“If It’s Still In Your Mind, It Is Still In Your Heart.”

It’s better to be your genuine self, and have fewer of the right kinds of people in your life, than it is to surround yourself with those who only accept you as long as you conform to their idea of who you should be.

Zero Dean

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.”

— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

My nights are for over-thinking; my days are for over-sleeping.

Hedonist Poet

A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.

Madonna Ciccone

Fariha Róisín, from Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind

[Text ID: “I never fought back, I learned how to cry silently, I bore my sins.”]

keep it close to your heart

keep it close to your heart give me a half glance when you pass don't dare whisper grin as my pulse thuds twice as fast don't set yourself apart. twitch my fingers in a wave keep it all in your chest oh your smile; I won't be the same. but spend every waking moment wondering what you think of watching with bated breath. wondering if I grace your daydreams. keep it all in your mind let loose that hope, smile and wave a promise, treading your tightrope. don't talk; be kind... soft mockery and fluttering sighs. keep it all close to me a thousand quiet hopes and another reason why be those butterflies I want to set free. hold those thoughts; let my heart skip a sweeping dawn, a bargain to rescind to a melody I can't let persist. a hundred damned flowers thrown to the wind save myself from finding closure the brush of fingers, clench your dreams into my fists, a warm autumn night, keep your whispers by my chest, the meeting of eyes, as I find my way closer a smile of delight. this broken compass that points West. keep me close to your heart, & listen: none of those letters were ever a lie & I'll keep you, with all my might. I loved you first. but I'll be the first to say goodbye.

for my unrequited crush (disguise)

she wakes at dawn when the sky is painted gold, and pink, to dress in drowsiness.

she doesn’t remember when it started, when her cheeks became so pink, when her heart grew unsteady whenever she tried to think, but now instead of colouring them flush, she drains the colours from that blush to keep and hide away lest someone see it and say her thoughts, spill them aloud— no. that couldn’t be allowed.

so now she wakes two hours earlier, when the sky is painted blue, to carve her cheeks and chap her lips and give off less than she might give so no one would see it and then ask how her glow had grown so fast why her heart beat unsteady over something that she wasn’t yet ready to know.

but instead of stifling it, as she wished, the glow grew and she began to know the hurt that followed, the cramps and aches and loving pains that carved out her heart and gleaned her happiness a constant rain.

until when she tried to cover it someone noticed the flush that couldn’t be missed, under her disguise, the hope that grew in her eyes, the stabs of knives in her heart, every  single  time.

she stifled that pain. till it went away, but to this day something faint stays the pink glow that was stolen from the sun the love in which she is the only one.

Fariha Róisín, from Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind

[Text ID: “I never fought back, I learned how to cry silently, I bore my sins.”]

The darkest nights produce the brightest stars.

Unknown

Second chances are made to make things better, to make love sweeter and to correct mistakes.

E.J. Cenita