would it be easier if i was prettier?

you want to see me stripped on the floor
a motor of a girl gasping for breath
crawling with her blistered knuckles
her wounds harsh and fresh
can’t you just breathe in deeply?
exhale, then inhale me
oh, for your sake baby
push it in then leave me diseased
you only see a body
you only see a body
you only see a body
you only see my body


—i wish so hard that you would just see me

unlikeable
write it on my
                            F      A      C       E

the air is heavy
incapable of breathing it
it clings to my mouth
******* in the
                    weights

i’ve never hated being alone more
but i know i am not just alone
i am lonely
when the sky falls
turns purple and pink
i am left in an empty battlefield
full of unloaded guns

oh, what have i come to?
but what am i kidding
i have always been unlikeable
i should have known

plenty of phrases, soaked through the bone
eyelashes moving with eyeballs closed
it’s almost halloween
it’s almost time to party
for our souls
for our bones
for our skeletons we push inside our closets, we have a place to hide, don’t we?
but loneliness is an illness i would rather contend with
it’s familiar and frost-bite warm
i should’ve been warned
about “love” and hasty infatuation
these are my bones
creaky and unknown
they are alone
beside these muscles
that i keep so i
can convince myself i’m fine
beneath a cloak of darkness, of fear
you shouldn’t come to me
you shouldn’t dare
pack a suitcase full of your organs
don’t come to my part of this ghost town
let’s hide our skeletons away, so no one sees, so no one stays
to love us
we don’t deserve it
it’s almost halloween
and i will try to be me
behind a cave
carved makeup on my face
i will try to keep a smile
i will try to leave this denial
i will heat my body up with something besides the hesitation
this presentation, i will perform
with the skeleton in my room
that hides during storms
that is afraid of collecting friends like memories
someone take these bones from
me

i’ve watched the same show for over two weeks
and when my favorite character was falling apart,
it put a damper on my mood.
i am that attached..
to fiction.
it wasn’t even real and i still cried in my bed
with my hair concealing my eyes.
i never like to think of myself as the most empathetic person out there,
it was a sudden jolt in my nature.
perhaps i see myself in his wild eyes,
not the wicked side,
but something in him that reflects in my heart.
i’m repulsed by my poetry.
i wouldn’t even consider it poetic in any way.
i tell my close friends that i write poetry
and i like to think that they scoff at that idea.
i told my retiring teacher that i wrote poetry
and she gave me her email.
what makes her think i’m good enough to be read throughly by an english teacher of forty years?
kinda ironic since i’m posting on a poetry website.
i’m embarrassed of my efforts,
ashamed of my achievements.
see, i’ve never been good at anything
i played basketball in middle school
and my friend would always say that i bombed a shot or i needed to do something more involving.
my past crush even said i was too short to play or something.
i tried being nice for a day because my sister and mother were telling me i was too mean,
i swear i’m not.
but i tried to be nice
and bad things still happened
and i called people rude names.
i’m not good at staying prompt to journaling
like tumblr girls at their highest.
catch my drift, i have never been good at anything,
and poetry is the only thing that makes me feel like i’m alive
who cares if it’s actually well written?
it’s self expression.
i hope everyone at least tries to write one poem once in their lifetime,
it changed my life.
step one: find a muse, trust me, if you have a good one, you might not even experience writers block
(that’s an overestimate, but sure)
step two: write about anything and everything.
write about your drive to work, how the highway signs started to feel like heartbeats because they were so repetitive.
write about your dreadful day at school and about the teacher who freaked out.
step three: find a metaphor in everything.
trust me, if you look hard enough, there’s always a metaphor.
step four: see yourself in other people. capture the conversation the bus passengers had. write from different perspectives;
you’ll learn a lot about empathy.
step five: don’t listen to my advice because i’m not qualified.
don’t listen to the writer of bad poems.
there’s no use in fearing rejection,
i get rejected by myself on the daily.
you’ll never be something to someone if you don’t just say it.
tell them you like them.
tell them they make your world glimmer
and they make bad days a little more bearable.
and if they shrug, it’s ok, souls don’t have the same meaning to everyone
and that’s beautiful.
you’ll live.
rejection is inevitable.
when i’m invested in a show or a person, it becomes my obsession.
when i lie awake at night, i’m wondering what will happen next,
what character is going to get killed off next.
i want my poems to be lengthier and
luckily i can rant like nobody’s business.
i feel less anxious when i throw my feelings onto paper,
and i think things through.
no need to have to suffer through all your chaotic thoughts alone.
write.
that’s advice to me.
write when your favorite character is stressed,
write when you feel peeping eyes on your back.
write when the world churns you out of shape like butter.
write when the music doesn’t seem to calm your inner self.
the world can be wrong,
that’s a possibility.
you are allowed to critique it,
you are allowed to believe in miracles
and you are allowed to ask God if you can’t conjure up an answer all by yourself.
that’s why they say He’s always listening.
they lie about lots of other things,
but definitely not that.
writing is not for everyone,
it picks its candidates with reasoning.
i guess i was chosen
and i won’t let my muses down.
they live inside of my heart even when i wanna tear them out.
i won’t send my poetry to my old teacher,
and i won’t live another day without the benefits of writing.
i still have two more seasons to binge watch of this show
and more and more reasons to be alive.
the world is wrong,
but i never said i was right.
i have no vendettas
and writing has infiltrated my mind.
no tickets are accepted at admission.
come another time.

