To dance under this broken moon
Is when speckled stars and old fascinations
Come together to put back pieces you
Shining a light on this midnight blue
That infuses your wounds

Ten thousand years can't save you now
So, leave behind this moonlight melancholy
Find the hands of those you've loved
Those that hold you in their eyes
Hold onto them,

In the empty space you used to breathe

when you climb mountains
you leave your footprints
in the rigid soil
that feeds into the ground
we once laid on
waiting for the sun to descend
to take our guards down
and prepare our fingers
for pointing at stars

Time leaves us reminiscing
Leaving behind bitter tastes laced with honey
something you liked about coffee
on these notes

I think about the distances between
Who you are and what I hope to be
And I see the mountains you said you'd climb

To the distances I could not go for you
I will say a thing or two
Maybe you will find in the vast field of canola
The same sun kissed reasons
For leaving behind the love of all seasons
To tremble in the wake of one

To the white noise we befriended
You hand-in-hand with silence
Wear the stars like midnight bloom
The sun avoids our encounters
And we become the founders
Of bordered misunderstandings

Blooming flowers, spring's demise,
Winter creeps inside your eyes
I would have left everything behind
If it weren't for this unsettled mind
But these vast fields of distances grow
Through the skies and soil above and below

And I, drowning in dreams of tomorrow,
Have lost the map I was meant to follow

Tell those distances I have yet to know
That I'm still learning how to let go

I've somehow stretched every limb
into a series of exhausted yawns
Now the rhythm of this day
Is with you
But it seems,
I am not the only one
With words breezy enough
To make you laugh
Because as I round the corner
I can hear the air rippling around you
And everything becoming lighter and lighter
Until you, a sun in everyone's galaxy
Illuminates the disillusioned
delusional rhythm makers
All here to gift you their love

This language, everblooming
It has so easily poisoned us
But you dust off those empty phrases
Washing stains out of rageful exchanges
This white flag is half in your hand
And half in mine
A haphazard grocery list
Stopped at tomatoes
Continued as a list of those “we would never go there" words
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Written like punctuation in the spills
Now I'm picking up dinner plates off the walls
So many weapons were thrown and old secrets hashed
A mess left with us drowning in the aftermath
I think the salad is now dressed in curses and ill wishes
But despite all that
I think it's your silence that will **** me

"A melancholy grows, and it's swathed in nostalgia.”

"Why is that?"

"With every day that rains, it is September again... the month of endings.”

"Or new beginnings."

To heal
To lose
In circles
We float
Losing
Healing
Breathing
Hoping
Fearing

What are we fearing?

You with solemn eyes look to the sun
Lost in its embrace
Wishing to be the clouds
That touch its light and dissipate

"I am afraid that everything I have lost
Will come back and find me
After I have learned to live without it"

And with that, I begin to disappear

Between us and this divided sea
Between us and this dying sun
Between us and this pale blue sky
Between us and the raging tide
Between us and running time
Between us and yesterday's dreams
Between us and tomorrow's sleep
Between us and the drying leaves
Between us and winter's grave
Between us and summer's taste
Between us and this beating heart
Between us and what's beneath
Are the remnants of our interlaced
Fingers
Still holding onto
Love
Hope
And some reason to
Breathe

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

I've talked to all the ghosts in this room
They speak of memories and grievances
And we revel in how quickly this fog has turned into smoke
It bites at my lungs
And I sit and wait, my eyes on my hands
My ears on the clock
At some point, each passing second
Parallels my heartbeat
There is someone across from me
Saying it is time to let go
But what would be left of me
If this grief vanished, too
At some point, it became all I am

Until you
somehow stumbled into this room
untethering the past from all that I knew

Do you remember when tunneling ravines would flow through our stomachs before we spoke out into the open?
And how vigorously tapping our feet felt like the only way to shake the mountains, daring to bury us alive...
or how when cold shoulders felt like judgment harmonized
and yet the dissonance euphonized in our ears as we swept our heads back into the open arms of the universe,
engulfed by inescapable laughter  

Now things are different; you wear your heart on your sleeve, washing the shores of people and things that scare you with your perpetual confidence,

and I proudly observe in wonder and admiration...

