there are still poems of you
rotting softly in my drawers —
paper-boned heartaches
that smell of cigarette smoke
and petrichor and old perfume
that have all learned to outgrow
my cathedral memories of you.
darling, I wrote you into everything —
all feral. mundane. visceral;
into the spine of every lonely dusk,
into stray storms washing over our love,
into trembling midnights
I would spend thinking about you.
I wrote way too many poems about you.
after all, what is first love
if not a catastrophe
that leaves an aftermath for one to suffer?
so I’ve turned you into poetry, darling.
and every word sounds faintly
of your footfalls leaving,
of quivering breaths I couldn’t hold
when your ****** lips first touched mine
and staked their claim on my innocence.
I was so afraid —
thinking that the world would bruise me
and throw greek fires at my trembling feet
for kissing a boy at sixteen —
for laying my softness bare
and giving in to your papery arms.
the world’s anger had drowned me,
but I loved you still.
I loved you with all the stolen afternoons
and borrowed metaphors
we kept hidden in locker rooms
and midnight conversations.
I loved you like a hymn
tucked beneath two young lovers’ tongues.
like a prayer to abandoned gods.
the world gnawed at tenderness
with cruel and restless teeth,
but I loved you still, darling.
and still,
you left me.
and your absence, your farewell
once burned through my **** ribs.
I remember how the stars
hung outside my window
like an unwritten apology,
like words gathered at your clogged throat.
so I reached for a pen, instead,
and wrote the thousands of apologies
we failed to send each other.
I wrote way too many poems about you.
darling, tell me —
have you written one about me too?
after you, the nights just slipped away
like a montage of hushed clamors
and love poems in sheer disarray.
but every love poem felt like an elegy
before I could even start writing.
every sheet had yellowed on the edges
and grieved longer
than the storms I’ve weathered
in the wake of your departure.
all this in vain pursuit of forgetting you.
all this just to quiet the echo of you.
and truth be told —
I’ve loved a handful of men after you,
learned to weather
each season of heartaches —
but this harrowing storm of grief
that takes its shape out of you
is a patient river.
it always circles back.
as bruises return beneath each paper cut.
as poems return to the wound
that first taught their language.
darling, even the wreckage
has learned to speak your name.
I’ve loved a handful of men after you,
truly, deeply, in the ways I could.
yet every season steeped in sorrow —
every quiet undoing,
every solitary dusk,
every trembling midnight —
always leads back to you.
I wrote way too many poems about you.
all rotting softly in my drawers.
darling, I hope someday,
your hands will find them,
and your eyes will finally linger
on every dusty word.
May 25
May 25, 2026 at 7:48 AM UTC
some wounds never heal.
they linger and fade into
tangible griefs inside our bones —
like the shallow rivers
still moving in my body after your leaving.
oh, such a fleeting daydream
turning into a perpetual nightmare
can never be too perfect
for a godless monument
of my reservation, sweet indecision —
of my self-inhibitions
that once spilled storms
on your genuine heart.
but like a hand hovering harmless fire —
close enough to feel its warmth,
but all too afraid to burn —
this love bleeds out a memory
of a life that has almost happened.
and grieving can only do so much.
grieving can only help so much.
some wounds, honey —
some wounds never really heal
like this shadow of regret
in the quiet shape of you.
May 7
May 7, 2026 at 1:46 PM UTC
your name reverberates
like a hot ocean wave
of all drowning reminiscences
as it rolls off my tongue.
it leaves a familiar burn
as if a rough, estranged sound
carelessly tumbling down
from the chaos of a senseless prayer.
I almost loved you, John.
I almost loved the way your hands
played a sweet,
flaming rhythm against my skin,
the way your voice hummed a song
that has learned how to
subdue the loud shaking of my fears.
honey, it still hums in my room.
I still hear its hard edges
slide across the sheets.
the sinuous curves of it.
the firm tone of your memory
that still lingers in quiet spaces
of the words you left hanging in the air —
like the questions I never answered right.
