My heart rate still quickens when my phone vibrates.
My stomach tickled by migrating butterflies.
Muscle to muscle they proceed.
As gut-churning as a pile of sick.
But of course it won’t be you on my screen.
it never is.
Wasted heebie-jeebies.
jw
Granny
Your laughter still lingers in my brain,
Like a tropical cyclone with a nonexistent wind-shear
Like a hurricane with a ceaseless reservoir of latent heat
It still lingers like
A puzzle with all pieces intact, every detail still clear
Like the base note of a fragrance and I only fear that
One day, it’ll start fading like a liquid gas smear
Forever loved grandma.
j.w
Parasite
Inspired by “Comeback” – Ella Erye
I felt you slipping through my hands like silt.
Radiating from my skin like heat.
I thought I had you when I pounced,
but now it’s clear.
You are the forbidden fruit
my stretched arm can never reach.
You’ve never sought the warmth my hands bear,
although you say you do.
So now my head soars like a dust devil,
Into the dark skies of un-lived hours
when even the city is fast asleep.
Retracing foot prints my thoughts left scattered in their making.
Collecting pieces of emotions you made me strip.
Longing to break the instant I let my tongue slip.
j.w
No Actions, Just Words
It must have been the hundredth time of you saying it
That your face began twisting into a mangled mess of unkept promises
That the honey in your words began metamorphosing into a simmering bitterness
That I finally realized you never once intended on doing any of it
j.w
Chaos and Calm
Chaos is dancing within me in synchronized steps
Proof — the havoc of meaningless words in its wake
Its trail has forced me down the lobes of my brain
Chasing the triggers of what keeps me sane
But what daunts me is the rushing blood in my veins
The tumult leaving the cusps of my heart astray
What haunts me is the mayhem echoing in the marrow of my frame
The anger rumbling in the fissures of my brain
But regardless, I choose to fight for the peace whispering my name
j.w
Letting go
Resting here, entwined with the sheer darkness of midnight, my eyes can only see our limbs. They lie in an ungainly sprawl, enmeshed like vines of a wall shrub. My fingers are quivering as they venture out to trace the hairs of a chest that isn’t there. My head is overwhelmed, harassed by vehement thoughts and words that were never said but still, here I am, fluidifying its frontier, pondering on how you managed to break my walls; how your charm cut through me like a disemboweling knife and left me spellbound, craving your company like a coke addict fancies his fine dust of cocaine. I doubt you’ll ever understand how your grip felt like home to me. Nestled between your arm and chest, head tucked beneath chin, listening to the tender processes of our bodies, I was unbreakable. The hairs on my arms are jutting into the night like an ambushed flock of birds, recalling how flawlessly the ridges of my lips mingled with the grooves of yours — in palpable adoration — as though made for each other. How the softness of your eyes blinded me to the hour glass hovering before us, haunting us indefatigably, one that we both chose to ignore. But now that the sand is fixed, motionless as the trunk of a full-grown baobab tree, and you have vanished like a half-starved hologram devoid of electrical energy, I can only describe how my heart danced in different rhythms watching the little things you would do; how effortlessly you brought words to me despite a creative slowdown of months on end. And now, listening to the fine murmurs of a lonely thursday night, cradled in a blanket I ought to burn, I can only hope I was more than a transient encounter to you. To me, you were so much more.
j.w
Emotions
At times I am a shattered piece.
Misconstrued. Bits of my brokenness
Scattered stunningly to my foes.
Weakened. Unable to end dreams girdled
By the ever-expanding aftermath of rotten feelings.
Discarded. Yet they still turn up uninvited;
Like new invoices seeKing to join an ever-growing
Stack of overdue bills.
Imperfect. Fighting a me version that
SpriNgs streams of ungodly passions.
Helpless.
Last night when I saw you…
The warm glow beneath your skin shriveled
Like a plum becoming a prune or like skin losing its grace
A dire fluorescence began cruising within your veins
That left me on edge, facing doom that looms ahead
Just last night when I saw you.
Craving to break away
Like a bird caged for days on end.
j.w
Dad
Your existence is nothing but a mere imagination.
A broken image that surfaces in my head rarely.
A fleeting thought mostly disregarded in ignorance,
But in rare occasions resists the force that churns,
My thoughts and instead harassingly haunts me.
j.w
A Memoir
A vivid image of your splendid face still
Invades my thoughts and makes me
Vanish into an endless cycle of wistful
Memories from when we were younger.
Those long gone days when you could still
Whisper a mischievous plan in my ear
And make me giggle from the tickling sensation
Of air waves propagating through my ear canal.
I still get sickened knowing that time is
Irreversible and that those are passed days,
Inaccessible to mortals. That those days when
We would wander about the brown, roasted
Grasses of the Savanna hunting for ladybugs
Will never be re-lived or retrieved from the
Ashes of scattered memories they left behind.
An image of the day we unknowingly shifted to
‘Less doing’ and ‘more talking’ still presents itself.
I admit I started to find you a total bore when you’d
Lay lazily in bed all day, but your anguish imprisoned
Me by your bedside because you were my only friend.
Each day you got sicker and sicker until the critters
Eventually liberated your soul and left behind a
Lifeless body and a girl with exhausted tear ducts
Stuck with a blank expression in unwavering disbelief.
Even to this day, I still dearly miss the ‘birthday-less’ boy
With the infectious laugh who’d be prompted to narrate
A lengthy tale to a wimpy girl who wouldn’t fall asleep.
Shalo, I miss you.
Turmoil and Tranquility 