Quietus.

         I have always learned to keep my feelings hidden. I never knew how to express myself clearly, been a manifestation of people's perception. Lately I have been trying to tap into my womanhood as well as my blackness but I seem to be doomed to always stay the irrelevant shy little girl drowning her self-disgust in books.

          I have always watched the sunset with my eyes closed, head in the clouds, hands in the air, levitating soul. As I grew up, I came to the realization that I have always been suffocating instead of breathing. 

                  

                 Years ago, I felt superfluous...

        

          There was always a disguised warmth in the hugs of my friends, a thorn behind each joke, a pair of cold hands stretching my being, a one-sided love poem camouflaged within my name.

           This year, I am merely but the assemblage of my friends' corpses. I felt hot from those who have been burned, dizzy from the bullets who erased their names, my skin charred from those who just disappeared. 

            People still pretend to be offended whenever they see death peeping out from under my feet. As if this life wasn't hell enough, the days weren't dark enough. I have always perceived nature as red since rain cried blood instead of water. 

             My given names suggested that I was either born to lose my innocence or my mind but I came into this world with my words as armor. I have been buried long ago, that day when I first learned that I have never been considered as human.

             I am a hoarder of life, I'm collecting it for those that I have lost and those that I am afraid of losing.