Split into two

by Ian Cardenas

Preface

  “Oh, I see it. Clear as crystal and real as faith.

   

  Sitting by my window, swinging back and forth,

   

  With mild jerks of deceiving life, Up, there, rests my soul.

   

  Somewhere in the cloud, closed and locked, With no key to the front door.”

   

  .. And in moments I cannot breathe, I Bleed.. in words and in silence.

   

  ~ Tanya

   

  Table of Contents

   

  I Begin, when I End

  Not Poetic, but it Lifts my Soul

  Not in your Arms, not in your Eyes

  As Real as a Dream

  I paint Butterflies. You see Dragons

  Let the night choke you to Life

  And some nights, I have your hands wrapped around me

  She is, what you shape her into

  Be My Eyes

  Colour me Colourless

  The Damaged One

  If I kept a log of thoughts for all the nights I spend awake and aloof

  For times when I forget to breathe in and breathe out, I write

  Silhouette of Life

  The good thing about falling into pieces is that humans can do it so quietly

  Yeah Baby that’s How Life Rolls

   

  I Begin, when I End

   

  There’s no evidence to life, there’s no proof to existence.

  There’s only a perception of seeing black turn pink,

  A failing attempt to fill-in the empty basket with colors of beautiful.

  To walk over the shadow and to turn on the lights, wouldn’t make it easy.

  The night in my eyes is hid behind the dawn in your eyes.

  The picture you adore is an illusion of what you’d like to see.

  Your memory of me is what lives in the mirror of your bedroom.

  Come, creep into my head for a while, and feel the tremors of denial.

  The denial to a one time end.

  Denial to the breaking down of frightening nerves.

  Oh and the denial to seeking comfort under the same roof,

  With strangers in my head and no sight of you, every night, is the hardest of all.

  You feel alive. I feel the under-current of being alive.

  I see it. Clear as crystal and real as faith.

  Sitting by my window, swinging back and forth,

  With mild jerks of deceiving life,

  Up, there, rests my soul.

  Somewhere in the cloud, closed and locked, with no key to the front door.

  The doorway to it was build years ago, just beneath my trembling feet,

  Passing through the betraying shame, crushing the inevitable pain,

  Rolling down the slopes of a guilty conscience, Peeling away the masks of all that lived, loved, laughed.

  Escalating to the point of silence. Peaceful silence.

  And alive it feels, to out-live the illusion of being alive.

  ” Oh, I see it. Clear as crystal and real as faith.

  Sitting by my window, swinging back and forth,

  With mild jerks of deceiving life, Up, there, rests my soul.

  Somewhere in the cloud, closed and locked, With no key to the front door.”

  Not Poetic, but it Lifts my Soul

   

  Not a story, no poetry,

  Nothing memorable or enchanting,

  Not even musical or dramatic, but it’s something.

  It’s something that helps me stop the choking

  There’s something about the way I close my eyes and your hands run over my forehead, asking the sleep-goddesses to help pause the nerve wrecking thoughts for a night.

  There’s something about the days, I wake up with your eyes on me, without a flinch, you make me want to dissolve into your eyes and never return to these walls, the blocking, disturbing, screaming with silence walls.

  Something about the way, I sulk and nag and obsess about all the what if’s and if not’s, what if I lose you, what if I lose my mind, what if I never make it to the line and you swiftly walk in through the door, making absurd jokes about how we are all nothing but the constant sum of the what if’s and if not’s all our lives and how in the end the if’s do not count and how it’s ok to live the if’s and if not’s as long as we are two against the world. How you’d make silly, ugly faces and we’d burst into a laughter that cynical and that wild.

  And something about the way I would lock myself into a room for days and nights to avoid making eye contact with anyone who would send shivers down my spine just by tucking their questioning eyes on me, expecting a nod, a sound of Yes, a voice, some voice.

  The sound of words coming out of their stable minds, empty, pricking words would make me want to crawl under the bed and shut my eyes and just when the voices in my head got louder than theirs, the sound of my name in your voice would instantly turn my face towards your face, slowly letting open my palm, releasing the razor, down to the floor, the plain, clean, red floor.

  Something about the way, we’d share the coffee and the food and the blanket and live in our secret bunny-house that no one else had access to.

  And about the way I could live though years and years of trying to remember who I was before I turned into this stranger version of me, who wouldn’t know why is she here, what is she doing here, why does she break down more often than she picks herself up, why does she look for answers every night and forgets the questions every morning, struggles to put on the dress and leave the house every morning and wants to put an end to the constant conflict that weighs her down every time she thinks of breathing without having to feel the burden of keeping alive.

  And while I wouldn’t know if I could survive this condition this evening, every evening, the touch of your warm, familiar hands would pull me right out of the bed and into the center of the universe, centre of our universe.

  Something about the way our hands locked together, freeing my soul from all the fears and scars and help me walk the road back home, alive, and in love, in love with you.

