The way in which we cower away
From desolate words
Yet we dream of bottling them up
To wear as perfume
We carry with us to ports and piers
Where the wind and water waltz
And take our hands in a line dance
Where fire can never touch the surface
So, it lives deep in our hearts
These are the ways I dream of our
unconventional circumstances
Wishing them into happenstances
That could possibly bloom into purposeful love

but I fix clocks, and no matter how hard I try,
I can't change time


...Don't forgive me, just don't forget me...

Broken words line these open seams
A bleeding heart rests in the palm of hope
You struggle to keep your hold on the ground
All your stitches are open doors
Ready to take in a lonely soul
At the expense of everything that was yours

Bloom, where do you go
when you are planted in this soil
soil, infiltrated with blue
the colour you wear so well
the only colour you can see
I try to mend these yellow dyed dreams
before they turn to green and the soil dries  
the sky already grey

It's raining, every time you open your eyes

Waterfalls of your everlasting memories
Flood down, pooling into pre-existing floods
Of stories, you left behind
Words I could never seem to understand
Memoirs of pain and grief that lay dormant on my skin
I swim in the ocean of teary-eyed nights
That colour these passages
Trying to decipher, trying to find the beginning
But every time I dip my fingers into these cascading waves
My eyes always seem to latch on to the moonlight
That you left behind
And stars that fluoresce with remediated happiness

The waters turn to sand
And I sit in this empty space
Echoing the future to your dissipating anguish

Take your grief and sink it into a pool of velvet red
Watch as green leaves flourish
And the petals dyed by your bottled up pain
Extend their arms to greet you
A melancholic flower,
a symbol of the strength you endure
To keep holding on to the sky

You
see pain,
Feel pain,
Live pain,

I cannot give an explanation for this pain
But I will sit here in silence
Peeling away the darkness of your pain,
find the embers of hope in your pain
And use it to ignite the fire to keep your cold hands warm.

Where the atmosphere meets blooming water
and boats of paper mache dock
You carry your dreams in a garbage bag  
waiting for an eclipse
to sew back together
your words of reconciliation that you sold
in exchange for hopeless daydreams
when you were too afraid of the aftermath
of healing

I am lost on these paper boats
Floating somewhere in an old laugh
We once shared
I am lost in these baskets
Made of woven conversations
And now you, right here in front of me
Are someone new, I've yet to meet
I guess my weakness has gotten the better of me
Wishful thinking had me fooled
Things were as they used to be
But here you are, and here am I
A world of differences between us
Born out of the blue, paving our departure
You toward the forest
And I, towards the sea

Somewhere in a dream,
you soak your heart in a basin of damp earth
and from it comes seeping out, the colour of your skin
the voices of your loved ones
cover you in blankets of layered melancholy
deep within your veins
flows a network of love that drains into
that heart of yours now buried
under rich soil, fertilized with hope
and from it, a seedling of identity grows

Braid the rain into my hair
and let the clouds stitch these wounds
as I lay under this canopy of gray
Writing stories about nonsensical things
maybe you can find something of substance
from my exchanges with the moon

and if the stories are too hidden for you
look deep into the shadow
cast by my drooping eyelids
somewhere in the exhaustion
are secrets I have left for you

To be a woman, in today’s world,
that stretches into the writing of a tomorrow’s world,
a world that feels so absolute in its reckoning
feels like a mountain that cannot be climbed.
I pray that you find some sliver of beauty
in the moonlight that chases you,
and the stars that kiss your forehead
when you sleep with your big dreams.
I pray you don’t let those dreams flow off your palms
into a river stream when this world threatens you with its cold air
You hold onto them tightly
because even with their singular light
the shadow you leave behind,
so big and strong – a fearless fighter
you stretch into the writing of your world
and your light brings me to write of you
in awe.

I made a list of caveats
For the designs you constructed,
From thoughts in my mind
And for one, you know me too closely
It is too frightening
The way you find constellations
In broken skies
And propriety from my colouring
Outside the lines
Then, within my bones, too unstructured,
You found the sun in their moonlight complexion
And you confess your secrets
That these letters and conversations we’ve exchanged
Hang in a gallery in your head

Etched sentiments
And faded drawings of everything resolute

Your emotions, cataclysmic sentiments,
build foundations from crumpled pieces of paper
creating ideas born out of despair
and you sit amongst yourself
feeling like a candle flame
with piles of unsaid things
as your fuel, waiting to ignite,  
a wicked smile held in place
right where it belongs
at the centre of a concept map
unsteady, unpredictable
the blueprint of catastrophe
laughter without reason

What is this feeling that seems so foreign yet familiar?
As we head our own ways
down our own paths
maybe we will think to look back
but until then  
Let’s walk back to the fork in the road
and reminisce over everything we’ve seen,
over and over,


until we meet again.

