Nusle

The candles of our hearts

The shining ocean in your eyes gave her hope.

Such a dangerous thing it was.

Blindfolded by the light she peeked from behind the wall.

And your smile that lighted up the candles in her heart

Made her step out of her hideout.

You never knew there was almost no wax left in the candles you made shine again.

So, when you became another one who blew out their flame with such a strong breath

You did not realize

That no one can ever make them shine again.

There’s a difference

There’s a difference between flowers in the field and flowers growing in your garden.

There’s a difference between lust and desire.

There’s a difference between grass peeking through the cement in the city and the blades growing in the forest.

And there’s a difference between relationships based on love and relationships built on the fear of being alone.

A little advice

When it comes to women’s anger,

it is not the raging tears you should worry about,

it is not her loud screams you should fear,

it is not her curses and sharp words you should be afraid of.

It is when her face turns to stone,

when her mouth gets shut,

and when her eyes get filled with darkness.

The moment her rage makes her silent,

the moment her anger consumes her,

The moment she turns into a walking fire with head tilted slightly down

and burning eyes looking straight up at you…

That is the moment, my dear, when you should run.

Cherries and stars

In my left palm lay five shiny cherries as red as blood. They tasted almost as sweet as the lips of a long forgotten lover. Almost as honeyed as the long-lost dreams.

My girlfriend was sitting next to me, and I wondered if she used to be an angel in a past life.

The night’s summer breeze was playing with her long red hair, full of ringlets made by the most talented goldsmith in this wide world. She was holding the rest of the cherries she plucked just a few hours ago from the cherry tree that blossomed in her garden for six springs now.

She had a special place in her heart for cherries. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why. But it became clear the moment she told me about that night when her love for the night sky was born. She had loved the night sky already, before. But that night it grew bigger. Stronger. Passion and fascination turned into love, dreams and hope. Hope and faith. Because that is what that night brought to her.

Hope was long lost and forgotten for her. The faith in love but also the faith in herself and the possibility of ever finding peace was something she did not believe in anymore. But that night when she was saying goodbyes to her friends and celebrated new beginnings with them, she met someone. A guy who she fell in love with years ago.

She saw him every day. But she had to say goodbye to him in a different sense. The one only she could understand. Because it was a goodbye said only in her head. Only in her heart.

A heart so pure, yet so shattered into little shards by her past. A glass no one was able to glue together anymore. Not even him. So, he did something completely different for her. He turned the shattered pieces of glass in her chest into stars.

They were watching them together in the middle of one summer night just like I am watching them with her right now. She didn’t tell me much about that night. She didn’t have to. I understood from what she said that he saved her. He was her first love. He was her first true kiss. But that wasn’t all.

“He was the first man who ever showed me respect.” She told me. Her eyes were full of tears, yet they were shining with happiness when she said it. I didn’t have enough words when she did. I was glad that he did that for her. But at the same time, it was the saddest thing in the world. She was fifteen. And until then, she hadn’t met a man who would show her respect.

The name of her first love was Charles. She used to call him Cherry in her mind. After her favorite fruit with the same initials as his.

Sometimes I feel a cold metal needle stinging my heart and digging deep into it when I realize that she is still thinking about him. I know that he will always be at the back of her mind. But I am grateful that she met him. That he did those things for her. That he stretched his hands towards the night sky that day, took down the stars, and gave them to her. Thanks to him she started to shine again. And now those stars were shining at me through those crystal blue eyes of hers with a smile on her face.

She was watching the night sky and stars shining on it with such admiration. But I couldn’t convince myself to think otherwise when I came to the conclusion that she was the brightest star of them all. None of those stars above our heads shined as much, as purely, as strongly, as her.

So, I watched her, my star, as she ate cherries, and watched the lights up in the universe having no clue that she was mine.

My light. My star. My cherry.

Finding peace

It was so strong that it was almost physical. Maybe it actually was, physical. After all, I’ve changed it into physical. Yet my body was calm. And my mind was slowly calming down too. Finally…

I’m waking up every day with the need to fall back to sleep growing stronger and stronger each morning. I thought it was just a phase. I thought it’d go away after a day or two, or a week. But it didn’t. It stayed with me and it grows louder and louder with every minute. I forgot to count the days after three weeks, but I think its presence has been here for about two months now. The time just died, and it doesn’t exist for me anymore, so I can’t be so sure.

