Somewhere in all the mixing
of these herbs and spices
I was caught in a scent of remembering
the way my mother crushes
crushed black pepper
because it is never fine enough
And the way she closes her eyes
sprinkling in salt, cayenne, cumin...
never measured, never the same
Just hands with so much to remember
hands with so much weight
holding the past and present
holding our hair and the house,
holding her pain and my pain
holding a ladle and my hand
smiling and laughing
I chase her down for a hug
as she runs from one *** to another
we giggle and giggle,
and the flame feels cold
unparalleled to her warmth

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

All these weighted apologies spill
from my hands onto the wintered ground
There are moments in the day
when all the quiet burns
and the smoke inhabits these walls
but the possession of this rain
is never enough to wash out these lungs
or dilute this volatile pain
I was never good at speaking
always shied away from crowds
you were never one to stay quiet
always ran toward the loud
A cycle of oscillating seasons
I'm too in love with hating the cold
and far too familiar with the sound of rain but these birds, they're always calling
to new mornings and a sky of gold
and you sit here, waiting to hear your name as I clean up all the spills
from these weighted apologies
and pails of winter rain

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.

Threads of light from a waking sun,
Illuminate the dreams,
That rest on your eyelids.
And you carry them with you,

wherever you go.

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

This grief changes shapes
It runs and comes back to me in different forms
Sometimes it's angry, sometimes sad
But lately, it's a sweet melancholy
That drifts along with the wind
Carrying the scent of pear trees and spring
It has lost its pain to the December freeze And now, it's a reminder of circularity
And the transience of this little life

First I nurse the realization
That this pain will echo
And in all my attempts to grasp it
And keep it close to my lungs
It weaves itself into my breath
And spills out into the open
Seeping into the damp earth
Whistling between the fog
Sinking among the morning dew
And slowly creeping it’s way close to you
My hands are far too unstable
To offer you some peace
I’d give you my bones and everything
That I thought I could be
I would wrap it in the flowers
That we wished for our garden
But this pain it’s too unpredictable
It leaps away from me
It touches anyone who dares
To give me a moment of their time
and when they tell me they are sorry
We both begin our decline
This grief, she sits at the table
It’s never just you and I
This pain it always echoes
Bouncing between your words
And mine

A cloud rests on the surface of the earth
and my heart, like a paperweight,  
tethers me to the stormy waters.  
I can’t foresee where I’m heading.  
But there’s something in the heavy air
compelling my lungs conform to the feeling
of letting go

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

Your strokes they were just so truthless
Your colours they made me ruthless
Made me stand and stare at my reflection
You told me my eyes were just perfection
You let me finish dreaming
But it turns I was hopeless
You painted my picture
Never let me see the truth
Of what canvas holds
And when you hung it up in my heart
I never felt so cheated
Those eyes you tried to perfect
They weren't  mine
Those lips, rose and red
They never lived
Your black frame lied like like a raven
Showed me a picture I never was in

You’ve befriended discomfort,
Left behind your childhood streets,
only to walk down dark foreign ones.
You kiss away your mother tongue,
Surrendering to an unfamiliar one.

                      ...............

Your battles are carved into my blood vessels
and I will carry them with me
as reminders of patience and faith

It's the grey of the sky
That takes my breath away
It's the blue of the day
That's stolen by the rain

it's the thirsty lake that is replenished with every drop
The smile of the clouds that darken their gaze
Or the misty aura that wraps up your skin
It's the way you're lost in the haze

And once it has drizzled it starts to pour
The winds came up and brushed us with hail
But then the ice softens when it touches the ground
The world might be strong but it's already frail

its the people.
The people who hold their hands high as the drought drowns in their prayers
For finally we've been blessed with rain
It's the children who watch in awe as they're wrapped up in layers

It's the way the world watches as the sky cries
It's the way the way everyone's umbrellas are furled
No matter how busy anyone could be
We all can say what a wonderful world

