I love being #KadiriInLoveWithYou

The few and far in between I give in to writing in such a rambling manner, I indulge, indulge myself immensely.

If you've been following this blog you can probably count the number of times I've written journal-style in one hand. Never a big fan of the whole dear-diary-this-is-what-happened-to-me-today bit, reserving that for good ol' journal writing with a pen and a notebook.

But today is an exception.

It's rare for me to write simpering prose and poetry laced with happiness, joy brimming at the edges. Very rare, in fact, that I believe the reason you stumbled upon my blog is that at one time, like me, you've felt sadness -- no, sorrow -- glorified in ways that "pluck the words right out of my heart" so says one reader.

I love glorifying sadness, holding on to sorrow and hence, what we have is most of what's written on this blog. And yet as of late, I've been driven to write about the light of love, its resplendence and burgeoning promise. Or to be more apt, the love I've been blessed with.

I have been happy - and this is the part where I must apologize to past loves - but I have never been THIS happy.

The long and short of it is that everything has fallen into place, everything just clicks.

I'm at a point in time where things are neither hard nor easy, there still are complications, dregs of the past I'm trying to reconcile with and I'm much more harried at work but I must say, her presence grounds me. Her being life's grandest surprise. Not too long ago, in jest I said to a new friend, "let life surprise you." Little did I know that life, blindsiding me one after another, was yet to deliver her biggest curveball.

And it was beautiful. It still is. So to her, who inspires me, who holds the highest distinction of making me write in ways I have never written before, who has made me beautiful once more, my muse -- you're crazy.  Absolutely crazy and I'm absolutely, irrevocably in love with you.

You were expecting that, weren't you? My declaration of love laced with our own brand of humor.

I'm starting to know you, really know you -- maybe in ways that creep you out, like how our minds seem to work in unison or how I seem to read you quite well -- and I'm loving every bit of you I find peeking from the folds of your skin, your soul. I pick them up one by one. I love gazing at them resting, delicate in my palm, torn between the desire to hold them securely because, my love, I fear there will be no letting go (so suck it up, crazy, you're stuck with equally crazy me), and the urge to see them soar.

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

Because you are at once, both the clamor and the quiet of my heart.

#1

Let's drink --

to the sun which is setting and to the stars in heaven which are rising.

-- because it seemed your eyes, the ocean of which I have often gazed upon as if they could reflect the beating of my heart -- and how could it be -- our very souls?

I love you

Take these words,
see their delicate tendrils
wrapped around my heart.

Take my heart,
ball it up in your palm
until you can fit it into a fist.

Now unfold your fingers,
loosen your grip. Find
that there it stays rooted.

My love, 
allow the gentle unfolding 
of fingers, finding that it was, 
after all, unnecessary.

---
Of good mornings and of finding for certain that nothing has ever felt like this.

Wear my words

Go on, love, drop your anchor in the sea that is me.
Let me be your sanctuary and I will claim the vastness of stars and sky
to be the warmth that lets you dream.




---
Welcome home, my crazy. How I have missed you so.

Cloudburst

I will let your light
shine through the broken
cracks of my heart.

I will let your light
make it whole.



---
Nary any doubt. Oh my.

I am making us lists

Whimsy dictates: you were immortalized on her person
before the first rays of the sun illuminated the city.

Taken to heart. Really.
You are akin to a very large body of water in my veins.

And while sleeping trumps everything,
sleep is a small price to pay
to get the conversation going.

"I have to pause to take your words in, to let them envelope me, and I swear,
they almost feel like the way you run your fingers languidly across my skin.
For a moment there, I can feel you right next to me."

What is returned, when one extends something
far more generous that what was agreed upon.

You say
I say -- hey.



---
Here's the thing about writers (no matter how tiny) -- they rarely forget, enforcing what they remember or try to retain, with a few words here and there, a misplaced poem, little missives of absolute adoration.

I don't know if you should count yourself lucky. 

Untitled I

So you are given time
on days spent confined in a space
running on a bolus of conversation.

Shifting beside her as a light flickers
on and then off, perhaps signaling a move on,
you cock your head in question.

