Now leave your voicemail after the beep.

"Hello,
I'm sorry I didn't come to the phone.
My chest feels like a thousand storms,
they are raging with hurricanes that go on for stories,
they had sunk every bit of peace and rest that voyaged from a good day.
A whirlpool in the middle had sucked in the overboarded sailors, normal sleeping hours, good appetite and the remaining fairy dust that I had saved for a rainy day.
And I,
I feel like the illustrated cow that is always drawn in the middle of a cartoon hurricane.
The higher and smaller the cow is,
the higher it is on the hurricane classification category.
In short, I am the dot in this weather.

I am constantly falling but also, suspended in mid air
Also, I'm being flung in circles and circles of loneliness with depression acting as a centripetal force of this never ending hurricane of sadness.
The speed of circling for 200 km/hr feels like slow motion after days.
Then, it's like I am in water
Except that,
I am submerged in the constant dread of not living my life to the fullest.
Then, I discover that I can breathe underwater
but I can't swim.
So, in that moment,
I am stuck in the mindset of wanting to to live my life and knowing that I have all the power to do exactly that,
but what is the point?

Sometimes when I am lucky,
I end up in the eye of the storm, like now.
It allows me to get enough of my shit together to construct a poem using metaphors and fancy sailing words like "voyaged".
I have sat here for a few days now.
All I hear are waves crashing against each other and the wind howling my name.
These storms feel too angry for them to be over any time soon.
I don't have a plan yet because getting out seems to be impossible at the moment.
I can't hear myself think over the destruction.
I'll send a message in a bottle when the storms calm down."

I mean,

"Hello,
I'm sorry, my phone died."

Questions that I want to ask you but never will.

There are so many questions that I want to ask when you told me you were meeting him.

Do you think of me when you hold his hand?
Is mine smaller than his?
Does he know or remember how your skin is smooth like marble,
as if the marble itself were hand picked by Gods himself.
Does his hand feel any different than mine?
Does his feel rough like all the work that he says he is supposedly doing
or is mine rougher from all walls that I had to climb through to get to you.
Does it feel like you're holding onto him or
does it feel like he doesn't want to let you go?
Does he look at your hands when you're holding his?
Does he hold onto your hands so tightly
that he feels like you might slip away and never come back?
Does he feel as lucky as I do when I am with you?

Then, I realize that you always hug him.
Does he smell of cologne?
Do you feel like your problems are fading away when you bury yourself in his arms?
Do you remember me?
Do you ever compare the way we held you?
Was I ever too tight? Or too eager? Were my shoulders broad enough for you?
Am I at the back of your head as he wraps his arms around you?
Does he ever realize when you are slipping away?
I remember, the way you turn your head sidewards
while you put your hands against my chest to pull away.
I remember how your eyes were dead.
I remember how you talked to everything around you but me,
and I had to play it off like I didn't mind.
Does he try to make any hug last longer? Does he try like I do?
Does he feel as happy when he is with you as I do?

And you cautiously told me that you kiss him.
Do you look at him the way you look at me?
Does he notice how your eyes can sparkle in low light?
Does he notice how you laugh when he pulls you in for another kiss?
Do you remember me when his lips grazed across yours?
Kissing you felt like kissing flower petals.
I wonder if you ever felt the exact way for him before you did for me.
Do you look at him the way you still looked at me?
Does it feel wrong to kiss two people the way that you do?

And when you told me, you still tell him that you love him..
Shit, that sucked.
It really did.
I felt that my chest was ripped open, my heart taken out,
only to have it shoved back in through my ribcage.
Do you tell him those three words before you go to sleep?
Does he say it back?
Do you mean it when you say it to him?
Do you think of me every time you say it to him?
You have deemed him worthy of those words.
Was I not enough to be more than a secret?
Do you think about the last time that you will say it to him?
What about me?
Have you ever meant it when you told me you love me?

Autumns and him.

I have never met you.
When I think of you,
I think of autumn,
breezy afternoons and chilly winds.

I was told that autumn can be quite cold
and somehow,
I can imagine us taking a walk in the park.
Hand in hand,
fingers interlocked.
I don't know how cold I'd be but
in this imagination of mine,
your hands were warm.

