Future (Poem)

The future is my secret closet monster,
Claws slowly dragging me to its doors
Yet its not the nightmare which I fear,
But the possibility I'll find nothing more.

We're searching, trying, feeling, dying,
Our dreams suffocated by intentions well-meaning,
I'm lost, blind and cut adrift,
Burdened by love overprotective.

Standing at the tip of the edge,
With shaking hands held tight.
Into the frightening unknowable unknown,
Falling, I drop out of sight.

Different (Short Story)

At first he'd fascinated her, this boy. With his stories, his ideas and ambitions.

It was hard to believe that people like him still existed in this world of today, brimming full with passion and hope.

And she wanted so badly to believe in those dreams of his.

To hold his hand while they both tried to reach for the stars with trembling, cold fingers.

But logic held her back and dragged her down.

Ambition alone wasn’t enough, she knew. A clear head and a calm heart were two vital things he should, but didn't possess.

Arrogance was also far more in abundance than his common sense.

Even so, it was hard to deny his talent for making things sparkle more than they're worth.

And she stopped herself from looking beyond and deeper.

There was still this secret longing that maybe, just maybe, cheap glitter might be stardust in disguise.

But it was harder to ignore the emptiness within him.

It called to her like a melody with no voice, haunting and dark.

She recognized it for it mirrored her own.

Like matching twin black holes that sucked everything down into a bottomless pit.

He told her she wasn't just like any other girl, that she was unique. But it soon became clear that he had an invisible, unspoken expectation of her.

Not sex, nor money, but love.

Or rather, his own definition of it.

Loud, clear and in your face.

And he didn't know how to interpret the way she showed it.

He was blind to the secret messages hidden between the lines, the 'I love you's slipped into little actions.

She tried her best to show it to him, but it was as though she was speaking another language he never bothered to learn.

'You're different from the others,' he repeats that same pickup line a year later.

This time round, she could hear the hidden accusation, dark and perplexed, as though she was a complicated question he was still trying to figure out the answer to.

'This time round, we'll be different,' he'd promised at the start.

In the end, he wants me to be the same, she thought to herself, with more than just a little sadness.

Still, it didn't, couldn't stop her from asking the unanswerable.

Why?

Far too many reasons were given to justify himself, far too many excuses.

In the end, she'd simply bowed her head in silence, the broken promises lying crushed underneath the weight of his lies.

It hurt to realize that she'd been foolish enough to assume what they had was real.

Yet, deep down within, she knew it was inevitable, unavoidable.

Two empty souls will not join if they cannot fit in the missing gaps.

She could never fill that emptiness in him.

Because he'd never truly loved her, only the idea of her, and that alone would never be enough.

Eyes On The Prize (Poem)

Tempted and tired, fighting back the lies,
Unwilling to be in a position over compromised,
Eyes on the prize, eyes on the prize, eyes on the prize,
Yet who can save me now, with a heart so paralyzed?

Endless tears and endless sighs,
Endlessly said unwanted goodbyes.
The story always goes in a cycle,
From happy smiles and euphoric high,
To low and painful broken ties.

Then it's oh dear, oh me, oh my,
Shed a few tears, have a good cry.
And when another comes along,
Another charming sweet-talking guy,
You say to yourself, why not,
Why not give it another try?

He might be the one,
The missing piece that fits.
He might be the one,
To sweep me off my feet.

So the fairytale flips back again and again,
Until it drives one's dreams quite dead and insane.

Tempted and tired, fighting back the lies,
Unwilling to be in a position over compromised,
Eyes on the sighs, eyes on the cries,
Eyes on the sad, painful good-byes,
No one can save me now, with a heart too cracked up inside.



Author's Note: This poem was inspired by Aaron's words, 'fight the lies', 'compromised', 'eyes on the prize' and 'paralyzed'. So part of the credit goes to him =)

Ignorance (Poem)

on a night stripped stark,
starless, I stumble in the dark.

Ignorance is
bliss,
there's nothing you know you don't know,
nothing you can possibly miss.

it can't actually hurt,
when your brain's buried in dirt.

Ignorance is
a lottery killer,
spinning slowly around fate and chance.

you only win,
when the truth stabs you hard in the guts.

Ignorance is
just a pretty word for stupidity,
and I was dumb enough to swallow a whole lie,

it nearly choked me to death on the way back up.

Ignorance.

overpaid with lost trust
& a guarded heart.

Too Late (Super Short Story)

She had watched him drop all the way down, like a fallen angel condemned to the sin-riddled earth.

The laws of gravity had always fascinated her and it didn't seem to matter to her whether it applied itself on human beings or not.

After all, she had seen people die in movies and this did not look like it was any different.

Except that this time round, the cameras would continue rolling. And the dead person would never be able to get up again.

"I wonder if he regretted at the end," she murmured, releasing each word out carefully only to weigh them down on her tongue, heavy with unspoken meaning.

One of the onlookers snorted.

"Regret? That poor fellow must have had enough misery to push himself off fifteen floors."

The girl didn't reply. Fat men old enough to be her grandfathers were not worth her attention.

The air was biting cold, but she remained unaffected, her eyes burning with a strange, dark turmoil.

"Before the ground dragged his soul to hell," she said softly, "that split second right before his fate was sealed."

The onlooker regarded her with a raised eyebrow and skeptical eyes.

"Well, it's too late for that now," he said slowly, choosing to reply even though it was clear he thought the girl crazy, and more so that she was not talking to him. "He's dead."

His nostrils flared as he took a slow drag off a cheap, half-burnt cigarette.

The girl caught the relief in his eyes before he quickly looked down, shame-faced and scattering glowing ashes all over the asphalt ground.

She was suddenly reminded of a pig who had just escaped the abattoir, glad that pain and misery had chosen another victim to push through the gallows today.

But he was merely standing in a long queue lining up for the end.

Sooner or later, his turn would come.

Her lips curled into a thin line crossing between contempt and pity.

"Too late," she echoed in a hollow whisper, briefly touching the locket she wore around her neck. "Too late for regrets."

Then she closed her eyes and continued to stand there, stiff and immobile, until the cold seeped into every pore of her skin, until every other curious onlooker had walked away.

A silent tribute to the death of a man whose blood runs through her veins.

Only then, did she allow herself to leave.

Zeroes (Super Short Story)

'It's just, I've heard you repeat this issue for the like, tenth squillion kajillionth time,' she said exasperatedly, throwing her hands up in a helpless gesture.

Whenever Stacey started adding mathematical amount descriptives into her sentences, I always took the first number spoken as the safe guide and subtracted all the zeros at the back.

For some reason or another, she loved to make her emphasis known through numbers. The nastier side of me would sometimes wonder if she was just trying to make herself sound more intellectual.

'It makes me feel like, alot richer you know,' she would say, half-joking and half-dead serious, 'Like if I said I have a bazillion gadzillion dresses, it would sound like I really do have a lot more than I actually have ...'

Then her voice would turn all wistful and she'd start squinting at her cupboard painfully hard; as though staring long enough would magically produce countless of dresses.

Still, zeros or no zeros, ten times was still quite a high number. I did not intend on repeating myself like a broken down radio to my best friend.

Sighing dramatically, more for her benefit than mine, I agreed with her.


Problems like these are best left in my mind to fester.

You Are You (Mind Map)

So many different possibilities that have made you into the person you are today.

Fallen (Poem)

let's pitch up blankets like tents
huddling underneath with only a torchlight
our too-loud voices and my imagination

we could have travelled to
anywhere,
everywhere,
except you never wanted to hold my hand.

we'll attach helium balloons to kites
and race across hushed air and tense silence,
our favourite game is 'pretend the wind exists'
(you always did like faith,

... but I can't feel it anymore.)

and I kept crying,
pleading,
'wipe these lies away from your eyes
while I wipe those tears away from mine'

but you sewed your ears shut,
you refused to believe you were wrong.

we treat ourselves as scientific lab experiments,
slowly dissecting each other layer by layer
until there's nothing left,
except slow, empty beating hearts.

they remain untouched by our fear,
fear of what will, might, must happen,
(humans are terribly, tragically flawed)

and still, we wanted more
still, we died.


we have fallen a long way down, darling.

Asylum (Short Story)

The two cups of coffees were untouched, resting just beside the fingers of a man and a woman in their early forties.

They were staring at each other wordlessly, tension lingering in their bright green eyes.

Then, the man cleared his throat.

"Are you sure it's ... safe for her to ... to be discharged?" he stammered, nervously wiping the sweat from his brow with an already soaked handkerchief.

"Dylan, will you please calm down? She’s been really good while she was in there, displaying no signs of outright insanity, showing no hostility towards the nurses ..." the woman trailed off hesitantly.

"... it's almost like she's normal again."

And still, the statement managed to sound like a question.