It doesn’t leave me, no matter where I try to fight it. I was doing so many things in attempts to get rid of it, things I’m not proud of. But I didn’t have a choice. Other people would say I had. That’s just because they haven’t been there. If they had, they’d understand.

When math starts, I already know I’ll spend another hour drawing in my sketchbook. Math is something I gave up long ago. While I’m drawing, I’m thinking about it – giving up. What a strange combination of words. “Give” is standing for a good thing, when it stands alone. When you’re giving a gift to someone it’s full of positive thoughts and excitement. When you write just “up” it stands for going higher and higher. It can also be a very positive word. But when you write those words together, you’ll get a very sad combination, a fatal phrasal verb.

I’m not just thinking about the meaning, though. Most of the time, I’m thinking about the act. Act, which is seen as some dead end, that people choose when they’re very weak. But what if it’s not about their weakness but about the power of the thing they’re fighting against?

I tried to be powerful, but it didn’t help. I tried to be strong, but it didn’t change a single thing. It led me into even darker corners than those I’ve already been in. And when the thought of accepting the darkness instead of fighting it hit me, I felt like I finally found a solution. A solution other people find weak. As giving up. But I don’t. Because finding the strength to hold the blade above my skin was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Because I had to find the selfishness in me. Something I never knew how to find. But when I felt the welcoming hands of the skeleton under his raven black hood, I suddenly knew the way. He was my navigator. And I was thankful. I was for the first time in my life happy for my afternoon math class. Because without that class, where I lost my focus for learning, I wouldn’t think about other things. And this solution might never have found me.

The pain in my mind was too strong for too long, that the pain felt almost physical. And so, I’ve changed it into something physical with the help of a small thin piece of spring steel. Yet my body was calm. And my mind was calming down too with every drop of blood which landed on my skin. Finally, after all that time, I felt… Peace.

The Prisoner

There is a question that’s been haunting my mind for years now. And I’m sure I am not the only one. “How do you get rid of your past?” Well, the thing is, you don’t. Because you simply can’t. It is part of you that you can’t kill because it is you. It is you that exists only in the ether between your mind and the minds of others. Sadly, we can’t erase just a part of our memory. So, with that we are coming back to the beginning of our circle – it haunts you down. Until you accept it. Or until it eats you alive.

Having a period is the worst part of the month for me. Not because of the pain, bad mood or migraines. But because of the blood. It is almost inevitable to see it. I am always doing my best to avoid the terrifying vision of the red liquid pouring out of my body, but I don’t always manage to do that. Just like now. I was watching the shiny red drop on my index finger for minutes now, feeling the anxiety filling my chest. 

“It is not the same kind of blood.” I repeated to calm myself down, but it didn’t help. It was still blood. There was only a tiny drop on my finger, but with each heartbeat I saw the drop growing into a pool right in front of my eyes. 

The pounding of my heart suddenly shifts into the police sirens. The red is everywhere. On the floor. On the walls. On my hands. On my body. In my hair. On the knife I was holding. In the air. Outside of the window blinking stronger and sharper as the police cars came closer. 

I wanted to scream with terror of what I did. But I lost my voice. My mouth was open but no sound escaped. I felt just one silent tear escaping my eye. Was it a sad tear? A happy tear? I don’t know. I don’t remember. I just remember him.

A hand touched my arm, and I realized just then that someone was talking to me.

“Hey, stop screaming or I’ll shut that pretty mouth of yours.” The security guard screamed at me. I immediately shut my mouth, surprised by my own screams. The policeman who arrested me that night was way nicer than the men who work in our prison. So, I quickly washed my hands and left the bathroom to keep myself safe. I deserve to be safe. Sadly, that is why I ended up here. Killing someone in self-defense is still a murder punished by taking away the killer’s freedom. Ironically though, I feel way safer in prison than I did back home. Because he was there.

The only thing that is still threatening me is my own mind. The scary part is that no one is capable of escaping their own mind. Not until they lose it.