In my mind,
we were wearing scarfs of the same color.
In my mind,
 we are walking hand in hand in the same park.

Cyan.

You were green.
I was blue.
I tried to be the color of your skies.
I painted landscapes with you.

You seeped through my veins,
and I now, a body of blue and cyan,
I changed and I didn't mind,
I thought you didn't mind too.

I love you.

Those three words are said too much,
they're not enough.
They became merely words,
with no promises, no hope, empty.

Then,
there was you.
I'd regret it if I didn't tell you that enough.

I can't say I'm in love with you.

I can't say that I'm in love with you
but when I close my eyes,
I imagine you lying next to me,
smelling of fresh laundry and sleep.
The monsters under my bed left me alone when you're there.
They know that you'll save me from
what scares me the most
and why bother, they said.
I wasn't the most superstitious person but after that night,
I called you my dreamcatcher.
If my prayers for miracles could not save me at night,
surely it could not be a coincidence
that your presence chases away what make me stop breathing at night.

Then,
those eyes, god, those eyes.
I forget my own name when I stare into them.
Sometimes, I even forget to breathe,
I wasn't "conscious" when you demanded for my attention.
I snapped back into reality in such a hurry,
suddenly aware of the clanging trays and impatient finger snapping from customers.
You said something about what to do next,
then I lost track of what you were saying
because, those eyes, your eyes..

I really can't say that I'm in love with you
but the idea of someone else holding you hand
makes me feel like the world is going to end.

I can't say that I'm in love with you
but I refuse, refuse...
It had to be you,
I want it to be you.

Atlas and His Punishment.

When the Titans lost their war against the Olympians,
Atlas was condemned by Zeus to bear heaven's weight on his shoulders.
His punishment was a series of cramping wrists and stuttering kneecaps,
shaking arms and shoulders that bent over like all the apologies in the world.
No amount of suffering or prayers will ever earn him
the forgiveness of the supreme ruler of the gods.
I guess it's understandable that he suffers.
It is retribution for going against the most powerful god of all.

When I am curled up in my own bed, I often ask myself
if any of my wrongdoings has resulted in this form of punishment.
The weight of the day greeted my waking body like the aftermath of a hurricane.
My shoulders mirror the act of Atlas balancing the heavens,
except the heavens replaced by my anxiety and my desperate need to be good enough.
My arms cramped from the way I wrapped them around myself.
I bite my teeth down so hard that I was made believe that
my voice was never meant to be heard.
I broke and crumbled, without falling down.

Perhaps I am the daughter of Atlas, reincarnated
over the centuries to share the burden of what was once my father's punishment.
Perhaps my pain will act as the head of a decapitated prisoner, stuck on a pole
high up, as a warning to those who might stray.

Then,
Perhaps I am Atlas himself, wiped clean off all memories of the past,
with only the loud echos of never ending pain,
as a faint reminder of doing what I thought was right.

When I am in a corner deliberately

Hi, my name is Tryphena.

My talents include redirecting conversation topics to food 

and making people feel uncomfortable with my probing questions about their life.

I am not here to meet people, 

Notice how I am standing in the corner,

avoiding contact with everyone else at all costs.

I am simply here because I am supposed to

or I'm doing a favor for a friend.

I do not wish to participate in your discussion of the weather,

or the debate of whether the iPhone 6 bends "for real".

We have two seasons, raining and hell.

It is not rocket science

and definitely not a good ice breaker.

Oh, did you know it rained today?

OH MY GOD, REALLY?

and here's a tip,

don't bend anything that is not supposed to be bended.

Don't get me wrong, 

I am a nice person but

if I am in the corner deliberately and you invade that space,

you better have interesting things to say. 

I am in this corner for a reason.

If small talk is the only thing that you've got,

don't take offense when I make an excuse to go to the toilet and never come back.

I would usually stay and chat but 

if I am in a corner, people watching, 

please leave me alone.

Unless you've come to join me in judging people by their covers for fun,

then by all means.

Waking up empty, again.

It was raining, a downright storm,
everywhere was dark, gloomy,
you feel like you never knew what happiness was.