I almost loved you, John.
and you almost stayed, too.
the way my pillows echo a memory
through my head in the night
leaves a hushed, undying ache
that settles in the hollows of my chest.
it loops in the dark
like a petty song
that has never learned how to stop.
it stings.
it fractures,
longing to breathe you back
until the melody forgets its own mercy.
but you never really left.
because you see,
your ghost still wanders aimlessly here.
and even though my heart
has already strayed too far
from all of your forced heartbeats,
sometimes, I still wonder
did you almost love me, too?
Apr 25
Apr 25, 2026 at 3:17 PM UTC
heaven f*cking forbid this pulsating sorrow
burrowing into my veins
grows swiftly like wildfire,
like deadly nightshades
for each web of my heart to feast on.
tonight, the world all totters —
it’s every shadow
I have been chasing away
for a thousand sunsets,
and I —
I am trapped in all its
gentle, loving hostility —
a small, feathery canary
pinned beneath a quiet, violent weight
my bones can never comprehend.
god knows I have tried to escape,
soar away from its utter gravity.
then again, my heart is a poor,
careless quail
sinking graciously in liquid lead —
in the quicksand
of my own fatal mistakes.
and I do have a terrible habit
of obliviously loving everything
that breaks me slowly,
piece by piece,
shard by shard,
until it completely gets the best of me,
until it leaves nothing but a trace
of my ****** unsightly flaws,
until it leaves nothing but history.
heaven f*cking forbid
these sharp nightmares grip hopes to bleed
with their own treacherous claws,
leave the bed frame undone
like a fae robbed of its wings and dust.
oh, but who’s to say that this heart
still longs to quench the wildfire
before it learns my ravaged name,
still prays for the canary
to flutter off of a fever dream?
and who’s to say I am meant to outgrow
my f*cking abhorrent flaws?
tonight, i know,
nothing troubles my bones anymore.
leave me bruised.
leave me charred.
I don’t mind.
i long to run away from myself
and melt into nothing
but an ash-laden history
I am meant to forget.
Feb 26
Feb 26, 2026 at 10:26 AM UTC
the glorious stillness
was madness shaking in quietude.
the heartaches,
the resonance,
the cold —
they have but lingered
like a stifling tale suspended in the air.
I have long left the pages in the dark,
sinking in frozen floors.
and for a thousand moons,
the dust and rust have kept
trailing through this skin
like thick gasoline all seeping
down the hair follicles,
down the messy cracks,
down my silenced grief.
oh, the drowning shivers have worn me thin
long enough my unspoken misery
has already set me on fire.
and the burns were loud.
the words now crackle, disturb
and bleed out then muted histories.
I know, this calm after an aged storm
was a frigid poem
perched on my open wound.
now, I long only for a flame
that awaits familiar disasters,
like a lost, unloving moth
coming home to its warmth,
to its unforgiving sparks —
those reckless, ruinous lights
that let the fractures split again
and give colors to frozen pulses.
so let it hurt. let it bleed, honey.
let the pain carve
its burns beneath my ribs,
each truthful ache
a deafening scream let loose —
such a graceful reminder
that I am still alive enough
to feel the breaking.
to hear my harsh breathing.
and to know enough
that I am still here.
Oct 30, 2025
Oct 30, 2025 at 2:50 PM UTC
I long for the stirred hours to disintegrate
and slip back to where
they are supposed to rest
tonight, I am six once more.
derided. condemned. falling.
looking for a safer place to hide
my soft, careless heart,
so it would not break into havoc
and wilting chrysanthemums.
and the night is a sarcophagus
filled with curses and hushed clamors.
my hands have laid my cluttered bones inside
like stray dying stars.
I shiver, crumble,
weathering the weight of ghastly traumas
crawling in the space
in a rotting state
tonight, I am six once more.
I find my small feet
dragging my body back to
the space behind our old curtain.
a besmirched prison
I have settled my sorrows in.
