riria-writes

the fine print of my soul. (just silly poems)

[riria-writes]

puppet strings

It’s going to be my fault. You will be hurt and it will be my fault. You do not listen to me when I tell you to walk away. This is no reciprocal relationship. I am a parasite, my love, and you must walk away. Why won’t you walk away? You love me, you say. You don’t want to let go, you say. But can’t you see, it is so horribly unfair, this is a game and you are the loser. I am but a puppet on a string. If it is pulled I will choke you to death. Will you be okay then, when my warnings come to fruition? Will you leave me, taking a piece of my heart with you? Will you be able to walk away or will it be too late? Will my puppet strings be wrapped around your hands too? 

[riria-writes]

oh, to be a woman

I grew up not knowing what womanhood was beyond pink bows and fluttering ribbons. I did not become a woman upon the date of my first period but rather when I learned what could happen to me when I walk alone at night. I so desperately want to be something beyond prey. I want a touch that burns everyone that comes near. But God help me, for I want to be gentle. No, I am made to be gentle, nothing else will do. I want to speak, I want to write, but my mouth is sewn shut with uneven stitches and my hands are carved to hold tiny fingers, not a pen. He asks me what it’s like to be a woman and I tell him he should ask me what it’s like to be a doll. God, it kills me inside, this endless mediocrity that comes from my sex. I will remain two steps behind no matter how fast I run. Give me a knife and I will cut out the womb that marks me as inferior. What difference will it make? The pain of biting my tongue cuts deeper.

[riria-writes]

last summer

Last summer, I wanted you terribly.

The week I met you I stopped going to the temple and went to your house instead. I only drank out of soda cans if you were sharing them with me. I said it was because I couldn't drink the whole thing on my own.

I lied. I did it so I could pretend the cold metal was your mouth pressing against mine.

Looking back it was all horribly embarrassing, but I was young and in love and thought I would die before October. Being near you made me damn desperate. I hated and loved it in equal parts.

I hated and loved you in equal parts.

I wanted your fingers interlaced with mine more than I wanted water or food or air. I gladly would have locked myself out in the oppressive heat if it meant you would smile at me. You asked me why I was always sunburnt and I told you it was because I didn't wear sunscreen.

I wasn't sunburnt. You just made me blush.

I felt choked when our legs accidentally brushed but then I would do it again, and again, and again, savoring in the irregular thumps of my heart. I knew this would not go on forever. It came closer to ending as the days grew shorter.

I had weeks to prepare myself but chose to sleep in your bed instead.

August came and went, and I never saw you again.

[riria-writes]

i love you, i'm sorry

In some ways, love reminded me of pain- I’d considered them synonymous for most of my life, after all. But I never knew the true meaning until I met you. 

When your fist hit my face, I relished in the feeling of sweet, familiar pain. I looked in the mirror, at the ugly bruise blooming across my cheekbone, and pretended that it was a mark from a kiss that I had not been able to scrub away.

It was so easy, to pretend that when you raised your voice it was in passion and not in anger. It was so easy to make excuses, to tell myself that you were still as gentle as early days, when I ran one of my fingers down your scalp, parting your silky hair.

You had shivered then,  and I liked it. I liked that I could make you react involuntarily. I liked that you stayed with me even when you did not want to.

I asked you, to never leave me, in a quiet voice, my eyes impossibly large and dark. Even now I wonder what kind of future you could have possibly seen in them.

Don’t worry, you said, with a smirk that made my stomach flip and served as a warning for everything that was to come. You’re stuck with me.

[riria-writes]

"I could have gone a thousand lifetimes never knowing God’s word but I pray for whatever version of me does not meet you."

-words I can never say, pt 3

[riria-writes]

it's you that i love

We stand together, on a balcony, overlooking the lush green valley in the late hours of the day. It is a beautiful location, you remark. I think you are more beautiful, but I do not say so.

Your cheeks are the same shade of pink as the flower petals scattered across the marble tile. I wish it were me, instead of the cold, bringing that color to your pretty face.

You look at me.  You think I am not talking because I am tired. Yet I refuse to speak for fear that my love will seep into every word I say to you, permeate it completely until it is not my secret to keep anymore.

You turn to go inside. I do not try to stop you, for it is freezing and I know that I make for poor company.

There is a fire inside with warmer people around it, people who will offer you smiles and hold your icy hands. People who will do all the things I am not brave enough to do, and say the things that I can never say.

I continue to watch the sky, my eyes catching on the sun kissing the horizon in the distance.

I wish I were kissing you instead.

[riria-writes]

the perfect pair

If one of us dies first, let it be me.

Let it be me so that I do not have to experience a world without you. I will not have to speak to people who do not know your name. I will not have to sit on the porch and try to hold on to the feeble wisps of memory carrying the scent of your hair and your sweet smile.

And when you come to meet me, we will make a home in hell or heaven, and I will whisper quiet apologies into your ears, one for every second that you had to live on without me.

Let us be buried together, and perhaps the flowers that grow over our graves will intertwine like my fingers with yours. Perhaps our shared memories will make the buds large and beautiful like your eyes, the petals buttery soft like my curls.

Perhaps the people who pluck them will feel the ache in my chest when you laugh.

If one of us dies first, let it be me, and then let us both never know a single moment without the other until the sun ceases to rise and forever loses its meaning.

[riria-writes]

icarus

And perhaps Icarus was just a child in love. 

Perhaps he dreamed of a future that could not exist. Perhaps the blazing glory of the sun drew him in, closer, closer, until he could not see anything but that lovely light.

