Italicized Love

Just let me twist your arms, your legs, and dissect the ensemble in you. Let me rummage through your bones, and unscrew all your joints, and tickle your mouth, and finally feel your heart. But don't push your heart into my hand. Let me inspect it first, let me play with your keys, let me joke with your peeves. I can unceremoniously discard you from the spaces between my fingers, but I won't. Let me bend your knees and your elbows, let me see through your contact lenses, let me breathe through you. Leave me in your library. Leave me in your lexicon. Leave me in the depth of your consonants and vowels. I'll drum my fingers on your freckles and tickle your spine without you knowing it. You're funny.

But, darling, as I backspace through my nonsensical jargon, don't let go of me. You'll be my beacon for some time. You'll be my safeword through the coughs and headaches. Be my anchor—make sure I don't always lose myself in these crosswords. Magnify my movements, italicize my locomotion, lazily drawl your analysis of me as we daydream in camouflaged pillow forts, but don't treat me like a pet. Play me whimsical music in the silence. Don't let me dangle alone from my noose. Join me in my frescades, but not always. Look through my telescope when I ask you to, and I definitely will. Be my poet and be my daily news. Give me permission to tattoo litanies and fairytales on your milky ribcage, and under your wrist, and somewhere on your ear. Be my duet partner, and come rushing with me through the forest. Pen me with undivided attention and undiluted love. Don't argue that I'm impassioned about this—don't take it away from me, and don't abuse your freedom. But—and there is always a but—feel free to clamor with me. Opine about my lifestyle, my wardrobe, or the way I laugh. Frustrate me, frustrate yourself. Be human. I won't hold you back if you be you.

photo disclaimers—credits: x x

You and Your Six-Shooter

So he's been absent for a while.

His movements are cool, but his shoulders are set high and his eyes—those unreadable hazel eyes—are unusually bloodshot. He casually scans the room, then hunches down to forge something from his beat-up backpack. Sitting on his head are dark curls vamoosing away from his plastic headphones. Right now, it is lunch. I am four tables away from his lonely one.

I don't think he sees me looking.

But I may not be looking so closely, really. Because when he pushes his chair back and it creaks harshly—and nobody still takes note of him—he apprehends everyone. Everybody in the cafeteria doesn't observe back, and in that second he begins to carry himself up with his arm still deep in his bag he looks in my direction. This is the first time I look at him in the eye, and when I do his eyes are brimming with tears, and something clicks. He tears the moment away; I am bewildered. He stands up, drops whatever he was holding back into the abyss of his backpack, zips it close, and walks to the exit as he turns his head away.

Something churns uneasily in my stomach as he strides out of my vision and out into the hallway. I heft crumbs of my lunch into my mouth and stand to throw plastic into the nearest bin. As I deposit my tray, I can't help but think of what he was reaching down for. Probably just a book, or money. But he seemed so hesitant... and angry.

So I march to the restroom to make myself more presentable for the next class—thoughts still running through me like a sickness—when there's a scream.

A scream.

It reverberates through the room—a majority of us either sits or stands still, and one scream multiplies into half a dozen. Then I think everyone can hear them now. The bloody screams flood our ears like urgent knocks against expensive wood. They rain down and through the air in a staccato beat. I am trembling in fear before I know it.

Then the first shot rings in our ears so vividly, disrupting the ice among our stances. In a syrupy second my heart thumps dangerously in my ears. I see people panic.

Another bullet cuts the air, cuts through somebody's body. Somebody's life.

I run. Jesus Christ, I run.

I dash to the door with everyone. It leads to the trellis. The guard isn't by the gate but an alarm is on. People hurry into the laboratories, the library—anywhere—while I fumble for my phone somewhere in my satchel. Just then my phone vibrates in my hand, kind of matching my distress. I take the call in the art room, falling under the teacher's table on impulse where I hear nothing but my serrated breath and the door sliding shut, just like my eyes.

"Hello?" I answer the call.

"Mel? Mel? Where are you?!" It's my friend, Krista, whose voice screams fear. I understand.

"Krista, I'm under a table. Art room. Where are you? And what the hell is happening?!" But I think I already know. And I think I already know who.

But why?

