Edited by: Lasya Adiraj
1
Hands on the clock tick beside the bed, with every day a stringed routine.
Thousand years of a knife deep in your eyes, dotage just a fleeting glimpse.
They said you were the cause of your ruin, but they never blamed Rome for the carnage of the past.
They’re just afraid of you on your throne; let it bleed your highness, let it bleed.
She was just a fleeting thought, a smudge of ink on your diary.
She was just the moonlight that you waited for every night.
She was just the drunken confessions in your texts.
She was just the song on the old broken record, she was just her.
Was she just her or a miracle you keep running from?
Sunlight streaks in your hair and a warm smile keeping you afloat.
Do you want to go back to the dreams in your hands? Where you’re a beauty of the present,
with words you held close to your chest burning up with every ray that you feel.
Where every step you take is a path written in history.
Do you wanna see the sun rise, my dear, or do you wanna see it set?
2
Four petals in your hands of a story you never told, with a future you wove in each.
one, where the endless skies felt like safety in a raging storm;
two, where your hands sealed an eternal vow over a broken chalice;
three, where your heart lay bare with souls you bloomed;
and four, oh four, where your shattered edges bleed in hope.
Scattered papers in a language that felt foreign laid across from you,
remnants of a broken home in between your sheets.
Sand, leaf or the smell of a forgotten bitterness locked beneath you.
Sour were the words on your tongue from a script that was written for you.
A question in your mind ringing like the school bell “Tear these apart, would you finally belong?”
3
Eyes open, strings broke, her gaze travels along with the shooting stars
Across bloomed meadows, vast oceans, skyscrapers and city cars
Notes to herself hidden within her charms
The lost sound of a forgotten lullaby echoed from within her memories
Cravings for a soothing hand, a gentle hug and a proud look trembled
from within her heart
Eyes half closed, the reel in her mind starts spinning uncontrollably
Transitioning back to a fallen youth
Lulling herself into a false sense of security
Words of her menage weighing her down
Shutting her down with a firm hand
Her eyelids feel heavier with each passing minute
Her desires tangled in her abode
Eyes closed, the sudden dark embraced her, startling her
Her control spinning, fading into the five rivers
Labored breathing and anxiety-ridden canals
Dismayed at whole full words
Venom in her words concealed
On her knees with an impaled dagger in her mind
Her eyes remain closed
Dear Lord, anoint her again, maybe then her sins would wane.
4
She hasn’t written in so long, her hands have forgotten how to hold a pen.
Take her back to the days when she could hold the pen as an armour, the pencil as a sword and erase your name off my textbooks.
Take me back to when the ink that bled in my notebooks still held the cries of her raging soul. Where does she go now that every word seems stuck in time, my words no longer hers, with a future watching her every slip up?
Whispers in her ears belonging to hands that found her in the twilight glow.
“Do you think you deserve to be loved?” “No” she says, with a conviction, with a lack of hurt, that doesn’t sting.
not anymore.
For how many times had she heard the word?
“Why?” She heard the question in her ear clear as the setting sun’s path.
“Because I loved you in colour when we were meant to be gray” she whispers back
as the light fades and the colour seeps back out into the ocean.
She thought
Don’t say my name like you can hold the shattered edges of me.
Don’t say my name, like you would sit on the floor with me.
Don’t say my name like you could see me, lies held between my tongue.
Don’t say my name like you can hear the pieces of me I place on the empty casket in my dreams.
Don’t say my name like you can trace the hard outlines of a tortured past.
Don’t say my name like you can wash away my sins with your fingertips.
Don’t say my name.
Don’t say my name like you could love me.
Cause if you do, I’ll start believing it.
And what a great catastrophe, to believe I deserve to be loved.