Distantly tapping my feet, fighting ravines, and laughing alone.

Leave the window open
Let wind sneak in
As it numbs my skin like a sharp pin
Let it flow to the papers
As they rustle around
I want it here flipping pages
Of letters from you I found
Let it whisper all the words
And read me all the passages
Let the window open
Let it flip the pages
And lift me off the ground

These fingers trace dust
that glistens in this fractured light
over old frames
crafted with beads and pink glue
glitter fell onto our laps
as we rattled this earth with our laughs
where did the time go
when we held it so tight?
yet it still disappeared, out of our sight  
now I look for you in bus windows
I listen for you in those youthful laughs
Holding onto these moments
wiping away the ashes
of these burnt recollections
from my shaking hands

I can feel the winter frost
The cold breeze biting at me
I can see the cracked ground
I know its the end of me
The days are shorter
The nights are colder
The trees are dying
My bones are shrivelled
Now I'm getting weak
Dry and brittle almost gone
I'm tearing apart
Winter brings my death
And I'll be gone away
Forgotten like a whisp
Something I used to be
I don't have nine lives
But I lived to only see
A world too big for a leaf like me

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

Fireflies float in lightless rooms,
Spelling out words with fluid constellations
And my heart still tender from afternoon
Drugged up and fussed with the want of rain
Interprets these flecks of dancing
as love letters to pain

I think of dreaming and I think of you
Somewhere basking in summer rain
While I fall for foolish stories
written on the windows of a midnight train
These conversations that go nowhere
heavily soaked in honey stick to my tongue

These whisperings float in pools of ink
Like the daunting midnight sea,
But i'm too far gone into this dream state
Yet ready to drown, before I can hesitate,
In this ocean that you call home

She glides past vendors of fried food as her bare feet skid across the muddy gravel. The pain of the gliding thread left behind with her shoes. A toothy grin and a joyous laugh switch phases like a sound wave as her eyes follow the kite carrying all her dreams.

She died from her own imagination.
She gave up on the world
She wanted to live her stories
And look at where she got
She let the writing trick her
Into falling for feather lust
A type of attraction made for
Writers like us

The winds have run away from us
Sailboats and feelings of incompleteness
Are now what we call home
Blue skies kiss the scabs on my knees
I've fallen many times while you were ahead of me
The distance stretches its limbs into the unknown
And I follow the quiet heartbeat
reverberating through my bones

If you listen closely, its reciting those words
And promises I once made to my broken self
It tells me all about my journey across the vast strait
That drains into the storm-loved sea
That bubbles and roars under my skin
I walk through fires and biting forests
As I make my way through everything that I fear

I walk these steps, holding you near
Prayers for you on my tongue
Evaporate into the open breeze
Carrying the hope that you make it through
Everything that obstructs your peace

Colour blooms
Onto a canvas of black-and-white impressions
Left behind are brush strokes from the blues and greys
Overlayed are the yellows and pinks
Flowers drift left and right
A sunset glows until dark
Transforming into midnight bokeh
With every blink, something new
A painter paints
A thousand places all here at once
A thousand dreams
A thousand wonders
All here, in the colour of you

I lay in fields of green as my day is almost done
My skin is radiated by warmth
And distant rays one by one
Envelope me in heat
finally touching the sun

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

We, birds in pain,
Put our trust in branches
Too weak to hold the weight of these dreams
This saffron grief is too fragrant
For our evergreen pine noses.
The everyday calamity
The everyman dream
Burns through the soil in our lungs,  
Memories of summer are now lost in September rain.
I am here dreaming of mending hearts
That have braved more than they can bear
But these drooping eyelids
Are stuck in endless night cycles
Of listening to the sounds of misery

I think, those wrinkles on your face
The ones you want to erase
The ones that appear with every laugh
Are waiting to be shaped
Into musical notes
That form the melody
Of the sound of healing

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

Do you watch the sky
The way I
Watch memories rewind
And sink your hand
Into pools of midnight sea
Searching for wet sand
Rocks and seashells
To build a clock tower
On the edge of this receding shore
That rests half in my heart
And half in yours
And gaze for dawn
While swimming in these
Pools of sapphire blue
dreams?

