i can't fuck up

this post is titled 'i cant fuck up'
because "fucking up" is colossal
increasingly irreparable, you become irredeemable,
your damage becomes a mess somebody else has to wipe up,
and that's not cool.

you see, the point i'm at in life
is where my first pay cheques came in right next to the pieces of paper that
claimed payment for the costs of my existence on this earth
tuition, phone bill, books, health insurance, transport,
i started to pay my way through,
so much so i started to feel ashamed when 
the hands of my mother and father had to come bail me out again,
hands that had so far cleaned up my mess, wiped my scraped knees, 
and cuddled my 6 year old frame.
hands that tell so many stories 

you're always happy to help, but
you can't cheat the way age, stress, unhappiness
has carved its way into the lines in your face,
or how they have all carved their initials into
each mile that separates us.
you're not so happy when i don't try though,
when i don't think things through,
when i make costly mistakes i probably could've avoided.

see mom and dad, when you're mad
i don't even need to look at your faces, 
i just need to look at your hands.
your hands flailing around, 
your hands slicing the air, 
your hands poking invisible chests, 
your hands shaking shoulders that don't exist. 
your hands become fists, of frustration desperation
wrinkles that come early, lines of deliberation 
within whose spaces i colour in little moments of 
absolute question 
at the situation 
you are in, 
why am i here, lord? 
why do i have to deal with this?

but when you look around
and you realise that no one else cares, 
no one else will listen or be responsible
for a life that is not theirs, 
you wake up and shake the doubt right off,
you can't fuck up... otherwise all is lost.

so you hold your head up high and you polish my shoes, 
you iron my school uniform and you prepare my food. 
you teach me how to never be in someone else's way, 
never to be a liability or an obligation,
and to always be welcome wherever i stay.

you help me spell the word responsible, and teach me most of all, 
that the expensive life you have so carefully tried to protect for me, 
is always and has always been my own. 
there's careless and then there's carefree 
and me stuck between the two. 
trying to find the balance between having a stick up your arse 
and choosing to have nothing to do. 

i'm too aware to waste away my days, 
i'm too wide awake at night. 
i cant sleep i toss and i turn,
because i know i need to fight. 
i need to invest in my own life, 
and never forget my parents' sacrifices. 

no matter how disillusioned i get, 
please let me never forget where i come from. 

i can't fuck up, because i don't want to. 

i can take care of myself that much.

eight days to 20

I am so scared. 
So afraid of failure, 
of obesity, 
of someone looking at me 
in repulse and disgust, 
mortified to find 
the blemishes on my skin
and even more repelled 
by the open sores 
of my heart.

I'm afraid of being misunderstood,
understood perfectly, 
being laughed at for being 
eccentrically extraordinary, 
and at the same time in my hovering frame, 
traditional values are the bones
that make me, I'm afraid of being boring
and old-fashioned. 
I'm afraid of that rancid undertone in your voice,
laced with scorn,
when you say, "It's okay, I understand. 
You don't have to if you don't want to."

Sometimes I wish I could skip out 
on parts of life altogether;
much like an acne-scarred, 
buck-toothed, 
fat, 
bulimic, 
awkward 
tall girl 
wishes 
she could skip out on high school. 

But where is the fun in that? 
Relief is only momentary, 
temporary 
and solitary in such things, 
and 20?

20 is coming my way.
Whether I like it or not.

over my shoulder

in time, i've realised that growing up and becoming more mature are two different things.
in fact, i've seen so many childish adults i used to think this is what was attractive to people as they aged alongside each other. the ability to talk coyly or emphatically put your opinion across, always be laughing and giggly and up for anything. of course, this has nothing to do with how you've really advanced in your pursuit of happiness *winking suggestively*coupled with how wasted you got over the weekend, but check you out, still managed to make it to work monday morning cribbing about the traffic, looking like a star. 

maturity on the other hand, i used to always confuse with nonchalance. but that if anything is absolutely not what it is. to be mature is to be able to let go; dealing with the truth no matter how hard it is. like the times when a conversation is dying and you really don't have the time or need to drag it out longer, to know when a person is pensive and wishes to enjoy the presence of your company rather than the echo of your words, to know when an event occurs that it will pass and that we constantly go through this cycle of regeneration, playing back things that really don't and will never change. 

we can barely keep up with ourselves as we get lost in our feelings and thoughts. and then, like a wisp of smoke, the fourth cigarette i really didn't need to have vanishes, taking with it the fleeting exhilaration it brought  and as soon as it came, i need another tug at the fancy cinnamon stick. i ponder on times when our words flow out our throats unceasingly, never stopping, so excited to enjoy and describe the grandeur of that passing second of fame and utter bliss. and then 3 months down the line, that second is almost worth a penny, collected in a rusty old tin that gets scrimmaged in once in a while, important enough for taxi money at the least.

if i were the adult i'd want to be, and i'm not there yet, but if i were...i would look at each moment like it was going to pass. and that way i could enjoy it for the 5 seconds that it lasted. i could watch it disappear with content, knowing that if i sat pretty enough, another one would pass me by too filling in the void, soothing my anxious trembling to be occupied in mind and satisfied in soul.

