poems.

who could ever leave me darling? (but who could stay?) -ts

[drunkensunflowers]

i will love you like the sirens are a church choir

s a / s h

[drunkensunflowers]

when i’m sitting so close to you i can feel your breath

i wonder if you know i’m going to replay this moment

in my memories for the next few moons

for the sound of your laugh is a sunday afternoon

your sparkling, devilish eyes make me delirious

the witty, back-and-forth banter exhilarates me

the sultry smile we secretly share is enough

to convince my exalted mind to give it all up

for more of this bittersweet paradise of lust and laughs

where it’s so hard to read your charming words and clever spurs

how could i ever decipher what this energy between us is

(i’m content in my ignorance so long this ends in a kiss)

everyone tells me i’m not allowed to feel anything for you but

don’t they know that telling me i can’t

makes me want to even more

so much so that it (you) (this) consumes my every waking thought

as you; calm and charm, play me like sport

but that’s just it

even if i lose the final score

the game was worth it. and more.

[drunkensunflowers]

you don’t have to call me tonight

even though it’s 4 am and blue

the night is cold and november

i smoke myself into surrender

you don’t have to call me friday

when the city lights blind girls

in the deaf club of lonely hearts

as i look for love mistakes to start

you don’t have to call me christmas

all mistletoe high and red romantic

dazed in the lights of the tyrant tree

trapped in the mirage of you and me

but you can call me next year in april

you hear the song and can’t not call

you drink too much and i am water

you think of me as you kiss her

call me then

when you realise that i am it:

a firecracker sunrise of pink

the cerulean ocean that sinks

call me when you realise you loved me

call me and let’s talk about today

with voices that betray our age

as i hear regret in your nostalgia

“what ifs” hang like a black dahlia

and when you finally call

i’ll smile a tragic ironic sigh

and perhaps write victoriously

about how you had but lost me.

4:03 am, call me, august 6th

[drunkensunflowers]

i wonder

if you think about me sometimes

even though you know you shouldn’t

especially because you know you shouldn’t

if you ever look at me and forget

that this isn’t supposed to happen

that you and i is strictly off limits

if you ever smile at me and wish

wish that we weren’t star crossed

scarlet lettered

wish that you could be with me

the way fire burns and people die

these fantasies are wild dreams

crazy and impossible

an imagination gone off the rails

reading too much into smoke trails

but the way you’re looking at me right now

(like i am the only person worth looking at

like i am the most magnetic thing alive)

makes me believe

that maybe i’m not so crazy

and maybe it’s not all in my head

and maybe

you should fuck thinking and wondering and reasoning

and just kiss me.

[drunkensunflowers]

maybe i should’ve known better

as your black jacket tight lipped

kissed me convinced me i was it

maybe i should’ve seen the signs

for your liquorice laugh and those

kind eyes were in a cloud of smoke

and maybe i was being deluded

when i ignored the crimson lip stains

instead of seeing the red flags

but maybe i was a lost romantic

wasting heart on a cold ghost

because maybe

you should’ve known better

than to play with a girl looking

for something to believe in

“losing my religion”

[drunkensunflowers]

my sadness simmers below the surface

of a gleaming face in worn places

i choke

barely holding it together at dinner

spilling all over at drinks

self-destructive at dance

this is lonely /

and i feel lost /

in a palace of self-loathing /

“help”

i write on the shower wall

it has faded as i put on my brace.

it has faded as i put on my face.

friday, 2 am, 27th july 2019. sad!.

[drunkensunflowers]

i write about other people now

i write about summer and sun and sex

about flings and fun and forgetting you

but sometimes

a friend of a friend will mention you

in casual conversation like it means nothing

and if it happens to be a day my heart bleeds,

the air is knocked out of my chest

and suddenly i remember everything

then, i write about you

and all the other people i wrote about

are cold, dusty prose

you, on the other hand,

are an epic, a tragedy, a sonnet and an elegy

today was a day my heart bled

and i saw an old photograph

so here we are.

but i’d like you to know

that i write about other people now

(mostly)