"Frigging boys restroom." A delirious laugh. A breathy pause. Stay calm, Krista. Keep it. "I'm with Reese and his friends. I think Jill is here, too. There's a psycho on the loose, Mel, and we're presuming this psycho's a friggin' student." My breath hitches. No. I begin to say something but she cuts me. "Now listen, Mel, I—"

And she's gone. Too fast.

I don't want to listen to her screams. Or Reese's. Or Jill's. So I turn my cell phone off although I could just dismiss the call, and I imagine how she must have looked like in the restroom along with her boyfriend—who I know must have been holding her tight—and Jill, who just wanted to get out of high school like most of us do. Then the image fades. I rub my palms on my jeans and dig for my inhaler.

Then I realize I should have locked the door, and now I'm in the middle of muffling a colossal cry. The art room is seriously stuffy. It's located by the garden, and there aren't much trees to obscure the view from the window. I remember how the garden looks like as I shut my eyelids close. Its beauty sits there peacefully as the student population dwindles in a massacre. The world for now is a terrible furnace, an oven, and the witch is looking for some kids to eat. To destroy. I try to recite a silent prayer, but I stumble clumsily on my own words. I've heard some pastor once say that your vocabulary doesn't matter while or when praying, but my tongue is dry, and my beliefs are in a heap of ash. I may be dizzy, and I freeze once again.

People scream by.

People come in.

Hide, hide, hide, I think. Jesus, people, hide. 

We all hide. We are all one breath.

Our predator still arrives, of course. It's inevitable by now. And all I can think before I die is, Why, Robert?

Why?

Your Science

So I'm going to be violent.

I dip your framework into white paint, and I dangle by your side, my nose almost dipping with you. The walls tremble, and the can of paint sways with my profanities as I stammer to call, "STOP!" You're almost there, because I hear you singing. I stand back and watch you shoot through and spin around, downing all the paint like you said you would, and soon you will be ivory. We are ivory, now. I clamber up the blotches of black, and I actually feel your reaction in me. My pulse tickles my ears, and your eyes trek through mine, and I feel like dynamite, and I feel pretty. Your tongue is a lexicon as you whisper the world to me. You plead me to come to life, and I do — I've wailed through the process, and now you're my bones and my flesh and my blood, zipping and zapping through everything in my system, in my systems. You drive my mitochondria, my cells, you are my neuron, and I bury my words underneath butterfly kisses. I am light and happy, true and quixotic, fond of your science. I trample down the stairs and find my hastily discarded words. I dance myself through and in them. You strip me of them, and I am still whole afterwards.

So here's a short description. Of you. Your eyes are illuminated with warmth, and I can't hear ANYTHING — it must be twelve, where is my clock? You are my alarm. Your lips are rushing with blood and keeping down words, but don't shorten your dictionary! I am in awe of how your lower lip is cherry, and how it can keep all... those... words... Your words are foolish and young, but I am trapped on my own consent. Your palms... your hands are gauche. You know how thin-skinned I am, regardless of what that means to you. Your hands are my phantoms. They ghost over me, and I am almost overpowered by your presence, but your palms are gentle when they land. They land to soothe me, to erase the tears, to accompany my hands which, no, you do not ignore. I like holding hands. I like holding your hands.

inspired by this

from

Prayer

It was the bothering humidity that had tried to push her eyelids down, but she couldn't feel them lock into place as the day shot down into night, and the moon was alive and the humidity, yes, still was too. She laid her heels down next to her pale feet, and her hair dangled sadly around her face and down her shoulders. The wind blew through the windows and the entrance, the tree giving her music as its leaves rustled in her ears. Her makeup was a mess, she knew, with all the tears and rain. But she will never know how she had always triumphed an ugliness people anticipated to see, because when she dashed away and sobbed and felt utterly and devastatingly alone she was still pretty. No, not pretty, but beautiful. Never... plain. Her gown bled raindrops, and as she gasped for air she tore off a part, and another part, of her infamous gown.