I stay and wait for the world
to end in flames.
I stay and wait for my dainty collapse
the night is so eeringly shaken,
rattling at worst.
and I am a child,
feeble, fearful
of a nightmare in the wake
I long for the stirred hours to disintegrate
and slip back to where
they are supposed to rest
Mar 14, 2023
Mar 14, 2023 at 6:50 AM UTC
I lift the weight of the dark sky
with my very eyes.
today, it is a stretch of wild ocean waves
on the cusp of breaking loose,
unleashing themselves
to kiss my cruel blue devils
carefully, I keep the torrents at bay,
keep the surge and flood at bay
so as to not fall into catastrophe.
one breath after the other;
each stuttering clench of teeth;
each quaking stir of the eyelids.
all for ceasing a calamity
but the water always knows
its way to disasters.
and storms always know
their way into my heart.
they dance their wrath into fatalities,
and leave souls drowning in the dark
so I stare blankly at the sky,
lifting its massive weight with my eyes.
and in the distance, honey,
I imagine you waiting in the gloaming,
robed in rainbows and fetching lights:
a lovely spectacle to behold.
and somehow, your colors subdue
this gravity that pounds me hard
you are all the shades of clarity
you are all the straits to sanity
you are my utter calm,
my sweet serendipity
and honey, forgive me
for always making you my escape
Mar 10, 2023
Mar 10, 2023 at 11:59 AM UTC
in the midnight's turbulent
after hours like this,
when truculent streams of clamors
surround my head,
I just want your voice
to quiet down the storms
into a sweet, sonorous whisper.
I can't think of anything
but this grave pining after
the placidity of lying next to you.
I long for solace.
I long for you.
Mar 9, 2023
Mar 9, 2023 at 1:31 PM UTC
my heart is in a mare's nest now,
waltzing in a cauldron of gunfires
and flashy, chaotic rumbles
at night, my mind is an ancient ruin
burning for the bruises
and the sheer absence of quietude.
everything is a mere cacophony.
and my world longs for composure
and there you are,
dressed in bright cosmos and lavender petals
in the midst of my breaking and withering.
my heart longs for you.
it is falling into a dystopia,
but its heartbeats recognize your symphonies
because I love you like this
I love you in the midst of chaos
and in all the unruly ways
my poetry has turned visceral.
I love you amidst shadows shattering
bones and structures
and corporeal memories
in a city sinking into the depths
of sorrows and full mayhems
this illicit intimacy —
so tender through shambles and compulsions,
thriving with all the wreckage
I love you like this, honey —
in havoc and total anarchy.
the kind of liberty my soul
has grown used to live with.
lawless. hostile. grievous.
in a regal state of collapse
I love you like this, honey
and this love remains all unknown
Mar 8, 2023
Mar 8, 2023 at 12:51 PM UTC
you can dig me out of the grave,
unearth my flaws and curses
to expose the transgressions
I buried in my dusty bones
this is a revelation.
such a necessary divulgence
of my fossilized corruption,
of my wretched defilement
you can drag me out of the grave
and I will strip myself of sacrilege —
all the blasphemies I hide in barbed words
and smoky white noises;
all the acts of desecration my putrid hands
have committed in conscious
honey, I will lay my forsaken body
on a pristine, baptized stone
like a trace of a tarnished relic
in an unflawed dreamland.
all for the act of purging my sins.
there, I will be a clean slate.
pure enough to deserve your glowing touch
unsoiled enough to deserve your sacred heart
I will be a clean slate.
and honey, you can paint my skin
blue and sunlight and marigold.
you can engrave scars in my veins
and I will live for the secrets
and unfazed histories in my blood —
all stemming from your heartbeats
and my wordless prayers to the gods.
this is an act of purging my sins
I am safe, undaunted
I am housed in your warmth
and when my body kisses
its way back to the earth,
my heartbeats will regrow like vines
always searching for your embrace
Mar 7, 2023
Mar 7, 2023 at 12:04 PM UTC