I woke from my nap, expecting to be refreshed or at least not as tired
but no, that ever familiar sinking feeling is back.
I felt like I really forgot how to smile, it was as if
I forgot what anything good feels like.
Getting up hurts, just like I remember it.
Talking or making attempts at communication drains you.
It's definitely back because
suddenly, I was desperate to feel anything that was bad for me.

I crave cigarettes and the way they feel when I smoke it.
I love counting how many years they are taking off my life
but literally, not caring about it.
I crave alcohol, I crave the burn it gives when it goes down my throat.
I want to feel my face numb up from too many shots,
I want to feel how peaceful everything seemed to be, drunk.
I crave pain, they tighten up all the loose screws
and I can appear as fine, as well.
I love how they stop me from feeling the black hole in my chest,
at least for a while.
You only need to function for a while, it works.
I crave the sense of danger,
I would walk outside late of the night, and hoping
that somehow I would fall victim to a horrible tragedy.
I love how I know that I have 70% chance of dying
and I wouldn't really care.

Despite having the desperate need, the want to destroy myself,
I am still alive because I refuse to die.

I remind myself that every day.

Day 9 of 30 Day oetry Challenge: Quickly jot down four verbs, four adjectives, and four nouns. Write a poem using all 12 words

Dreams can shock you into feeling, anything.
It's a dream, it can go anywhere.
Anything can happen, whether be it a lost memory,
or a treasured moment.
Dreams have the ability to make you feel the extend of what you are capable of.

Sleep reminds you that you're alive when you wake up.
It's how you rest, how you stop thinking.
However, when you drift off into unconsciousness,
you don't control where it goes from here.
You are free but somehow, not really.
Your dreams are where you face your fears,
your hopes, your worst case scenarios.

When you wake up,
you can feel pain, so much pain.
You wake up, hunched into question mark and
admit that there is nothing else worse than what you are feeling now.
You will naturally learn to tell yourself to breathe,
to say that it's not real and you'll be okay.
The pain will subside and slowly,
it will be an imprint of what you felt just moments before.

Day 5 of 30 Day Poem Challenge: Write a three line poem about lemons without using the following words: lemon, yellow, round, fruit, citrus, tart, juicy, peel, and sour.

Lemons
Oval-shaped and has the color of the sun,
Mix it with water, it's refreshing
Warm it up and add honey, medicine for those who lost their voice

Day 2 of 30 Day Poem Challenge: Who was the last person you texted? Write a five line poem to that person.

Abigail Harris.

You are one of the most responsible person that I've ever met.
I don't know you well but we get along,
I think it's loving of you to stay with your family when they need you.
We don't see a lot of that, especially in youths and young adults.
I hope we remain friends, really, I think we would.

Day 1 of 30 Day Poem Challenge: Write a poem where each line starts with a letter from your first name.

Trying to walk across my room, nope, just walked into the fan.
Right in the middle of the room, not sure how it got there.
You must know, I am not a neat person
Probably because I don't like moving from my bed a lot.
Heaven knows that I'll never leave my bed
Even if, I am hungry or I need to pee
Never mind, at least I didn't fall, crack my head open and die
And that will most likely be my last words, if I were to die young.

Love letters.

I'm sorry I can't write you a love letter.
No, I don't mean "those" letters.
You know, the ones that involve words like,
You and I, forever, house, children, mortgages,
and occasionally, your parents suck.
Love letters, the type I meant were
the ones where you tell them about a place that you went to
because they love the color red.
Then, you'd tell them about the person that you met recently
and how this person's laugh is similar to theirs.
Letters where profanities and insults were the language of endearment,
and I think, it will probably end with,
"Dude, text me. Why are you writing?"
Letters like these are never long,
sometimes they are a beautifully sculpted essay, using words such as,
flamboyant, combust, dynamic, serendipity.
Sometimes they are a random string of words, like
pizza, hippopotamus, Herbie, smelly, you.
Another thing about these letters is that
it made sense either way because it was written to you,
only you,
with love.

