we were kids? you always hated the fact that your parents had separated early on in their relationship. we took an oath together to never be that kind of couple. we were never meant to keep that promise, it seemed. time passed and we grew apart; we never even made it down the aisle. broken hearts, broken promises- is this what it means to grow up? 

latin. remember when we fought? you always seemed to speak in gibberish when we argued. nothing seemed to get across to you anymore and it kept getting harder to understand your side of things. with each fight, the distance between us grew larger and you became a stranger. every night as a cried myself to sleep on our couch, i wondered- what could i do to make you less foreign to me?

last. remember what you said when i caught you two together? you said you couldn’t love me anymore and yet you asked that we share one more night. on the 31st of December we agreed to make us a thing of the past as soon as the clock stroke 2400 hours. there was something i wanted to tell you- just one more thing- but by the time i gathered the courage to open my heart, the new year had come. i pushed it all down, turned on my heel and left. it’s been months but why do i keep going back to that moment? late. “i’m sorry.”

[anyway-skyway-blog]

're'

remember. back when group messages were a thing, she had accidentally sent me one. i texted her asking ‘who the hell r u’ and she replied with a ‘HOLYCRAP WRONGNUMBER’ quickly followed by ‘but we can be friends hi!!!’

recluse. ironically, that wasn’t the first time i found myself in that kind of situation. my friends often set me up with strangers. they thought i needed to ‘get out there’ more. i personally preferred to let fate do its thing.

regret. i didn’t realise how much i was missing out on until i met her.

release. things weren’t going very well, on my end. our text conversations became my outlet and i started relying on her. soon enough, her empathetic replies and corny jokes became something i looked forward to.

revelation. i went to a party last night. i found myself drunk enough to make out with a stranger. yet, i was sober enough to realize that i was imagining how it would feel like with her.

return. our connection grew stronger as the conversation grew longer. ‘excuse me? i’m calling to ask for my heart back. better yet, would you let me have yours? i promise to take good care of it.’ ‘deal.’

ready. i just hope that whatever this is won’t going to end up like the last one. i wouldn’t be able to live with myself if it did.

[caffeinewrites-blog]

Im telling you this because i do not have enough courage to tell you personally but i really love you and i wish you all the happiness this world can offer. Always smile at me whenever we meet at school, okay? Because you're smile always make me fall for you all over again.

aaaaaa oh my god idk what to say to this ;;;; pls come off anon or say hi at school this means so much like this actually made my night ;( thank you so much [hearts]

[caffeinewrites-blog]

Remember When the ground begins to shake and the floors begin to crack; when the wood begins to crumble and the tiles begin to break, I will be there to hold you up and keep you from falling into the holes and the gaps. I will patch up the splits and take out the splinters that have caught onto your legs. I will bandage the wounds and remind you to take care; be careful; I love you. Remember When the world rests its weight on your shoulders and all its troubles on your head; when the fates tangle your strings and make it seem like there’s no way out, I will be there to slip under the Earth and press my back to her load so your shoulders and spine don’t feel so alone. I will lighten your burden so you can take a break to ice your bruises and wrap your muscles. I will take your hands and remind you to listen; stay strong; I love you always. Remember When it seems like the sun won’t rise and the darkness will never end; when you can’t see the stars and the moon and all you feel is cold, cold, cold, I will be there to take you to the highest mountains to stargaze and countdown to sunrise. I will give you the hands of every clock and let you watch as the minutes tick by as tomorrow creeps into say hello. I will let you wrap your arms around me and remind you to breathe; have faith; I love you regardless. Remember When the hurt becomes too much and the agony starts to suffocate you; when your hands start to look for the sharp edges and your body is screaming for an end, I will be there to catch the tears and listen to the cries that will fall from your lips. I will pick the silver from your fingers and give you my hand instead. I will trace my name onto your wrists, onto the scars and pains, and remind you to think of me; it’s okay; I’m here. Remember I love you the most.

your butterfly

[anyway-skyway-blog]

'sol'

sol. the moment she walked into the studio, i knew. i knew she was going to be the light of my life, my source of energy, the only warmth i’d ever seek. she was going to be mine.

