Mint

• Bella Liu, Grade 8
• Poetry
• 2011

Mint

To K.J.H. & K.K.B,
Who had kept their promise until the very end.
Thank you.

— I hope you have found each other now...



Why did you have to do this to me?
Why did you have to make me think that all the world beholds are lies?

Oh.
Maybe it’s not like that.
Maybe you didn’t lie to me.
Maybe I gave up on that myself.
Those warm, beautiful, bright ones.
Maybe I let myself fall.
Maybe I volunteered to visit that desperate, depressing world.

To me.
Right now.
All the memories of the past are jumping out at me,
All reminding me of how filthy I am.



Now, there’s only black, white, red, and grey left in my world.
Sinful black;
Filthy white;
Bloody red;
Depressing grey.
Four colours, huh. How colourful.

Pity. I don’t even want to open my eyes anymore.
Don’t want to see.
Don’t want to see how filthy I am.
Don’t want to see a completely different me,
No matter on the outside, or within.

Ha.
Even I don’t want to see myself.
You probably don’t want to either, right?

The one you love, should be the old me.
Insolent, indifferent, sharp.
Instead of what I am now,
Kitsch, rotten, filthy.

So I shut my eyes, forcing myself,
Not to distinguish between black white, red, and grey.
This obscure world.
Doesn’t need any more colours, does it?

But why,
Why even if I close my eyes.
Destiny still shoves you into my sight.
The unchanged you,
And the one beside you.

Why.
Why did I have to see?
I’m already a puppet, aren’t I?
I’ve already lost my right to feel, haven’t I?

Then why.
Why is my heart still aching?
That huge blanket wrapping tight around me,
Of compacted, blunt pain.
Like faith being shattered.
Like losing the ability to breathe.
Even more painful than the whip lashing on my skin.
Like memory’s drill carving letters all over my soul.

*
? Hey, Do you know what the meaning of the mint flower is? ?
? ... ?
? -‘Love me again’... ?
*

I saw the one snuggling in your arms.
A pure child.
She replaced me, didn’t she?
Replaced the sordid me, didn’t she?

Please.
Just one last time —

Love me again...



This is love.
Simple love.
Yet the world fails to understand it...