If I could transcribe behind your eyes,
I’d see the times they’ve sunk and cried,
The shadows of pain you’ve held inside,
And all the needs you’ve been denied.

You don't speak much on heartache,
Or insecurities you can’t shake,
Breaches of trust, being treated unjust,
Are there fears left concealed, undiscussed?

If I could dive inside your lovely mind,
Swim through your veins, us intertwined,
I’d find exactly how your heart perceives,
Study the language your love receives.

Maybe it's the 'I love you's throughout the day,
Or these poems, though limited in what I can say,
Even a warm meal after work on a cold day,
Or perhaps it's those weekends we spent away.

Mapping responses to our conversations
And how you react to my love demonstrations
I’m looking for clues, all sorts of indications,
Fine tuning the way I love with my observations.

I’ll narrow in, long as you continue to share
Your reception of love–please make me aware,
For, finding your love language is all that I care,
I’ll express my love, I solemnly swear!

It seems I don't know quite how to respond,
To the pain present, within and beyond,
So, my subconscious defaults to the lead,
With habitual patterns, I proceed…
Reliant on instincts and emotions,
These primal pathways take me through motions,
Now I’m acting rash, values misaligned,
Hurting loved ones in this stressed frame of mind,
All because I’m unable to pacify,
My cortex, drenched in stimuli.

These knotted guts
eject my pulsating heart,
while I wait for my welfare
to imminently crumble–
I’m lunging from my vessel.

I frantically survey for danger,
but the culprits remain covert–
I turn up empty on my basis.

But failing to subside, I wonder…
do the wires of my diagnosis
wrap me in incessant neurosis?
Or has conditioning to trauma
trained my brain to fear?

Regardless I remain engulfed
by this looming devastation,
and my neck constantly aches
from looking over my shoulder.

Sitting cross-legged at your site,
dreadfully admiring the grass clumps
growing disrespectfully over your plot,
as if time forgot to stop for you.
Your neighbors are encroaching closer,
becoming a sea of graves,
You’re blending in with the rest.
Crickets and birds keep chirping
while the excavator cuts through
my thoughts digging new plots.
Time and life just keep progressing
But without you, I’ve stopped.

In just one split of an instant
Life force entirely withdrew
With your vitality vanished
I find myself severed in two

As heavens expand between us
I fear I’ll recall less each day…
So, I think back through the senses
To keep time’s forgetting away

I’ll always smell you as diesel
From the truck you tried to repair
And later, the antiseptic
Congealing the hospital air

I can still taste the cheap cigars
We inhaled as an attempt to cope
The blandness of the Psych Ward’s meals
where you hid your disorder’s scope

I almost still hear your singing
Of single half-melodic lines
Always found it quite endearing
How you’d repeat them so many times

And, while your laughter still cuts me
It’s Your voice I try to repress
The sound of its damage haunting
Scarred, by the life support process

I still see the flash of brilliance
Intensely piercing through your eyes
But yet, with a sense of softness
When returning silent replies

And I still feel your energy
In brief moments I feel in tune
So, I remember through senses
Until we will meet again soon

There once was a captive giraffe,          
Who escaped from the city zoo,  
But with this newly found freedom,
He wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Bustle overwhelmed his senses,
‘Till he finally found some lawn,
But the trees were scarce and fragile,
With dried leaves barely hanging on.

Flooded with options and self-doubt,
He let out some ironic laughs,
And returned back to the same zoo,
Back with all the other giraffes.

I’m coasting through my life,
Many chances unseen,
Perfection or failure–
I know nothing between.

I’m afraid to attempt,
Any new kind of feat,
For risk of the unknown,
Leaves my goals incomplete.

Before an honest chance,
I avoid and delay,
Then I self-sabotage,
Every step of the way.

And I’ll only engage,
If I’m sure I’ll succeed,
Never taking a chance,
So, my win’s guaranteed.

This way I’m protected,
But, I don’t dare to dream–
For I’m broadly inept,
With a low self esteem.

Of course, I’m missing out,
On any real progress,
For this fear of failure,
Never leads to success.

Distraction after another distraction,
Chasing dopamine but it’s fleeting.
My failure to take any real action,
And patterns go again repeating…

Sitting with it would be better-
Creating space with each exhale-
But instead, I seek quick pleasure,
Can I escape from this mental jail?

With each transient gratification,
Receptors meet a chemical reward.
Producing less natural generation-
I just want my brain restored.

As you came into my view, I could see…  
There was something missing internally.    
A void was preventing me to be free,            
And was plaguing me, since eternity.            

But with your presence, I suddenly knew,
All along, my insides have felt askew.        
It’s keeping me down; it’s painting me blue.    
But now the color is displaced by you…        

Displaced by you–my gaps vanish in whole,  
Displaced by you–integrated my soul,      
Deep–into every last wrinkle and fold,      
We’re integrated–together we’re rolled.    

And as you’ve become ingrained in my veins,    
There’s no pause to the pattern or plane,      
We sit flush, joining as if we’re the same,    
This feels familiar--there might be a name.        

But how to define something of the sorts,
Existing naturally, without a source,
But now apparent, an obvious force
As it all made sense–I uttered...

“of course.”

Hunting the marrow of my brain,        
Raptor talons feast through flesh,
Shredding tissue with each tear–
my neurons scream.

And as pain pulses in violence,
I’m swallowed by a cloud–
The external muffles, then drains,
Leaving only the talons.

With sunlight dripping
onto this fading couch,    
washing the dizzying pattern
I’ve become so used to…

Once more, I fail to act–
I fail to engage.

I’m spewing in the rays,
but, closer to stagnant water
filling a murky pond.  
  
Motions feel heavy,
thoughts– slow, clumsy
and failing to flow.

Washed by my water
I’m colored by dullness,
corroded to flatness.

I’m growing dry,
evaporating along with
the pattern of my couch.

Four years elapsed,
Since the world collapsed,
And I still can’t delete it,
Delete it from my head.

The concrete impaction,
One solitary action,
From able to chained,
Chained to his deathbed.

And I’m disturbed by the memories,
Sad for the suffering–

                For his suffering,
                For their suffering,
                For the collective rippling of suffering…

Tragedy inspires, I’m told,
But its message is lost upon me,
Blurred in darkness,
A stop-motion picture,
Haunting me, frame by frame.

Homing in on this harrowing loss,
I find my focus will never sharpen,
Just like he will never come back,
And so, I’m left fixating on that which
I can neither fully remember nor fail to forget.