solarium. she invited me over to meet her parents for the first time. her family was as kind as she was. they were friendly; they offered sweet smiles, mashed potatoes, and lots and lots of dirt on politicians.

solstice. the physical distance made the days without her even longer. the weeks spent by her side seemed too short. still, we understood the need for the proximity. she lived out her dream to travel while i stayed close to home, painting the sights she’d describe. 

solitaire. our correspondence grew less frequent. i’d be lucky to hear her voice twice in a week. it wasn’t even fifty-fifty- the probability of her still loving me. miles away with a job that hardly pays enough, the odds just weren’t in my favor.

soledad. being alone with one’s thoughts is a dangerous thing. it had been a month since her last phone call, the letter she was supposed to have sent was yet to show up- hang on. wasn’t that her at the cafe across the street? who was that man she was with?

soldier. she wrote about meeting a warrior. what she didn’t say was that the man had come home from the war and brought her to his bed one night when he wasn’t strong enough to resist desire. i was fine when i found out; i was a veteran.

solemnity. the moment she walked out of our apartment, i knew. i knew she was never coming back. she left my life and took the light with her. she was no longer mine.

[an-exotic-writer]

five word prompts

[inspired by this]

“actually… i just miss you.”

“alright, i’ll leave you alone.”

“and slowly… i was forgotten.”

“and then everything just disappears.”

“and where do i go?”

“anyone could tell from here.”

“are you finishing that or…?”

“are you stupid or stupid?”

“anything, just call me, okay?”

“bitch better have my money.”

“bro… that’s so… not cool…”

“but did you do it?”

“call me now. it’s urgent.”

“can’t you listen to me?”

“cross that. don’t answer that.”

“don’t even think about it.”

“don’t you dare walk away.”

“do it. i dare you.”

“did you think i forgot?”

“eventually… you just move on.”

“even if you still do.”

“everything will fall into place.”

“fight me, you attractive stranger.”

“for once, i need you.”

“for once… i was right.”

“for once… i was wrong.”

“forget i even asked you.”

“forget it. you fucking suck.”

“fuck’s sake, what’s your problem?”

“fuck off. i mean it.”

“give and take. that’s life.”

“great. perfect. nice. fuck this.”

“have you lost your mind?”

“hello? it’s me. i was-”

“hey… that wasn’t so nice.”

“here’s a glass of whatever.”

“how about a hug, hm?”

“how about you make me?”

“i haven’t forgot you yet.”

“i can’t be around you.”

“i don’t need you, really.”

“i don’t need this now.”

“is this your first time?”

“it’s just a cut, really.”

“it wasn’t me, i swear!”

“i said i love you.”

“just don’t fuck it up.”

"just… come back alive, okay?”

“just make sure you’ve eaten.”

“kick his ass for me.”

“killed him? wait, what, literally?”

“life really sucks. feel better.”

“letting go hurts… a lot.”

“let me live, will you?”

“no, i don’t need you.”

“nothing can hurt me now.”

“nothing matters anymore to me.”

“okay it was me… so?”

“people lie all the time.”

“pipe the fuck down, asshole.”

“please, you can’t die now.”

“please don’t leave me alone.”

“quiet. they can hear us.”

“quick! give me your phone!”

“quicker, you freaking piece of-”

“quit it or i’ll bite.”

“quit staring! they’ll notice us!”

"really? do i look stupid?”

“real smooth, tripping over air.”

“rise and shine, sweet thing.”

“rise and fucking shine, motherfucker.”

“seriously? give me a break.”

“so… what are we now?”

“so… did you miss me?”

“so… can we go eat?”

“so… when’s the next flight?”

“so… how did everything go?”

“sometimes, i wish you died.”

“so what? you did it.”

“time passes slower without you.”

“then what do you suggest?”

“the fuck? who are you?”

“then you tell me why.”

“this is not working out.”

“this isn’t what i wanted.”

“this is all a fucking disaster.”

“when did it all happen?”

“who knew you’d be here?”

“why do i even bother?”

“why do i love you?”

“why didn’t you tell me?”

“you’re just… so, so stupid.”

“you can’t be here now.”

“you look like an accident.”

“you really need to go.”

“you know who to call.”

"zero fucks given. next please.”