I can't write love letters anymore.
The last person I wrote to stopped talking to me,
and now, I am writing this to you
after deleting 290 photos of me and her at 3 in the morning.
I am not a person who is good with speech, or affection
or love, or relationships.
The only thing that allows me to properly explain the things that I feel
is a pen and paper.
Therefore, love letters, they are a manifestation of everything that I am afraid to say and
even everything that I refuse to say.
When I write to you,
no other thoughts but you will occupy my mind.
You will be my sole muse, my inspiration until the very last word
which is where I sign "Love, Tryphena"
I would use words to paint you like a picture, in hopes that
you would understand how I see you as a human being.
I have a knack for seeing things about people that are not noticed by many,
I'll tell you how you always keep your arms close to your body,
like somehow, you are trying to make yourself smaller or to preserve body heat.
I'll tell you how you always smile differently in pictures, especially the ones taken with me.
I'll tell you that people love you and you shouldn't be with someone who doesn't.
I'll tell you how you always change the topic to something else when it's a question that you didn't want to answer.
Then, to make things worse,
I'll tell you how different I am when I am with you.
I'll give you examples, references, citations, everything to show
how your existence is so important to me.
I'll tell you that you're the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep.
I'll tell you that I am comfortable with you, even when we're both in decade-old PJs.
I'll tell you that I check your "last seen" on whatsapp when I couldn't sleep.
I'll tell you that I never stopped loving you.

If I write you a love letter,
I am giving you my heart, my self-esteem, my self-worth on a silver platter.
If I write you a love letter,
you are given the ability to crush me into a million pieces in the time span that ranges from one millisecond,
to three years,
or more, your choice.
If I write you a love letter,
I am exposing myself to you in a way
that I later will suffer maximum damage from
if you ever plan on killing me.
If I write you a love letter,
I won't be able to take any of it back if you chose to leave,
and I will be left here with all the words that I ever wrote to you,
stuck in the back of my throat.

In spite of this,
if I write you a love letter,
you should know that I must really really love you.

Day 11 of 30 challenge: Are you a lover or a fighter?

I am both actually.

When I love, goddammit, I love.
I'd tell you that you look beautiful, perfect,
even with all your flaws that hung off your walls of insecurity.
I'd sing you songs that remind me of you.
I'd play you the songs that my heart beats to when I see you.
I'd say that you are a story waiting to be told, 
these scars that you bear from falling down and wrong side of beds.
Holy shit, that smile, I blew it the moment you look my way.
You are the plot twist in the stories, you captivate people,
you are the climax, the one that everyone has been waiting for.
I'd write you songs, poems,
but then, I'd stop because
no combination of 26 alphabets could ever describe
what I feel for you.
And those eyes, they echo centuries and centuries of wisdom and insight,
I could stare at them for so long without feeling lost.
I'd have to set myself on fire. 
Engulfed in flames,
that would be something that is only seemingly accurate 
to this overflowing love that I feel for you.
I'd scream to the whole world that I love you.
Oh my god, I love you.
I wouldn't be able to understand it completely,
I wouldn't be able to understand how is it possible for someone to feel
so much, so much about someone,
and not explode.
Goddammit, I love you, 
I love you so much.

A fighter, yeah, I am that too.

I'd beg you not to leave, I'd throw out every reason that I can make up to apologize.
I'd beg, on my knees, snot and tears, to fix things
I'd compromise, give whatever that I have.
I'd figure a way to make things work.
I'd refuse to take no for an answer.
I'd make it work, 
I'd make us work.
Fucking hell, 
I would do anything for you.

On being happy? I guess.

I have people tell me that,
I am one of the happiest people that they have ever met
I laugh a lot, I smile also, they say.
Funny, because I feel like I am anything else
but, that.
I guess it's a compliment?
I started to focus on myself more, call me selfish
but it helps me with "loving myself more".
They are right, especially when it comes to that.
When you love yourself, everyone else can go fuck themselves.
At least, that's what I try to live by.

There are days where I still feel you linger in my thoughts,
my dreams, in conversations that I have
and sometimes, in little things that I do daily.
I think I still hold you dear and I will still call you babe.
On the other hand, I wish to scream at you,
to make you regret every name that you ever called me,
for making me feel inferior,
for making me beg you, with all the apologies that I could say in a breath,
for making me believe that I indeed a horrible person,
for making me believe that I was never worthy of trust, or love.
You made me believe that no one needed me
and I believed every word.