in the moonlight, i dream of being you
partially blue, but all there
unafraid and unbelievably able
if i were to be stable
perhaps i could be capable
of holding my arms outstretched
to reach a release that yearns for me
perhaps i could be capable
of moving the whole ocean around
in a tiny bottle
to lay in the riptide
consumed by the violent rise
and fall of the swells of
dwelling little white-caps
i could be more than you would ever know
i could be a you you’ve never known
never shown
never grown
up to be a “when push comes to shove” kind of
love-
r
i could be a you you’ve never heard of
never dreamt of
never conceived of
never believed of
but, of course,
the good ones never know
never show
never grow
up to be machines
always own up to be-
ing flee-
ing
i could be a me many have never heard of
i could be a me that is silent and swift like a dove
a silence warm, reached out in a hug
a soft streetlight that shines light not so bright as to blind
but as to awaken the right light in one’s eye
and in the moonlight,
i dream of being who i can fully be.

the house i grew up in
festered with a body—a garden perpetually filled with weeds
the rainwater refused to fall
the roof caved in
stricken with a sense of unending
discouragement

i miss the poor girl i used to be
who smiled after she tasted her salty tears.
she tried to seek the positive out of situations.
the chains in the train yard wouldn’t dare shackle to her.
she stayed locked—unwillingly—in a strangulation cage meant for wild animals.
she couldn’t scream or thrash
for the danger she faced was inside her own home
grappling with the concept of his nature
bound into his fibers of being
chasing a reason for such cruelty that was instilled on me

when these songbirds are trying to explain to me
the own reality that confronts me.
like a shark to its ****,
eating so slowly, so monstrously
without a care.
anger is a ghostly emotion—apparently—and i was told that my entire life.
you can’t make mistakes for things you can’t help
or you can’t hurt someone because you didn’t mean to.
you didn’t mean to hurt me, so the stain on my mind doesn’t exist, right?
the pain i have endured, it doesn’t mean a thing.

nights staying up
praying for a difference
praying for deliverance
scared to wake up the next morning
scared the beast would crawl in between the walls
and plant itself into a vase inside my room.
woke up to crashing, banging, screaming, flailing, falling, yelping, sobbing, screeching.
living in an intricate world faced with devastation.