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

Palms of ocean blue
This sinking boat
Me and you
Hands tied to sheltered love
We float on our backs
Toward shallow waters
Dipping our toes
Into wet sand
Hanging our feet
Off the edge
Of these coastal cliffs
Reaching for the horizon
Tying together strings of current
That exists between
these distant conversations
a rush of turquoise
runs through our blood
cooling down the fire
that rages within
our anger subsides
and we start floating
toward togetherness

Sounds of silence,
They swim in weak goodbyes,
They linger in the corners of hatred,
They dance in the light of ignorance,
they lounge in peaceful loneliness,
Sounds of silence,
They're always there,
written in every story
drawn in every picture
Silence
It kills

At the break of dawn, letters sit by your bedside
narrating moon sonnets,
Remnants of satsuma and rose, colour in childhood streets
and you find ways to bottle nostalgia into a fragrance,
and with it, blooms melancholy.

Red branches,
out of place?
White snow,
been here for days
Old goodbyes,
In a tight im brace,
Just couldn't let go

With an overcast sky, summer warns us
the moon stops by for a brief conversation
before taking its leave, replaced by the sun
I stitch together sheep counts, Z's, and dreams
but these days drag into my subconscious
and streams of melancholy drain into one

You shake your head, watching me
it seems I have mistaken midnight gloom
for rain clouds and thunderstorm doom
Summer's warnings, now clear as day,
everything they were meant to say
I tend to overthink and underthink everything we are

When winter comes,
with endless hours of midnight
maybe then, I will have enough time
to consolidate what we are destined to be
unmistakably

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

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

Here's to the ephemeral nights carried away by the sounds of birds.
While you were tracing constellations in your popcorn ceiling
I was drowning in the midnight blue, thinking of love,
And how the shape of water reminds me of you,
I packed a bag of dreams for the bus ride down your memory road
To keep me occupied in your dreamscape world
as I chased remnants of wished-upon dandelions
back to the backyard where our laughter still circled with the wind
only to find you waiting with our two-handed promises still knotted together
the dreamscapes shed around us
and sunrise glow burned through our souls
shoulders hunched by weighted confrontations
night escaped hours ago, but I, desperate to hang on, drown in day-glow
My memories and dreams have melted into motion blur
And thoughts of you carry them away to the moon.


I am back to where you left me last, taking reality on a walk,
As a long summer day saunters ahead.

Between you and this dying world
Are boats carried by tidal waves
Built from pieces of love you left behind
You keep moving toward the horizon
As their anchors fall into deep ocean
Strings of forgotten fears hold you back
And prayers, from when you were lost,
Take your hand, tell you stories, and bring you back to where the sun said its final goodbyes
And you, covered in terracotta and blue
Begin to sink in the sapphire gloom
As whatever remains from your dreams
Keeps you afloat and clouds disappear
The stars bloom from midnight grey
Illuminating the way home
All for you

Thank you, for everything.
Despite this rain that thunders in my heart
Your sheltering love will never be forgotten
I'll walk down these streets of motion blur
Thinking of you with every streak of light
And when this rain starts to pour on you too
I'll be waiting with my apologies
For this fragile heart is still learning to heal
It tends to scratch at anything new
It hides away when shown some love
And when your sun rays scare it away
It'll come back to hold the umbrella over your head
It might not be everything but it's all it can do
This broken heart will heal for you

Here we are at a crossroads
Separated by clouds of silence
We've exchanged laughs, stories, and condolences
You carried your virtues on your back
And I held my shortcomings in my hands
The horizon calls out your name
Waking the moon that sleeps in your eyes
Your light has guided us through the midnight grey
And this trail winds down to a story's end
Fireflies guide you home toward the moonlit sea
Where thoughts and prayers take the shape of water
And boats built from your benevolence
Take you to rest with the roots of your dreams
As I accompany the fog through woven forests
I echo your humming in this silent night
Building the distance that was written to be
I walk, lost in reflection, toward an unknown


And quietly,
my soul follows you home

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

Oh sunflower soul,  
You chase the daylight
Looking for hope in bright blues.

