Fabric

There is a piece of fabric wrapped around you.

Ever since the first clot of air that you inhaled, the fabric wound itself, attached itself to what you now call your body.

A parasite to your soul's home. 

You can cut this fabric, slowly, systematically, it will take patience and time, you'll make it out of it, fresh and alive, but you'll lose some skin, bits of you would spill out along with your blood because it took too long to cut the fabric out and it had already made itself a part of you. 
But you'll make it out of it, fresh and alive. 

You can tear through this fabric, with the urgency to breathe again because its presence suffocates you, its existence proclaims you as its own but you don't want it. 
So you tear through the fabric, with shivering fingers, mustering all your strength. 
There is some pain yes it feels like a needle, pricking your skin again and again and again.

You can slip out of the fabric, like a snake shedding its skin, slowly, gracefully and effortlessly. But it will soon return, the same as it was, like it never left. 

Take your pick. 

Gardening

Extract me

Dig at my skin

Reach my skeleton

Pry me out

Right from the roots

Put me down
Somewhere else

In an alien place

Push me in

Superficially

Like a plant

Pulled out from its garden

And put in a plastic bag with wet mud

Restrict my sunlight

Stop my growth

Don'tletmebreathe

Let me choke 

Poke at the soil around me

Cut me off

Slowly. 

Suffocate.

A person sits outside my window

I see his shadow in the night

He drums his fingers against the glass

He waves me a good night 

I wave back

His cold presence doesn't bother me anymore,

Like it did to the child before

He drags his drumming nails across the glass

Making a screech sickening to the stomach

His long thin fingers press against my neck

Choking me 

Remind myself to breathe in

Almost pulling my soul from its anchor

Breathe out

Making my vision blurry

Breathe in

Gasping for air

Breathe out

Arms cemented to my sides

Breathe in

A soundless scream

Breathe out 

And then it's over. 

Breathe in

A person sits outside my window

Its daylight by now

I see his silhouette

He drums his fingers against the glass

He waves a good day

I scoff

Heaving over the basin

Puking out black ink

The only remnants of the nightmare

Reminded that this liquid was made by my own treacherous body

Helping my treacherous mind in my misery. 

The Art Of Pressing Flowers Between Books

Did you read a book you loved? 

Are you still hungover, intoxicated by the masterpiece of literature that it was?

Are you still under the spell of the words that told you a story unlike any other?

Walk out of your home, close your eyes and recollect everything you loved about the tale. 

Relive the pages that you had felt between your fingers. 

Now look around. 

Do you spot a flower that reminds you of the words that are still fresh in your mind? 

Take the flower in your hands.

Inhale. 

Let your mind entwine it with the story. 

Feel the petals like the pages. 

Let the flower accept the story.

Open the book.

Put the flower in gently.

Does the flower fit in with the story? 

Does it signify everything the book stood for?

Close the book softly and press the edges together. 

Let the story accept the flower. 

That is the art of pressing flowers. 

Pac(k)man

Instructions: Use the arrow keys to move, pack all the boxes, avoid the ghosts. 

               XXCueArcadeMusicXX

With the sunlight streaming in through my now curtain-less windows,
I look around my half empty room.
A turmoil of emotions within me. 

I am not packing things, you see,
I am packing memories. 

                   XX ThreeLives XX

As I pull down the posters off my wall, my heart sinks.
Then come down the golden lights that had been strewn across my window and the pictures that had accompanied me through the nights.
One by one.
Leaving the walls naked and exposed.

It doesn't feel like my safe haven anymore. 

                     XX TwoLives XX

Next comes the box of ' Letters To Future Me'. By the wise sixth grader that I had been,
Signed off with the hope that I was happy. Along with the little trinkets;
the piece of wood from my class seat,
the pieces of chits that I had kept,
chains and lockets.

I almost break down. 

                       XX OneLife XX

As I clear my desk out, I feel a tug in my stomach.
From the candles, to the books, to the diaries, to the dried flowers, to my little dinosaur erasers, every little detail that made my desk mine lay lifeless at the bottom of a cardboard box.
My place wasn't mine anymore. 

I break down. 

                    XX GameOver XX
               

Puppet Strings

Hello! No strings? Well you seem to be new. Let me show you around. 

It is a busy street, so you better keep up okay?

Over there, in the workshop by that tall building, that's where all the strings are made, you see, just like the ones on my arms and legs. 

What exactly are the strings you ask?

Well, they're on every person around here. They teach us submission and obedience. The strings go from here all the way up to the sky. 

Oh look, those are my friends, they're great though they don't really say much, the strings don't really let them. 

Anyway come on, come on. Do you see those people who are tied up? They tried to cut their strings. You never cut your strings. 

Cutting your strings gives you freedom, we're not allowed to have that. 

Freedom is good you say? Haha rubbish, who put that silly thought in your head, of course not. 

Moving on, that grey building you see over there, yes that's my house, would you like to come in?

No? Okay. Let's have tea in that tea shop there. I love their tea.

So do you have any questions? 

Oh, who controls the strings you ask?
The man in the sky of course. 

Handcrafted Mistakes and Midnight Creativity Ltd.

Do you want to hear a story? 
Well I'll tell you one. 

A while ago on a dark dark night, when I had had too much coffee
and was just about to take a break, 
I made a character. 

A character with adjectives for bones
and ideas for flesh, 
with a 'Handcrafted Mistakes and Midnight Creativity Ltd.'  
label on the back of her head. 
A character that perhaps reflected me a little too well. 

We had coffee and discussed the world. 
Her frizzy hair bounced when she talked, just like mine. 
We laughed the same weird laughter. 

But somehow she was more 'me' than I could be.

Her craziness and creativity surpassed mine by a notch.

We shook our hands and met only a few times again. 

Perhaps she was a part of me, that I had lost somewhere along the way. 

I realised for some reason we don't meet much anymore. 


Well, so I called her today for another mug of coffee, 
we chatted for hours and danced till our feet ached. 
I realised just how much I'd missed her. 

I ended the meet with a sliver of hope, hope that over time we'll join hands and become one once again. 

The Warning Bells Are Ringing

"Close your eyes"
they put their fingers across my eyes,
"Its not there if you can't see it." 
they whisper in my ears.

"Hush now don't say that" 
they say as they slowly part my lips,
"You don't need that anymore"
I hear the sound of their scissors snipping.

Snip snip

My tongue is gone.

I flail around helplessly,
They can't do this to everyone,

Someone will see,
Someone will speak,

But wait, can they?

This is wrong, this is unfair.

The warning Bells are ringing, loud and clear.

The warning Bells are ringing, can't they hear?

Everything will fall apart.

The kingdom they are building,
with the fragile bricks of perfection 
and the cement of their propaganda,
Won't last long in the storm that is brewing.

The warning bells are ringing, loud and clear.

The warning bells are ringing, can't they hear?

Sour Candy

Words of fear
Deafening gunshots
Quaking blasts
Boom boom they sound like fireworks
And a stranger offers me a sour candy

Violence consuming humanity
Screams of insanity
Bleeding people, broken hearts
I wish they were just fireworks
Chew chew I chew the sour candy

Flower fields blackened and dead
My favourite colouring book's pages are red
I am scared and underfed
Gulp gulp I swallow the sour candy

Anger flows through the streets
Sadness spills out as tears
Loss is all that they have conquered
It makes me sick, just like the sour candy

Scary men on the roads
Who look like the monsters in my books
I hide under my bed and cry
Mama had always warned me
Against the stranger with the sour candy.