all the warmth, hanara

until nothing is left, until everything is consumed.

[likhanara]

One Marlboro red, please, (and his lips).

Withdrawal Symptoms, Likhanara

Withdrawal Symptoms

Withdrawal Symptoms is a collection of prose and poetry. Of love and destruction. Of succumbing to someone's cigarette...

Withdrawal Symptoms is collection of poetry and proses posted on my Wattpad account that you can binge-read for free!

[dailykafka]

— April 8, 1914 / Franz Kafka diaries

[likhanara]

[likhanara]

Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Franz Kafka

[likhanara]

nuns & the peace they carry,

sitting with them is thinking of dying

& not getting scared of it.

at confession rooms, when green lights turn red

above doors, is it blasphemy if I ask the priest

why a nun is not allowed to sit on their end

just so I could confess my sins without shame?

sometimes I want to kiss their feet

for forgetting the prayers my grandmother taught me,

& only coming back for the sculptures

& the perpetual silence before the bells ring.

on church pews, I wish kindness could be counted

& filled with, like tithes on baskets.

not alms, not charity parties.

so that somewhere, in between all this struggle,

a nun will not see that I have died many times

in the arms of someone's kindness.

Likhanara, June 2025

[likhanara]

[likhanara]

How do I say that I am not good at staying, that breaking promises is a prerequisite to getting my freedom back, that I specialize in forgetting names so I do not remember faces, and that I always look far ahead, wondering, wondering what another version of me awaits, far from the hundreds I have become—if I just go there?

Likhanara, May 2023

[likhanara]

Ilang beses ko nang sinasabi: ayaw ko sa pangalan at apelyido ko. Tuwing isusulat ko iyon sa papel, o maririnig na sabihin ng ibang tao, hindi ko na makilala ang sarili ko r’on. Ni hindi na ito pamilyar sa akin dahil matagal ko nang pinatay.

Matagal na rin akong nabubuhay sa mga pekeng pangalan. Parang nangungupahan na palipat-lipat dahil hindi mahanap kung saan ba talaga nababagay ang buo kong pagkatao.

Baka nga hindi ko pa lubusang mahal ang sarili ko para tanggapin ang mga nakaraan ko sa tunay kong pangalan.

Baka nga masyado pa akong estranghero sa sarili kaya hindi ako makauwi.

Likhanara, June 2024

[likhanara]

teach me how to be those things

Likhanara, March 2020

I'm afraid of sunrises, beautiful things and pop punk songs from 2000,

of aesthetic photographs you might find in your grandmother's closet,

of sharp things and voodoo dolls hidden under beds,

of angelic voices that can calm oceans and drown city noise.

of cigarettes and alcohol that taste like peace and silence.

And you laughed when I told you the things I'm afraid of,

and you stopped when I told you that I’m afraid you might find a person

that looked like sunrise and sounded like 2000 pop punk songs (balanced, beautiful, madness).

I’m afraid of aesthetic photographs in orange filters, 

of short-haired girls in skirts and baggy shirts,

Baby, I don't do aesthetic.

I do photographs in black and white with my back facing the lens.

I capture naked shoulders kissed by the sun,

apples in skinny, white legs barely hidden by white sheets.

Darling, I’m not the sharp things you use to carve my name on your wrist,

nor the voodoo dolls you kept hidden since you were six.

I am the soft pillows you hate for comforting you,

and sunsets with distorted colors of soft pink and blue.

You have always hated anything soft and pastel

but you love anything that can drown bus horns

and hundreds of feet walking in your head.

And I can't do that,

I can't do that,

I can't do that.

What I can only do

is to be jealous of cigarette butts and bottle mouths you kissed

in exchange for slow and unnoticed self-destruction.

I am jealous o the things that can save you,

and I hate myself for not being able to.

***

This is part of Withdrawal Symptoms, a collection of poetry and proses posted on my Wattpad account that you can binge-read for free. Link on pinned post.

[likhanara]

cigars, magic, and you

Honey, you are the cigarette I swore to never taste but found myself craving for more after that one curious risk of consuming you. I found myself wanting you between my fingers, tucked in my left ear and in my lips. I found myself keeping you in my pockets and away from anything that can destroy you. Sure, menthol and vanilla rolled in sticks is fun, but when your soul stuck in your body collided with embers folded in mine, we became the cigarette not consumed by lips but with friction our skins can only make—honey, we just became the magic without its trick.

Likhanara, May 2020

This is part of Withdrawal Symptoms, a collection of poetry and proses posted on my Wattpad account that you can binge-read for free. Link on pinned post.

[likhanara]

How to Wash Clothes

Likhanara, January 2024

Rage is hand-washing my white clothes

where each brush is an attempt to come clean

and close to the source of my wrath.

for what these fibers are made

are also made by madness.

Watch a silkworm sew its cocoon,

each thread a spit of its unnamed rage.

Watch it hide itself and not turn into a mammoth

so it could land on my palms—a white cloth

made for mad-brushing, as if it could scrap

the claws that have cocooned on my chest.

Once I finish washing my clothes,

my mother will notice my red-stained palms,

well I could just say I brushed too hard

my skin have been scarred as well,

as if I did not spit curses,

as if I did not self-induce the pain.

***

This is part of Withdrawal Symptoms, a collection of poetry and proses posted on my Wattpad account that you can binge-read for free. Link on pinned post.

[likhanara]

[likhanara]

Clive Cussler, Shock Wave