[drunkensunflowers]

condemn me;

pink skies

first kisses

slow dances

lost romances

are all the objects of my art

critics called it ‘tired’

and ‘uninspired’

as are

the smell after rainy dusks

the way you hold my hand

and the sound of mum’s laugh

but forgive me;

these subjects are common

because they are felt

sometimes

i do drown in lonely

midnights do feel magic

and poetry does exalt

art unfiltered

less unique

more unifying

join me;

[drunkensunflowers]

the yellow swing set smells like picnics and time passed

a map

a key

the most important moments of my life happened here

as i walk through the foliage

a secret

a song

the childhood haze has met the teenage debauchery

as i climb the jungle gym

a dance

a kiss

years from now the archaeologists will uncover

the grass our bare feet danced to

in the music of the falling rain

they will find

the bottles we thought our parents didn’t know about

wedged between the sunset and the unused cigarette

that you lit on the wrong end

each cough like a commitment to childhood

and an assertion of independence

2:30 am and we had our first date here

a firecracker paradise of easy laughter

drunken conversations under the banyan tree

about college and everything we wanted to be

the time we bitched one friend forgot to bring the wine

the same time my mother woke up at 3 am looking for me

the time we thanked that one friend for forgetting to bring the wine

pre game in the basketball court

our hearts dribbled by boys who were used to playing

post party sober up our legs dangling into the pool

every boy i brought here i thought was the one

but every friend i brought here reminded me he wasn’t

as we laughed our breakups away

flying

sliding

as i walk through my building garden

in a stupor of nostalgia

i see the little children draw dragons and dreams

on the ground with sidewalk chalk

and i see the memories i’ve carved out

with lipstick and glitter

on the trees i tried to climb

and the trees i found love under

i draw stories of reckless youth

no regrets can find me

this garden has seen me make mistakes and smile

smile smile smile

i’ve never been happier than in this

childhood haze of teenage debauchery

the yellow swing set smells like picnics and time passed

and for a moment i close my eyes and hope

at least in our memories, we last.

“gardens”

[drunkensunflowers]

can you see it?

can you feel it?

this? this? this?

the songs we know by heart know us back

they thunder through the night in your dad’s new car

with the scent of drive-thru fries hanging fresh

and as we laugh about love and light and lana del rey

you speed like we’re missing our redeye to nowhere

sitting there in that stolen perfect moment i swear

i felt god in that diner and its midnight scrambled eggs

with our glazed eyes and gentle smiles do you know

you looked at me and said that you were happy

and then spilled your coke float all over my pyjamas

the rain was falling

our hair was flying

i could see it

i could feel it

this

this

this.

midnight drives. thursday, 13thjune, 3:05 am.

[drunkensunflowers]

we sit in silence

years of knowing each other and not knowing each other fill the pages of this bildungs roman

the air feels warm as we smoke sunsets in your wooden balcony

my lips are still sticky from mangoes at your grandmother’s house

where we spilt filter coffee over cards and casual affections

and i think to myself

drunk on your parent’s rum and old photographs

that you are my version of a memory:

a coming of age story written in the language of

missed calls and words unsaid

(or) faith and room to grow

the comfort i find in you is

unwavering

across continents

you knew me at my cotton candy cute

and at my drugged destructive despair

here, we have

unshakeable honesty

silent love

i have known many evolutions of you

we have grown up watching us become ourselves

i can not wait to see the people we become

( on love, maturity, and long distance best friends )

[drunkensunflowers]

i am bursting with the love i have not yet given

i leave it

in hotel rooms i wish were homes

i look for it

in every smile laugh kiss shared between friends

i create it

in places it does not exist

my love has not found refuge in this cold

it searches and romanticises and dreams

and i can’t do this anymore

i call my wandering nomadic love a fear of commitment

and maybe that is what it is

but maybe the shiny flings and friends with benefits

are what i’ve told myself is what i want

too afraid to consider what i need

and maybe this wandering nomadic love

is a wasted vulnerability that falls on deaf ears

of boys who do not want it

the love i have to give overpowers me

so it must overpower those who do not want it

so i hold my love

lonely

cold

i cradle it in my arms

kiss it goodnight

and try to give some of it to myself

but i don’t want it either (self-loathing is unpoetic)