I still have those messages.
I can still hear you screaming at me on the phone.
I took your pictures down a few months ago.
I tucked them away, somewhere deep in my drawers.
Give me a few more months,
maybe I'll be able to burn them then.

FINISHED - Challenge Day 8: Write: a love poem … for a non traditional item or person

This is a poem for my bed.

I have spent most nights, most afternoons and all morning
huddled in a mountain of pillows and blankets.
Sometimes I hide under the blankets, pretending to be a hiker,
hiding from the cold on Mount Everest.
Sometimes I pretend I'm in a small cave while under this fluffy fort that I made,
hiding from the rest of the world, half convinced that
if I never left, I will be fine.

My three pillows became my fortress from the dark,
my blanket became my invisibility cloak that shield me from reality.
Wobbly, a birthday present when I was 10,
was my loyal friend.
He, yes, it's a he, he loved me
even when I was all snot and tears.
My bed is a place where I made sense of things,
where I pour our my feelings, staining the whole room with it's darkness.
It is where therapy is sleeping and waking up is another chance to change things.
My bed is where I laughed at the most ridiculous jokes,
and come up with most of my paradoxes.

Home was far away, it was out there and out of reach,
I was sad, it wasn't easy being so far away.
Pillows, that have collected most of my tears and dreams during sleepless nights,
became a place where I rest my head when I give in to my thoughts.
Blankets that have so often imitated the arms of a protective lover,
mastered the art of being there and never letting go.
In my loneliness, they have given me comfort and peace
when there were nothing but storms in my head.
Wobbly, in these silent moments, has given me strength
and hope when all seemed lost.
My bed is the island where I sought help, where solitude was happiness
silence became another genre of music as my bed slowly became home.

Every time when I am exhausted, wounded or overjoyed,
I come back to this nest that I build, in which
I have slowly start to accept, as home.

I sense my anxiety levels slowly rising. The red light in my head says “DANGER! CAUTION!” and the green light says “Run!”. I am afraid of the past repeating but running will not help me see that it belongs in the past. 

She’s smiling and she’s happy. I am happy for her because I know she would be happy for me too. She was smiling so big, it's nice to see this side of people. It is oddly comforting. Despite everything before, I know this time it will be different 

because I won't let the past make me fear 

because 

because  

because when the red light in my head flashed, I didn't run.

You don't want this poison

she said to him,
"You don't want this poison,"
and then,
she ran away.
Her heart screamed and cried
because she loved him
but she didn't believe that
he could ever love her.
She didn't believe that anyone would love her
or at least, stay.
She ran away,
she ran a distance, to somewhere
that no one knows, somewhere completely barren.

She loved him
but she said to him,
"You don't want this poison,"
and then,
she ran away.

Aren't you?

Hey you!
Yeah, you, the one whose reading this.
Aren't you tired from life?
No? Well, I'm not either.
I am tired of people.
I am tired of pretending and caring.
I.. I just want this, all this to be over

You know those times when you just want to let it go
but you can't.
Then, you tell yourself
It's not important.
It doesn't have to bother you
but it just does.

And you chose to ignore it
or maybe
deal with it a little later

And then,
when it's time to deal with it,
you just refuse to open yourself up
to let yourself feel
because you are pretty sure that
you're not able to patch yourself up if
whatever that you are feeling starts to eat you up.

Aren't you tired of pretending that something doesn't bother you
when that is all that it does, the whole time
even when you're not thinking about it.
Aren't you tired of putting on that face
when none of it seems worth it
To pretend that things are fine when
they choose to be what it was before
To hope that it lasts when
they choose to be how they are now

Aren't you tired of stepping on eggshells
Always trying to guess what mask you should put on
Like when things are good,
you let out a sigh of relieve
When things are not,
you just hold your breathe
And hope that somehow you don't die
Sometimes, I just wish that I'll sink
so that I can somehow disappear from this scenario

There's not much you can do about this
because it's not you, you're sure about that
You don't know what's wrong but
you just know none of this is right

Aren't you tired of getting mad
at things that doesn't have a foothold in your life yet
Aren't you tired of getting upset over something like this
when you know you have other things, people to live for

Aren't you tired of it?
because I am.