She meets the question with a smile for an answer,
as if saying "I'm okay," having taken the prescribed x number
of sleep needed to make the weekend worthwhile.

How we scar ourselves

Morning

Waking up this morning to complete quiet, you slowly ooze out of bed. A promise is a promise, and you promised. The heaviness of the promise looms in the air, wraps itself in the folds of your skin even as you attempt to smile at your bedraggled image in the mirror. You get a grimace in return.

You think of writing.

But no. What good has it brought you this time? Sure the words flow easily now, they pour out of you like never before. But you speak too much of the truth and your words are potent in the absence of knives. Everything is so new to you and a thought comes to mind. Not good enough. 


---
Bones.

Haiku I

Stay with me tonight.
I will carry you, my love.
No, I will not tire.



---
Heart farts today of all days.

It gets better

The mind meandered when you left.
Traitorous, it brought tears to the eyes
and knives to the heart.

Blood flows unseen,
unstoppable where it must,
evidenced only by bruises on skin.

It gets better, I tell myself.

Fall in love

Every year around this time I fall in love.

Not with someone special but with the promise of the season. Christmas is just around the corner and there's something magical about the drop in temperatures, the longer nights, the softer yet festive lighting, and the thought of gifts - for self, for the ones we love and the people we care for. I fall in love with it all, year after year.

My favorite thing about Christmas approaching is the idea of getting shiny new things that make me feel every inch a woman. And nothing does that for me than sexy intimates, good lingerie that give me the support I need. I was recently looking into Wacoal's fine line of lingerie at Zalora and fell in love with this half-cup t-shirt bra. The fact that it's in a punchy animal print is all sorts of wonderful. 

Don't get me started on animal prints! Wendy Nguyen does it best here. And here. It's all in the details. I like my animal prints strategically peeking from a nonchalant white shirt over shorts and sneakers for a nice weekend out or paired with nude platforms for that quiet femininity with a hint of boldness in the office. 

Often we forget about what's inside in our quest for the perfect outerwear. I like to invest in good quality intimates to take my outfit to the next level.


Speaking of outfits, I took my knee-high boots out for a spin one time, weather-permitting, and I feel like I've run out of outfit ideas. As a big fan of dresses, this funnel neck dress from Mango would look lovely with my boots and a pair of lightweight tights. This outfit idea may seem like a stretch for my tropical Philippines but for someone who works at night, I find myself taking advantage of the cooler temperature to let my imagination soar.

Love me a good neutral paired with an accent piece -- animal print, of course! You know what else I love? A really good book, especially those hard-to-find ones. A good friend recently chanced upon I Wrote This For You and graciously gave me the book. She must have seen how my face lit up like a thousand Christmas lights and felt compelled to give me an early Christmas gift. See what I did there? Here's a favorite from that book ---

The Winter Child
In bright white snow, when everything sleeps.
And hope has left you lonely.
When all you ever remember about summer is how it ended.
I send hope back to you. wherever you are.
I hope you remember all the people you still have time to be.
I hope the little things in your life inspire you to do big things with it.
I hope you remember that summer comes every year and that the sun is still sweet.
I hope you learn to hope again.
I, still, hope.

I have entered a life which requires me to spend a huge chunk of my time with myself. I'm not complaining but there are things I miss. This lonesomeness, so felt and strangely intrusive does something to you. A something that can only be allayed by movement. These days, I no longer count moments or memories. I measure my time in increments: an hour's worth of chores, a couple of hours spent reading. 

On a practical level, the exercise of limbs and mind is always a good thing. Movement is always a good thing. After all, the reaching for something worthwhile begins with putting one foot in front of the other.

Tango

I danced with your demons.

You hightailed at first sight of mine.

Something kind of funny

In life, we make choices.
And sometimes, the choices make us.


---
If I Stay. I haven't watched the film (yet or maybe not at all depending on my bandwidth) but I've read the book. Both books, actually. This post has nothing to do with the film.