To sit here and scale our memories
looking for worth in wondering
searching for pieces in the past
I left all my paints and colorful hues
and moved forward with potfuls of rain thinking that to love is constant
and to lose is momentary pain
but all these versions of lives lived
all the people we said we were
and all the things we hope to become
stir and boil in this water
and winter tells us to stay inside
but this heart keeps racing
aching to feel the sun and the snow
to tear apart the days
and take these fractures
as testimonies of all that we braved

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

I leave empty spaces of crowded stillness
In hopes that past promises can sew themselves
into the embroidered stitches
of your wise words
And you speak to me, unbound
A heavy heart in your hand
And I carry it, quietly, searching for its rhythm

To witness the subtlety of change
in all things that breathe

To grow in this new delicate rain
and spring's easy breeze

To be the colour of water
when it's finally set free

From the beginning till the end
I’ll watch through shattered windows
Admire your changing colours
And revel in your foreign fractured skies

I’ll watch as time takes your blues
Changes a day into a minutes worth
And steals the colours of the wind.
Watch as the night is born again.

I’ll remember your changing skies
As I fly towards your diamond stars
Forever you’ll be a distant sunrise
And a closer memory somewhere far

I wandered...
Across an open field
And felt the waves of sea breeze
I tasted the salted waters
As drops landed on my face
I wondered...
Whether home was a mistake
I thought about the people
The graves and faces I left behind
Not thinking that I was home
All along
I waited...
For a distant train
Or a letter of reconciliation
Maybe even a voice calling out my name
Or a ticket of desperation
A message begging for my return
To a shallow place
And I wrote...
Back to nothingness,
That I was home,
By a deep sea,
A vast field of my memories

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.”

The inheritance of loss
Often told as a tragic story
I sit here writing
while gripping onto the edges of every passing day
hoping to change the narrative of this pain
I'm sorry to my daughter;
there were too many things I never solved
I walked with this heaviness
with a dream to transform the world for you
but instead, I lost and lost
and left these wounds on your carpet
watered a grass that was already dead
and called it advocacy
The inheritance of loss
is beaded into these gold bangles
the same ones my mother gave me
the same ones I keep for you

My heart, tethered to the ground
Beats in anticipation
It desires to listen to the melodies  
That colour the wind
When you decide to return home
Where you left the best parts of your dreams
And you pack them up
Ready to take them to the moon

To bind the books
I have written in a consciousness
about all the little things
that manage a heavy weight
the things I pour into my mouth
along with the endlessness
and swish it around like mouthwash
hoping to taste the peculiar flavour of wonder
enough to forget the pain from
dunking my hands into buckets of wood chips
and fishing around for the next steps
retracting my fingers from future mess
that are now covered in the challenge
of scarring and healing

You in your full bloom, at peace,
like swirling honey in warm milk,
made of rich pigment and velvet petals.

take a breath, and paint a picture,
of the transient atmosphere,
and you swaying with the ocean breeze.

send it to that part of you
that is lost in endless worry.

She drew on her hands
Pictures I didn't understand
She wrote on her hands
Pieces that didn't make sense
But to her, skin was her canvas
Her ink flowed better
Then ever on paper
She put her thoughts on her hand
Yet I never understand

I don't sit in these minutes.
Wondering how and why
I fall into a motion, mindlessly
Opening cabinets of half-made
Half-done, half-finished things
Opening and closing
Yesterday and today
Just opening and closing
Until it starts to make sense
Until this loss fills in the cracks and these half-things, this half me,
find a resolution to seal these doors shut

In the fabric of time exists
moonlit seas of happenstance
and rose-scented memories
sewed in with golden beads
but it seems to me that life has found a way,
to sew in worn-out frayed threads,
that have lost their silky reflection

yet you,
with your resilient skin
found a way to make
embroidered mosaics of colour
out of the dissonance between good and bad

When your dream is being ripped from you,
When you feel reality push into your skin,
When your darkest secrets replay in your head,
It's been one more night through,
opening your eyes
To the sound of the waves in the beauty
Of invigorating sunshine
And to be welcomed by the sunrise
It's like a waking up to another dream.