Although she was two years younger than her brother, she had always been the more controlled and logical one.

Yet reasoning it out in terms of insanity had always left her teetering on the edge unsure.

"Marion, you know just how well she ... she can act."

"She doesn't have long to live," Marion pursed her lips tightly, as though trying to hide the relief that was leaking through her teeth. "The doctors predict only a month or so before she'll die. Her cancer is at the last stage, Dylan. We have nothing to fear."

Her brother's hands were trembling uncontrollably as he shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket.

He didn't take his hand back out.

"Have you forgotten how calmly she ... she convinced you to drink washing detergent by insisting it ... it was some special tonic? Or the time she ... she broke all the glassware in the house in ... in a fit of temper and started ... started blaming ... "

"You. And she forced you to walk all over the broken glass. Yes, I know, Dylan," Marion interrupted through gritted teeth. Her voice was controlled, but the pain in her eyes was obvious. "I remember."

All those trips to the hospital, the faked excuses, the crying, the horror, the longing for it to all just stop, to feel safe in their own home for once.

It was insanity in itself to welcome back the person who had wreaked so much terror and pain in their lives so many years ago.

Had she somehow inherited that gene?

No, I cannot be as cruel as her, I will not.

Yet, it was a strange, stubborn sense of filial duty compelling Marion to take back her mother during her last days.

And the underlying perverse need to prove that she will not be the defenseless little girl she was back then.

"Don't worry, brother," she said softly. "We've grown up and she can't harm us now."

Her words rang with a determined conviction, a quiet defiance.

Dylan remained silent, but the hands in his pockets were still trembling. And Marion could read his unspoken reply.

She can still hurt us, sister.

The look in his eyes was that of a six-year old boy once more, trying to claw his way out of a living nightmare.

Hearts beating as fast and loud as hurried feet pounding against the ground, terrified eyes darting around, sweaty skin, harsh ragged breaths and walls that never seemed to let them escape.

It was as if their minds had connected in that flashback, for Dylan immediately surged up from his chair.

Muttering something under his breath, he left quickly.

A sob caught in Marion's throat and she continued to sit in the café drinking stone cold coffee for the next one hour after her brother left, staring at the swinging arms and legs striding past the café window.

Suddenly, it felt as if she was inside a television box, observing the show of reality while trapped behind a glass screen.

As this feeling grew, her heart began to race, governed by the rush of familiar, unreasonable fear.

And it was this fear that finally propelled her from her seat to stride out past the door.

The very next day, she went to collect her mother from the hospital.

Even though it was their first meeting in twenty years, there was no drama involved.

Marion couldn't bring herself to feel anything other than awkwardness, and more than a little of the old fear, as she stood facing her mother.

"Hello, Marion," Mrs. Collins murmured. "You've grown so much."

Marion simply looked at her blankly and stared down at the grey concrete floor that her mother had walked across for the past twenty years.

Despite her long confinement, her mother's grey eyes were still just as curiously bright and sharp.

However, her movements had slowed, her back more stooped than before and Marion could tell that she was easily tired.

The journey back home was uneventful, with Mrs. Collins falling asleep and Marion focusing on her driving, all to the sound of classical music pouring out from the radio.

When they entered the apartment, Mrs. Collins had glanced around once but hadn't shown much interest in her surroundings.

"Your room is just over here, beside mine," Marion said politely, dropping her mother's small bag at the doorway. "We'll have dinner later. You'd better sort out your belongings first."

When Mrs. Collins entered the room, she held up three fingers and slowly ran them across the whitewashed walls; they came away coated in dust.

"This is just like my cell," she said, smiling blandly.

Marion couldn't tell if she meant it in a good or bad way. Shrugging apologetically, she left her mother to grow accustomed to the room.

The next few days went by rather smoothly, and other than the occasional bout of screaming at night, her mother never tried to do anything out of the ordinary.

Until the day she approached Marion with a request.

"I would very much like to see Dylan," she said weakly. "I ... I do not have very much longer to live, I know that. I was hoping I could at least see him for the last time."

Her expression was bland, passive like the surface of a peaceful lake. Marion found it difficult to look past that depth.

She hesitated.

Dylan was still extremely sensitive. She wasn't sure if her brother would be able to handle meeting their mother, the sole reason for his nightmares at night.

"It'd be wonderful if I could cook a nice, hot meal for you two," Mrs. Collins paused, her voice wavering. " ... like ... like a normal mother."

It was the closest to an apology Marion knew she would ever get, and somewhere within her heart softened.

"I'll try," she said stiffly.

It took more than a week of coaxing and pleading.

"At least grant a dying woman her last wish, please?"

Over the phone, Marion could hear her brother sigh exasperatedly, trying to muster up his last shreds of pity for the 'dying woman'. And she knew he would never be able to summon back something that never existed in the first place.

"Do it for my sake then."

A pause. Another sigh; this time in defeat.

"One hour, not more."

He showed up promptly on time, wearing a too tight white checkered shirt and barely suppressed frown.

Marion gave him a quick hug, feeling the tension and sweat on his skin soaking into her own before she pulled away and ushered him in.

"Hello Dylan, it's so wonderful to see you again," Mrs. Collins said calmly, appearing from behind.

There was nothing in her expression to indicate maternal love or recognition of the fact that they hadn't met in a very long time and that Dylan probably wanted it to remain that way.

He stiffened and for a moment, Marion was almost sure he was going to turn around and leave.

Then he paused, tilting his nose up to sniff the air.

"Is that ... minestrone soup?" he asked tentatively.

"Yes ... I remember it was your favourite," Mrs. Collins said. Her lips twitched with the barest hint of gleeful triumph.

Marion frowned.

She'd helped with the cooking of course, but when it came to the minestrone soup, Mrs. Collins had been adamant that she 'did this alone'.

"It's a special surprise," she'd explained, pushing her out of the kitchen with renewed strength that had not seemed to exist until then.

Marion just could not figure out why that unsettled her.

Dylan simply looked away and snorted, but he made no second attempt to move towards the door.

"Let's eat, then," Marion said, clasping her hands together tightly, as though sending a subconscious prayer to a God she'd stopped believing the day her father died.

The meal was a quiet one, filled mainly with the clinking of utensils against the plates and chewing of food.

Dylan did not bother to talk at all, focusing on his food with a fierce intensity, acting like it was a trial he had to endure before he could finally escape.

Then Mrs. Collins brought out the final dish, the minestrone soup.

To Marion's pleasant surprise, it smelled delicious.

The rich taste of chicken broth and chopped potatoes flooded her senses and she dug in without a second thought.

Even Dylan's tense expression relaxed slightly as he drank a few spoonfuls.

"How's the soup?" Mrs. Collins asked expectantly.

"It's ... wonderful. But I ... I didn't know you could cook so well," Marion said, puzzlement creeping into her voice.

After all, her mother didn't strike her as someone who was good at cooking, and she hadn’t exactly had any opportunity to do so either.

"Oh, I couldn't do that in any other kitchen, Marion," Mrs. Collins said. "There is just something about your kitchen that is more ... fitting."

And she smiled a slow, chillingly triumphant smile.

Icy dark fear permeated the atmosphere, sour and unstoppable.

Dylan pushed his bowl away violently.

Paralyzed, Marion felt as though she was seeing the remaining soup droplets arc from the bowl in slow motion.

As the soup spilled onto the linoleum floor, it puddled like a growing bloody pool of liquid.

"What have you done?" Dylan hissed furiously, his body shaking with terror.

Marion couldn't tell if it was directed at her or their mother. She was too ashamed to face her brother.

He'd warned her and she hadn't listened.

Only Mrs. Collins remained unperturbed, calmly stirring her spoon on the table, metal scraping against cheap synthetic wood.

"Soon, you will all join me in a place where our souls will be together forever," she said softly, lovingly caressing her own bowl of soup.

"You're ... you're crazy!" Dylan sputtered, half-crying, half-yelling as he backed away, knocking back his chair and falling over. "I don't want to die with you ... this ... this monster."

At the last word, Mrs. Collins' head snapped up and her eyes darkened in anger.

"I am your mother," she said coldly.

But Dylan was already cowering at one corner, rocking his knees back and forth; his mouth open in a silent scream.

Marion couldn't bear to see him this way.

When they were young, she'd promised to protect him from their mother, no matter what the cost.

But now, she has made a terrible mistake, she has broken her promise.

No, I cannot let this happen. I will not.

Something snapped inside of her.

This time round, it wasn't fear that made her push her chair back and stand up. It was a slow, overwhelming fury that dragged her to grab her mother by the neck.

"How dare you," she hissed, her pale white fingers digging into Mrs. Collins' wrinkled skin.

Yet Mrs. Collins simply went limp, leaning against the support of Marion's hands.

Like a broken ragdoll; she offered no resistance.