Choices are wonderful because they open new pathways and if you're lucky, reveal a new self. We could spend years or seconds making a choice. Sometimes the choice has been made for us, often in the heels of time - internal and shared - expiring. A most difficult and trying experience to go through but inevitable. Doors close when they do. Doors closing open a window to the self, I would like to think.

No lesson. Just a musing.

Animals

       Have you forgotten what we were like then
       when we were still first rate
       and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
      
       it's no use worrying about Time
       but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
       and turned some sharp corners
      
       the whole pasture looked like our meal
       we didn't need speedometers
       we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
      
       I wouldn't want to be faster
       or greener than now if you were with me O you
       were the best of all my days

Frank O'Hara (1950)

How we died

Impossibility
lends its charms best to
happiness
honesty --
to be completely is impossible.

Take you and I,
take the world we built and throw it out the window,
let it wither, leave it to parch in the sun
of what was once resplendent
in its beauty, in its hope.

To what do we owe the immensely human desire
to put up walls, constructing snares of refusal?
I have lost all desire to scale yours
any more that you do mine,
perhaps.

And yet -- remember -- the time
when mountains moved? When fingers searched
for a pulse in another, no matter how feeble,
and rejoiced in knowing
it was there?

Missing Mr. Keating

This tribute will probably get lost in the outpour following his passing but still.

I grew up watching Robin Williams and at one time, I wished he would magically turn up at school to holler at my ear, "Seize the day!" He was a lot of things: talented, funny, clever, intelligent, and sad. Like most of us, he was all these interesting things and he was sad, too.

Always and never just or only. 

Because we can be a lot of these interesting things and also be sad. Sometimes the sadness can be all encompassing; it can be so big and complete and we feel powerless at its enormity. But sadness does not invalidate the other beautiful parts of ourselves although it has a tendency to stay.

I presume it held on than necessary and we have, thus, lost a tremendously talented man. There is a story here somewhere. Even in his passing, like his movies, he leaves us with a lesson.

Rest in peace, dear Sir.

Fragment 5 on the 2nd

"Poems are never just poems. They're compensating for something. Here are the words I wish I had written in crescent-shaped moon bite marks down your neck. Here are a hundred words for stay, and a hundred more for please. Here is how I hold a pen. Here is how the pen holds me. Here are my thoughts, over-steeped in empty fervor. Here is nothing and everything all at the same time."

In order

I was here once before,
I am here again.
Singing the same song
however long ago the audience
has stopped exclaiming encore.

Desperate desires coating
each line; an aria
wrapped within a plea.

I was here once before,
I am here again.
Hands still dancing
despite the cold coating it.
You must wonder as have I.



---
A wondrous thing now past but we continue to hold on to feathers fluttering. They say you have everything when that is all that you have.

Knuckles on the ready. Or not.

When I commit to a person, I fucking commit. If challenges or life comes knocking, you bet your ass I'm at the door with a double-sided axe waiting for a good fight.

You can't expect people to always be happy even in the throes of love.
Because life doesn't stop for anyone. But you can be there for the good fight.


---
Life lately will unfold in increments.
I owe this blog so much.
Pardon my french.
Because feels.

Of rusty attempts

Hurling an empty bottle of beer at an approaching wave.

Hoping for it to return with perhaps a note

drenched in sea water,

the writing barely visible ---

                                                                                  someday you will be loved like no other.

April 7, 2014

We close the book.

Lovingly we caress 

the frayed edges

lingering for a minute or two

at each dog-eared page

where memory is at

its most stirring --

Grateful for a more

than a good read.

How not to write

I wrote this in a piece of almost-forgotten paper. I am forever writing pieces of poetry, bones of a prose and what have you in whatever I can find lying around the house and so here we are ---

Because it is not in my nature to tell people what I suspect they already know about themselves:

I don't love you as much as you do me but I suspect you already know that...

so began the handwritten letter that had been delivered by post earlier. Enclosed in a nondescript white postal envelope, the letter was seven pages thick, written on ruled yellow paper. It bore traces of what she suspected to be tears. Or sweat. She could be wrong. Hadn't Eloise written about the dreadful dry spell that had been plaguing the city lately? She banked on the former, hoping somehow that the words were as hard to utter as it was to read them...