Written by Mehak Kazmi

Mehak Kazmi

If I could turn back time, I would have never looked at you.

I saw you open your heart so wide that the whole world had fallen in.

I saw that you stepped out of your world and into this world. And

what I saw scarred my mind so painfully that I choked on my breath as it hit me.

I saw a graveyard in your mouth for all the words that died on your tongue that never quite made it out of your mouth.

I saw you inhale a cigarette so fiercely that I began to envision a tornado running down your spine and into your lungs.

I saw you sigh so deep that the trees fell in love with the scent of your soul as they inhaled it in hope of producing growth in the leaves, but to only welcome the season of winter.

I saw that you would stare at someone, only to look away but always look back at them.

I saw that your thoughts ran so freely and carelessly inside your mind that a few of them began to lose their way and ended up living on your face; your thoughts scribbled on your forehead as you frowned, swam inside of your eyes as you cried, and lay across your lips as you cracked a smile.

I saw the anticipation and frustration vibrate through the anatomy of your being as you tapped your fingers on the coffee desk.

I saw that you had harps on your wrists playing broken melodies about the tragedies that unfolded your life.

I saw the way that you absorbed the storm from the sky so deep into your veins that you began to release them through your anger.

I saw that you cremated your body into ashes that you unknowingly poured into an hour glass.

I saw that if your heart had the ability to sing, then it would sound like a cello; sad, sweet, and lost.

I saw that you built disasters in the way you spoke and in the way you acted, and you never stayed to watch the disasters fall and crumble upon homes.

I saw how you despised looking at your hands because you believed that they were claws that left marks upon all the people that you had touched.

I saw that your skin was the border between you and the world as you bandaged your bruises to hide from the world how wounded you really were, and you plastered the paper cuts on your skin to stop your secrets from leaking out.

I saw how hurt and helpless you felt as you overheard the raindrops soliloquising about the loss of the sun.

I saw that you stopped introducing yourself in hope that people wouldn’t tell you their name as you couldn’t help but turn those words into poetry.

I saw that you punished yourself for feeling, and seeing, and hearing, and being; by depriving yourself of sleep.

I saw that you found the pieces of all those that left broken promises and false words scattered under your eyes in the form of purple bags.

I saw that your heart started to harden into a stone as you poisoned your blood with the thoughts of those that had let you down.

I saw that you switched off your humanity as a last resort to figure why you kept messing up, and not realising that it wasn’t you that was messing things up, it was them.

I saw that the darkness never left you, even when you awoke the next morning with the blinds drawn that lit the whole room up, because the daylight never reached you.

I saw that you recognised the monster that lived inside of you.

And the deeper I stared into your being, the sooner I realised that it wasn’t the monster that lived inside of you, it was you that lived inside of the monster.

If I could turn back time, I would have never looked at you.

Mehak Kazmi is a third year English Literature and Human Resource Management student at MMU. An aspiring human resourcer, philosopher of wonder, midnight writer, and a lover of all things mystical. You can follow Mehak on twitter @mysticalmimii or on her blog www.mysticalmimii.wordpress.com