Safe and Sound

When I find a place, where loneliness doesn't exist, will you come with me?

[mun-days]

The Longing

During the quietest of moments, the thought of you lingers in my mind. I can still feel your fingertips pressed against the hills of my back, in the same way the Sun kisses the Earth. Let us speak of love— the wakening of my soul upon my lips as I say your name.

[mun-days]

To Think of You Is to Remember

There are times when my memory relapses, and the thought of you is lost. Maybe one day I will lay it all down— all of the futile attempts to keep you at bay, all of this love that has no anchor to keep it in place. Maybe one day, you will fade, or I will, and there would be no meaning between us; only our names will remain. There are times when my memory relapses, and I find myself only remembering you.

[mun-days]

January 22, 2022

I am writing this late. It’s been a few months since that one night, when I asked you, “Is it okay for me to like you?” It was a stupid question, really. I sort of said it in stage whisper. The words came out in an awkward but giddy way. Maybe it was the nerves. Maybe it was the alcohol.

You didn’t say anything for what felt like an eternity, but then you said: “Yes.” You held me tighter in your arms and, somehow, all of my irrational fears and doubts about us being together dissipated.

After all that has been said and done now, I wish you didn’t say anything, or pretended you didn’t hear me the first time. I could have said “Never mind”, laugh a little, or nag about how your music is always playing loudly—I could have done a number of things to prevent myself from being so foolish. Your one-word response weighs heavy on my heart now, more than I want it to and more than it should.

You’ve barreled through me without conscience.

And, deep down, as painfully as it is to admit, I know you think very little of me.

And still, I write about you. I think of you, always.

[mun-days]

October 31, 2021

To love you, I think it would be best to described as the ache in your feet, after standing all day. I want to be where you are, wherever that is. I want to see you but not from afar – maybe just across from where I’m sitting, or close in between the sheets. I’m tired of pulling back when all my heart wants to do is push forward.

[mun-days]

October 23, 2021

Sometimes I replay those nights over and over in my head. No borders between us. Skin against skin. Our drunken-state exchange of words. Our laughter. All I can do is wonder if there’s anything meaningful between us. There are days when we talk as if we are only good friends. There are days when we kiss as if we are lovers. I always fear the moment we wave our hands at each other when the day ends, not knowing if we are saying “see you again” or “goodbye”. We forget about the titles and labels. Have I ever crossed your mind when it is still bright outside? Is there anything that reminds you of me? Without realizing, I find it in myself that I can’t stop thinking about you. Against my better judgment, I continue to let my heart fill to the brim. And God, it makes me so feel so terribly sad and, at times, pathetic – to know that I’m fully capable of breaking my own heart by always giving it to someone who can’t see it, or doesn’t want to. I’m foolish for letting you in each time, knowing full well that you will never stop leaving.

There are days when the breadth of ambiguity hurts much worse.

[mun-days]

When You Ask Me if I Have Ever Been in Love

I’ve been told the well-meaning advice that real poets, whoever they are, don’t write merely of love, or the lack thereof, and if this is the case, then I’m quite the opposite – a dream or wisp or fancy, perhaps, a childish girl forever playing dress up with words too loose for her thin bones, spinning wildly in circles on her tiptoes. I’ve been stretching towards the same morning light that faces the same window in the same house, breathing the same air that you breathe in, and all the while, I think about how lucky the Earth gets kissed every day by the Sun. But the love I yearn for isn’t simply a feeling, an embrace of some sort, skin-to-skin, or limbs tangled together. I’ve been imagining the unfathomable meeting of us and how it’d shake me, how perfect in position the universe would be on that day. Perhaps you’re grown and responsible, while I’m still trying to grasp that version of me. Perhaps you’ve already found love once and lost it and seen the ugliness of that— and I would just be starting to understand what it’s all about. I’ve been telling the Gods that I will love forever. It will always be the reason that I don’t want to wake up in the morning and be the reason that I do. It will always be the only gift I have to offer— fingertips soaked with sharing it, ink-stained pages with writing about it. It will be the only tenderness that I’ll ever need to keep in my palms. When I speak of love, I’ll speak of you. When I write, I’ll write about you.

[mun-days]

The Improbability of Us

If I had met you at a different time when I didn’t try so hard to hide and fight the thoughts in my mind, when a war was already impending in the crevices and corners of my heart, maybe then I could have fought harder but for us. If I had met you under different circumstances when I could see everything as they are, as they should be— like the way your eyes interpreted life, maybe then I could have loved you the way you wanted to be, the way you imagined love for yourself. If I had met you today as I am, unapologetically me, an evolving being: swaying between healed and healing, slowly but surely learning new ways to go on and seizing all of my days, maybe then my first choice would’ve been a kind of love that doesn’t compromise, a love I should always have for myself.

[mun-days]

I Will Love You Quietly

There was a time when I thought my walls were finally coming down, slowly falling like the first snow or maybe it was my heart making space. There was a time when I realized the sudden crumbling— but it’s never that simple, it’s never just crumbling. There was a time when I thought I understood what it felt like to watch someone forget about me, or maybe I was the one trying to do the forgetting. There was a time when I learned how to chew and swallow my food, and while I do it mindlessly now, I still find myself choking on the potential of you, of us.