Her lower lip quivered as a breakdown hummed around. Her breaths were commas, and they were ragged ones. Trying to collect herself, the leaves rustled on some more, and she relinquished almost half of her meticulously prepared attire for comfort. Her canvas has been brushed with violent colors, and she couldn't shield it. She couldn't improvise a cover. So she ran. To his—their?—tree house. She had spun around streets and found it in the midst of an unpleasant drizzle accumulating to rain—a whimper accumulating to a wail—and nimbly but carefully rose up the familiar ladder after shooting her worn out heels through the entrance and into the blank half-time abode of a dearly missed face. She had breathed the strong panels of wood around her, hoping the joy of a hundred memories would come tend to her, and yet—she almost expected this—all she felt was nostalgia as the boastful rain tumbled down from the clouds. And she wished all the melancholy she knew would vanish down all the gutters throughout the street. 

The rain came on some more for quite some time. She tucked her knees under her chin, and although the heat felt almost lost and unusual beside the rain's gloom, it felt golden. The world felt golden, and she wiggled her toes as it tickled the wooden floor. This was the dance floor she knew. And hey, it had no disco ball, no Top Forty either, but it was home—it was the sight of droopy trees and the soundtrack of her thoughts. She had abandoned it. He had then later abandoned it, too. But she had sped back to each and every moment spent in the funny, sticky heat and humidity of this treehouse. She wasn't weak, but she was troubled, and she missed out on everything too damn soon. She missed this, missed him, and just sitting down inside felt like a dream and a wish. Wiping her face with clean cloth, she scooted closer to a window and drank the tears of the evening sky, praying—oh, so, praying—for freedom. And a chance. A chance for what? For the space around her to stay there, and strength—dear God, strength—to know better. And she felt like she did... But then she wanted all the acid off her tongue. Please.

A mutter. A whisper. A half-broken cry. Then a silhouette crushing down into a fetus, and breathing, then sleeping. But not forever, not yet.

"Amen."

Amen.

Soup

When I look out at the sea, though, with its majestic foyer of blue-green waves that runs throughout the panorama, I almost fall off from the crust that locks my toes down and my breath breaks into ice before I need to cough it up. It’s like blood gushes everywhere and my seams fall apart till each crevice of my body falls into the sea. I can feel the soles of my feet tingle with the salt, and my eyes burn as I bask in the midnight moonlight. My watery stutters are closing in on me and summoning me further into the sixty seconds before it is actually a minute after twelve. My lonely lips sting with delight as I get to sip the debris of mermaid songs, and my chest heaves with my limbs and my limbs crawl through the dark blue sweaters knitted together around the swollen statue of me. I am a phone call at 1.38 in the morning in between an interlude of cookie bites and coffee, coffee warmth. My tongue tangles in the salt, my gums bleed in effort. My teeth dance in harmony. The juxtaposition of my skin and of the ivory light of the goddess that floats on the bellies of my friendly clouds rises in comparison. My lungs are a choo-choo train. My eyes are struggling men looking for their train to France. I clamber on wave after wave, I reap my goddess’ light. A warmth not too far from those early morning coffees steels my hands and my feet, crumbles the ice down to my core from there. I am a sudden conundrum within very little time; I think I trouble all those people watching in the sidelines! I am coming back there, my dearest – that is what I say. I talk to this girl in a sunny dress, her hair a surprising combo of lovely dawn and mesmerizing sunset. I gulp with difficulty before the walls till I find my footing on hangers and hangers of winter clothing. Winter? It isn’t here yet, ma’am, I say. I am caught off guard when a merman rises from the sea and steals my feet. I have lost balance, I am slipping from my dear consciousness, I am soaring away from the cookie bites and coffee till I am not a 1.38 phone call. I am a house, this is my house. I am in a world of sea, finally. I can breathe without irritating my neighbors with a cough of ice and nothing but contemptible ice. I am rusting into water, huffing and puffing into salty sea. My eyes are the sea and my feet are the sand, and the corals, and the land. I am going to France, and I will bring you there… maybe? Maybe.

September's Finale

Last Friday the Avatar: The Last Airbender’s spin-off THE LEGEND OF KORRA had aired with surprisingly two episodes across Asia while I incoherently tweeted about my favorites’ debuts on TV. Not less just fifty minutes before the premiere the cable was pretending to be dead and I was plunged in an ephemeral pall caused by the pessimistic feeling that it would not come back before the very much hair-standing series of which I have been awaiting for months and months. Now, I am supposed to be reviewing for an emphatically long quiz on cells for tomorrow, but I wanted to record a few happenings of which were quite enjoyable, and the record had already started with Korra’s heavenly intro pre-October. But I will still study afterwards this update!

