i stare at this emptiness in my hand
without your sleeve to pull onto
without your shoulder to lean onto

you were careful as to not wake me up
your shoulders stiff from sitting straight up
how did you feel back then?
in your mind, what did you comprehend?

as the train crawled into the city centre
more and more people were glancing at us
bashful from pretending to be lovers
i cleared my throat, straightened my posture

but i knew you felt only my hand
tugging onto your sleeve, not letting go
though our moments together were scarce
i hold each of them so precious to my heart

i couldn't help but miss
you who stopped being by my side
the more it dawned on me
that you'd only stay as a passing moment
the more my chest aches, it's a torment

if only i had known this is what it'd come down to
i wish i hadn't approached you in the first place
i wish we hadn't spent alone time on the rooftop
i wish we hadn't walked the night together
i wish we hadn't stargazed until sunrise

i wish you hadn't offered to ride until my station
i wish we hadn't been on calls until ungodly hour
i wish we hadn't talked about what's in it for the future
i wish i could've changed everything

not that i would've, though

i only talked to you for my own selfish sake
for the sake of erasing someone else
for the sake of repressing my emotions
into you, i pretended to yearn

now i'm trapped in my own game
became a prisoner of my own cage

© lostboyzephyr


story time! ITS SO LONG?

this was the first piece of writing (wouldn't call it a poem, at least not the original version) that i wrote back in summer of 2022, about someone - hence the title of the poem. at the time i was not at all familiar with writing, in fact, it was originally written in Japanese. it was super long lol, this translated version I did recently is only like half of it before i gave up🤣😭 maybe I'll do a part 2 one day...

my previous poems "day 0 no yearning" and "would you look at us now?" were written in reference to this.
so the thing is that, the person that I wrote about in this poem, we went our separate ways after getting close exactly the day before school ended. so I was absolutely crushed by the memories that we made in such a short span of time, knowing we would probably never see each other again. but I was wrong. by the time I was ready to move on, news came in that we got accepted into the same college, the same course, even. it's just so funny every time I think about it, like what are the odds?

and so this 'confession' got buried in my notes app, I wasn't really big on writing after all. until last July, when I met someone else that in a way, unleashed my desire to write poems, specifically in Malay, my native language. he was beautiful and completely out of my league, I admired him so much, albeit from afar. my poem "papyrus" was dedicated to him, because of the prompt that was something along the line of "write about the ONE that made you start writing".

anyway, since then i have been writing. and before i knew it, i had came full circle and my notes are full of poems about the first person again. i used to not be able to write about him at all and i don't really know what changed, but here we are. current status is friends..? (citation needed). we'll see how it goes.

oh that's so horribly long i don't think anyone is reading this! to be fair it's 4 am and it feels really good to just put it out there even if no one's reading. story of my life of some kind lol. if anyone is still reading this mess, i thank you a lot, really 😊. i referenced some other poems in this, you can check them out on my profile if you want to lol.

should i have uploaded this as a 'story' instead? i don't know. finals week starts tomorrow so wish me luck and i'll probably be a bit inactive! maybe! maybe not! i don't know!