  Something about the way I kept shouting out your name and you wouldn’t turn around, you kept walking away and I couldn’t catch up with you cuz they were all pulling me back and holding me down. They wouldn’t let me talk, they wouldn’t let me move and they would keep telling me, you did not exist, that you weren’t there, that you weren’t real and I could still see your face, from the corner of my eye, before my eyes were shut and my hands tied.

  Something about the way our hands locked together, freeing my soul from all the fears and scars and help me walk the road back home, alive, and in love, in love with you, schizophrenia.

  My last hope, my music, my drug, mu beautiful illness, schizophrenia.

   

  Not in your Arms, not in your Eyes

   

  Not in the moon-lit nights, not in the twinkle in your eye.

  Not in the space between our locked fingers, not even in the corner of my eye, not in the melting ice on the tip of your tongue, not even in the smoke-made rings that kissed your frozen lips.

  Not in the nods of your head, not in your tilted neck, not in the whispering sounds in the back of my head and not in the call of my name in your bitter-sweet voice.

  Not in the blue that hid my body from your eyes, not in the red that ran out of my shaky hands, not in the moving palms of sudden pats on my back and the soft swirls in your hair.

  Not in the sweat that clinged onto you to annoy me and not in the gravitational pull of your innocence filled face.

  Not in the bed we sleep in and not under the quilt we wake up in, not on the kitchen
shelf that reeks of dropped coffee beans and our unfinished quarrels.

  Not in the silence of us breathing off each others breath and  the endless thundering conversations that form a lump in my throat and an ocean in your eyes.

  Not in the hours and hours of speaking of things that don’t exist, of words that find you at your weakest. When you know you are about to give words and a sound and existence to something you thought you’d never be able to think out loud, out of  your head, to some one else, some one looking into your eyes, without flipping even for a second, holding your shivering body, challenging your vulnerability, moving your soul by just beginning to acknowledge the fact that your feelings exist as much as you do.

  Someone who wants you to give in and let go. And you speak, you utter the first word and the second and then the third, you complete the whole sentence, you can feel a part of you popping right out of your mouth, the part that had you press your face hard against the pillow to bury the scream and the pain and the sighs that night and the nights after.

  Not even in that moment of release.

  Not in the petals of your name in-between the pages of your favorite book, not in the walls that sometimes echo of your voice.

  Not in the hand-holding and the name-calling, not in my cooking skills that petrified you, not in the threats that made you gulp in the funny-tasting sandwiches and not in the floating utensils that you thought you were cleaning but really, you were only holding water up in the basin so that you could see me go wild for the millionth time, piercing your skin with my nail-claws and yelling at the top of my voice. Not in the flirtatiousness of you acting like this never happened before and I didn’t recon the evil look in your eyes.

  Not in the months that had me breathing only in the moments the phone would ring and your name flashed on the screen. Not in the weeks, we were romancing the screens on our computers, like it was actually a person, a touch, a whisper.

  Not in the pretence that I put-up to not let out the butterflies that went up and down and up in my stomach, the beat that skipped at the mention of your name.

  Not in the years of breaking down and feeling my insides crack-up a little more every single day, not in the unending nights of longing to know how were you doing, what were you doing, did I matter anymore, did it hurt you as much as it hurt me, did it hurt at all, did this happen in my dreams, did I just deceive life, did I grow a new part in my body the moment we ended or was it always there. Did I lose not just a person but the ability of sitting next to a person and not feel a thousand worms crawl under my skin and reach out for my gut.

  Not in the stillness of memories and the chaos in my mind. Not in the strangers and their presence in my life. Not even in the known, my very own, mirror of my bedroom.

  No, I don’t see you in these things.

  I see you in the hidden door that has me locked in for days and months and years, with no fear of a knock at the door, because now, I am oblivion to anything that requires believing, again.

  As Real as a Dream

   

  You’re a dream, a nightmare.

  You right there, leaning by the window, soaked in tears,

  Aiming to look through the stars, pointing at the sky,

  Getting down on your knees,

  Gasping for breath, letting the silence gulp you in.

  You, my dear, are an illusion.

  A dark illusion of pieces falling apart,

  Of fears drowning you dead, of trembling steps, of lost battles.

  You indeed are a dream, a nightmare.

  For I know, one day, I will wake right out of you,

  to end the dream and step into the real, the beautiful,

  the one I’ve known, until you happened.

  The dust on this memory will choke you.

  One night, I shall do what it takes to live.

  I shall pick up all the torn, broken, bleeding feelings one by one and hand ’em over to you.

  I shall speak of the million unbearable nights with no blink of an eye and no gasping breaths, I shall hold your hand and look right into your eye, place you in the midst of life, where it hurts the most. You wouldn’t know what’s hurting and why, you wouldn’t know what would make it stop, and you’ll look for help. You will need the choking to stop.