Then she started to laugh weakly, even as Marion's fingers continued to tighten around her neck.

Stop, you'll kill her.

No, she deserves it.

Am I going crazy too?

Mrs. Collins began shaking violently as she started to suffocate to death, but Marion found herself unable to let go.

Hatred, deep and embittered, had seeped down to her fingers and glued them there.

Suddenly, there was a sharp rapping on the door.

Marion jerked around, immediately loosening her grip as her mother collapsed to the floor, barely alive.

A random neighbour's voice called out in concern, muffled from behind the door.

Even though her brain was reverberating with frayed threads of thought, Marion found herself automatically responding that 'everything was okay' before sinking to the floor.

And she lay there, her eyes squeezed shut and trembling, for a very long time.

It was only after the next day that one thing became very clear.

The soup was never poisoned.

That Secret Half Smile (Poem)

that incident halved her smile.
it became crooked, bent and out of shape,
one side of the lips fell just a fraction lower,
as though she was struggling not to care
but sadness was weighing down on one edge.

she thought no one ever noticed.

I did.

I called it her secret half-smile,
and I'm going to pretend this is a mystery
shared between her and I.

yet she will never know,
for I am just a stranger,
standing, lost,
behind the shadows.

Faeries (Poem)

Let me tell you a secret,
I do not belong here,
no.

In my world,
I wear skirts woven out of tulip petals,
cutting pieces of blue sky to sew into my dress.
I taste the first drops of morning dew on blades of grass,
Mixed with potions concocted out of moonbeam & sunshine.

Dancing around fairy circles and empty grass bowers,
I decorate empty acorn shells with pretty wildflowers
At night, I sleep in a robin bird's nest,
where dreaming of magic is what I like best.

In yours,
You wear military uniforms created out of greed,
Shooting missiles into the sky, you couldn't care less,
Drink the first drops of power and thirst for more,
Mixed with weapons concocted out of a bloody, pointless mess.

You are like dogs on a leash
Limited by your own set laws and false humanity
Yet you try to stretch beyond as far as possible
With your secret agendas and smooth talk no one believes.

I do not belong here,
no.
I never wished to be.

So I'll paste broken fairy wings onto my back,
Of fragile faith hopefully, I do not lack,
Fly to a faraway place where time can never tell,
And no one ever has to say, forever farewell.

Love Is When (Quote)

Because the heart does not follow the path of reason.

Or (Poem)

today,

I
woke up,
feeling out. of. breath.
and

empty.

in my dreams,
I ran a 10km marathon
and Ineverstoppedforabreak,
no.
I
just kept

running towards the light,

and I didn't feel tired.

funny,
how dreams work
you only feel their impact on you
once you open your eyes

maybe
there is something wrong with the air
or
my sense of time

that aching greeted me like an old friend
squeezing my lungs harder and harder
until I'm no longer sure if it's
lack of oxygen
or
deja vu
or
maybe even loneliness.

Brainwash (Poem)

Wash your brain
With lies and denial
Scrub it with detachment
And a square block of ice

Chant this mantra,
I will never make the same mistakes again
I am strong, stronger, strongest,
And no thing no one no body
Can ever bring me down.

Because we always tell ourselves,
It's mind over matter,
That emotions and feelings
Are just silly games your heart plays

(As long as
They aren't your mind,
They don't matter)

Because we are human beings
We are complication-makers, peace-haters
We are God-players, promise-breakers
And everything else in between

Because indifference is the key to protecting yourself,
And whoever cares less has more power.

So wash your brain,
Tell yourself feeling nothing is okay
Our future is still faraway distant
This world is going down anyway.

Sometimes I suspect,
We are no different from robots
Functioning wholly on apathy and
Cold hard logic that slows everything
But solves nothing.

(We are on the road to self-destruction,
It's only a matter of time, denial and
Empty promises of hope.)

Sub-Conscious (Poem)

They say
Dreams reflect your deepest longings
Twisting reality and fairytale around
Its sadistic, little finger

Sub-conscious unenlightened,
I struggle to find my way out of the dark
But these buried secrets are dragging my eyelids down
And I'm falling deaf to the voice of reason

It's growing harder to deny the truth
When I'm already denying a part of me
The part that still wonders, longs and misses
The part that never did make any sense


Wake up, please
No one else can teach you how to open your own eyes.

what I need is something which doesn't exist.
it never did,
so I never will.

Orchid Summers (Background Story)

She saw his face before they carried him away on a stretcher. The wind was strong that day, and a corner of the white cloth covering his lifeless body had flapped upwards.

Her mother had tried to pull her away, but it was a split moment too late.

Orchid recognized who he was.

She'd seen him walking around aimlessly the blocks where she lived, and she knew that he had no family, no home to go back to.

Yet, strangely enough, the blood and gore didn't scare her as much as it should have had.

It was the empty, hollow look in that man's eyes.

That scared her.

The realization that he'd be forgotten the very minute his body burned to ashes. That the world was going to continue like the death of one sad, lonely man didn't exist at all.

"I don't want everyone to forget me when I die," she'd muttered tearfully to her mother afterward.

It was selfish, she knew, to care only about herself instead of the millions of other sad, lonely people who died everyday.

But Orchid wasn't perfect. And the look in that man's eyes continued to haunt her, a bitter memory created by wind and chance.

Remember To Forget (Poem)

Remember to forget, love
Those memories are like broken glass shards
I could bleed my hands crimson red
But they’ll never bring me back to the past
(The present is an impenetrable barrier)

One day, I'll stop running away
One day, I'll stop long enough to learn
How to smile once more.

For now, love,
Remember to forget.

Silence (Poem)

I'm a disconnected, tangled mass of thoughts
with no way of unravelling them.

I tried burying them in ink,
but the words only bled spiraling graffiti
twisting round and round
until the hole in the paper matched my heart

I tried searching for suitable reasons,
but answers can never excuse facts
disappointment dragged down every letter
as the line between my memory and reality blurred.

You aren't who you said you were.
(it is difficult when you discover
you've been living in your imagination all along)

So silence is my new best friend,
there are far too many words that should never have escaped my fingers,
for the truth has left its bitter taste on my tongue,
a reminder of illusions and facades.

Repeat (Poem)

Life's like a record rewound over and over again,
And at the end of the day,
It's always the same sad story.

Start;

The world seemed like such a beautiful place,
Through rose-tinted glasses and a child's innocence,
And as rainbows soaked into everything I saw
I believed that evil and good was like black and white,
Easy to differentiate, easy to categorize

(I never wondered about the grey)

Play;

Reality slowly killed off the child in me,
As happiness turns fickle,
Hopping from one thing to the next
It never stayed at the same place for too long

I tried to look for it in things and 'love',
But the fireworks always fade in the end
And I'm left staring at the empty sky in disillusionment
Floating aimlessly on the currents once more.

(I never knew I was searching in the wrong places)

Stop;

I want to pull out the fingers on the clock
And demand for time's explanation
Twenty-four hours will never cover
All the mistakes I've made in life.

Rewind;

Every morning, I wake up,
Only to feel like it's the same day on repeat.
I'm growing backwards, falling back to sixteen
Sometimes, I question my sanity.

(Irony must be playing a big joke on me)

Because life's like a record rewound over and over again,
And at the end of the day,
It's always the same sad story.

Distance (Poem)

I dance on top of thin telephone wires,
Teetering on them like a tightrope walker
Just so I can hear your voice magnified
A thousand times over the mindless static.

And every day, I pack a hundred and one words
Into a battered suitcase sent through electric pulses
Hoping you'd receive at least the more important ones
Like 'miss', 'love' and 'remember not to forget me'

We are ten thousand miles and a heartbeat apart,
But when I close my eyes and speak to you,
I can almost feel you here beside me.

And I would run across those telephone wires
If it'd bring me to where you are.

Leaving (Poem)

Opposites
That's what they are.

When they first meet, she's on one side of the train platform
He's on the other.

She catches his eye with her odd habits
Like praying before boarding the train,
Skipping from one end of the platform to the other,
Or standing only at certain areas where the sunlight fell
Onto her pale, white skin.

He catches hers with his unwavering stare
And the serious expression he always wears
Like his dusty old T-shirt and worn out sneakers.

Over time, unspoken hellos are exchanged
And shy glances traded

He wants to know her more than guesses and mind games
She wants to teach him how to smile.

Yet, they are opposites
Him and her,
The trains always arrive at the same time
But they always leave in different directions

He doesn't dare to cross the line,
She doesn't know if she should follow her heart

Then one day,
She folds her courage into a plane of paper
And writes her hopes in ink.

'What's your name?'

He is about to reply,
When he catches her heart
Hidden in a fragile paper plane

But the train for the girl arrives first.
She stands inside and stares at the boy sadly,
Separated only by a train door
And a neverending track line.

