Red Is Angry And Loud,

Maybe we will not be anything that aches when it is gone.

-A.G.

Dripping chaos everywhere I go.

Hands held breaths,

Claimed themselves to be Gods today;

Said:

Here lies a body-

And the life within,

Both held in my grasp.

We do not have the habit of letting go;

Even in infanthood

They taught us how to hold things,

Clutch them tight,

For anything given the chance of leaving

Will run away from you.

I have gone through life

Holding things that do not embrace me back;

I have the cuts to prove it.

Sometimes, we cut parts of ourselves

Just to watch something heal.

What are hands

If not something that holds

Another thing;

Another person,

Another body?

Sometimes hands let things fall,

Get tired of holding so much of

What does not want to stay;

Hands look in the mirror,

Ask themselves what have they become,

What have they done?

All that blood and all that glory:

You can not wash away either.

I once wrote a poem.

And the poem strangled me.

I wrote another

And it held me.

How do you know who is here for the slaughter

And who will embrace you,

Unless you see their hands

Reach for you?

You know you cherish them

When their absence aches-

A non-existence of ache

That attaches itself to you.

And sometimes we cherish those

Who slaughter us.

Like God.

Or the hands of our lovers.

I think the kindest thing a God could do

Would be to leave us alone;

To not stand there, peer over our heads,

Look into us, quite so literally-

Not keep a track of the actions,

Of intentions;

Or disapprove what we became.

Gods bring catastrophes

We are not ready for;

Bring forth wreckage,

Not knowing what to do;

Gods cause so much damage;

I mean Hands.

Hands reaching for things

They do not know how to hold yet.

Perhaps Hands should leave things be,

Unclench those fists,

See how much there is

To simply caress.

A.G.

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When I was little, I used to stay away from matches because I was sure I would set myself on fire. What I didn't realise was that I've been burning for a long time. You know how they say you're a sum of everyone you've met; everyone you've come across? I think I'm other people, more than I am myself. I still remember the phone number of my friend from the third grade. What do I do with the memory of that? That's the problem. I remember too much. I can never forget: numbers and people. I am a walking ache, I am a fresh scar; I am open wounds: always aching. I am hurt. My happiness is pretense and my sadness is a default. I have been hurt too many times and I can never forget it. I never remember my happiness. I remember too much of what went wrong and too much of all that hurt me; that's the problem. What do I do with all this hurt? I carry a lifetime of hurt. I think I will age backwards; I already hurt so much at so little, I am sure there can be no way this gets worse so I have to hope this will get better. As the years grow, I will grow. I will be taller when others are starting to hunch. How could I not? Where do you go from this ache? I am the ache I feel and I am the thing that hurts my heart. My happiness is always a pretense. I am always sad during the happiest moments of my life. Someone called me arrogant and I laughed at their face. I think some people are always sad. I am always other people and I have never been myself and I do not know what to do with that. I am a stranger in my head and my face is always a foreign image that surprises me. I remember too much. I don't know how to not. How do you forget? I don't hate myself, I just don't know what to do with her sometimes. She is a child and she is so grown up and strong and she is always grieving the loss of some part of herself.

Do you think that if you love a certain thing, it is supposed to be constant throughout and it loses its charm when it stops being exactly that?

I think that the idea of loving an entity as it changes and transforms is much more endearing than going "Oh. This doesn't resemble what I initially fell for."

I think that especially with people, you have to know that they're constantly moving and they are experiencing things, and they change. To hope that something stays exactly as it was when you fell in love with it doesn't sit right with me. Haven't you changed? Do we have the right to tell something to remain stagnant when we aren't?

I think I personally have a skittish attitude towards things that remain constant; on the other hand, change feels so natural. I think I see it in this light: to be with someone or something as it changes is to get to discover more things to love, new things to love about them. I also believe that there are certain things that always remain the same. Even when the person is entirely someone different, there is always a set of habits or a preference or something specific to just this one person, that still remains constant. I find myself fascinated by the fact that even after this landslide of a change, there are moments where you can see them be the person you first go to know or how even after such an elaborate transformation, there are things that still somehow remain the same.

I think there are tiny constants even in the grandest of transformations. I quite ardently believe that people are much more endearing when they embrace their changes rather than thinking that the people who loved them when they were someone else will stop doing so as they grow into another person. I think that if the people you know do not fit the life of who you want to be or who you have become, you should let them go. So no, I do not think that anything I love owes me the grave burden of being in a state of constant; in a state of stagnancy.

-Anika

so maybe there will be no coming of age.

maybe there will be no moment, signifying glory;

hell, maybe there will be no glory.

maybe we'll simply be two people who were here and then weren't.

the gods will not line up moments for us to scavenger hunt our purpose;

maybe we will not have a purpose.

or a god for that matter.

in one moment you're driving home and you're singing loud with your best friend;

in another you get mistaken for a man with your helmet on, the bulky death bike and then you get out of a ticket when the policeman sees your face and you come home in giggles.

in another moment you've decided to live through another day.

so maybe we will not be anything that aches when it is gone.

maybe we'll be mundane and chaotic indecision floating in an abyss of our own selves

and maybe you never get to meet that famous 2010 singer you liked as a teenager,

and you never get to learn the fourth language,

or go to that remote country

or kiss the love.

maybe there is no love here.

maybe we will go quietly, with naive hope that is false but you hold on to anyways

because if you do not have this hope to hold on to, there is nothing else.

to hope is to have the courage to pray, against all odds,

to pray that there is someone out there lining up things for you,

lining up lives and people for you to become.

to have hope is to be terrified of all the realities.

we'll go quietly, unnoticed;

and yes this does not match what we wanted to be,

but there are happy endings in all those poems and stories to make up for all the ones you never get to have in your reality.

A.G.