[mun-days]

April 6, 2021

It’s quite possible for people to feel the same feelings as each other. I’m not unique that I possess feelings that nobody shares on this planet, but I think what makes me lonely sometimes is that people around me don’t have the same feelings as me – to the same extent as me, and at the same time as me. And even if they did, I could never know. Even if we talked about it for an extensive amount of time, marveling at how wonderful it is to know that there’s someone who exists and is possibly living an almost parallel life to ours, there’s actually no way to tell if there’s a small decimal of difference in the shade of meaning or intensity. We’re not exactly the most objective judges of our own feelings but that’s what we do anyway, right? Sometimes we do it so mindlessly, like scratching a scab off our skin. I suppose that other people don’t think about any of this, at least not as regularly and desperately as I do.

And perhaps, what I’m really trying to say is that I just don’t want to feel so alone with my thoughts anymore…

[mun-days]

March 15, 2021

I can’t decide if I want to be in love or, instead, alone. But then again, these two things aren’t so different. They create a kind of joy and pain that are both inexplicable.

As long as I feel happy good and safe, that’s all that should matter. That’s all I want to ask these days.

And I’m afraid, terribly afraid, that I’m not quite there yet.

[mun-days]

March 7, 2021

I didn't let my feelings die for you — they simply dissipated when you finally revealed your true colours. I wasn't "lucky" because you liked me. However, I am completely and truly lucky that I realized I didn't have to force myself to stay with you. I am lucky because I left on my own.

[mun-days]

February 12, 2021

It fascinates me how human beings are capable of loving someone and then not loving them anymore. Sure, people change, but not in their identity as quintessentially themselves.

When you told me, “I love you,” I thought about how the ‘I’ means you, the ‘you’ that I came to know, and ‘you’ means me, the ‘me’ that will remain in your memories for some time. I still believe you only said those words to keep me, to convince me to stay— is it really possible to love someone only after a few weeks of knowing them? But sometimes, I think about you— against my better judgment—and I think, I used to love this person but I no longer do. Or maybe I just used to like you. Maybe I’m lying to myself because I still have love for you, just a bit. No, it has to be the other way around:

I love you, but I just don’t like you anymore.

[mun-days]

February 6, 2021

I liked you best when I first met you. I think that’s what usually happens when you meet someone for the first time. I like how you put on your best coat and showed up in front of my house. You opened the passenger door for me. You always did. I like how you tried. I like how you paid attention. I liked how you looked at me in the eye, but you also looked at me with your body language. I liked how you completed my thoughts. I didn’t have to choke up on my words trying to over-explain myself because you just knew without needing to ask. I liked everything you were and how you were waiting for me to accept all of you – almost as quickly as I kept taking your hand in mine.

Now, the idea of you has finally crumbled – who you are now is real, someone new, but unbeknownst to me. The person I thought I knew so well has disappeared or never existed. Your words don’t line up with your actions. You hesitate to say what’s on your mind, in case you might hurt me, but your silence speaks louder. We’re different than when we first met. I think that’s what people usually assume after everything has been said and done, but we’re not different, we didn’t change… we just know better.

[mun-days]

February 2, 2021

Tell me it was real. Tell me there was something so genuine, that I wasn’t just feeling it in my bones. Tell me that we were true, to ourselves, to each other – despite all the blurred lines and words falling on deaf ears. Maybe I should have spoken up more.

Tell me it was love. Tell me it was the closest thing to that. Not just curiosity. Not just an idea. Not just an admiration or a craving.  

The more I think about it, the more it was love to me. The more I gave love, the more I wanted it returned. The more I think about it, the more I believe that I felt everything all alone.

[mun-days]

January 28, 2021

I could call you names now. Maybe list a hundred reasons for why we weren’t right for each other. The way you pinned me against my own fears, the way I was dishonest and lost my voice trying to always listen to yours– oh, how sincerely sorry I am for keeping you in the dark—because I was afraid I could never be the light that you saw in me. You put me so high up on the pedestal, it was only a matter of time before my greatest fall. How little time has passed but how quickly things have changed between us. All beginnings have endings. But I’m hurt, so hurt because you and I barely started. 

[mun-days]

January 16, 2021

I like the way he makes me feel. I like how he makes me feel when I’m with him. I like the sound of his voice when he has just woken up. I like the way our voices gradually become softer when we talk to each other – it’s almost like we’re sharing a secret or waiting for silence. I like how I haven’t felt this way in a long time. How unfamiliar and new it feels. How terrifying and beautiful it feels. I like the way he brings a kind of joy into my life so effortlessly. I’m fearful, fearful of how quickly this started and how it could quickly end. I can’t stop smiling like an idiot. I don’t notice anymore, but people around me do. My jaw hurts sometimes. I like him, I like him so much. I don’t know what to do with these feelings but let them be. Let them stay.

Oh God, I hope they stay for a long time.

[mun-days]

December 26, 2020

On May 5, 2018, I wrote these exact words:

“I’m afraid that one day I’ll wake up not able to write or, maybe I’m afraid –terrified, actually—that one day I’ll wake up not able to reveal what weighs on my mind anymore, that I would finally surrender for I had enough.”

It is almost midnight, a brand new day, closer to a new year – I haven’t written in this journal in such a long time, and yet the words above are still the best possible way for me to express how I feel at this very moment.