66 Days Of Unlearning You

Due to COVID, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival was held virtually, including the poetry slam. I had the honor to share the space with talented & wonderful poets across the world.

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2020 - Poetry Slam | Stage appeareance 32:25

Transcript:

Science says it takes 66 days to build a new habit.

1. 3AM, reaching out to the cold sheet next to me.

2. I'm a Leo, rising moon Scorpio. And I have no idea what it meant. Still, every morning I open the app to find out if the universe finds new ways to make me suffer, on weekends, they give me a reminder of childhood trauma I didn't know I have.

5. Oh the things we reach out to feel something. Some days its sharp objects, some days people whose hands guilty of the fires. Today I found out that I'm not really into coffee & it really has nothing to do with my productivity in the morning, then proceeded to have a mini-breakdown over the fact that I've spent my adult years waking up very early & basically taping my eyelids on my head with caffeine rather than just have an extra hour of sleep.

15. We call it different names.

Is it shame? or the necessary stepping stone of healing?

Is it love? When you give and give and give? Is it love if you wish anything in return?

Is it compromise? or swimming in the comfort of pain because we fear the unfamiliar freedom?

35. You'd be surprised that there are endless ways to fit apologies & confessions in rhymes & stanzas, how beautiful catastrophe could sound in the teeth of poetry, how tragic it is that I beg and beg "please, meet me here, in my sanctuary I have nothing but words in my hands", how sad it is that they rest in the palms of strangers but you. You open your mouth; honey-dripping excuses. And every time, I recite this as if you were in the crowd.

44. People said we were alike, I thought I could learn to love myself by loving you. But you were a mirrorball.

58. You asked how we got here.

Not knowing the invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck. Everything is a slow death, and we could've sunk with grace. Still, there was a crowd watching, blue light glistening in their eyes, and we tried harder & harder & harder just to stay on water—carving our perfectly circular love into sharp-cut edges thinking we would fit like puzzle pieces. The backdrop of foreign faces slow-clapping as we go under, "what a great show", disappear before we hit the ground.

66. I still sleep on the left side of the bed. Always make the coffee for two. Still call you as I open the door—the echo speaks back in violent guilt. Still mason jars of tenderness, lids open only in the face of farewell. Still give & give & give to convince myself even the tiniest part of me meant something. And there are days when my phone rings with your name on the screen, it always takes 5 seconds for your fingers to realize they made a mistake. I don't have the keys to your apartment anymore.

67. Science says it takes 66 days to build a new habit. I wonder how long it takes to unlearn one.