I don’t know how we ended up here
The mountains and the crisp air
Something cliche about the atmosphere
Something I read in a poem in my notes somewhere
A feeling of contentment dances nearby
And infused with the oxygen we both breathe in

Let’s take a walk through my dreams
You see them speckled with hopes and memories
You’ll see they are broken and incomplete
You may even see behind the grey clouds
A hint of sunlight stringing beaded fascinations into things to wish for

It has thorns like roses
and solemn hues
the pinpricks from picking
these flowers have left maps on my hands
that I read when I am lost in the woods
by my childhood dreams

You know that feeling?
When you remember a moment
Restructured to fit what your emotions desire
And then it’s born
Out of empty space
Nostalgia, a blue flower

I’ve placed myself in debt
From borrowing the past
And now my headspace is always unclear
Regrets tied around my wrists
And the future, always slipping from my grasp
Runs ahead
Holding signs too far for me to read

Take a walk with me down my favourite street,
down memory lane
it’s still under construction
Memories built and renewed
I will tell you stories about foreign colours
so you can paint them onto bricks
placed by some past version
of myself

I don’t think I’ve lived enough life to be nostalgic

But I can’t shake this melancholy
Instead, I look back now that the journey is over,

Whatever the journey was
Sometimes it’s just a walk to the other side of the neighbourhood

Remembering and singing songs from a life I never lived

With the sun invested in your patience,
You get so cold when you are breaking
So silence and I exchange nonsensical chats
as silence waits to draw the curtains
and I wait for you to handover your ache
to my extended hand

You take flights on paper planes
on September nights to escape the rain
love sits beside you
and so does pain  
in their hands, feelings from June
and they sit there waiting  
to take you to the moon

Where did the sunlight go
that we used to lace between the
gaps in our fingers?

Remember how we would make threads
from the light and tie them to our
hopes to string them along as we'd navigate
our childhood dreams?

Do you, too, like to stare at the moon,
chandeliers and *** lights?
when your eyes feel
like they belong to a sculpture
stuck in place, tunnel vision
Do you, too, make moonlight out of street lamps,
and use dreams to feed the craving
of meaningful existence?

Pictures of you: saturated. In motion blur.
we cast nets into the ocean of lights
to catch flames and fireballs
that ignite to the sound of rain
and resist their inherent nature
to extinguish
and so do you,
in rebellion

Dust settles between this continental divide
I, on one end, a fleeting candle wick
Burning slowly, hopelessly against this cold
And time, like fallen clouds,
Does everything to hide the sun.

I practice dancing to sounds of silence
Distances become all too familiar
and like melted wax, I fall to the floor

hoping that before you walk away
you will break this barricade of silence
that time has built around us

Words fall asleep on my tongue
Too tired to reach the edge of my lips
So they wake up and head back to my beating heart

I sit here hoping you don’t feel my silence
Because if you happen to be listening
Then I am afraid of what I might tell you

I once poured my heart out onto some letter
Read it whenever you find yourself reminiscing about your childhood
On my tongue remains those words, the ones we stole from the graves of poets
They try to take shape into conversations, reaching my lips but still falling short
So they live out their days,
Becoming old memories
leaving behind the bitterness of sea salt

Words we never exchanged

My thoughts take the shape of water
And drizzle down from the hands of smokey clouds
my scalp itches with desperation
to feel the coolness of the September wind
run its fingers through my hair
but here we are, under canopies of summer rain
thinking about the leaves changing colours
and how everything will fade again
my lungs, they ache for foggy streets
to inhale the tears of evergreens
and wander off to where the air is thin
I write in dark corners, hiding from heat waves
With an aching heart that yearns
to see you grow

You carry with you pick-pocketed fairytales
In hopes to find something close enough to home
That can fill your glass half-full
You sew yourself into white noise
Soak your hands in spring waters
That rush down memory lanes
Putting together a mosaic
of the greener grass you saw
On the other side
Stitching together fragments of light
From the end of the tunnel
Even bought yourself some rose coloured glasses
To see the silver lining of every cloud
But it all falls short
When the tree stops bearing lemons
So, what does life give now?
Besides some shade and something to laugh about...

