estherrrrrrr

writing and yearning

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Instincts.

I’m not over you— not even close.

Something mildly amusing flickers across the telly screen, and before my own laughter can fully materialise, my head instinctively swivels to my right, as though you’re with me.

For a daring moment, I hope to catch a reaction, at least in my mind's eye— the way your eyes would soften and your features shift into that contagious, familiar grin I would still give my everything for.

It takes another torturous moment, for my heart to catch up with what feels like perfidious sight, only to realise you are no longer here.

The seconds tick by, they feel sterile and unfinished, like my conscience's perspective of time is unsatisfied without you, as if it yearns for smiling, fleeting instants which were destined for our confines.

Yet, I’m left struggling to hold on to, unable to let go of the shreds of your lingering presence in the air you left me with— because even now, my first instinct is still you.

please dont copy or steal :)♡

x

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Where's Our Peculiarity?

They furnished me a way of being before I had the tongue to resist it. They called it stability, called it sense, and somewhere in my half-hearted nods, it coarsened into truth. I learned to recalibrate myself without noticing, to soften anything that felt too distinct, too untranslatable, to exchange the unfamiliar contours of my own mind for a thing more painlessly recognized.

Now the environment bears a peculiar uniformity. The same convictions, refracted just enough to seem original, the same cravings, inherited and rehearsed until their origin dissolves. We speak in patterns that feel prewritten, move within frames we never consciously chose, yet somehow never think to catechize.

It settles into the normal, yet delicate decisions. A gamine who loves green says pink because it earns an easier smile. We pretend to like a song they don’t understand for silence feels more exposing. Thumbs hover over a message, then reshape it until it sounds like one that won’t be questioned. Clothes are chosen not for comfort, but for how little they disrupt. Laughter is delayed, then edited to match everyone else’s. Anger is diluted, made quieter until it no longer feels like anger at all.

It shows in conversations, in mirrors, in privacy. Lips part when answers feel certain. Disagreement is softened into almost-agreement. Expressions learn which faces are safest to wear. We scroll, we watch, we absorb— and slowly, begin to resemble the very things we consume.

And it isn’t imposed. That’s what makes it so arduous to name. No overt force, no visible erasure, just a gradual submission, a quiet attrition of what once made us singular, until individuality becomes something implied, but rarely embodied.

please don't copy or steal :) ♥

x

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Still Reaching.

I constantly uncover you in places you’ve never been—

in the way certain words hesitate on my tongue,

in the silence that follows when I almost utter your name.

It isn’t memory, not really.

It’s something incomplete, something reaching,

like the void you left between my ribs remembers you

more vividly than my mind ever could.

I don’t know what to do with this yearning.

It twines within me, restless, unsatisfied,

transforming even the briefest moments into reminders

of what isn’t here.

And no matter how far I place you from my life,

you remain. You linger—

not as the person I can no longer hold,

but as something I can’t seem to stop reaching for.

please don't copy or steal :) ♡

x

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Love?

The world categorises it as a feeling. A mere emotional state. A reaction.

As though the gripping, churning sensation in my gut the moment She walks in is nothing but a mentally experienced phenomenon.

I assure you, it is not. 

Not when all my nerve endings ignite as Her shoulder brushes against mine, or when Her fingers intertwine with mine in a “friendly” gesture, when She laughs that soft, pleasant, lilting laugh of Hers that makes my heart squeeze in a way that consumes me.

Is it a feeling when you physically ache for someone?

If anything, it feels as though there is a gaping void in my very soul, one that only She can fill.

Every fibre of my being yearns for Her, an affair I both love and hate— though poles apart. Love, because of the warm fuzziness that spreads in my chest and butterflies that erupt in my stomach, making my heart feel full, like a wizened bud blooming after the winter. Hate, because I detest how extremely vulnerable it makes me— how a simple glance from Her could absolutely demolish my composure, how the second Her eyes lift away from mine, I am left staggering, reeling, recovering as well as trying to convince myself I can proceed without Her, like an addict deluding themselves because deep down they know they’re too far gone. I know I am too far gone.

It’s like She can come between my conscience, and every rational thought flies straight out the window.

Her eyes are this beautiful shade of brown, like the roasted almonds She loves so much, and the way they glint when She talks about Her interests with so much passion ought to be criminal. They crinkle at the corners with this little smile that lights Her entire face up, makes my mind sing with glee, while simultaneously making my world plummet off its axis, like a train derailing from its track, obliterating any semblance of thoughts I might have at the moment. They have this authority over me— this force— that draws me in and can tug my gaze from across the room to meet Her own, construct a nearly palpable impression that weighs down on my reasoning and renders me speechless.

Her voice is a serenade’s finest competitor, a tune most bewitching. It takes the reins of my heart, making it gallop faster with each syllable She utters, silencing the havoc behind my eyes and dumbing the words on my tongue.

She is the very air I asphyxiate without, the sunlight that warms and brightens my day, the flame that wields the power to bring down woodlands and mansions, as well as cure the darkness I feel without Her.

Somehow, this pining, longing, burning, aching, and hungering for a person can be condensed and refined into a single word— love. Yet for Her, it is insufficient. In fact, even if I were to travel to all the ends of this earth, I doubt I would uncover the words to express the extent of how enamoured I am under Her spell.

So I shall settle for “love” for now.

I love Her.

please don't copy or steal :) ♥

x

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Pulled Under.

There is a kind of silence that doesn’t arrive all at once. It gathers without haste, creeps into the gaps between things— between what was spoken and what was meant, between the moment you reach out and the moment you decide not to.

At first, it feels like repose. Like loosening your grip on something you were never meant to hold this tightly. The world grows pliant at the edges, and you let it, because resisting feels unnecessary, for nothing is pleading you to stay where you are.

Sound changes here. It loses its elasticity, its urgency, becomes something distant and indistinct, as if meaning itself has chosen to step back and leave you alone with the absence of it.

You notice, eventually, how stillness begins to resemble belonging. How simple it is to stop calculating distance, to stop wondering whether you should be struggling at all.

And somewhere in this breathless quiet, without a clear instance to point to, you realize you could remain as you are— not held down, not forced, just no longer grasping for anything beyond it.

please don't copy or steal :) ♥

x