left me alone in empty bedrooms
arms around my kneecaps
clambering about for stability
for refuge
devoid in a void
clumps of hair collapse onto the floor
with a sore scalp and arms
spit on weeds to stir growth in them
no seeds, no roots, no living things
sprouted from the rouge colored fluid

police sirens would go off, thinking they would finally take you away
instead it was brutal beating and
no one came to save me.
the world i felt was icy cold, with icicles plopping down from trees onto the crystallized ground where my tiny feet stood.

the beast would shred the tapestries,
drown the happiness,
banish goodness.
claws as sharp as razor blades—attached to my skin and it wouldn’t free me.

came upon purgatory with tears blamed on allergies,
weariness blamed on tiredness,
fear twisted into nervousness.
do you think the inhabitants believed me when i watched the garden soak up with water?
no, they didn’t.
and i didn’t want to believe either.
the neurons inside my brain painted as façades, shapeless and blurry
for i could not worry if i left my mind in an alleyway
bound to be found one day
by a friend; not isolation, not consternation
but something that could bring forgiveness.

but violence—it’s red and unavoidable—
haunting every cell
like a tornado whooshing along a path
paved with fresh cement and bright bloomed roses
ripping up piles of dirt
flinging it around every corner.
it knew i looked up every night to find Heaven,
gleaming in the blanket of night.
from the gold gates to the strikes of my enemies.

the mind i knew grew cold
the situation was dense, kidnapped in the notion that suffering was forever—in certain circumstances it can be—finding fault in my own soul
instead of in the soil in the battlegrounds of a labyrinth

a corpse unlike any other.
shell of an aging body
built on the foundation of red violent tendencies.
flesh of an unidentifiable creature
alone in its reality
doomed to linger.
for forever.

i don’t crave your big green eyes
but you’re using them to watch over somebody else.
i know this relationship is over
but i wish i could’ve ended it with somebody else.
and i don’t like that you’re sharing drinks with another woman
who sells her body to get money
wouldn’t you have liked to be with somebody else?
she has your favorite songs on cds and i never did
i wish you could’ve ended up loving somebody else.
somebody who’s rude to waiters, somebody who is only good for a first date or
at least somebody else.
now i have to hide my cold hands under my winter coat
cause you’re too busy holding somebody else’s.
your dog still loves me more
but he has to spend some time with somebody else.
just like you went and forgot me
cause it was more beneficial to see yourself with somebody else.
now you’re happy go lucky
since you’ve replaced me with somebody else.
lonely eating ice cream
while you’re shoving it down in the house of somebody else.
perhaps, i don’t miss your company
i’ve just been enjoying it more with somebody else.
or maybe this is hopeless
and i should let you make love to somebody else.

i don’t want your body
but i hate to think about you with somebody else.

the weak have never been strong
or maybe they’ve been strong too long,
holding on
to something that makes them quiver.
being loved,
does it feel impossible when the night swallows you whole and spits you up?

has it been love this entire time,
this entire period of sulking in haziness?
there are saviors on each corner
singing pretty lies
but they’ll never save me as you had.
there’s been apprehension
since the dawn of time
but this time,
i just wanted you to be sure of something.

the weak have never been strong;
never have i been able to lift myself off the edge of the cliff.
i’m extending both arms to you
as if you’ll save me once and once again
a masterpiece strewn on ***** carpet,  
a death rattle heard from the backyard.

my lungs do not know love,
but they understand fear.
nothing is meant to be.
i turn to dust.
i hear sirens in my ear,
has it been love this entire time?
some creature that was eating away at my heart
that i had to **** in order to stay alive.

that some creature always looked suspiciously like you.

apparently the opposite of love is fear
so why do you think running away from him skittishly after he burned you
means he loves you?

there is music made by the delicate
cadence of my mortal heart when your name
is spoken from this constructed abyss
absent of the means for real happiness
there is a chapter of my life that is 
undisclosed, there are seeds planted in the
soil where your heavy feet once trod by day
there is a rose bush neglected by soft
gardening hands by the landfill where your
hollow corpse lays, as ***** rainwater trickles
down my spine, in places your fingers will
ne’er reside, confiding in your shadow
dare say if the infrastructure faces a
sudden hurricane surge—friends forever.