Suddenly, a dark foreboding surges through.

Before she can turn to run out, the doors slide shut
Frustrated, she bangs her clenched fists against the glass window,
A desperate form of praying,
Her eyes darken in a silent plea.

No.

The boy waves at her
Then, for the first time,

He smiles

and she forgets
how
to
breathe.

All that's left
Is an imprint of his smile
Before she is swept away forever
By time and change.

Opposites,
That's what they are,
And always will be.

Numbers (Poem)

I used to think
We were a simple math equation
Like one plus two equals three.
No questions asked, the logic's there
For everyone to see.

I only figured out at the end that,
You subtracted meaning from your 'I love you's,
They valued zero nothing from the start
And I was too dumb to do the math,
I was too blinded by my heart.

Our conversation lasted five seconds, six words and
One sixtieth of an hour of silence
‘Did you ever truly love me?’
You were more interested in counting the time that went by
I spent the next fifty-nine minutes,
Trying my best not to ask why.

Numbers were never my strong forte,
Neither is love.

You used to say,
'I love you more than anything else in the world.'
Now, I can only wonder,
If I'm even anything else in your world.

Outer Beauty, Inner Emptiness (Poem)

When the flowers bloomed,
Their beauty captivated me.
My heart was a reflection of their vibrant colours,
As they bowed their heads gracefully.

For a moment in time,
I imagined we were flowers,
Fragile beauty surviving
The harsh reality of the world.

I imagined love did not need roots to grow in the soil,
That love could sustain on the clouds of castles in the air.

But then they withered and died,
Leaving behind nothing except
The tiny grains of shrivelled up petals,
And the cold, lifeless earth.

In a way, I guess, we were like those flowers
Unbelievably beautiful while they lasted,
But horribly
achingly
empty
...

(when we ended.)

Maybe (Poem)

Yes or no, two simple words
Yet your mind is torn into two
When I asked you, "So what now?"
You say, "I don't know what to do,

Maybe we should wait and see
We cannot predict the future
Maybe you'll find someone better,
Maybe we were never really meant to be."

And just like that, I became a tentative consideration, a likely possibility
Reduced to a wavering suggestion, an uncertain probability.

And I can only wonder,
What happened to 'Yes, I still love you so',
What happened to 'No, I want to let go'?

So don't say maybe, perhaps, we'll see
I don't need your doubts or fifty-fifty
'Cause maybe isn't what I wanna hear,
Maybe just isn't good enough for me

Maybe you were right and I was wrong,
Maybe you and I were really never meant to be.

Where? (Poem)

Where do sighs go to when they escape from our lips?

My daddy smiled at my strange curiosity,
He claimed my first words since young came in the form of a question
Yet he always had a story for every question asked,
He always had an answer for everything.

'My dear child,
They travel on the wind to remind someone else of sad memories and grey skies
From there, they escape once more through the person's lips
They slip back out into the breeze,
Becoming part of a never ending cycle.'

Then, where do tears disappear to when they fall from our eyes?

'My dear child,
They splatter into small wet puddles
Pooling on the concrete ground,
The air steals them away, weaving them into clouds,
But they long to return to the ground.
So they fall back down in sheets of silver needles,
Pricking your skin but leaving no mark.

That is why people say the sky is crying every time it rains
Because somewhere in that single raindrop,
Therein lies a part of your tears.'

And I remembered
Once, when I was crying,
He gently took a tear from me and balanced it on his fingertip
'Look,' he whispered
'This tear will turn into clouds and fall down as rain. I think the sky has cried more than its fair share ...
Don't you?'

So ... where do people go to after they die?

At this question, my daddy fell silent.
It was strange.
He always had a story for every question asked,
He always had an answer for everything.

Slowly, he looked up at the sky,
Pressed his palm against his heart,
Then he lowered it to rest over my fingers and looked at me.

He didn't say a word,
Still, I understood.



Some emotions don't need explanations,
Just like how some questions don't have answers.

Voodoo Love (Short Story)

He wandered around aimlessly, unsure of where his legs were taking him.

A cacophony of loud noises and warm colours swirled through his senses, both tantalizing and confusing.

It threw him into a sensory overload as he tried to make sense of the teeming crowds and the various wares and trinkets fanned out on rickety tables or mats.

What on earth am I doing here? he thought to himself, as he shakily adjusted his spectacles.

The heat was slowly getting to him and he was growing slightly disorientated. He'd always been physically weak, and coming to places such as these was a bit too much for him to take at one go.

But the minute I see her, I start following her like a lovesick puppy dog. I've really got to stop doing that.

Shaking his head slightly, he tried to figure his way out of the maze of make-shift stalls.

"Hey you! Oi you! Boy!" a gritty old voice was bellowing extremely loudly.

The surrounding noise was unbelievable, but this particular voice stood out like a blaring megaphone, and to the boy's surprise, it seemed to be directed at him.

"Me?" he was surprised.

"Come over here," the voice said, somehow managing to sound loud and conspiring at the same time.

The boy looked around, trying to look for the source of the voice, but all he could see were a multitude of faces. It made him feel even dizzier than he already was, and he squinted his eyes shut, swaying as he tried not to faint.

"Behind you, boy," the voice said exasperatedly.

The boy turned around. A short, stout old lady was standing behind her table of wares glaring at him.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely, sensing that there was no point in trying to aggravate her any further.

However, the old lady's glare had softened to a stare and she was looking at him in an extremely disconcerting way.

"You followed someone here, didn't you?" she finally said. It wasn't a question.

The boy's mouth fell open.

"How ... how did you know?" he stammered.

"I saw you following her before she disappeared into the crowds," the old lady admitted. "And you had that love struck look in your eyes."

The boy stiffened. The last part was rather unnecessary of her to mention, he felt. After all, it was his personal feelings she was talking about.

"It was what made me take notice of you," the old lady explained. She wasn't particularly bothered by the annoyance written clearly on his face.

When he didn't say anything, she continued.

"So what's your name?"

"Jason," he muttered before he could stop himself.

Cursing himself silently, he sighed.

Jason didn't believe in giving his real name to complete strangers, but he had this strange habit of answering people truthfully whenever they asked direct questions.

"Jason, that's a very ... interesting name," the old lady said, drawing out each word slowly and clearly. "I'm Gretchen."

"Gretchen," Jason murmured, his eyes focusing on her for the first time.

Appearance-wise, she didn't stand out much, attired in a plain, brown sleeveless dress and sandals. A simple wooden ring encircled her fourth finger, while her deeply wrinkled face was free of any form of make-up.

It was what she was selling that caught his attention.

"I see you've finally decided to take a look at my wares," Gretchen drawled.

"Er, very ... interesting objects you have there, madam," Jason muttered, trying to hide his horrified fascination at the neat rows of hemp string voodoo dolls resting on the table.

They came in different shapes and sizes, with pins of all sorts stuck all over them, but what unnerved Jason was the way their faces stared pleadingly back at him.

Save us, they seemed to whisper in a chorus of terrified voices.

Jason tore his eyes away and settled on Gretchen instead. Anything or anyone was better than having to look at those creepy looking dolls.

I must be going crazy under all this heat, he thought, tugging at the collar of his school uniform uncomfortably.

If Gretchen noticed his discomfort, she didn't show it otherwise.

Instead, she continued smiling.

"It is perfect for someone such as you to use."

"Me?" Jason said blankly, not for the first time.

"Of course!" Gretchen exclaimed animatedly. "I managed to get a look at the lovely girl when she walked past my stall, so I can create a doll loosely based on her features. I understand why you find it so hard to forget her ... her face is indeed ... striking.

The only thing I'm lacking is an object that she owns ... you wouldn't happen to have one, would you?"

Her eyes flickered over to Jason, eerily bright.

"I haven't agreed to anything yet," he said quickly. "What are they supposed to do anyway?"

The old lady's eyes gleamed as she looked down lovingly at her wares.

"You can get the real person to do exactly what you want them to do."

Yet, that gleam was tainted with something which made Jason uneasy. In fact, if he'd been more imaginative, he'd have felt it rather sinister.

"I don't believe you," he said curtly, shaking his head as he turned to leave.

"Now just wait a moment, I was going to mention that you can make someone fall in love with you."

Jason paused in mid-turn.

"Impossible," he retorted softly.

And still, a fragment of hope within began to stir.

Stephanie will never notice someone like me, he reasoned, and I'd do anything for her to just notice.

Gretchen grinned when she saw the look of undisguised longing on the boy's face.

"It is true," she insisted, picking up one of the voodoo dolls and pointing a long fingernail at a tiny heart that had been sewn onto the doll, "All you have to do is prick a pin into her heart and say that you want her to fall in love with you."

Leaning forward, the old lady whispered conspiratorially, "It's a 100% guaranteed will work product, otherwise, you can get your money back."