honestly, these years between broad waistlines and meagre paychecks, i want to be able to really pick and choose my colours. character is built and not granted. i want to be able to grow up with elegance, and humility. maturity is something i hope God gives me the grace to pursue, because it really is an effort to be confident enough to correct ourselves, our old ways, manners of speech, fears. i realise we have always had the answers clenched up so tightly in our fists, but often lacked the courage necessary to untangle our intentions from our insecurities, to raise our hands up straight and clean, and ask the question anyway, "ma'am, will it all be over soon?"

truth is it never finishes. we either grow bitter or we get better. at ourselves, or the whole world; we all end up wanting more. how different would it be if we knew we were going to get where we needed to go anyway, we just had to work at lasting through the seconds, the minutes, the days, the weeks until finally...we can look back in months and years and know, we did the best we could with what we had.

unnamed

We seem to be living the blur yet again. We seem to be walking the same damn line. Take me back 10 years. Take me back to the summer where we house hunted, where we ran naked through our pockets in search of pennies to pay for a home.

Shelter is not just an aluminium sheet anymore, the rain seeps in, orders. The mattress you sleep on today has a story, it was stolen. Hungry hands grabbed it away, a bachelor turned it into a wedding bed, and then threw it away when a baby was born. When your baby was born, 18 years ago, was your home small? Or was it large, was it too big to hold? The feeling of having to be a home for another being? Another life you held in the palm of your hand, you would be the hand that fed it, you would be the brush that painted the smile on its face, you would take it to school and help it live.

You would show it the world, a world that was too ugly to be rolled into a diploma, you showed her the chasm between theory and practise. You broke the sound barriers when you educated her with those words.

When i write, i talk at a thousand people at the same time, to a hundred people in a single glance and to a handpicked few in a single breath. Today, its 18 years after. And the both of you are here, another came in between to define the prism of light growing in her womb. And it shone brighter and brighter, but she grew weaker and weaker, and no matter how hard i try and save the hands that taught me how to live for the one that still has to live, age has caught up with you. and although the wise one tells me to be brave about death, how can i when your story has yet to be told? I stay away from it all, I’m sheltered by the walls that enclose me, the wings cover me, and so many others that try escape the shrewd nature of the world that lies beyond the walls of barbed wire, beyond the grizzly screens, and further beyond the pictures in the paper, black and white and red all over.

Still in the midst of all this instability, in the heart of this wall of text, there is a beating fighting young poignant heart. There is a point. Sailing across the gulf that separates us, you come to build me a home. I have a few more years left in me, i still have them. All i can say is I can still step into my Father’s House, I can still look up and praise, and I will still look up with no shame until there is nothing to look up to anymore. For that is how I came into this world, with my head thrown back, and my eyes shut, and my hair covering my ears.

Not the pretty way words are supposed to look on a page, no the beauty you bring is when the intensity of your eyes burns life into every syllable of this prose. When finally you swallow your fears and your pride and every single piece of your mortality that remains and you pause. Your stomach churns, because the hardest thing to admit is that you have reached the end of the page. So until then, i’ll put a stopgap in the inflated importance my generation gives to procrastination, and i will shamelessly waste away my days with you, until all we know is taken from us again, and we will be hurt.

And still from the ashes we shall rise.



Golden children of the sky, you golden children of the sky.

"this world is not my home"

here i stand,

'free fall'

the rock she built her dreams on
the child he hoped to see aspire
to fight the against the veil
that was drawn over her eyes
to hide her passion, her thirst for justice.

the child grows everyday
and everyday it thirsts to know
which way is right to know which way to go.
there isn't a corner left to hide in,
as time starts to fly in,
all the alarms start ringing,
its the airpatrol,
black the windows out,
snuff the candles,
go to sleep cold and shivering.
unable to decide which breath to take and when.

what do you do with the power of awareness?
it is not to recognise the trouble you're in,
it is not enough to admit your feelings.
"It is not because men's desires are strong
that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak."

will i come to you even with the storm raging on?
will i walk blindly towards you over the water?
i feel like i'm drowning already,
irony,
the boat that I want to do the rescue?
I got the colour painted, the size mapped out,
I got the dimensions and the crew.

yet, here i stand,
on the bottom of the sea floor.
i'm staring up and i don't know whether i'm supposed to fight the depths to surface
or whether i'm just down here, chain and ball,

mama, am i supposed to escape this?
or am i supposed to push through?
i keep making these mistakes,
its the only way i've ever learned.

when everything is changing,
what do i hold onto?


i'm trying to figure it out.

MIDTERM SEASON

Fatigue. That's all that I seem to be emitting right now. I keep wandering around  half lost searching for a place to study or work or read or just generally do one damn thing that is productive. 

Without sports, I really feel like my life lacks rejuvenation at this point. Physical workouts are so vital to your mental health, and I guess, until and unless you are pushed to your limits, you won't be able to accept the fact that there are some key ways to get rid of all the tension, stress and anxiety, no matter how lazy you feel.

I miss tiring myself out at rugby practise or playing a game of streetball with my cousins. It's a different sort fatigue lol! One that doesn't make me feel like my life depends on it!
But oh my days, these midterms...they are something else entirely.

I'm just going to let these ones go. Honestly. Still got one more tomorrow. Geography. It's sooo not high school anymore.