"I hope you find ease."

"This discomfort is temporary, and that is the beauty of time. I have found my ease in that mere thought."

"But pain is pain."

"And it passes, like grief, it buries itself deep within, growing its roots and blooming into gardens, disguised as triumphs and memories.”

And with this hope...

When all these walls turn into doors
Oceans into rivers with bridges
Mountains into hills, hills to fields

Will you then realize
The potency of all your dreams
When you tell them to me
They invade all my air space
My thoughts and my sleep
And I hold onto them for you
Thinking of ways to draw maps
Reciting them in my prayers
Waiting for the day
When all this hope I carry
Returns home to you

And with this hope...

I exist in a world where you are never without dreams

I desire to smell the flowers that grow in your allies
The ones that colour the streets even in the darkest light
And walk the trail of stars your people leave behind
When their wandering towards new wonders
As they turn new corners in their lives
I dream of floating in your scent, that dances in the wind
Carrying culture, history, and your nature in its wings
I’ll dance amongst your voices, and sway with their melodies
The laughter will carry me to your quiet little streets
And somewhere in the silence I’ll start to miss my home
Until your stars will start to wrap me in your ethereal glow
And from then on along your yellow brick roads
I’ll make your love my home

Somewhere along a shallow coastline, stood my sandy feet listening to wind chimes

I’d stare the ruthless wind right in the face
As it takes the shape of water and drifts away

Over the distance of a sea of blue, waves would howl at the moon for you

The sun still sets with a thousand colours, an artists sky made of wonders

The rain still falls with the beat of a drum, and every drop is my heart calling for one

The grasses sway with the dancing wind, to music written on the cracks of your skin

Summer comes wandering in, in the shape of a nomad searching for bliss

I watch the changes of your time, singing songs and embracing the climb

You watch as moments are surrounded by an iridescent envelope
They transform into memories that float towards the sunset sky
Colouring the shadows with their flamboyant reds,
Resting in the clouds amongst soft blues
Prismatic and vibrant as they become the entourage
That accompany the sun’s goodbye
And eventually, they're gone, light years away
Now a part of a glittering nebula somewhere far
 
The night comes charging with its sombre hues,
Decorated with stars, waiting for you
To collect your dreams and take them far
And you watch as your dreams are tied with luminous ribbons
As they float above towards a boundless sky
To meet your memories somewhere in between
And before you feel the new day arise
They become one, entangled within your mind
 
And as you recall those beautiful days,
Those minutes from another time,
your memories will meet all your dreams
And come back to you
Surrounded by a foreign fluorescence
Disguised as gifts of time.

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

Why is it that disappointment plays as motivation,
Why is it that happiness requires creation?
Why is it that a world so fare could be so dark?
Why is it that we can read something so small such as a pen mark?

How do we remember our goodbyes even before our hellos?
How do we write complexity into a prose?
How could I write something so foreign yet so clear?
How could you ever be sure that there will be answers you'll hear?

Moon sailor, you watch pensively,
Hoping to catch sight of the evening moon
Lost at sea, your heart searches
for a lighthouse to guide you back home,
But clouds wash out your bones
As you make your abode in the sky....

....Dreaming

She was a forgiver
And he was a river
Where all her tears ran free
From his lies they came to be
And he held his hands out to the sea
And begged for forgiveness
But she was a lover
Who couldn't really see
The life that he left her
Was burdened with his mess
And she would clean it
With the water of her tears
She would sweep it with her cries
But to him it was all a show it was all lies
Cause he knew a forgiver never cries
Instead she always dies
Inside.