(but so is being unlovable)

[drunkensunflowers]

he asks me if i smoke

i pause; study his sunken skin and

try to determine which version of myself

i will be tonight

the shallowness in his eyes tells me

that he is not “trying to get to know me”:

he has already created me in his mind

and with each word i piece together

the manic pixie dream girl that

he so desperately needs me to be

sifting through the personalities like a closet

picking the one most suited to the occasion

a liquid taking the shape of any vessel it’s in

lately

the fabrication is almost instinctive and

i commit so earnestly to character that

somewhere in the act i lose myself

(whoever that is) (?)

[drunkensunflowers]

it is 2016 and i own all of myself.

i am wrapped in a warmth of ignorance and naiveté

it is 2017 and i kiss the boy i love for the first and last time

i kiss him and i give him a piece of this heart of mine

between lips i name him first boyfriend

he breaks my heart before i can blink

and as i detangle my body from his mess i realise

a part of me died in the labyrinth of loving him

it is still 2017 and i am a girl scorned

i try to kiss away the memory of first boyfriend

i throw a party and invite every boy he hates

i make myself the party favour

it is 2018 and a drunken daze disguised as consent took something from me.

the night is a haze of hands and hurt,

and suddenly, these days, i blame things on myself

the boys that promise to be different aren’t

and i feel…up for grabs?

my body feels foreign and cold, i hate it and it hates me back

the mouths i explore all still reek of first boyfriend

and my self-worth resides in the untrustworthy hands of boys

who treat me like i treat myself

and piece by piece i have become a dandelion  

a wisp of a girl who never quite became woman

there is nothing home about my own body

so full of smoke and drink you’d think i was trying to destroy it

it is still 2018 and i make my body a self-destruct button

last night i pushed his hand away

i said no and i meant it

it is 2019 and watch:

i am taking my body back.

[drunkensunflowers]

i don’t like making you feel important

so sometimes i pretend that this has

nothing to do with you

but i’m wary of “working late”s and missed calls

and it’s harder to lie to yourself after four drinks and a stranger

trust issues

[drunkensunflowers]

And maybe it’s because it felt like one of those nights – the kind you always remembered, the one you told your mom about, the one that felt like they were a beginning. Serendipitous. Kismet. When smiles sloped into shoulder touches on accident, and laughs fell like showers of blessings. From the first moment that I saw you walk towards me with that effortless confidence of yours it felt like you would come to mean something. And hey, of course I didn’t think it was love at first sight – maybe lust – but there was still a certain kindness in your eyes that drew me even more than my (almost overpowering) physical attraction to you. The night we met was a montage from a movie, a sonnet scribbled on skin, and a dream in a daze of destiny. It felt like it mattered. Even as I lived it, each giggle and side glance peeled back layers of my wariness and jaded cynicism. There was something in the air that tasted…different. Spring, after months of cold. And the way you looked at me, god, I swear, you looked at me like I was more than a girl in a dress on a blind date. You looked at me like I would matter to you. The first night people meet they have to break the ice at first but like I said, with you, it was instant spring. I’m not one to usually believe in the universe and signs and fate but that night I really did. I floated back home on a high, enchanted to meet you. And maybe that’s why the hurt cut so deep, and why I felt so blindsided, so stupid – because to me it truly felt like one of those nights. The kind that mattered.

meet cute with a ghost

[drunkensunflowers]

when you look at her

does your throat constrict

do you feel stupid and sick

do you reduce to just panic

when you talk to her

is every second syllable a struggle against confession

is each breath you take a balancing act of betrayal

is your laugh an instinctive defence of repression

when she smiles at you

can you remember the way we held each other

can you feel my delicate warmth still close

can you see in her lips our time together

because i still wake from nightmares

where her best friend bracelet bleeds me dry

for somehow the disloyal secret is spilt

drowning me in my palace of lies

how long will we keep playing this game

of charades and hide and seek all in one

where the dream of winning is sinning

but the price of losing is friendship undone

“how are you dealing with this unforgettable guilt?”