blunt

you cannot afford to not smile. your laugh needs to be hearty!  thick skin to the jeers, get rid of the tears -  you are the life of the party! put your phone away now.  you have  to light up the floor!  amidst the crowd stand, with a glass in your hand -  because they're all expecting more!  don't you dare try to slip away.  ensure that they're all on their feet!  get yourself wired to not feel tired -  you have a record that you need to beat!  i'll instruct my reflection in the mirror, for anything else feels like a crime, my lips protest, my eyes beg for rest, but for the life of the party, it's simply show-time .  aishu 17-01-2026

touch me not i hate the touch-me-not flower  because without fail, it closes when i try to hold it.  i know it's in its name -  touch. me. not. but i don't know how not to touch something i love.  i said i hate the touch-me-not flower. but it's only because i love it.  and i can't hold it.  i swear i know it loves me too, but it's scared of love so i'll keep trying. it shuts me out so i try again -  i'll try to hold it until it never closes.  how many more tries until it never opens?  how many more closes until i never hold it?  sunflower i find warmth in the light  of his face  it's my favorite  place  to be. i can only turn  towards him to be filled to the  brim with glee.  rose the star of the show, soft love after woe,  a bouquet's hero, warm gesture to-go -  but i want a daisy. daisy the first time i found a love that wasn't lazy was with a boy that gave me a daisy, and it still sits perc...

i love writing but i'm scared to write, day and night, i think i might just pick up my pen but then a voice in my head says wait. the time isn't right so don't write just yet. everything i've written has turned to ash, a slash across my heart, a part of it burnt, the other numb to everything that's come to me. and so i wait. because i can't be brash, take another slash, or more ash.  they say words make things more beautiful but mine can only kill. it's a skill i will have learnt to withhold with age, when i'm at a stage to accept that every page doesn't need to have words. and it's absurd to me but i see the disastrous impact of what i write and it doesn't feel right to write anymore. so i wait.  i wait until i am sure that i won't be insecure of the place i hold in your life. i pause with a knife at my wrist, a millimeter away from a tryst with death but more importantly a means to not pick up my pen. a means for when i need to fight th...

When I was thirteen-years-old, I watched He's Just Not That Into You  for the very first time and I vaguely remember feeling quite unsettled during the course of the movie. I think it was to do with the fact that every character didn't have a happy ending (that I was SO accustomed to by the Disney movies that I otherwise exposed myself to). Not all loose ends were tied and not everything made sense at the end - just like real life.  I just finished rewatching the movie for the first time since I was thirteen, and it has left me more perplexed than ever before. Let's go over the rules and characters and lessons to try and break this down analytically.  The Main Message: If a man is into you, he will make the effort to see you and date you.  Does that make sense theoretically? 100%. Sure. Yeah.  I would expect a man who likes a girl to make the effort to make something happen with her. I would expect him to stretch a mile, actually, to make it happen. Then again, ...

"What's in a name?" It was around seven years ago that I learnt that Juliet said these words to Romeo. Incredibly romantic, and movingly wise, I was thirteen years old and mesmerized.  What is in a name, indeed?  It's simply a convention, a label, not to mention its failure to draw attention to what really matters - the person itself - the essence, the effervescence, the lack thereof, the warmth and love. It fails miserably.  It makes me feel confined to think I am defined by 5 letters, of which 2 are the same. Can all of me be summed up by my birth-given name? That would be a shame.  My name isn't me, but I become my name, and through places and time, it's never been the same.  As a child, my parents lovingly changed the last of the five letters. In college, my friend eliminated it, for worse or for better. And I let her.  These little changes in my name made me feel closer to people, as though every modification was simply an indication of love and affect...

2025 has hardly begun and it might just be one of my toughest years yet.  I love playing football. I love being active.  On the 4th of February, I went to football training like any other day. Around this time, I was loving football more than ever before. I had just got into form, I was playing without pressure, and my game had improved significantly. It was perfect.  Until I tore my lateral meniscus and sprained my ACL. On the 4th of February, in the last play of the game, while saving the ball from going out, I pivoted and heard a distinctive 'pop' sound in my knee. An MRI 12 hours later revealed that I had torn my meniscus and that I would need to be in a wheelchair for 3 weeks, on crutches for 3 weeks, and out of training for 6 months.  It has been exactly 60 days since I played any sport, or even ran. I currently can't walk downstairs or even jog. It has been absolutely frustrating. I am in rehab, doing physio, and doing water conditioning. The last 2 months for...