Ver • Ti • Go

Everything feels the same, now. 

That is to say, 

Everything feels like coming to life. 

That is to say, everything

Feels like dying anew. 

.

—resurrection (y.c.)

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE DARK STARTS CALLING

Don’t say you’re fine. Every lie amplifies its siren’s call. 

Play music. The soft sort. The sort that sounds like lullabies and freedom, maybe a pinch of adrenaline. 

Work. Anything is enough to plug your ears, dull the dark’s edge. 

Lie. It’ll amplify it, but we’re all masochists here, aren’t we?

Punch something. A wall, maybe. The blood looks like eyes. The pain feels like teeth. 

Don’t say you’re fine. Fine doesn’t mean a damn anymore, anyways. It’s a cop out, a run out, a blindfold.

Close your eyes. 

Close your ears. 

It can’t get you here.

These days, beauty is packaged and sold.

That box there is this weirdly specific hair

colour whose name

sounds like a desperate student’s last ditch

efforts to meet the word count

That shampoo is a scent that sounds like an

overenthusiastic writer’s sensory description

That t-shirt is designed to make you look slim

Mirrors are our enemies

Make-up our allies

and we gobble it up,

Burying our identities in

Consumer debt and social expectations.

— y.c.

Love and despair are drawn from the same well.

I cannot always tell which is the poison,

And which is the cure.

— y.c.

“We keep wasting away, whiling away our days, chasing what? Fame? Fortune? Those might not last, darling. Love might. Hope might. Joy might. Chase those. They’ll keep you warm when cold fate abandons you in a trench on the side of a road.”

— what are we chasing? (y.c.)

Tell me,

When you look into his eyes,

do you see storms brewing

like the ones that tore your home to shreds?

When you hear his voice,

do you hear the rumble of thunder

deep and unyielding

accompanied by that flash of smirk-lightning?

Child,

he was not made

to be handled by soft hands

and dewy eyes

He was not made for gentle hearts

and forgiving minds

He was made to

level cities

decimate countries

raze the world to the ground

— Yushan C.

I am rediscovering how to love

The way I used to when I was five. Before Love

Was swept under the rug and 

Freedom became the only prize. 

Fear runs rampant, dominates—Panic is seeds sown by a 

         careless farmer—

But here, in this moment, without distraction, 

        without fear, 

I am rediscovering what it means to love despite 

       the flaws we hold. 

Here in this moment, 

I am redefining who I choose to be.

If one thing must come from this living, 

barring death, 

let it be the choice to love again, 

despite Love’s faults in the past. 

.

—in the space between here and then (y.c.)