There’s a house at the end of the road
between the oak and the willow
with a gate too high to ever see what’s inside
and a living room too large to fill.

In every barren room,
there patiently lies
windows that cry — to be kicked open,
and balconies that talk — only to each other.

There’s a thin line between being
too roomy and too lonely. Space
has the damning ability
to make such distinction.

Perhaps the real luxury
after all
is to live loudly amidst intolerable noise
than to perish placidly in deafening silence.

When I grow up,
I want to wake up alone each morning.
I want the air to be so quiet,
I can hear the wordless tunes
the birds sing to each other
from distant branches
and barbed wires,
every last note.

Silence never scared me,
neither did solitude.
What frightens me most is
finding comfort in the noise.
If one day, you find me
in a crowded hallway —
not wanting to die,
**** me right then.

When I grow up,
I want to wake each morning alone.
Though sometimes I forget,
I’m already grown.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

I am an irony.
The medics often call it
an emergency.

Though I assume, the poets
would argue and claim it
a masterpiece.

To call it as it is,
I prefer the term
tragedy.

Moronically,
I am a walking clock
ticking until

the time is up.
A camera clicking
until the film is out.

I am a miracle
and ten.
An excuse for a daughter.

A waste of a warm seat.
Extra space in the luggage,
never a carry-on.

I am the embodiment
of sand
drifting through the desert.

A pebble stuck in a shoe.
A wet sock with a hole at the end.
As inconvenient as may be,

I am
a testimony.
A promise

waiting to be met.
A memory
that hasn’t happened yet.

I know now how it feels
the way schoolboys feel
when wistful winds come
to visit the playground
The ache down my spine
The ballooning in my left chest pocket
How could I not have known
the way of the schoolgirl
The skip in your skirt
The tails of your pig
There’s a pink pony tightly ribboning
a pinch in my waist, air
is a luxury when relics of you feed me from the inside out, you
are a commodity — the only food fit to fill the hollow pit in my stomach, I
crave only for you
when the recess bell rings

Remnants of your voice
stain the words
that compose my verses —

as bitter residue sits
at the floor of a cup
once the coffee’s finished.

Echoes of your name
even from a distance
burn the hoods of my ears —

as relentless ringing
ruptures eardrums
after explosions.

The damage you left is colossal —
perpetuated to remind me
there was once you.

I owe all my life
to the light from my window
don't tell the wind though
air is quite necessary
but the sun is essential