My pain flies away with the puffs of smoke. Yeah, I know smoking is injurious to health. But so is love. No one warns about that. People who like unicorns and read love stories would describe it as the most beautiful emotion of all. People who have actually been in love would call it a sweet poison. Love is the last cigarette of your life which kills you. Love is that last drag of smoke you inhale which damages everything inside of you. Love does have a dark side. It ruins you. Breaks you into pieces, you wouldn't even recognise whether belonged to you. Love is the pack of cigarettes you buy, ignoring all the warning signs. Love is the alcohol you are so much addicted to, that you can't survive a day without. Love is that red traffic sign, shouting stop, which you break anyway, at least once in lifetime. He was everything I had ever imagined, read about. Perfect. Perfect for me. I wish I were the one for him. Well that's love for you. That's smoking for you. It kills.

~Shubhaa

insta: @darichonne

It takes a lot to offend me but very little to hurt my feelings.

Excerpt from a book I’ll never write - m

last night i asked you why i am the wretched way i am and you said it’s because i carry everyone else’s pain along with my own. you said you used to be the same way but somehow you stopped— overflowing with pain of your own. pain. it’s like concrete— wet and sticky like overripe fruit before it suddenly coalesces into immovable, gray heaviness, blocking you off from the world, shielding you from the sun. but you should know by now that the concrete has made a lighthouse out of you. i want to enter the sanctuary of your body like the door has been open, waiting for me all your life. i will let the salt of the sea erode the concrete to dust, our petty pains to nothing. i will hold the windowsill of your fingertips and prefer you to the rest of the world. i will set the brimming pitchers of our pain down and let the years whittle it to air. and it will be enough to keep me warm for as long as you’ll let me stay.

—the pain has made you into a lighthouse and i want to live in you for all my years a.p. (6.21)

❝Paint me the scars you wish your body did not have.❞

(via @thisissai)

acing a stranger in the mirror shrugging your hair in a higgledy-piggledy while biting your lips stopping yourself from sobbing yet still it escapes

every single day seems a struggle for sanity- you brush off the tears from your cheeks take a shower with a puffed eyes, brush your teeth with eyes-closed since hanging in front is a mirror, wear a pair of the body you feel like you do not own

everything is a struggle yet you still manage to live and endure the days handling the stranger you see in the mirror cracking a smile in the people who smiles at your way

and I think that is such an act of bravery

(old one | via @thisissai)

I am terrified that I will inadvertently condition myself to hate everything I once loved.

— [i.r.]

[06.24.21.]

Italian Memories - Chapter 2.

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Dusk was falling and I was able to see a number of lakes at the bottom of the surrounding valleys and hills, which could only be seen from where I was.

As I looked northwards under a sky that was a mixture between purple and deep blue, with stars glittering like diamonds, I gasped as I realized I could see the purple-heads of the mountains - clear into Austria!

I've never seen anything so beautiful or so dramatic in all my life!

I was so excited to be seeing my family's region, that I had fantasies about bathing in the waters of Lake Fedaia, at the bottom of the mountains, when I got there.

But at that altitude - with long, winding, mountain roads to get there - when I arrived and took one look at those icy, black waters, which were mostly run-off from the mountain snows, I quickly changed my mind and decided for dipping my hands in the waters instead.

Even this was a shock, because the cold was so sharp that it felt like it actually burned my hand!

Although I loved the colder regions of North Italy after having spent some time with the family there, I preferred the warmer regions further to the south, especially those on the coast - which is where I went next!

One of my favorite places in Italy is not the most beautiful, but it's a line of cliffs and beaches running along the coastline after the French-Italian border, towards the coastal city of Genova but not quite reaching that city which, by the way, is where Columbus is from, Genova being his hometown!

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I’ll kiss you quiet. Try me.

This is some writer bs.

Bish is like “this story is so interesting, I wonder what happens next, where’s the rest of it?”

Bish you’re the writer of that story, why don’t you tell us where the hell is the rest of the story? Better, why don’t you write it?

And one day when I stop giving , do you think they’ll realise that I’m finally exhausted?

“and I’ve realized nothing is ever so bad that it can’t be helped by unlocking your front door, and stepping outside into the morning sunlight or the warm evening breeze on a summer day.”

- n.c. // i would compare it to a breathe of fresh air when you didn’t know you were suffocating.

I moved into a new apartment. I was excited at first. The thought of starting over was like a breath of fresh air. I could breathe again. I was more than ready to leave my past and all the memories behind in those four walls I knew so well. Eagerly, I packed my things into boxes and sat with them stacked. Hours passed. Days passed. Weeks passed. Months passed. I waited. I waited there - dwelling within that bare room, those four walls speaking of my past, my being becoming weary of the dread that had come over me. It was happening again. I was running. Running from my comfortable position and ended up in an uncomfortable waiting period. Running from my unresolved past life and into a new one I was ready to make. Everything went wrong. I spent too much money. The movers broke my furniture. I lost so much that I owned. A family member got sick. My bed didn't arrive on time. I had to replace everything. Then, I was back there. In that room, again. Four walls, the same color as before...there I dwelled until I realized...it was hapoening, again. I was becoming my old self. Trying to be comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. I was feeling but, never felt. I was present but, not there. I was doing but, what was done effected others more than me. See, while I moved...I placed my body into a new location but, I left my heart and mind in the same position at the old home with the key on the table...

Aku sempat mempertanyakan semesta,

yang selalu berkata tidak pada kita,

yang mengitung hari demi hari,

yang berjalan lebih lambat dari kura-kura yang sedang cedera kaki.

Aku sempat curiga semesta sengaja bersekongkol dengan waktu (yang juga tidak suka jika kita bertemu).

Lalu mereka mencampuri detik-detik kita dengan sianida,

dan kita, manusia yang sedang mabuk-mabuknya, meminum detik-detik itu dengan sukarela.

Hingga merah bibirmu dan merah bibirku menjadi biru, sebiru samudera.

Lalu terjatuhlah tubuh mabuk kita berdua di gersangnya tanah di halaman depan rumah kita.

— séri

I don't think I am anybody's favorite. He'll I am not even my favorite.

Italian Memories - Chapter 1.

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My maternal family lived in the north of Italy, in a beautiful place called 'Dolomiti', the Dolomite Mountains, the tallest of which is Mormolada, and I was blessed to have lived there for a while, working in a nearby hotel.

I remember once with the family I was staying with, in the mountain village of Colle Santa Lucia, waking up early one morning and deciding that I was going to see what it looked like from the top of the peaks, whose hillside the house was built on.

When you looked out the bedroom window, you saw a literal 'wall' of grass stretching up to the top of the hill - it was that steep!

With nothing but jeans and a t-shirt on, the hillside was so steep I had to dig my fingers into the earth to keep going up at times, and when I neared the top I saw there was another peak still higher, and so I kept going and ascended three more peaks like this, higher and higher, until near evening.

The third peak was denuded of trees and there was little room to stand on it, because a shrub had taken over the entire top of it.

I was hanging onto one of the branches of this massive, sprawling, shrub - by only one hand on the side of the mountain, and I'm glad it didn't break - it's that steep! - as I would have been rolling and tumbling for a very long, long time, dead or alive!

But the view from up there was amazing!

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At the moment , it’s all blue — my thoughts , the skies , the moon.

Endless wait

a tight, unassuming embrace

you don't have to say I'm strong

i don’t think i’ll ever love anyone else, you know..

i still look for you in every other guy and i can’t find you

even if i can though, they’re still not you.

the thing is:

i want you,

not anybody else.