  One day I shall tell you with un-clotting arteries, why you shouldn’t speak of love that you do not possess and how it takes away the lease bit of you from you and how it leaves a new scar each morning.

  One day I shall break my silence and rub the tainted-smile off my face, just one day, for the first time in years, to let you see what you could never imagine.

  And until that day, I will perfectly shush my sighs, walk by the happy-world, fit in like a survivor and pull it through the nerve-wrecking night, every night.

  I paint Butterflies. You see Dragons

   

  Lift your face, Tilt your neck, Look around,

  Nothing that you perceive is real; everything that makes sense is driven from a source unknown.

  You see of what the eyes see, you believe what the world believes,

  The illusion, the universe appears to be is but the sky-line of unseen clouds, that keep receding from your blurred vision.

  The origin of originality is long lost in the wilderness of incapable minds, trying to accept values, cultures, traditions and life as an inheritance of what was.

  The drill is simple. Your idea of self is never your own.

  The mirror you look at is carved by the subtle, camouflaged but powerful designers of your faith. The ones, you think are superior beings and the ones you are expected to keep your peace with. The need for approval, the sync with majority and the fear of being out casted is the religion, we follow religiously.

  The brain freezing  practice of hopelessly whiling away, waiting to be told  of what is your favourite pass time to who is the perfect catch for you and everything in between is  the tribe, we belong to.

  The meticulous art of fulfilling all the pre-requisites of being, The perfect son, The heroic dad, The giving mother, An over achiever, The class-topper, A beauty diva, The sensual girlfriend, The traditional wife, The emotionless husband, The competent manager, The wicked mind, The harmless manipulator, A skilled artist, and The ideal role-model for generations to come, is overwhelming in every sense of the word.

  Ever heard these famous lines, The right stream to pursue, the right age to marry, the right planetary position and the auspicious place to get married, the only “one” you’d ever be happy with, the better dreams to  dream of, the altered aims, the obvious careers, the forced choice between what’s’ right and what’s your passion, the boss version of being successful, the fearful right to remain silent, the respect for people you hate, the default better sibling, the family tradition of being the next “Me”, the art of aping the society, and then comes my personal favourite,

  The right time to be sorry for yourself and wish If you could defeat death and go back to living life, your way.

   

  “I see and I learn,

  I think and I learn to differ,

  I imagine, and I create.

  I obey, I understand and I give-in.

  At the verge of breaking down, I Rebel.”

  Let the night choke you to Life

   

  Stab! Stab it hard, stab it one more time,

  Stab it until the heart stops pumping blood to the brain,

  And then leave it to bleed.

  Leave it to stink of unworthiness.

  Leave it to shiver with crippling fear

  Leave it until it’s time to hold it again,

  Hold it tight,

  Hold it with love,

  Hold it tighter,

  Hold it right up to the point of faith building up itself again,

  Hold it with a grip that reeks of never letting it go,

  Hold it until you can hold up your lies; hold it until you can hold up your needine
ss,

  And then stab it harder than before,

  Stronger than ever,

  Stab it again, and again and again.

  Stab it with all that you’ve got because this time you’re stabbing a soul soaked in the pool of old-blood

  Stab it with the pride of a lover,

  With the tenderness of a creator and the passion of a writer.

  And if that’s not enough, come back again,

  Some souls were meant to die every night.

  And some nights, I have your hands wrapped around me

   

  I wouldn’t know, if walls could speak

  But mine have definitely started whispering.

  The one on the right tells me, I could try breaking the silence once in a while,

  The one backing my head hands me over a pillow, hoping to watch me sleep with the music on

  Then there’s the one on the left, this one swiftly takes up a form  of my secret list of favourite faces on different days and we speak for hours and nights, some nights.

  The cushion absorbs it all in, refusing to fill in any more and We, I and the mirror, get into a laughing riot until it starts to hurt so bad that laughing another second would mean a nervous break down

  And some nights, I have your hands wrapped around me or at least my bedroom walls tell me so.

  She is, what you shape her into

   

  She goes un-noticed in the crowd of hundreds or even ten’s. She walks in confident, radiant and ready to gulp in all the coffee and defeat the day filled with stress, fun and confusion. She makes it look like the world is all lighten up with rainbows and sunshine. Some days she struggles to keep up the radiance but manages to pull off an entire day, week or years by the willingness to sustain the storm.

  Some days you can see her right at the door-step waiting to fetch you a welcome smile and take away the baggage of emotions you carry for the day. Sometimes you could run into her in the hallway, hopelessly gazing into oblivion, probably day-fantasizing of how unbelievably beautiful life could be with you being around and is stunned by your abrupt call of her name.

  She’s also seen on streets, some days hurriedly making her way through gauging eyes, unfamiliar faces, maddening voices, struggling to  make it on time, again. Some days you can see her all wrecked and broken and life-less. With no words to speak and no claims to make, she lies on her bed, buried in her pillow, praying for a life-savior or a sound-track that could help her sail away in time.