"But ..." Jason's voice trailed off.

Somehow, he could feel the wrongness of the idea.

Still, anything is worth a try, his inner voice spoke. Even if it means cheating.

"I'll take one then," he said, after a long pause.

"Excellent choice, my dear boy," Gretchen said, bending down to pick up a brand new doll from a large box. "So, do you possess any object that belongs to her?"

Jason hesitated.

As a matter of fact, he did have something of hers with him. A hair clip she'd dropped while walking home quite a few weeks.

But it's not like I was stalking her or anything, Jason thought to himself defensively as he felt a blush slowly working its way up his neck.

He'd been meaning to return it to her, but had never quite gathered the courage to do so.

Not surprisingly, the clip was passed over to Gretchen with great reluctance.

However, she simply took a single strand of hair that had been stuck in the clip and handed it back to Jason.

"Hair, or any part of the human body, will work much better," she explained, before ordering him to leave her to do her work in peace.

"Come back in ten minutes," she added, before Jason left.

Time seemed to drag by on its sluggish feet as he meandered around the bazaar, looking distractedly at the various odds and ends that were on sale.

Even though only ten minutes had passed when he returned to the stall, he felt like he'd wasted a whole hour just walking around the bazaar.

"There you go, all done up," Gretchen said softly. She held the doll with a curious tenderness when she passed it to him. "That will be ten dollars."

Without even taking a look at the product he'd just paid for, Jason slipped it into his pocket and wordlessly passed her the money before turning to leave for home.

"Good luck," Gretchen called out, but Jason didn't appear to hear her as he trudged off.

Neither did he see the strange smile playing on the old lady's lips as she turned to pack up her stall.

*****
The first thing Jason did when he got home was to collapse onto the sofa.

His parents had told him they would be coming home late today, so he didn't bother to change out of his school uniform straightaway.

As he lay there on the sofa with his eyes closed, he began to sense a strange pulsing coming from his pocket.

Puzzled, Jason rooted around in his pocket, pulled out the doll ... and almost dropped it in fright.

The doll looked eerily like Stephanie.

Jason could see that the old lady had painted her face with startling accuracy, but that wasn't all that unnerved him.

The doll seemed to possess a kind of lifelike energy of its own, and Jason found it hard not to imagine that this was really Stephanie, just not in life-size form.

A single strand of her hair had been twisted around it in a tight band and a tiny red cloth heart was sewn at the area where a real heart would have been.

As Jason brushed his fingers against the tiny red heart, he recalled Gretchen's instructions on how to use a voodoo doll.

"All you have to do is prick a pin into her heart and say that you want her to fall in love with you."

But this isn't right, one part of him recoiled at the very thought. Even if she does fall in love with you, it wouldn't be real, it'd be because of the doll.

Jason adjusted his spectacles as he carefully considered his options.

Maybe this voodoo magic stuff won't even work and that old lady was just lying, he reasoned, I just want her to notice me, that's all.

With that thought firmly fixed in mind, he went to look for a needle.

In the past, his mother used to sew random bits and pieces of things, but that was before she decided that she wanted to work too.

It had caused a terrible row between his parents, and Jason could feel the tension and suppressed frustration steadily growing in the house ever since.

For some odd reason, he always had this irrational fear that his mother would leave the house for work one day and never come back.

Shaking his head as if to chase those dark thoughts away, he found his mother's old sewing kit in his parents' bedroom, looking strangely forlorn as it lay abandoned in one corner.

Opening it, he drew out a silver needle with one hand. It was trembling, and he didn't know why.

Maybe it was because of the fact that he'd never meddled with magic in any form before. Or maybe it was the creepy way the doll seemed to be looking straight at him as he held it in his other hand.

Closing his eyes, he forced himself to take deep breaths and count to ten.

He always did that whenever he tried to pluck up the courage to talk to Stephanie, but every time he finished counting to ten, Stephanie would have disappeared somewhere else or another random guy would suddenly appear out of nowhere and talk to her.

Jason resolved to count to five the next time round he saw her.

And you'll fall in love with me on first sight, he said softly as he opened his eyes after ten, and pricked the needle into her tiny, red cloth heart.

*****
Okay, just take deep breaths, he told himself frantically, as he saw her sitting at the benches by herself, reading a book. And count to five.

It was another ordinary school day, bright, sunny and normal.

Except today was the day when Jason decided that he'd go up and talk to Stephanie, regardless of whether the voodoo doll worked or not.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and counted.

One. He took one step forward.

Two. He took another step.

Three. Just two more to go, he told himself. Somehow, that thought didn't feel very reassuring.

Four ...

"Um ... excuse me if I'm being rude but ... what are you trying to do?" an extremely familiar and bemused voice asked him politely.

Jason opened his eyes and found himself staring right into Stephanie's twinkling, soft brown ones.

Shocked, he squealed in an extremely unmanly fashion.

"I ... uh ... I was ..." he stammered as he desperately tried to think of a reason plausible enough for his behaviour. "I was ... I was playing hide-and-seek with my ... with my friend," he finished lamely.

Inwardly, he groaned at the kiddish, pathetic excuse. He'd never been good at fabricating stories on the spur of the moment.

"I see," Samantha said, smiling with amusement. And still, she lingered, staring at him.

"Oh yeah, and you dropped this ... quite a while back," Jason said hurriedly as he took out her hair clip and passed it to her. "I was going to return it to you but ..."

His voice trailed off when he realized that Stephanie wasn't really paying attention to him.

It seems like she isn't really that keen on hearing explanations anyway, he thought.

"It's my favourite hair clip!" Stephanie said happily. "Thank you so much ... er ... what's your name?"

"Oh, I ... um ... I'm Jason," he said nervously as he quickly pushed up his spectacles, which had somehow managed to slide down his nose again.

"And I'm Stephanie," she said warmly. Then she added in a faraway voice, "You looked so cute when you had that look of shock on your face and your glasses slid down your nose."

Jason could only stare at her as a blush slowly spread across his face.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I ... I didn't mean to let that slip out," Stephanie said, obviously horrified at herself for saying it out loud.

She doesn't seem like the sort who would be so blunt towards strangers.

Jason was puzzled. A thin tendril of fear slowly tightened around his heart.

Could it be the work of the voodoo doll?

Embarrassed, they stared at each other, not knowing what else to say.

Just then, the school bell rang shrilly, breaking the awkward moment and startling them out of their silence.

"Well, now you've made me all twitchy too!" Stephanie suddenly exclaimed huffily.

But before Jason could apologize, her eyes twinkled and she burst out laughing.

It was one of the nicest sounds Jason felt he'd ever heard.

"Can I ... that is to say ... can I meet you after school?" he asked shyly, looking down at the ground before he lost his nerve and said something stupid too.

Stephanie smiled sweetly.

"I would love to," she said softly, before turning to walk off.

"Meet me at the school gates!" Jason called out after her, marveling at his own sudden bravery.

Whatever happened next felt like a beautiful dream he didn't want to wake up from.

He would meet up with Stephanie on the weekends and they would go on all sorts of adventures. It didn't really matter what they did. As long as they were together, the day always turned out to be fun.

As time flew by, he found himself growing more and more enamored with her.

Yet, there was always this niggling worry inside of him, wondering if all this was the work of the voodoo doll.

Gradually, that niggling worry mounted to an intense guilt that Jason found impossible to ignore.

He finally decided to tell her the truth one day, when they were sitting in the library, supposedly studying for a major test.

"Steph ..." he began hesitantly "... I need to tell you something ..."

"Hmm?" Stephanie looked at him blankly, half-lost in her own thoughts as she leafed through a thick Geography textbook.

"The truth ... the truth is ... I messed around with a bit of voodoo magic to get you to fall in love with me ... or at least notice me," Jason winced.

He was making the whole issue sound really bad.

"Voodoo magic?" the look on Stephanie's face could only be best described as skeptical.

She smiled to herself.

"There is no such thing as voodoo magic, Jay."

Jay.

It was her new nickname for him, and one that he never got tired of hearing her say.

Somehow, she made him sound more cool and self-assured, almost as if he was another person entirely, and not nerdy, shy, unconfident Jason.

Still, he was determined to tell her the truth, whether or not it'd change her mind about the way she saw him.

"It's real, Steph," he insisted.

Then he pulled out the doll and showed it to her. "An old lady sold this to me. She told me to prick a needle into your heart and order you to fall in love with me."

For a split moment, the skeptical look on Stephanie's face flickered to one of pure horror and disgust, as she stared down at the doll whose face was an exact mirror image of her own.

This happened in a split second before her face switched back to stubborn disbelief.

"Jason, I think you should know by now that I'm in love with you," she said softly. "And no amount of voodoo magic can control my heart to feel that way."

Gently, she rested her hand on his.