You tremble with the thought of a dark night,
But the stars have come out
amidst the navy blues.

A crescent moon becomes the silver lining,  
And a trail of streetlights twinkle like surface stars lighting your path as you walk toward

dreams you’ve been waiting to meet

You look down at the cracks in your hand
brushing them through hairs of silver moonlight
in your eyes, time has made its abode
and your gentle speech now informed
by a thousand spoken words

yet your smile is an emblem
of your eternal youth

Dish soap-soaked hands
Dreams stuck to the bottom of these ***** pots
I wash and dry
still thinking about the rain in September And holding onto drops of July
Silence, a gentle hum, an occasional cough my eyes fixed on searching for all those planets
And blue moons
But never making it past the windowpane home to reflections of an unrecognizable face

I revel in how fast this life changes
and how much I miss the rain

I simmer in this silence
My hands ache to write something
But words dissolve into my surroundings
Before reaching my fingertips
I try to translate my dreams
Into palatable conversations
But I've lost them to anxious deciphering

Can you take this faded heartbeat,
and pour it into the white noise,
that puts you to sleep?
As I lay here
Held captive by a permanent dawn
That rests under broken skies.

You have always given me enough space
For my laughter to stretch it's healing bones
I don't have much in the corners where I reside
Besides enough room in this soul of mine
For the both of us to sit and recline

I don't have much space in this beating heart
It's still under repairs and renovations
But I will find a way to stretch it thin
To let it's shadow cast over you
And shield you from the glaring sun

From whatever remains..

Greenlights takeover the afterglow of the sun,
Raindrops paint cities on our windowpane,
We run onto the street with our bare feet
Hand in hand, holding onto a parachute made of dreams.

Seconds go by in tender bliss
We smell roses and stain our hands with
crushed petals.
Declarations of life long rumination
live between the distance in our
exchanged affirmations.
Happiness opens its undisguised embrace
As the silence between our spoken words
fills the gaps of our stuttered promises.

A trace of light
That's all you and I look for
when those mountains fade
behind descended clouds
and that ache in our shoulders
crumbles under the fire of this rain

the moon and all its pieces
lost to all these thoughts
you and me, the same and most different awake and restless
the silver lining of this charcoal moon
is getting harder to find

until comes this eruption of warmth
and a storm of pattering fear
that if I start counting seconds
you might disappear
so, I guess it goes without saying
everything you've always known

these nights go by in wonder
of how to build you a home

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?

I massage the black seed oil into my hair
love the way it reminds me of my mother's fragrant laugh
And the way her soft hands stretch the dough
And she sprinkles kalonji onto it where the melting butter
welcomes the seeds with open arms

I braid this ocean breeze into my itching scalp
Thinking of how she would sit me down
And run her fingers through my knotted hair
After I played outside without a care
And I would shriek in pain with every pull,
desperate to leave her grasp
But she would pour the mustard seed oil onto her palms
And I would be transported into her tough love

Now I think about those moments,
And the pain feels like distant menthol induced haziness
Instead, all I feel is my back against her warmth

—————————————————————
Kalonji - Black Seed/Onion Seed

In the allure of this thin air
Streetlights tell stories
Of snowflakes and rain drops waltzing
You put out your hand
Threads of your heart
Fall into place like hourglass sand
Hoping to catch some remnants of time
But on these darkest nights
Where dawn seems to have faded
Into the midnight sky
We count snowflakes
As if counting sheep
Falling asleep to the sound
Of the beating hearts on our sleeves