Asunder

Artwork during the Pangbenga Festival 2017

I hear the shrilling words you used to cut my heart asunder. It’s wailing, my heart, it’s wailing. My sullen soul will never forget every ineffable syllable in your asphyxiating sentences. I’ll sleep with relentless tears and gnawing pang at the very center of my being. After all, this is what we live for- feeling deeply.

I thought I knew what pain is like when I saw my mother walk out of my father’s life. I thought I knew what pain is like when my lungs were out of breath because I was drowning. I thought I knew what pain is like when I failed to tell my grandmother that I love her before she left. I didn’t know enough. Pain is best felt when you know that silence becomes your only choice to be heard.

Quivering lips and damp eyes show that something is causing a scrabbling in the soul. Abluted hands poison the streams of people. Flaying forces scrap the notion of happiness.

The gestation of violence is for the bearer, itself. They teach us to live with these. No, there is a way out of these shenanigans. There has to be a way out.