Swayed by the sudden confession and the warm feeling of her hand, Jason looked at her and said, "I love you too," in a voice choked with emotion.

He didn't notice the blank look in her eyes as she smiled. And when she told him he'd better leave the voodoo doll behind, he didn't argue at all.

All he could feel was the softness of her fingers intertwined with his as they walked off, abandoning the doll on the park bench ...

******
"What a pretty doll!" a young girl exclaimed as she picked up the voodoo doll from the bench. "Mommy, can I bring her home?"

"Of course, honey," her mother said distractedly, her attention taken up by the cell phone she was talking to.

"I shall name you Carrie, and you shall be my favourite-est doll," the girl whispered happily to her brand new doll.

Then she frowned. "Your eyes are much too small," she decided, with all the authority of a little seven year old girl who has watched way too many beauty pageants.

The girl tried to wipe the paint off the doll's eyes, but no matter how hard she rubbed, the paint refused to come off.

Stooping down, she hunted for something that could make her doll's eyes look bigger.

"Aha!" she cried triumphantly, locating a small sharp piece of rock. "Now I can make your eyes look bigger, Carrie! Wouldn't that be great?"

So saying, she held the rock in one hand and began to dig into the doll's skin, right underneath her painted eyes ...







Somewhere else far away in her own home, Stephanie was sleeping when at that very moment, she suddenly felt a terrible pain in her eyes.

Her hands automatically reached up to touch them. Something was slowly dripping down her fingers. Shaking with pain, she lowered her hands and they came away bloodied.

Then she started screaming ... but there was no one there to hear her.

Extra Ordinary (Poem)

You always built up your insults,
In three simple steps.

First, you'd tell me, 'You are extraordinary,'
I'd scrawl my pride across my cheeks in blushing red,
Happiness weighing my eyes down till I can hardly look up,
For fear I'd burst with it.

Then you'd correct me and split the word in two
'Extra' meaning additional, plus, more,
'Ordinary' meaning plain, invisible, no one.

Finally, you'd laugh and laugh and laugh
as though it was the b i g g e s t joke ever in capital letters
(correction; I think that adjective suited 'insult' better)

Your words were like sharp, tiny hooks,
Tugging the corners of my lips up.
You gave literal meaning to the term, 'a painful smile'
(I still fall for that same trick,
every single time)

Then I reminded myself that
Sticks and stones could break my bones,
But I'd never allow your words to hurt me.

So I broke your insults down,
In three simple steps.

First, I'd say, 'You're right, I am extraordinary',
You'd look at me as though you didn't have a brain.

Then, I'd correct you and piece the word back together
'Extraordinary' meaning incredible, amazing, marvellous and all things special.
'I am' meaning I believe in me and myself, in dreams and miracles.

Finally, I'd thank you for the compliment,
And I'd laugh, and laugh, and laugh
Right back into your pathetic, little, extra ordinary face.

Blue (Poem)

It is just a little ordinary crush, she says to herself,
On an ordinary boy out of the ordinary crowd.
'You look beautiful,' he told her at the prom,
She'd worn a dress the colour of the deepest seas,
But at that moment, she was drowning in his eyes.

Blue has been a part of her ever since
It was always there, present in any way possible
It coloured her clothes, her dreams, her personality
And gradually, she forgot how to be herself.

It is just an ordinary little crush, she tells everyone,
Even though she stares at him in school every single day,
Wondering if he'll notice the blue on her
Wondering if he'll compliment her again
He never did.

Then one day, she finds out
He’s fallen in love with a girl
Whose eyes are as blue as the sky,
And has freckles as countless as the stars

She buys a can of sticky paint
And splashes dark blue over everything,
The pillows, the desk, the four walls
There is no beauty in blue, she screams wildly,
There is no beauty in love.

She slams the door over and over again
But it's as though she got stuck in a muted dream,
And the banging is never loud enough,
For her anger is a mixture of
Deafening noises, molten heat and undecipherable screaming.

The paint finds its way into her eyes, her hair,
Slowly staining her skin
Filling her mouth with
The bitter taste of lead and rejection.

It was just an ordinary little crush,
she continues insisting.

And the tears begin to fall,
The closest they will ever be to being
A real blue part of her.

One Thing Adds Up To Another (Poem)

in theory,
one thing adds up to another.

therefore,

hope + expectations
= Disappointment

trust + lies
= Betrayal

love + stupidity
= Rejection + Heartache

and I'm not going to be that fool, anymore.

Play Pretend (Poem)

There is a very fine line
Between friends & enemies
You crushed it into
N-o-t-h-i-n-g.
All that's left are forced laughter and painted smiles, Oscar worthy acting and just
a
little
bit
of
sadness.

I'm good at distancing myself from people.
They annoy, they judge, but most of all, they scare me
Hiding their lies, their selfishness, their ignorance,
In empty words like 'best friend' or 'I love you'.

Masking their imperfections,
With a smile
As bright as a falling star,
When it lies buried in the earth.

'You aren't perfect either,' an inner voice reminds gently.
'I know,' I whisper. 'And I don't wish to play pretend any longer.'

But my inner voice was right
I lied.

Snow (Short Story)

Dawn approached, creeping in on silent golden fingers.

The atmosphere was still, and the very air was tense, as though expecting something to happen, to disturb the way in which morning arrived.

A fresh fall of snow had blanketed the ground, pure white in all its glory.

It beckoned to a young six-year old girl as she rushed out of the house in her pajamas to admire the snow.

It enticed her to taste its pureness and savour it as the crushed snow slowly melted on her tongue and slid down her throat.

That day sprung into a four year old standing habit which was carried out on the first day the snow starts to fall.

"That Sheila!" Mrs. Johnson would mutter, tight-lipped with an air of sheer vexation as she bustled around the kitchen preparing breakfast.

"It's just not hygienic," she'd complain to Mr. Johnson, every single year without fail.

And every single year, Mr. Johnson would patiently reply his same answer.

"Give her more time, she’s just growing through a phase of hers."

She'd first discovered Sheila's strange habit when she'd gotten up much earlier than usual to prepare a cup of coffee for herself.

Her daughter had been standing outside and Mrs. Johnson saw her through the window, drinking the snow.

With a cry of disgust and dismay, she’d rushed out to stop her daughter and told her to stop drinking the snow.

But Sheila had simply looked at her and smiled as she innocently offered the melting snow up to her mother.

The icy coldness did not seem to bother her at all even though she had been cupping the snow in her bare hands.

Angry and desperate to stop this strange habit of her daughter’s, Mrs. Johnson had slapped the snow away from Sheila's hand and given her a harsh scolding.

But Sheila, strange, sensitive and given to sudden bursts of tantrums Sheila, had simply kept silent throughout her mother's fierce tirade.

"It was really odd," Mrs. Johnson would recount the incident later on to her husband. "She didn't shed a tear even though I'd scolded her really badly."

Now Sheila, ten years old and studying in elementary school, still carried out her strange habit started four years ago.

The others in school had relentlessly teased her about her strange habit ever since her so-called 'best friend' spilled the beans on her.

But Sheila had taken care of that, soon enough. Nobody knew what it was she'd said to make her 'best friend' feel threatened, but it was enough to make her change schools within a week.

It didn't particularly bother Sheila that she didn't have any close friends now.

Somewhere along the lines, she'd decided that fear and respect were what she'd rather get out of a person. Friendship was the third option, and one that she doubt she'd ever choose.

After hearing weather forecasts estimating that the first fall of snow would arrive in a few days, she'd stayed up through the nights, sleeping at intervals, but always on the watch for the first hint of snowflakes.

She loved seeing the way they spiralled gracefully down to the earth, loved how they seemed to fall endlessly from the sky, every single one exquisitely delicate.

The first sign of snow appeared towards the later part of the night, just when Sheila was about to doze off.

Luckily, her sharp eyes caught the falling spots of white as they descended from the sky.

With a yell of delight, she put on her warmest jacket and rushed out of the house.

A drunken kind of ecstasy surged through her veins with wild abandon, and she was blind to everything except the snow descending onto her.

Laughing, she capered around in her bedroom slippers as the snowflakes rested against the tip of her eyelashes, melting against her smooth, creamy skin.

She didn't care even when the flurry of snow started to fall heavily, covering everything in a white so pure it almost seemed to glow with magic.

Before long, she was standing in a layer of snow that reached up to her knees.

Intoxicated with sheer delight, she made her way through the thick layers of snow, gazing fascinated at a magical white town that had been so bland, dull and grey a moment before.

So absorbed was she in looking at everything that she did not realize how far she’d strayed from home.

Shivering in the cold, she turned around to trudge back home.

Then, she saw her.

A young olive-skinned girl, squatting, outside a dilapidated house to scoop up a handful of fresh snow with her gloved hands.

