I have never believed in the principles of physics because they do not apply to girls like me. Girls who disobey Newton's straight-mouthed rules with scarlet leaps of blind faith, girls with hopes soaring past our pastel heavens, never weighed down by any mystical force of gravity measured by dead men. The audacity of the physicist's rotten rules anchoring themselves into thick velvet skin-- as if to stifle the daydreams that keep twirling unpredictably even if acted upon by an unbalanced force. There is no way to silence my momentum, I will keep blooming-- slender hands outstretched toward the flickering sun, past all of the white numerical lies and formulaic cages that ache to confine me. What a perfect contradiction, that a soft-spoken girl can rise at the break of Einstein's miscalculated morning, illuminating the sky with the poetry of her defiance.

She, who loves gracefully without friction. She, whose bones cannot be broken by the laws of heat. She, who keeps herself warm when the cold mathematical wrath of their graves fails to keep her quiet.

I.
a calm darkened room, curtains drawn
outside, the sky is crying-- its tears
slamming white noise on our rooftop
there is a mattress and blue cotton sheets,
a cloud for a comforter and two bodies
clasped together like refrigerator magnets
as icons dance on the screen of our
static television minds

II.
here we are again, hands intertwined within
the streets of Rome, ivy crawling across
yellow edifice recollections, Italian
sun scorching her liquid tongue upon
our baking shoulders-- home
is across the Atlantic, a plane in the sky,
my head on your chest as a passport
to a place forever engraved on our eyelids
and in photographs where love
never fades with time


III.
our hometown has our hearts memorized,
the coffee shop at the corner where past
Augusts had melted our whipped drinks
into fumbling infatuation, the trees
we kiss madly against, the empty grass fields
that know the shape of our spines as
we gaze up, fingers tracing wispy trails
of our blue sky canvas

IV.
do you see that cloud? the giant one near the sun;
what does it look like to you?
like you, like you,
like proof that God adores me.

I have been at war with my brain for as long as I can remember. A perpetual massacre, crimson annihilation, whatever sounds best bleeding from your tongue. No matter how many casualties you can find staining my fingers, there is no tragedy here. Words are what the carnage always leaves behind.
I have always had words, too many of them-- always left hiding behind my overbite in fear of crowding the world. It is a torturous thing, to be a writer in a world where people are not made of paper, where transparence is sacrificed for conversation.


I think in different shades of contradiction.
I want to talk to you but my brain keeps telling me to pretend my phone is ringing so I don’t have to talk to you anymore. There always seems to be an escape plan I cannot help but map out. I want to speak my mind, to watch my opinions soar into morning skies, but my brain gathers all of my words into paper boats drifting into shark-infested waters. I am full of synonyms and definitions, of pretty cursive words inked on skin. Perhaps it is hard to see this. I am, in fact, too busy picking my eyelashes out to realize that you are speaking to me. My heartbeats have cold feet when they try to serenade my thoughts.

Forgive me, for the paradox of my friendship. I am listening. It is just that sometimes, I am a telephone line with both ends in my hands.

You have always dreamed of aviation,
cellophane wings glued to your heartstrings--
my marionette lover of hopes hanging high
enough to abolish the air from heavy lungs.

I watch your cavern chest rise but never fall,
tsunami tides engraved permanently airborne,
intertwining hands with time as suspension
silences destruction.

Time does not exist here--only periwinkle
veins illuminated by morning light,
wispy eyelashes beginning their ascension.

You are all light, and altitude, and grace.

I am grounded, tethered to comfort, but
the curvature of your spine breathes sanctuary.
Your shoulders-- broad, significant--
as if to fingerpaint the alpines you will ascend
once the wrath of gravity is conquered.

When your parachute soul finally gathers
enough strength to pilot the destined flight,
I hope you remember to save
a window seat for my heart.

Wrote poetry and decided to turn it into music.

Link: https://youtu.be/BadmCkoPOdE

LYRICS:

You hear me through the silence
Bleeding down the streets
That used to know your name

Can you see me through the fog
That's anchored to your eyes
Oh you can feel me sighing

Take me back to you
Take me back to then
Take me back to midnight
Dancing on the rooftops breathing blue
Like heaven's sin
Let heaven in

Your veins, sweet surrender
Summer catching rain on
Skin that's tasted freedom
Young, but why are we so
Quiet--
You are still my words
When they are left to die
Your phosphorescent smile

Can you love me
When the night holds steady
When my hands are trembling
When our hearts burn lonely

Take me back to you
Take me back to then
Take me back to morning
Dreaming in the sunrise living reds
Like heaven's sin
Let heaven in

Love hard, my friends. Love noticeably.


Love does not deserve to be shoved under the rug, to be disguised, or to be quieted. Love does not mean conforming to the idea that genuine affection is “sappy,” “cheesy,” or “cringeworthy”; instead-- love loudly.


The world wants to tell you that relationships are to be silenced. That posting multiple photographs of each other is tacky, uncomfortable, and something to make fun of. That devoting time with your favorite human being is disgusting, overbearing-- especially when you are young and the future does not exist in your hands.


Too bad, future. And how unfortunate, world. Because at the end of the day, the world does not own love. You do. It is yours to have, to keep, to share, and to do whatever it takes to hold onto it. It is mine.


When you find love, shout it from the rooftops and frame a million photographs. Post selfies of the two of you smiling wide and unwavering. Wear its colors on your face and shamelessly declare it to the whole universe and beyond: You are in love. You are alive.
And likewise, this is my philosophy: Love intentionally, fiercely, tirelessly.


Love so hard it makes people dizzy. Take it as a compliment. In an exhausted world that spins with violence, hatred, and monstrosity-- praise its joys. Snap those pictures.Tell your friends. Scrapbook it, publish it, make art out of it. Laugh about it, display it, live it. Put an end to the grotesque concept that something so beautiful, perhaps life’s most magnificent, should be sheltered. Let it grow.


This is a declaration. I am boisterously in love. There is no quiet here.
One day, you will find someone or something that your heart will never be able to shut up about. And that’s okay. Let it scream.

Like the bulls in every existing china shop,
we danced clumsily past midnight.

The soles of our feet sticking
to the hardwood floor of my living room,
twirling, dizzy--
in hopes that if our souls learned how to tango,
minute hands would cease
to spin.

It was holy bliss.
It was the sweat shop
factory of affection.
Our bodies-- luminous in the
palest moonlight, a passerby
might have believed
we were angels.

Even now, as we sit
in the midst of silent tension,
furrowed brows of frustration
with no words left to promenade
out of our jaded bodies,

I watch your chest rise and fall
to the hostile melody of our
fruitless accusations, each breath
a reminder of our dance.

Your soul is still liquid music to my ears.
And as long as it continues to play,
I will stay, the hem of my dress floating in motionless air--
waiting for midnight
to intertwine our silhouettes.