I tried to write a poem about my Guardian Angel being angry at me but when I asked him for help he said nothing. He was real mad, silent mad, so mad he wouldn’t vocalise it. I understand, I’m not a very good human often so I can’t blame him.

The poem went something like this:

“It’s funny, this back and forth we have. Today I’m mad at you and tomorrow you’re mad at me. Good old fashioned relationship dynamics at play.

I don’t like to dwell on the fact that I’m always the one at fault….”

And then I had nothing else to write because every time I turned to my right he was looking at me with a face that said, “Are you being serious right now?”

I actually was. It was my way of trying to lighten the mood when all I should have said was sorry. I don’t imagine – no. I know having to watch me is hectic. I am tired of me, I wouldn’t expect any thing less.

But Guardian Angel, I just gotta say, I’m really grateful I have you. Life would be magnificently chaotic without you.

Kassy_Lu

Whispers

Some days the silence is so heavy, palpable, portent, enough to be cut through with a knife. I sit in it, wondering if it would shatter like glass if I screamed.

Other days, on the days I want it the most, the silence gives way to whispers. Little rustles that seem to never stop. Thoughts in my head that speak to each other, have a good laugh and turn to me to share their findings.

I wonder what that looks like to you. Does it distract you from your watching over me? I wonder if it distracts you when it’s time to fight the darkness that flies at me from time to time.

I imagine the pointy end of your sword sticking in the ground in between your sandaled feet, your forearm resting on it, ready to strike at any moment and that makes me feel good, I feel safe.

But I can’t help wondering, if you stabbed into my silence, would it abate?

Kassy_Lu

I Hear You

I hear you speak, I just don’t want to listen. You have a knack for saying things that make sense when I don’t want sense. You tell me the truth that I don’t want to hear when I am here, blissfully oblivious. Why you gotta burst my bubble?

I hear you shuffle around me, silent yet not quiet, watching, trying to nudge me, rouse me into some motion. I hear you thinking, see the thoughts on your face, see you try to hide them.

I hear the things you don’t say when you don’t want to hurt me. I see you struggling beside me, fighting me with me, pushing me forward, cheering me on, calling me out, bringing me into me.

I feel you beside me, brave when I’m afraid, more daring, exploring avenues I’d never dare, facing fear head-on, unapologetic in who you are. I hear you and I’m glad you’re there. If you weren’t, the silence would consume me.

Kassy_Lu

Inner Voices

I imagine it must be interesting to watch me from a distance when I’m seated by myself. Talking and listening to the voices in my head.

It’s just one voice really, with a bunch of different views and add-ons. You never answer when I ask you.

You seem to speak without speaking, a voice with no sound, just promptings towards something and I carry on this monologue that has no end and no purpose. Just me ranting about things that make no sense half the time.

I wonder, does it tire you? Or maybe it’s amusing. I like to think I’m funny so I hope you get in a good laugh or two regularly. I rarely say this but I have to hand it to you, you my friend are the real mvp.

Sorry that I don’t listen to you but you knew what you were signing up for when you agreed to be my Guardian Angel. You can’t undo that now, we’re stuck for life and you have to get me out of dicey situations because if I don’t put you there, who will?

I guess the point of this rant was to say that I hear your voice non-voice and I’m glad that it’s there. At least I know I’m still sane and there’s hope for me yet when I hear it.

Kassy_Lu

Deepest Darkest Abyss

An unexplainable darkness covered the day. It seemed like the night had not ended when morning come, as though even when the sun rose it was behind a veil blocking out its light.

It had been a long day. Somewhere somehow he lost track of time and track of his friends. He turned around suddenly at one point to find himself alone and helpless, unsure of what to do apart from watch.

They were being cruel, unnecessarily so, but when people in power feel threatened, they pull out all their defences, as drastic as they may be. He followed the crowds, fighting back the urge to go up there and rip those horrid wips out of their hands and turn them on them. Fighting back tears of anger frustration and defeat. Fighting back fear.

Somehow he found himself standing next to a bunch of women. They were quiet having cried to a point where they had no tears left. They looked at him with sad eyes and then up into the sky at the man who was little more than one large open sore. He was talking. How was he still able to talk?

He loved him. He was loved by him and even in the middle of all of this pain and injustice, he knew that that love was not dimished, would not be destroyed. It would still be even when at some point the sun shone again.

He walked away from that place a broken man, wondering if he had been too ambitious and too trusting to think that they would have been rulers of dynasties. He walked away a comforted man with a new mother and somehow as the day went to its end, the sun began to shine again.

Dru_Dru

Pick

Your guitar hangs on my wall as a bittersweet souvenir. It looks like you; bold, strong, dominating. I never heard you play though you always spoke of how good you were at it. I always thought you were lying. You never played for me.

I found your pick under my bed today as I cleaned out my room. Your lucky pick, the one that gave your music the good vibes. It looked like nothing more than a piece of plastic to me. I kept it anyway. I put it inside your guitar so that it wouldn’t get lost again.

I heard you play. I would get out of bed at ungodly hours and hear the soft melodies you played. I’d sit by the door wondering what the titles were and if you would ever invite me to listen to them. I knew you never would but I had hope.

It makes me smile sometimes, this guitar of yours. I get the sense it laughs at me when I’m being silly like you used to. Though, I think it laughs more than you.

I wish I could hear you play again in the late hours of the night and I will hum along. I learnt your songs and assigned them titles and added lyrics to them. They all talked about how much I loved you and how you made me happy.

They all talked about how you will always be my top pick.

Dru_Dru

Haze

I’m looking for someone. I don’t know how to describe her, I don’t remember what she looks like. All I remember is that we resonated on a wavelength I had never explored before. I do remember that she wore a short skirt and a weave. She held the same plastic cup full of punch that we all did. She spoke.

She spoke things that I understood. It was like she was me, explaining me to me. She knew me without knowing that she did. She told me things about myself that I needed to tell myself. She laughed.

She didn’t laugh like me. But she laughed and my alcohol drowned brain printed the image of her laughing on itself. It didn’t remember her when I sobered up, but it remembered the feeling of not explaining a thing and still being known so well, inside out.

I think she’s my soul mate. She wears the clothes I wish I could wear. She goes to places I’m too scared to explore. She’s curious, adventurous, a risk taker; maybe too much of a risk taker. She laughs in the face of her mistakes and still goes ahead to make them. She speaks her mind effortlessly and dances to the sound of car horns. She refills her plastic cup before its even halfway empty. She challenges social norms, she challenges me. She is me in another life.

But I need to find her again in this one.

Dru_Dru

Perfect Strangers

• 

It was like I had known you forever. We clicked like a key turning in a lock, opening up in ways we never thought we ever would again. We bloomed like flowers, offering our nectar to the bee that flew between us, taking secrets from one to the other.

We fell in effortlessly, with a little reserve even though it was with so much abandon. You held my hand and pulled me out of the murk I was stuck in. You reminded me that I didn’t have to stay there. And you showed me your own stains. Stains you had gotten from wading through a lake of mud.

It was on our walk to the water that we became friends. Two people just looking to heal, each offering healing without realising it. I didn’t know you but I knew you. It felt like we had been walking together all along but it also felt like we still had a long way to go. We still had so much to share. We still had each other to discover.

We were strangers lucky enough to find ourselves in the same place. Grateful to hold hands and walk together at the same pace.

Dru_Dru

Sketch: Sand Ducky