We swim in pools of flowers picked from the gardens
Grown from your words
Going back and forth between poetic sonnets
And bare laughs
Feeling pain in our ribs
Healing the pain in our hearts
I try to write sentences too cluttered to make sense of
With metaphors, like gardens
So that you may not accidentally figure out
Everything you mean to me

So that you and I can spend a lifetime together
Picking words apart
Searching for meaning and walking with the stars
Because these midnight conversations
Are too precious to be lost to effortless deciphering

Remember when we’d fly kites
And your hands bled from the wire
We used to talk about dreams
As you bandaged your cuts
Ready to fly them again

We drifted with each other's names
Still sewn into our hearts
I think back to those days
Praying that every dream I could never reach
Has found you instead
And that they walk with you every step
The distances I could not go
For you

The winds from where you grew up
Strike conversations at midnight
Your thoughts, now paper planes
Take off into memory lanes
And your feet, aching soles
Search for branches, and petals
That remind you of home
The taste of sweet dates still dancing on your tongue
Sweet syrup stretches its limbs
Through your nose
Sensations of a past soaked in white noise
When did you leave it behind?
And you think back to the time
When you walked with your naïve self
Too young to comprehend
Back onto a boat
In those dreams that never escape you
Called memories

You sit on your porch swing, miles away
Making shapes out of streetlights
Dancing in the dark
Looking for remnants of a red sun
Chasing after silver moonlight
A pen in your hand
Poetry on your tongue
But the wind catches sight of you,
Carrying the words away  
And everything remains unspoken

You soak your sun-dried dreams in rose water
And bead them onto strings of premature promises
You once made to your naïve self,
Despite your love for dreaming
The summer moon’s quick departure
Leaves you stranded at train stations
And you make your way back through fields
Of distant memories
Looking for ways to fall asleep

You stand at a crossroads
unsure of where to step
the night is too dark
The day is always accompanied by fog
at a street corner marked by time
Where moonlight collides with your midnight blues

Honey drops in to the Milky Way inside your tea cup
We sit chatting for old times sake
Friends of distance and enemies of uncertainty
I hope you’ve paved your road on those maps
That you pinned onto your walls
I hope the sun didn’t chase you away
I hope the foreign thunder stole your heart
And you found reflections of a beautiful past
I had written the night before
Inked into letters from the moon

From across the ocean, I waited for your postcards
Yet we sit here, with our thoughts
dancing in the silence between us
Your spoon makes ripples in your tea,
I dream to see the world you’ve seen,

You reminisce and I travel with your memories

You write letters with your broken pen
after waking up from a dream
undisturbed, among peonies soaked in water
your feet rest against the sand
that once kissed the moon
and the stars write back to you
transcripts of our conversations,
like fragrance, they leave a trail in the wind
and we remember them
on those odd nights of wakeful dreaming

The home we built was up in flames
but the cold air could not touch us

Our fences were broken by the wind
but we were once again face to face

I call out to you.
And the solemness in your broken irises
I call out to the dust on your hands
That sparkles when your tears fall onto them
How many battles have you fought?
How many times did you run from the rain?
Only to let the wind catch your hair
Like the kites above Kabul streets
How many hopeless dreams turned into nightmares?
Where heartbeats turned into the unspeakable silence
That follows the crushing of the world
Beautiful girl, you bleed out.
And I wonder how I can stop the bleeding
But my bandages can’t wrap your wounds
For they run deeper than the ground
And your child-like laughter
Filled with more life than any man
Echoes in the streets of Kabul
I call out to you
And I hear your silence
As it deafens the world

You hold pain in your palms
Like water lilies it floats around
You guard it with your fingers
But as time tells tales of broken pasts
Nothing can stop the rain
From washing the lilies away

And we sit on the porch steps
our bare feet rest on cold cement  
the space between memories and contentment
starts to occupy your lungs
we watch the distant rain, still too premature
yet you, in fear of the future
run inside.

You wash your heart with evening rain
as waves of drowsiness hold out
paper boats made of written dreams
that search endlessly for a lighthouse
to guide them home to you

The best of your days,
spent in vast fields of memorabilia.
Golden drops of sunset rain,
wash over your haste,
and you reach out for the hidden starlight,  
to rewrite the melodies of your broken heart.

Summer rain descends to the ground
Hope rests on each droplet
And you watch as it fades into your skin  
Slowing your anxious pulse
As you waltz with the idea of blooming

Growing pains,
It hurts when your bones break the tethers
And you float above oblivion
only to see yesterday smiling back at you
holding out bandages
to wrap your open wounds,
and send you off to tomorrow,
toward a monument of obstacles
you forgot you had already crossed

Healing wounds
leave behind threaded words
as written declarations  
of all that you have survived
and I leave them here
for you

An excerpt from a fairytale:

“You found what you needed from some token of love. Happiness lived at the end of bridges crossed and burned. You swim into an abyss of     oblivion and build a home in a sea of happily ever afters no one has dared to travel past.”

An excerpt from reality:

“What you needed, found you. You spend your days walking across broken bridges, mending what’s left of them and staring out at the horizon. Where the distant sun, ever so close, kisses your skin, and you are where you’re meant to be, manifesting the energy of healing.”

Tangled unfinished thoughts  
rehearse midnight waltzes
in attempts to fill the gaps
left behind by transient dreams