Fast Love

I thought it was okay for us to act so juvenile.
I thought it’s what people starting out in relationships do.

Puppy love starts out great and giddy.
First and second dates turn from bashful to exciting.
Casual dating grows quickly to mutually exclusive.

If we were both chasing love and happiness,
then the goals were clear.
No matter how many differences, we’d get there somehow.
Because the sex was animal.
The lust was ravenous.

But alas, like oil and water. You can mix and mix and mix.
Go as fast at it and as hard at it you want in the beginning,
In a matter of a short while though, the two always separate.

Because fast love isn’t real.
They’re out as quickly as they came in.
Leaving you still pulling up a bra strap, when they’ve already called a cab.

 

What Would You Have Done?

It haunts me all the time, thinking back to the day I strolled down 3rd Street Promenade. Was I the only one who noticed? The poor bruised child scared out of her wits? The heavy tall robust man clutching her arms as they briskly walked past me?

Often times, people say we have this bystander effect where we believe that though there are misfortunes and tragedies in this world someone else will lend out a hand rather than ourselves helping out the unfortunate. It’s a social psychological phenomenon, it’s a mistake, and it’s what I’ll have to carry with me as a burden because I swear what I saw that chilling afternoon wasn’t just a regular day on the promenade.

I so want to believe that there is an altruistic good left in our world. I so want to hope that with all the human cruelty that persists from day to day, there is still a small pool of decency left in us. A spark that barely flickers in our tainted hearts. I regret that afternoon. I know it wouldn’t be my business and I, myself, could have been put in danger of the man with blood thirst eyes but I could have saved a young girl from her suffering.

To paint a better picture, here is what I remember from that day-

I was strolling down past a few pedestrian shoppers near 3rd St Promenade when I saw a young girl with a face that had looked like it’d been brutally assaulted. The inflammation of her most recent bruising stuck out like a tumor near her cheeks. Different shades of purple were displayed across her face that trailed up to her eyes. The moment we crossed paths felt as though a lifetime of pain was shot into my eyes as I saw her sorrows manifest the air. In those brief few seconds I noticed her raggedy clothes, her sniffling nose and sounds of a whimper as if she were choking back tears. She was dragged along by a man tightly gripping her arms. He looked like a menace. I so badly wanted to halt, turn around and question her distress, but what were they doing in broad daylight? If she was being tortured or even raped, would the kidnapper really bring her out in public? Biting my tongue, I shook away the crippling chills that pricked at my spine and turned the other cheek.

There is no happy ending to my passage down memory lane. In fact, there isn’t even an ending at all. But I do linger with the question…

If you were to brush past the two, would you have the humanity to stop them? Or would you have surrendered to bystander’s apathy… the way I had and am now disturbed by my own lack of action?

 

This is what happens when I don’t have my coffee

There’s a storm raging inside of me.

I don’t know how to explain it. I want to cry it out as a form of release but no tears can be shed. Instead, I feel void of any emotion. I drove by a four way stop intersection earlier and wanted the perpendicular car to hit me. I want to feel something…anything.

What’s wrong with me? I swear, I am not trying to end my life. I just want to feel again.

Everyday has become the same monotonous routine, another etching on my imaginary wall of countless days until what? What do we have to count down for? Every year is the same – New Year, summer… zoom it’s Christmas day again. Days go by faster as we get older, but they’re all the same. DAMN. THING.

I’m tired.

I’m done.

Have you ever felt like this before?

Someone please explain what this is. Is this a rite of passage into adulthood? Let me guess, you’re going to try and tell me it gets worse. Responsibilities will start to stack up while more and more loved ones leave without closure in our lives. We are left bare boned, empty, and lost.

There’s a storm raging inside of me.
What was once a quiet, delicate cloud is now festering into something daunting and wild. I am afraid that I am unable to cry this one out… which scares me far more because this is the calm before the storm.  

L | EPHANT