She heard the distinct crunching noise as the girl proceeded to mash the snow up. When the snow had melted slightly, the girl then tipped the liquid into her mouth and closed her eyes.

The look of pure joy on her face as she savored the snow, the way the silver moonlight seemed to be netted in her dark ebony hair.

It was a strangely beautiful scene, yet all Sheila could see was how the girl's dark skin colour jarred with the purity of the snow.

And she did not like it.

"You have no right to drink that snow," she said, in a firm yet strangely petulant tone, as if she alone was allowed to have such a strange habit.

Her voice rang out loud and clear, piercing the silence of the night. The girl looked somewhat crestfallen as she let the remaining snow fall from her fingers.

"Why?" she asked, somewhat awestruck by this haunting young wraith of silver blonde hair and the palest ivory skin, who'd suddenly appeared in front of her doorstep and caught her doing what she’d thought no one would discover.

"Because ..." Sheila began self-importantly, but stopped when she saw the admiring look in the girl's eyes. Her tone softened, "Because you aren't suited for it. Just look at your skin colour. It doesn't match the snow."

"Oh."

The girl fell silent, but she didn’t seem to want to battle against Sheila’s weak reasoning.

There was an awkward pause.

"What's your name?" Sheila tried to be friendly.

"Elsa," the girl murmured, shyly twisting a curl of her hair around her finger. Sheila could see why she was named so.

Elsa was an awkward, ugly name, and this girl was weak-willed, the sort who could be easily manipulated.

Her bright green eyes were set too closely together, and her lips were a little too wide.

But I can teach her how to be a better person, I can teach her to be like me, Sheila thought to herself, a hint of a smile curling her lip.

"What's yours?" Elsa asked softly.

"Sheila," she answered, smiling at Elsa.

And that was the start of the strangest friendship between a girl who wanted to be idolized, and a girl who admired her.

For one thing, Sheila suggested that Elsa change her name to Esmeralda.

"It sounds more glamorous, you know?" she said, as a form of explanation.

"Esmeralda makes me think of a mysterious girl with haunting green eyes, and that's who you are going to be one day ... with quite a bit of practice of course," she added as she assessed Elsa with a rather superior air.

"I ... I don't know ... I quite like my own name actually ..." Elsa mumbled tentatively.

Esmeralda seemed to symbolize a different person entirely, and it scared her that she might have to transform into someone else.

But Sheila did not understand.

"Why can't you just grow up? People change their names all the time, it's just a name after all," she snapped, growing impatient all of a sudden.

"I ... I'm sorry," Elsa said weakly, and whatever little resistance she had left crumbled away into dust. "You can call me Esmeralda if you want."

"Trust me, Esmeralda," Sheila said softly, placing a hand over Elsa’s trembling one. "You have to believe me ... because I'm never wrong."

And so this odd friendship continued for the next one year, with Sheila always trying to change Elsa into someone else entirely, and Elsa never objecting to a single thing that Sheila suggested.

All too soon, it was winter again and the girls were growing more and more excited as the days passed.

Even though Elsa knew that she wouldn't be allowed to drink the snow, she was still looking forward to the day when the snow would fall, clothing everything in white.

And for the first time ever, Sheila announced that she wanted to stay over at Elsa's house for a sleepover.

This in itself, was hardly surprising.

Based on her past few visits, Sheila discovered that Elsa's mother was hardly around at home. Even during the rare times that she was at home, she normally retired to her room, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and swigging cheap liquor bought from the nearest convenience store.

This gave the girls free rein over how they could spend the time.

Still, this sudden announcement by Sheila was more than enough to shock Elsa into a wild sort of delight and pride that her best friend would want to stay over at her house this time round.

She could only pray that her mother wouldn't make a spectacle of herself in front of Sheila.

Please God, don't let my mom ruin this special day, she murmured to herself as she gazed at a photo that Sheila took of them together for reassurance.

Somehow, the photo Sheila only seemed to smirk back at Elsa, in way of divine reply.

When afternoon came, Sheila came over, loaded with a sleeping bag and a haversack weighed down by mysterious items.

"Hello Sheila," Elsa breathed, barely able to contain her excitement and happiness at the fact that her friend was going to sleep over at her house for the first time.

"Hello Es," Sheila said, heaving her bag past the doorway. She had been to Elsa's house a few times to play together, and she knew just how bad things were around the place.

Being fastidious, she'd brought an extra cloth just to wipe away the dust before she placed her belongings on Elsa’s bedroom floor.

Dusting her hands, she slowly surveyed the room once she was satisfied that Elsa's germs hadn't touched her items in any way.

"Your room looks a little drabber since I last came here," she observed, her sharp eyes traveled over Elsa’s worn out blanket, tattered pillows and dirty, stained walls.

It wasn't exactly a mean-spirited comment, just a casual, careless remark. Still, it was enough to make Elsa squirm uncomfortably.

She knew her room was small and dusty, but her mother held a part-time job and it was hard making ends meet as it was.

If only Sheila could try to be more understanding. If only I could be ...

"I know what we can do today!" Sheila announced suddenly, brusquely cutting her way through Elsa's thoughts. She always did that whenever she felt that she wasn’t having enough of Elsa’s attention.

So when Elsa now turned to stare at Sheila, wide-eyed with curiosity, she gave a grin so wide it seemed to split her lips apart.

"Make. Up!" she announced triumphantly, digging through her haversack as she produced a bulging silken bag filled with cosmetics. "I snitched quite a few goodies from my mom," she whispered conspiratorially. "It'll be fun, I promise."

"It sounds fun," Elsa echoed with excitement, trying to imitate the way Sheila arched her eyebrow whenever she wanted to be dramatic.

She is so sophisticated and daring, she thought to herself longingly, if only I could be more like her.

"Let's start with you!" Sheila said, as she drew out glossy tubes of lipstick and dozens of glittering eye shadow, and got to work.

Ten minutes later, she propelled Elsa to the bathroom to take a look at her 'make-up masterpiece.'

"You look absolutely stunning," Sheila had reassured her before she pulled her hands away from Elsa's eyes.

However, when Elsa stared at her reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror, she was unable to recognize the girl staring back at her.

Vivid neon green eye shadow was smeared all over her eyelids while a whole ton of black eyeliner was applied especially at the corner of her eyes, making them look more closely set together than ever.

To top it off, the dark red lipstick seemed to stray just slightly above the outlines of her lips, accentuating their wideness and size.

In short, she looked like a complete caricature captured in real life.

The shocked look in Elsa's eyes was evident, because it somehow compelled Sheila to act as if she didn't know what she’d just done. By subtly highlighting Elsa’s weakest features, she'd succeeded in making her look uglier than ever.

"I think you look great," she said casually, but there was a hard edge to her voice as she stared at Elsa.

Then came the unspoken challenge disguised in the form of an innocent question. "So, do you like it?"

"I ..." Elsa struggled to find the words. Sheila was more knowledgeable than her about the outside world, so this had to be what the world saw as beautiful.

She managed to force a sincere smile. "I love it, I really do."

And Sheila smiled back, that same strange grin which seemed to be so much wider than how she normally smiled.

"Perfect!" she exclaimed brightly. “Now, I’ll go do mine. I borrowed my dad’s digital camera, so we can take photos afterwards.”

"Perfect!" Elsa repeated, mimicking the false cheery tone of Sheila’s voice, except hers sounded much weaker and extremely fake.

When Sheila walked out of the bathroom an hour later, Elsa could only stare in awe at her best friend's new look.

Even though Sheila had overdosed on the black eyeliner around her eyes, it drew more attention to one of the best features of her face, and she seemed all eyes to Elsa now.

Sheila did not bother asking her for her opinion this time round as she went to dig out her camera.

"Smile for the camera, Es," she drawled as she started snapping away, but Elsa’s eyes were drawn to the glossy pink lips smirking behind the lens of the camera.

If only Sheila had used that glossy pink lipstick on me too, I'm sure I'd look more like her, and maybe I could look more beautiful.

"Now, you take me," Sheila said, batting her eyelids flirtatiously as she handed Elsa the camera.

Obediently, she took a few shots, but she was distracted. The glimmering silvery blue eye shadow painted on Sheila’s eyelids somehow reminded her of the snow.

"Do you think it’ll snow tonight?" she asked hopefully as she handed the camera back to Sheila.

"No idea," Sheila shrugged, acting like she didn't care, but there was a trace of hopefulness in her eyes as she put the camera away.

The afternoon passed by with the girls running around the house and exploring every nook and cranny.

Sheila kept insisting that Elsa’s house was haunted and they’d tried to search for ghosts everywhere, but obviously, there were none to be found in the day time.

As night fell, the girls were in the living room watching television blaring at an unusually loud volume, because Sheila claimed that she couldn’t hear what the people on TV were saying.

But Elsa could still hear the soft jingle of keys before the front door opened, and she hurriedly switched the television set off.