My mother and I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and I had awkwardly yet almost boldly explained the reason why Perks is rated R-13. Basically the book would be the same if they were rated like movies were. I also rambled on about how people should not act immature about the scenes in both the book and its movie adaptation, because seriously. Anyway Perks was emotional and by “emotional” I mean exhaustingly enjoyable and captivating. And as two older teenage girls giggled on about how cute Logan Lerman is and why this and why that (since one of them apparently did not read Stephen Chbosky's work of brilliance), I clung to my mother’s arm and thought of many things, which I admit did not exclude the attempt of figuring out what personality type Charlie has and the probability of a high wave of the online statistics of Harry Potter/Percy Jackson crossovers via a number of writing sites I admittedly tarry around for fanfiction from other fandoms. I argue that some aspects from the book weren’t so stressed about or did not even appear in the adaptation, but overall I’d given Stephen a thumbs up and a friendly smile. I should also mention how beautifully blessed Ezra Miller is with the audience’s obvious infatuation with him summed up by their cheers, but I’m handing it over to you to dream about until you see the movie (if you haven’t seen it yet).

But before Perks had caught my full attention I was at Fully Booked, hissing around lest someone grab the SIGNED COPY of John Green’s bestseller The Fault in Our Stars. My mother was of course hesitant about getting it for me since I already own a NOT SIGNED COPY of the book, but she eventually did. I wriggled around with my hands across my face, a tingle of the Nerdfighter sign racing through my fingers. Then en route to a nearer mall after a quick respite in the house, I replaced Owl City’s The Midsummer Station with Ocean Eyes. It was a bound to safety and relief, for I had needed it.

One significant character from TFiOS is Augustus Waters, and I just had to add: I also love metaphors and fear oblivion, Gus. I feel comfort through your sentences through Hazel, so thank you.

Today a book and the cutest bookmark were purchased. Think Shakespeare and a flower, getting ready for October. With a new month comes this kind of unpredictability I both dread and dream about. Let's do that together, hopefully with less worrying.

The following month, again, okay! Good evening, good night.

Blind Them With This

Despite how perilous it would be if it continued on pouring, I like the rain. I like rainy days and petrichor. Although nights sabotaged by rain may worry me at times, I can never say I do not enjoy the company of the sound of water falling from the sky and the smell of it, the atmosphere. The rain is an inspiration, and when thunder starts knocking on the front door, I do not fear. I like the shout of the heavens. Oddly it comforts me more than it should.

An archive for my feelings - that is what I desperately need. I can't seem to collect them all, tuck them in somewhere safe and private every other day. I am a scattered mural stretching my arms as if they were wings, but I am apterous, and it couldn't suffice! I dream of sunny mornings of plates of bacon but I also do dip my head into reveries of tucking myself in a bed of handwritten journal entries, cotton blankets, and a hazy whisper of elsewhere. I don't really know, I really don't know. I'm just a bundle of question marks. What happens if I fall from a cliff to a pit of flames and waves? Will I ever redeem myself from letting it happen? If I could blame the propinquity of madness, I would. But I can't for I had promised myself that I am in control of my own steering wheel. I could parry these haunted circuits, but I did not and I do not know why.

Run, they told me. Run like the wind. I ran into pale moonlight and whirls of claustrophobia. I fell apart under a garden of pending ambition. What do I do now? Do I dream?

Yes. No.