Perhaps as he fell, he did not regret the loss of his life, but instead the coldness that washed over his limbs once the sun’s embrace no longer cradled him gently.

I first wrote Icarus off as a pathetic fool whose hubris led him farther than his mortal body could handle. Someone who had freedom in his grasp and chose to give it all up for a childish dream. After all, it is nothing but idiocy to have everything in one hand and throw it away for nothing in the other.

I did not understand until many years later, when I stared into your eyes, that even if the sun burned me I would choose death rather than losing it. The cold depths of the sea were preferable to never knowing the sound of your voice.

I would have let our fingers touch once, twice, and felt the pain of a thousand knives in my heart rather than pull away. 

The brush of your hand was both the wound and the knife that tore it open again and again.

Loving you was worth the pain. Loving you was worth the missed calls and the late-night texts and the inexplicable distance between us, even though we were barely five feet apart.

I watched you from afar and thought,

Perhaps Icarus too, was just a child in love.

[riria-writes]

coffee, tea, or me?

When we sat down at the café, you were wearing a black turtleneck and a red scarf. 

I noticed, of course, because I notice everything about you. 

You asked me, coffee or tea?

Tea, I said too quickly to hide the fact that I had been staring at your mouth.

You went to the cashier, came back with our drinks. My eyes lingered on you the whole time. If you were the sun then I was a tiny sunflower.

I didn’t know you liked tea, you said, grinning at me. I wanted to brush my thumb over that smile, as if your joy could seep into my bones just by being close to you.

I looked down at my cup. I’ve always loved tea, I heard myself say. It’s my favorite drink.

I lied. It’s you I love, not tea. But I’d gladly drink the damn thing for the rest of my life if I could spend it all with you. 

[riria-writes]

"Some days I find it hard to blame Adam and Eve for the original sin. After all, if it had been you holding the forbidden fruit to my mouth, I would have eaten it too."

-words I can never say, pt 2

[riria-writes]

my rotting heart

It is late January, and we are watching the rain fall outside. I look over at you and hope you do not notice the stench of my rotting heart. 

You have not picked up on it yet, too absorbed in your own matters, your fingers pressed to a small piece of paper resting on your desk, eyes darting back and forth over small strokes of the pencil. Occasionally you will glance at me with concern, as if to check that I am not tired or bored of watching you. 

While you work, I sit there and rot, quietly, with a smile on my face. I don’t remember the last time you made my heart pound uncontrollably. For so long, it only beat for you.

Now, it rots for you.

Or perhaps in spite of you- it could not stand that it loved you so much and simply decided to self-destruct to save itself.

I can feel it decaying in my chest, a pitiful, small thing, worn down to hardly a quarter of its original size. It is blackened and disgusting. I cannot even stand to look, and I fear that you would not either.

Though, you are oddly apt at looking at the darker parts of me and not shrinking away. When you have stared into the depths of my murky soul, untouched by light for so many years, and chosen to hold it in your hands, how can I hide my rotting heart from you?

The words linger in my lips, push themselves to the tip of my tongue. Yet a tendril of that awful, decomposing thing that cannot be called my heart curls around my vocal cords and chokes me until I cannot speak.

It does not want you to know that it is disgusting. 

You will certainly turn away then. 

For who would want a perishing heart over a whole one? Who would choose half a girl when a full one stood right in front of them? 

People want what can give them the most value and I can offer you nothing but a half-broken heart that has rotted in your name. 

So, you will never know, until I die and they cut me open and deliver the thing that has killed me to you, and tell you, she loved you. She is dead because she loved you. Do you understand? 

Do you?

[riria-writes]

"You were always my dearest undoing, my sweetest punishment. I would choose death by a thousand cuts if they came from your blade. Lick my blood from my fingers and taste my devotion, my darling, while my lost soul kneels by your feet."

-words I can never say, pt 1

[riria-writes]

like father, like daughter

My father is a simple man. His god is money and his saints are success, found in business deals and cold rooms and mountains of paperwork. His temple is his office and he worships there from dawn to dusk. He does not kiss my mother when he comes in, he is only silent.

I am a simple woman. My god is you and my saints are my poems written in your honor, lying scattered across my floor, none of them in your hands where they belong. My temple is your body and I would gladly worship there all night if you would let me. I do not kiss you when I come in, I only yearn. 

[riria-writes]

my name, the ugly bruise

Many years from now, someone will say my name, and it will hurt you. 

It won’t hurt too much, don’t worry. It won’t hurt like hand sanitizer in a paper cut, like tripping and skinning your knee, like holding your breath for too long underwater.

It will hurt like pressing on a bruise that you didn’t realize could still ache.

And then you try to justify it. Justify the bruise, as it’s revealed. Rationalize the pain that comes, the ugly colors that marr your skin like splotches of dark paint. 

And when that day comes, you will not tell them of the stages that I graced with my presence. You will not tell them of the plaques bearing my name or the people that sing my praises like parrots.

You will tell them of the way my hair brushed the nape of my neck, of how I tried to be gentle even though I could not. You will tell them how I laughed, and how the sun turned the darkest parts of my eyes into honey. You will tell them how I spoke wistfully of another life, and how you did not believe in such things but listened to me anyways. 

You will not tell them that you wish I had stayed. Or that you had. Neither of us can remember who left first, or who loved more. 

We can only remember the murmur of two soft voices intertwining, like they were always meant to be together. 

You and I, I and you. Far from a perfect pair, a cursed one, in fact. We both knew that another life would not have saved us. We both knew that the ending would always stay the same, in every universe.

Yet, many years from now, someone will say my name, and it will feel like pressing on a bruise. 

-aria