of revolting famine; this grief-kindled flesh yearns to devour a mouthful of inflaming fondness.
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to cradle what i despise, perhaps, could awaken a cordial devotee of life. after all, how else could i be deaf to the language of the lonely if not to be consumed by the resounding mumbles of self-deception.
from the dawn of my emergence, i mourned the deaths of my father and served mother’s cursed devotion. my existence was sowed merely to atone for the sins bathed on my blood. they wore me off my skin to name it theirs. from them, i have inherited decades of legacy: to redefine childbirth into one crucifying dawn of lifelong funeral procession. and i knew long since, this weary soul is a mere corpse revived to relive its deathbed. thus, for always, i have deemed my shadows slave to blindfolded radiance. for always, i have been living asleep in a tomb, barely desperate for salvation. and for always, i have glorified spiritual death as heaven’s touchstone of remaining physically present.
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the dullness of childhood was my sole memory of faith.
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hence, this child had only known to vulnerably gasp and perpetually revisit the aches stowed in her overgrown lungs. arising from her trembling fists are the rekindling embers of burning desire for a maimed being, so she may finally worship her extinction. so she may crawl on earth and veil her graves with merited epitaphs.
nonetheless, however repulsive, this hollow ghost prays of being reborn as one unformed by morals but raised by purity. one as a child of love, unmarred by truth, and unburdened by fabricated freedom. for i have grown too young for an age-worn bruise, and yet born too old to commemorate fleeting innocence. devoid was the life in between. all the more fear for the haunting horror of hope. my back shivers as it leans on unwonted aches in an attempt to defy a fall, to gnaw a foreign flesh as one hungered wolf, leaving trails of a blood-shedding meal in place. as though proclaiming full, only to once again howl in mournful starvation. only to be out-wolved by the hunger, until it feeds on you.
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inevitably, i abhorred yearning for a taste one knows is a constant of uninhibited self-murder. the same taste that devoured my origins, they who best starved me of life.
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and yet most of abhorrence awaits to be fondled by tenderness, albeit in denial.
Tajirah Arthave
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Sullied borrower of life within unbreathing realities. In my coming of age, the world could not be any more familiar. The same ruins for the wretched and short-lived shelters for the unchanging. A first sight I longed to have witnessed blindfolded. For the shape of my being embodied ancientry more than its roundness had. My footprints disappear on its lands before I could even proclaim my existence. Most air rejects the desperation of my weakened chest, as I seem unfit for all declarations belonging to a person of being. It was a place unwilling of acceptance, except when one thing awakened my numb-soothed sanity. The soul of words.
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This is how I apprise the earth of my promised newness. And may you be witnesses of the redemption avowed by someone beyond the persona of Tajirah Arthave, @adhira. Someone unconfined in her birth in Davao City, Philippines and her inclination to Medical Laboratory Science. A being of infinite substance who writes most about childhood recollections, personal introspection, and even perhaps her discoveries. Until then, know that this is how I make sense of every word: A compass to ownership of the life I once denied to live with.
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Acknowledgment: My earnest gratitude to @tpkidkai and @rks.wuhdrelis for introducing me to this community. Your helping hands are always well-appreciated.
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