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

"...He said he'd be home tonight. Knowing his two little daughters were there waiting, maybe even praying with their small hands that he'd come home tonight. Even in the minds of the little girls they knew it was unlikely. He was going home that night, he must he told himself! To him home was the bay where he planted the tree as a child. He was going home to watch the leaves blow off the dying tree as if it's his reflection...."

I think im stuck on the ground
there is no getting away
I'm trying leave in silence
but the stars block my way

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

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

Lungs outlined with blue feathers
Ready to take off and fly
My fingertips like silk
Are incapable of holding on to anything
For too long

What can you hold against me?
Ghost stories I should've never shared?
Or that every time I dream out loud
I always seem to miss your outreached hand

What can you hold against me?
Besides this ache in every bone
That whispers to my soul
To let go for once, and try flying alone

In hopes that this reaches you when you need it most

A message soaked in echoes, reminders, and hope
Lathered with the perfume of nostalgia
Floats back and forth between my mind and heart
Out from the arteries, back through the veins
Shaped and reshaped into paper trains
Thought bubbles and mind maps
All muddled into flashcards
Something in there might say: I have dreams for you
And maybe if in some way
You can decipher all this mess
You'll find the speech bubble, bullet point, and quiz question
written just for you that says in someway:
1 believe, and believe, and go on believing
Everyday
In you.

Her stale lips were ripped of faith
Her tears were just mere stains
Left in the drought of her ashy skin
The life in her eyes was escaping with every drop of water
The water was as hot as fire
Like the dreams she wishes she dreamt
But those Were her nightmares in daylight
If it wasn't for her soft reflection
She'd be floating
Her thoughts cloud the world
As she pulls the grip of her dreams
Away from the sleepiness in the air
She was an insomniac
Who could only dream

I found that the cracks in my skin began to heal whenever the moonlight lingered by my window,
during the nights when I let the wind bring in its cooling remedies.

I would sit still, lost in my head,  
With a storm brewing in my swollen heart,
Ruminating as I opened my eyes,  
And I watched the dainty fabric of my curtains as they danced with the cold breeze.
Slowly sunlight leaked into the sky as birds sang their delicate songs,

And I found my restlessness fast asleep on my palms.
For a moment, time was standing still and I was...

healing.

Scents of satsuma and cinnamon
bottled up into reminders of the little things
this blurred motion has created a mirage
of incomprehensible reasons
to forget our love for patience
from strings of silver threads
and sentimental alliances
woven into patterns of picture frames
completely blurred, alive in motion
together, a collage of all the times
stillness couldn't find its breath
and laughter took us by the shoulders
shaking and shaking
till we fell into a rhythm of remembrance
with all the little things
bottled up in an illusion of permanence

I lay here searching for wakefulness
hours after sunrise.
Outside, remnants of a soft pink rest
among new-born grey clouds,  
And embers of a morning sun fade away.

I admire the transitioning sky, remembering how this life is a mystifying blur made of hellos and goodbyes.

I was waiting for the sun
With midnight I drifted off into the waves
The seamless sea wrapped me up
As I swam in between the cracks
That made your smile run

And when the only thing you can hear
Is the sound of my breath
You’ll know I’m alive enough to sink
Below the surface of your fears

And I would drown to save your soul
Even if you pushed me down
Because i’d wait for the sun in your eyes
To gaze into mine and a burn a hole

I was willing to fly away
But you made me swim instead
And now I’m caught up in a net
Where the light would never come again
Somewhere in your heart
Where there’s nothing but dark stars
I would be waiting for the sun
To light you up again

In the context of things unknown
the leaves have fallen far into these doubts roads I travelled on summer's humid days now pinpricked with touches of gold
wheels blast past,
and the remnants of this past year rustle, there is a mystery in the coolness of this air will winter be one we can still bear?

In the context of things known,
I leave memories of all our growth
under the shade of baring branches
as days go by,
they'll be buried under the delicacies of fall until next year,
when the burden of the snow
has shifted their weight
I'll be back to bury more