I feel defeated. My hands feel defeated. Marks of teeth and cold calluses wind around my hands and arms like my conscience. I can't fathom, I can't let science explain this one. I spot a fortress of breathing blood in my body. I sniff a scarf of trees and rivers, and it is never the same. Yet I could not be the same. My veins burst with adrenaline and my cough plans to outrun my heartbeat. And my smile, dear, is terrible. I, people, have scarred it maliciously and have planted battles on it. I cannot cancel my dreams; I cannot cut them in half and save the latter part for later. I do not go back. My spine is aching. My eyes are lost. My lips are searching for a kiss I've never won. I had no competition but the foretold way of how events sequence. I am in bliss somewhere in between these lines, in between these mad trains of thought. Dear God, my thoughts are malarkey! My doings are its quintessence! I am but a figment of a girl's imagination, aren't I? I am spiraling into her disappearing childhood memories. Bring me back! Am I not of import to you? Haven't I nourished your mind and heart in lieu of leaving you with blank pages? Do I not give you something to think about? Oh, my panic. She must have felt it, and it should've been heavy on her, so she had unceremoniously burned it to the ground.

But it's still here. With me. In the ashes of her memory.

Chalky Throat

and though the embers are new, whatever you do, just don't let the fire die

From slapping sinew to cracking degrees, she pirouetted like a swan across the hollow stage. Her trailing ribbon of aquamarine sequins floated above her head as her chalky skirt and opalescent arms diced the air in swift precision. Dredged in rosy daydream, stuck in an aquarium, the auditorium of Gothic Orchestra sang no song but the dance of October. The spines of thousands and thousands of books have graced the tip of her fingers. She couldn’t see; her eyeglasses were missing and her head was tumbling and her heart was crashing to her feet and oh 
                           God oh God someone please catch me–

Catch! Caught. I-She caught herself, found her heart, and then twirled some more. Composure. She watched her shaking fingers tickle the ghosts, lavishing them with secrets to keep. She felt diaphanous, so naked in the two or three stage lights. When she’d breathe, she’d swallow an ocean. She could already feel the overwhelming bedlam of the crowd, the cheer not so collective. She had swallowed a fire, wanting to give up, but nothing. Nothing but a nauseating rollercoaster on life. She tripped – almost broke – on her own feet. She followed traces. She followed ghosts. She followed embers. Trying to swallow, then swallowed, couldn’t choke, will not choke. 

She was better than this, still.

Icy Drumming

His spindly legs prickle even under the fluorescent light, with snow in between his fingers and his heart drumming in his ears, knocking on his ribs with such stamina he himself couldn't fathom. His coat rises with each breath, one inhalation feeling like his last. His tongue is ribboned with snowflakes, daggers of icy water creeping down and down his throat and swimming in his peanut butter and jam-rimmed belly. It is futile. He couldn't fight. He couldn't stand and battle the men. Those snowmen in the snow world of a house. He cants his head and finds his clawed hoodie, his barely shielded head, in the low mirror. And oh, the sore of his shoulders, slapped with loose rhythm by icicle hands. A pained groan escapes him and the room shakes, he thinks. The bathroom trembles with belatedly prophesied transformation.

"No," he croaks. First the ceiling grows roots, and a chandeleir sprouts, accompanied with more swaying and the sound of ice bumping and tinkering. His breath quickens, and when he tries to fold his legs they cower and collapse in front of him, betraying him. But then he still initiates to move although it hurts, because he doesn't forget. Those fairytales. Those myths. The truth all along. The slow yet deadly gain of ice on his flesh will hurt a million times more than the ache he feels.

By the time he is in the mimicry of standing on both feet, the bathroom has shrunk, with the ceiling thickening with ice and daydream. Later, the floor will breathe with the snowmen and he needs to get out before the walls and the floor do, too.

With his head down he miraculously manages to squat and pass through the door with his whole body still, as he knows it, intact and his ice skates tacitly with his feet and the large expanse of ice. It is almost dark outside, and as a breeze kisses him a voluminous chatter follows. He grapples for his flashlight in one baggy pocket, then turns it on, flashing each corner of his bedroom with yellow light. Ice, ice, ice. All is ice. Then the floor creaks, so he's got to move. That's the trick; you've got to keep moving, keep yourself warm, keep being human. The rules of life among snowmen always have the word "keep." But in this life you can't always keep the ones you love. You can't keep trust. You can't keep Earth. You get snow, and then you begin to keep and not keep again. He finds it hilarious, tiresome, this make-believe gone real. He warms his hands, quick, and skates onward to elsewhere. Anywhere. Somewhere. Just not here, where everything is scarier alone.

Zac Efron

Every time I see Zac Efron for Bench I always see this image.

You're welcome.