"Hello Mrs. Carlos," Sheila said in a sickeningly sweet voice, as Elsa’s mother walked in.

Mrs. Carlos merely nodded as she turned to stare at her daughter pointedly, "I didn’t know you were bringing over a friend today."

Elsa squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. Her mother seemed unusually lucid today, which was really rare because on most days, she normally stumbled into the house in a drunken stupor.

"I forgot to tell you," Elsa said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

But her mother heard her, and she slapped Elsa without another word.

"Don't you ever dare to do things without asking for my permission again," she hissed fiercely, before storming upstairs to her bedroom.

Numb with shock, Elsa turned to stare at the blank television set. How she wished this didn't have to happen right in front of her friend.

What would Sheila think of me now?

There was an awkward silence as the girls stared into space wordlessly, with Sheila perched on one end of the sofa and Elsa sitting at the other end.

"We'd better go and sleep," Sheila finally said, standing up and stretching. She acted as if nothing had happened, and for some reason, Elsa was grateful for that.

"Yeah, we’d better," she muttered.

She stood up too and together, they slowly walked up the creaky stairs to Elsa’s bedroom.

But sleeping that night proved difficult for Elsa, and she dozed in fits, waking up on intervals.

When she woke up for what felt like the hundredth time, she decided to go downstairs to have a drink of water. Stealing a glance at Sheila, she saw that her friend was still fast asleep.

So she crept downstairs to the kitchen by herself. That was how Elsa discovered that it'd started snowing.

Ecstatic, she ran back upstairs to shake a rather groggy Sheila awake.

"It's snowing!" she yelled. And that was all it took for Sheila to open her eyes.

Giggling with anticipation, the girls ran out of the house and right into the falling snow.

The first thing Sheila did was to bend down and scoop up a portion of the snow, rubbing it vigorously in her hands until some of it melted.

She seemed immune to the coldness of the snow, for she never wore gloves.

Closing her eyes, she smiled as she tipped the melted snow into her mouth and swallowed.

Feeling envious and somewhat resentful that she wasn’t allowed to do the same, Elsa grabbed her own portion of snow and idly molded it into a snowball.

A tiny spark of something had flared up in her, and before she knew what she was doing, she'd lobbed the snowball right into Sheila’s face.

Sheila sputtered angrily as she wiped the snow from her face. Glaring at Elsa, she grabbed a handful of snow, molded it into a snowball and threw it back.

It managed to hit the side of Elsa’s head even though she tried to duck it.

Before long, snowballs were flying all over the place, and the fight had turned into a snowball war.

Too absorbed in trying to hit each other and avoid the other's snowballs, the girls didn't notice that temperatures had dropped drastically, and the snow was coming down more thickly.

Then, Sheila suddenly dropped her snowball and collapsed to the ground, hugging herself and shivering uncontrollably. She was only clad in her nightgown and a thin jacket.

Elsa hurried over to Sheila.

"Are you all right?"

Sheila was shivering to the point that she could only whisper through chattered teeth, "Home, go home."

But all Elsa could hear was the chattering of Sheila's teeth, and all she could see was the slow transformation of her friend's appearance before her eyes.

Sheila's lips were now tinged with blue and her skin was growing very pale, as pale as the white snow trembling on her dark eyelashes.

"You are so beautiful," Elsa whispered reverently, gently picking up strands of Sheila's silver blonde hair and letting them slide through her fingers like silk. "You look like a snow goddess now."

It was a haunting scene, two girls in the snow, one lying on the ground, as though already on her deathbed, while the other knelt beside her, like an entranced worshipper.

And for some reason, even though she knew she was going to die, Sheila smiled that strange, wide grin of hers.

The grin stayed on her face even when she closed her eyes for the final time and quietly slipped away into the howling icy wind.

Perhaps she liked the idea of being immortalized as a snow goddess, the romantic notion of dying young.

Perhaps she thought she could preserve her beauty forever through death.

Regardless of the reason, Elsa sat there for a while, huddling in her jacket and shoes, slowly tracing her gloved fingers across Sheila's icy face.

So this is what Death looks like, she thought to herself. No dramatic entrance, no fuss, just slipping in like a shadow and taking away one's soul.

Expressionless, she closed her eyes and slowly bent down to kiss Sheila's waxen cheek.

Then, she stood up and walked away from Sheila's body, now frozen in the snow.

She was calm when she went to inform Sheila's parents of their daughter's death.

She remained unemotional throughout the funeral, never shedding a single tear for the girl she'd once idolized. People kept giving her strange looks but she ignored them.

After the funeral, she went straight back home and up to her bedroom

Sheila's haversack still rested against the dusty floor, a reminder of her presence once.

Pulling out a pink tank top and white jeans from the bag, she put them on and surveyed herself in the cracked bathroom mirror.

It was only then, that a slow smile began to spread across her lips, and she batted her eyelids at her reflection.

"You look so beautiful ... Sheila."

P.S. Dear Heart (Poem)

P.S. Dear heart,
I know there are days,
It hurts as much as the first day he broke you,
Because I'm sewing you back together with a needle dipped in glue.
And there is no anesthesia for this mending
So bear with it for a little while more, please stop crying,
By the time I'm done, you’ll be as good as brand new.


Dear heart,
When everything heals, there'll be scars left on you
Don't be ashamed; display them for the world to see
You can tell everyone how you fell apart,
But there is a happy ending to this story,
Because it only made you stronger in the end.


Dear heart,
I think they must be lying,
When they say the skin is the most sensitive part of the body,
Because you are the most delicate organ I've ever known,
And you hurt worse than bruises and open wounds.


P.P.S. Dear love,
Once, you were the reason for my happiness,
Now, you're a drug I must stop being addicted to,
I still wait for the day I can smile with my heart
So I'm closing the door slowly on you,
Until someone can walk right in,
And won't ever leave again.


P.P.P.S. Dear God,
If I could have one wish,
It'd be to believe in miracles once more.

Anger (Poem)

As the sun burned against my skin,
My cheeks were dry.

Yet, deep inside my heart was crying.

Anger was stealing my energy.
Pain was making me feel weak.

Was this really going to be the end
Of me & you?

Answers.

You kept demanding them.
I had none to give.

Pride stuck in my throat.
Rendering me incapable of
Making myself understood.

You didn't understand at all.
Neither did I.

"Take back your ring, I don't think I should have it any longer."

You said this,
Without any form of emotion.
Your face gave nothing away.
I fought ... really fought ... to control my own.

It sounded like you were saying good-bye,
And I wasn't prepared for that single word.
Not now, not ever.

Words.
You were full of them.
I was empty of it.

It created an invisible bridge,
Between us.

One that was filled with your words
But not mine.

One that was filled with your logic
But not mine.

And as the sun burned against my skin,
The tears started to flow.

Was this really going to be the end
Of me & you?





There will never be a right time to say good-bye.

Alone (Poem)

Standing at the back of that crowded train,
I try to push back the pain,
But my skin is already stained
With memories and tears.

I tried to hold on to your heart,
But it slipped through my fingers
I never heard it shatter.

You must have taken it back
A long time ago.

Before today,
I thought nothing could be softer than
A single teardrop hitting the ground,
And a heart being cut into two.

You proved me wrong.

After today,
I lost three quarters of my faith in love,
I lived the painful meaning of a heartbreak,
I learned a little more about being brave.

And right now,
I just want to close my eyes &
forget



you.



I will hold on
To the one quarter that's left.

Swinging (Poem)

Swinging creates that illusion of flying
As I push off from the ground
Soaring high into the deep blue sky
I swing all the way up, before falling back down

Memories flashed by my eyes
Good ones and bad
There were those that made me smile
And those that made me sad


Up;
When I got back home
On my birthday’s eve
Mom & Dad threw me a surprise party
Under the falling autumn leaves

Blew out my birthday candles,
One, two, three, four, five
I tried my best not to cry
For I will never forget
The love I saw in my parents' eyes


Down;
Society is a complicated thing,
A language I couldn't comprehend
No matter what I did, I just couldn't fit in
Why? I really didn't understand.

Then puberty struck,
Pimples popping up on skin
I started worrying about my weight,
I started wanting to be thin.


Up;
I had a crush on a boy
With the most amazing brown eyes
Whenever he was near
I melted into nothing but sighs

His name decorated my front page
I got his number from a friend
He trapped my heart in a cage
Yet crushes such as this
Were destined to a bittersweet end.


Down;
Told my best friend a secret
She swore the pinkie swear
Yet the next day, everybody in school knew
It was more than I could bear

I confronted her, she denied
I did not believe, I knew she lied
I lost something in the most horrible way
I lost a friend that very day.


Up;
I finally learn
Happiness does not have a price
Love cannot be forced

Just be true to yourself
And maybe one day,
You’ll find the answers.