Okay

“Are you okay?”

If I were anything less than okay,

Would you still want to be my friend?

If I told you I wear kohl

To distract you from my tired eyes

Swollen from a night of stifled screams

Would you still want to look at me?

I sit at work

I remember techniques, I know protocols

But I’m hollow

Would you still hire me?

I remember how to love

I remember how to laugh

But if I took a break

Would you still want me around?

What if I told you I’ve lost my spirit

It was stolen by chaos

Of doubt, of an apathy fighting with itself

Would you still want to listen to me?

When you talk to me

I often don’t know who is responding

Would that scare you away?

Would you want me despite my melancholy?

My latent, trigger-happy melancholy

Would you feel a need for me

If you knew my warmth was practised?

“Of course I’m okay”

A Hangover of Evolution

There was a time

When my smile was honest

My heart was more accepting

Of the truth I was fed

My mind did not whisk itself into a haze

Of complex questions and desires

My eyes projected clarity

My lips only kissed sweet tasting minimalism

I walked in straight lines

Did I fall?

Not even in love

I was bright

Radiating unmarred optimism

I didn’t know my demons then.

Now I am a hangover of evolution.

Letter to My Father

Dear Dad,

Can we go back to the days

When you sat me down on your lap

Holding me within the safe confines

Of the arms I would cry for

At the mere thought of my cradle

Can you make me feel safe again, dad?

I looked for a man like you

He looked and talked like you

But he caused me pain

That’s not you, dad.

Can you chase away my demons, dad?

I don’t like playing with sadness

Apathy doesn’t let me play

And confusion hogs all my toys

Let’s watch cartoons instead, dad.

Take me back to the roads we walked on

When I clasped your index finger

Afraid of getting lost or torn away from you

Take me back to bedtime

When you wrote lullabies

That launched the most beautiful dreams

I’m lost now

And my dreams make me cry.

Take me back home, dad.

The Meaning of No

It’s not your fault

Perhaps you stayed home the day they taught “no” at school

Let me break it down for you

It’s a single syllable

Wielding the power of objection

You can question it, feel free

You lose that right though

If I say it to you

When you’re two centimeters from my face

It’s commonly used to express dissent

What is it not?

An invitation to assert your will

And monopolise the air I was breathing

Choking me with a lack of choice

It means I do not want your hands

Undressing me quicker than your eyes

I do not want your lips

Obstructing mine from mouthing “no”

It isn’t my signature

On an NOC

Allowing you to claim my personal space

Giving you ownership of my body

Don’t brandish your entitlement

To drown out my pleas

Don’t amplify my shame

My gender isn’t a license

To assert your freewill

I cried so you would leave

Not so you would come closer

In the name of comfort

I cried so you would see yourself

As the animal that was before me

No.

It means stay away

And take your hungry eyes with you.

Romancing the Void

What does death feel like?

Nobody has ever lived to tell the tale.

Peer into my mind and you will see

A wildly romantic black

A vast expanse of nothingness

Unshackled by thought, free of emotion

No sensation, no consciousness, no compulsion to be

Death won’t reject me

When it comes, it will accept me

For all my faults and all my follies

It will engulf me with its dark arms

And soothe my demons

Death will embrace me like a parent

Hush, it will say

You are now incapable of love

Incapable of pain

So High Solo

I was his drug.

He showed me warmth and lit me up

I crackled, he enjoyed it

He pulled me in harder

But when he let me out

I faded from grey to naught

He watched me burn

As my flame turned to ember

He flicked off parts of me he didn’t need

And as he moved into the distance

Got lighter and calmer

I disintegrated.

Repression

It’s a dark place.

It houses in its crevices,

Discarded teenage stories

Truths I never came home to

Till they crawled out

And began to tickle my bone of balance.

The tickle turned into a scratch

The scratch into a rip.

They tore through my skin

My only disguise.

They infiltrated my exhales

My source of warmth.

They were young once

They liked to hide

But they grew quicker than I did.

They ask me why I ignored them

All they want is a little attention

We knew each other back in the day

But they don’t look the same anymore

I don’t look the same anymore.