Imagine stress as the process of boiling water
Starting with a heated silence
A triangle chimes the ripples
Crescendoing to a cacophony
The best way to know that I am stressed is by how effortlessly I can snap back harsh words with all the sternness of my voice. My propensity for stress is dictated by how small of a leeway that my balancing act has.
Smaller leeway, more stressful.
That reminds me why I need to select my activities wisely.
No matter how much I just want to be doing something.
Capture is a series of entries that seek to express spotlight moments that I hold dear in my heart for they capture my emotions and ultimately, they are dreams.
Take this moment before I disappear
To pick a song that’ll lure my ears
To promise me you’ll always be near
To seal with the dance of the year
Take this moment to fulfill the dream
To be whisked down the melodic stream
To bask in the rays of the sun’s beam
To quake at your magnificent scheme
The shoujo stories are stale
That has always been my tale
The twist is that I always fail
To mention that there’s a holy grail
Of moments that will capture me.
An excerpt from my third long exam for Philosophy 102. The paper as a whole received a 3.25, the highest grade that I have gotten for an exam in this class. The paper as a whole could have been more organized.
Kung iisipin, ang pagpapakatao ay ang pagbabalanse ng sarili at ng iba. Kailangan na patuloy ko ipaalala sa sarili ko na hindi ako ang sentro ng daigdig, na hindi lahat ng bagay ay nasa kontrol ko kahit ang nais ko ay ikontrol ang lahat. Kung nagkaroon ako ng kontrol sa lahat ng bagay, ako’y magiging sentro ng lahat at makalilimutan ko ang iba. Kung mangyari iyon sa lahat ng tao, hindi magkakasundo ang mga tao sa daigdig at tuluyan, baka mawala pa ang daigdig. Ang nagpapabalanse sa sarili at ang pag-iral ng Other dahil hindi nasa kontrol ko ang Other. Ngunit, ang Other ay tumitiwala sa akin, ako’y may responsibilidad na sumagot sa pagtiwala na iyon dahil sa kabila nito, ako ay tumitiwala rin sa Other dahil ang Other na iyon ay sarili rin pero hindi sarili ko. Nagkaroroon ng ilusyon na may kontrol ang sarili sa lahat ng bagay, ngunit ang katotohanan ay nag-iisa ang lahat ng mga nagmemeron sa daigdig dahil lahat tayo ay tumutungo patungo sa Meron at tinutulungan natin ang isa’t isa. Lahat tayo ay nagmemeron at sa kagustuhan ko magmeron, kailangan ko mag-isa para maging bukod-tangi. Nagiging bukod-tangi ako dahil sa ibang tao na nagmemeron sa daigdig at ang mga taong ito ay tumutulong sa akin maging bukod-tangi at ako rin ay tumutulong sa kanila maging bukod-tangi. Bukod-tangi ako dahil ang mga karanasan ko ay hindi mararanas ng iba ng kumpleto pero may mga karanasan na unibersal at doon nakapagtutulong ako at ng iba sa isa’t isa dahil nagkakaintindi kami. Ang responsibilidad na umiiral ay umiiral dahil sa mismong pagkakaiba, may pagtutulad; ganoon naman talaga ang tao.
It’s at 3AM that my darkest thoughts roam, slipping into the depths and memories that stir the what-ifs of my life. Three in the morning deeply entrenches me in the fictional realities that I have conjured, watching me writher to the stories that I have brought to life with each expression and movement. The dance is painfully alluring silently coercing me to the path of self-destruction.
It’s at 3AM that the music blasting through my headphones affects me the greatest. It plays with my struggling mind and heart through its gentle caresses and its sharp stabs. Memories are washed up to the shores of recall as if these frequencies were their lifelong masters who reeled them back to earth. The mere music that cuffed my tendencies to the rails become my undoing at 3AM.
It’s at 3AM that I find a friend. Through each melody, each memory, each emotion, each heartbeat— I find myself. I get to know myself for each weakness, each strength, each value, and each treasure that I call my own. I befriend myself at 3AM because I am the most vulnerable at this time and as I roam my thoughts in silence, I ponder how to treat myself.
It’s at 3AM that I am most alive and dead.
You remind me of the color orange
In its warmth and its loudness
Not the red-tinted ones
Or the yellow-meshed ones
Splat in the middle
Where I always find you
I don’t remember when I wrote this, but it has been sitting on my laptop’s notes for a long period of time waiting for further additions. I know that it was about you, but now, I’m happy that I never added upon it, because it’s beautiful on its own and ultimately, because we didn’t happen.
This is the poem that I made for the Day 4 Prompt of NaPoWriMo 2014. Prompt: Write a lune.
Not mere numbers
Or the formulas and flows—
That is boxed
Math isn’t hard;
but silver spoons of info—
math becomes plain.
Math is social;
strip to the main question,
ask everything else.
Math isn’t blasphemous
nor a bloody QPI murderer—
just forever misunderstood.
And the cycle?
It continues on, unchanging, relentless—
Math gives up.
Math is human.
Just looking for a friend
who loves him.
You remind me that I am inadequate; that the source of my troubles is my inability to love. To love another person is to give a part of myself up for that person— to remove me from the relationship. I am scared to be vulnerable and to care for someone who may not care back.
Your smile in still moments is envious. It shows your strength to love someone, to care for someone, and ultimately, to give yourself up for someone. While these still fragments could be fabrications of the truth, wisps of truth still reside in the crevices, bursting with emotions to radiate that semblance of truth.
You astound me with your capacity to continue to love, to support, and to care for everyone who matters. You astound me with your skills to feel like you are loving someone as if you haven’t loved someone before— as if she was your first.
It is amazingly strange.
With just a rattle of a chain, my world shook. I chuckled outwardly, but stood stupefied inside. I paced, fidgeted, and I knew I wasn’t still. It didn’t make me still. I took too long to discern.
No, it didn’t take me too long to discern.
Yellow creases on the eleventh day of cupid, my heart skipped and my brain shut. The strangeness settled and the confusion clouded in. The words to forgo escaped into the air. The feelings of positively-correlated probability left to boil.
I was being sentimental.
Death should never be remembered for its gruesome tales and happy-never-afters. Death should be remembered as the light at the end of the tunnel, as simultaneous shutting and opening of doors, as the rebirth. Death is a transition to the new and shinning.
It was on the day of your gradually-approaching death that the yellow creases shall be bestowed upon you. To yell out the chance— for you to stand, stupefied from head to toe.
Yet that is a story only left in the thoughts but not in life.
The melody haunted me. These goosebumps found their way to my soul with each prick and trickle on my skin. The path didn’t matter for the electricity surged from all-over. As my eyes closed, they grew ten-fold. I felt the weight of the baggage on me. I was suffocating; I wasn’t aware.
And it happened.
The droplets dripped down. I dare not touch them until they land on my palms. They were warm and I could breathe better. These lips curved to the calming beat of my heart that had been engulfed with such intensity.
There are certain melodies that remind me of you
even after all these years of distance.
It’s strange how I return to the words that you had written to me two years ago. How each word links to each other, chaining me to the idea that I was special to you. They were just mine to hold and relish the feeling in. I didn’t need to share those words. They were mine— no, they were ours. They were our story written in a perspective that I never knew existed.
Ailia Kate Kira 