To be a poet
is not to burn the paper with your words
but to be heard,
when ink and page and pen are embers
it is the beauty one remembers

I went looking
for my mother's grave;
it took me two weeks to find it,
and when I did, I was standing
on it; I actually looked around
to see if anyone else saw
what I had just done

5am,
snuffed between the fingers of the day
slumming stars and a night not fully broken,
the waking world, its petals still to open
is filled with silent promises unspoken

As if everything

revolves around me I see --


people flashing by.

We sing and that's how

we make a very good time --


out of the waiting.

Here’s the thing
the missing
never leaves
we just learn
that love
is just as real
from afar.

your presence lingers
not in grand gestures
but in the spaces in between

your smile filling my kitchen
with a warmth that remained
long after the coffee grew cold
and my cup was empty

the place still set for you,
as if you would walk in, sit down,
and make everything
feel a little more whole

the way we spoke on the subway
our words mingling like passengers
clinging to the rails
never quite ready to part ways

the way things look too clean…too still
not just your toothbrush
but the mess you made of my heart
gone

how lovely it was
to have your things scattered among mine
a forgotten sock
your glasses on the nightstand
a sign this space was ours
once

the scent of your shampoo hovers
an echo of you in the quiet
I breathe you in, eyes closed
wishing you were here
to wrap the night around us
turning off the world together
leaving only us
together in the stillness

Our cherry orchard

is full of glitter-garlands --


Do the birds party?

there’s a quiet kind of grief
in wanting to scream but choosing silence,
in driving nowhere just to feel the road
pull you back into your body.

some days, my reflection feels like a stranger,
a ghost of who i thought i’d become.
other days, i’m just tired—
of waiting for apologies
that won’t come,
of remembering things that didn’t end right,
of waking up hoping
it might feel different.

there’s a heaviness in holding on
to people who’ve already let you go,
a hollowness in pretending
you don’t feel the gap
where they used to be.
but even in the absence,
you play their songs like prayers—
a melody to make the pain
feel like it belongs to someone else.