i don’t wanna be that girl who uses her body
i don’t wanna be a little toy for one night and one night only
i am not that kinda girl

i will not be the kind of girl you can just push around
i will not be the laughed at puppet in some circus show for morons
i will not be her

i hope i am never the kind of girl who throws away her life
i hope i am never the person who loses her head and doesn’t go to church
i hope i am never her

and right now
i don’t wanna be the girl who cries cause she’s lost and lonely
but i am
and i am sorry that i let you down

i wanted to be a prodigy at spanish
so i could be better than someone
at something, anything
i guess i will never be better
and i should just accept that sooner
or
later

on the corner, there’s a woman.
and she’s a mother to the small things,
a soldier on the battlefield of life.
she loses herself in the flames that
engulf her and
she wishes she was a real poet
who knew how to summon words.
she wishes she was chosen,
just once, but the world
she loves does not love her back
and she cannot convince it to.
someone else’s bones seem stronger,
less brittle, unkempt but beautiful.
the curls on her head move like
the waves
but the words on the page
do not speak back to her
and the candle blows out
the evening closes in
with its unbridled attachment
and she’s alone with the darkness,
making a home in its skin.

through tsunami waves
like fortresses
pounding with such force and restlessness
lay a hand upon this chasm
fissures along this human body.
blinked two times;
a signal for help.
you, an undercover perpetrator, spilt this ****** blood
there’s no rhyme or reason
for the capture of such purity.
the eagerness of the flesh
descending upon uneasiness.
one heart unmoored
one mourned
two hearts unbreakable
by a force of nature
so undeniable,
death is willing to submit to its feet.

is it crazy how weak i feel falling in love?
it is stronger to start to cling onto an unfamiliar season
and wade through its frozen river.
it is stronger to let a fragment of yourself stray into the bog,
approach a stranger with olive branch eyes
reaching out for a piece of your soul
you weren’t sure even existed.
is it crazy how weakness is all i think of love?
a mistake, a mishap, something to do-over.
i need stronger arms, stronger limbs.
i was so much more as a child,
playing with love in my hands; bending it whichever way i deemed fit.
there is possibility in adamant denial:
a curse for a lover disguised as apathetic.
i am stronger in love than it seems,
only weakness is simple to grab onto
allowing the tiredness to creep onto my eyelids
and the force of sleep beckons me.
loving is giving up,
loving is sinking into quicksand in shallow waters.
love is strength masquerading as weakness,
a pale creature moving in the bog.
how come i am so scared of love when that is all i am made up of?
every little embrace, every small favor, every tiny chuckle,
every good cry, every rekindling, every intermingled life in mine.
i am strong for believing in something as fragile as love,
that could crumble in my hands at any moment,
yet gently still holding it so that it may remain.

your flesh is brackish and bruised and covered in melancholy
it seems like you work in the coal mines with those oil stains printed all over you
i am worried that you might never return home after you were swooned by some blond chick (pawn) at the rowdy city bar and dazzled her with your charm
i am starving from the core because of a perfidious promise
licking up the crumbs and rummaging through the schemes
locked and loaded like a rifle
but you know i would never fire
cause i am the coward
who fell for your clownery in the first place

and i’m swallowing each impossible love
and letting it fill my stomach lining.
i have touched this ****** with shaky palms.
i have taken my fill,
i have loved, lost, loved, and gave birth to a body i never conceived i would.
i have been in my own company
each night with stacked dishes and undone laundry
and puffy eyes that cannot seem to shrink.
i’m swallowing each sweet nothing as if it belongs to me—as if you belong to me.
through flesh and blood, i see your insides.
they are living. your aura. the soft delicate smooth manner in which you exist.
i live to see the sunrise from your bedroom window in a nightgown,
observing whole towns awakening
as our hearts have never known another
as clearly worth living for.
we are alive and i’m swallowing each emotion
i forced myself to deny.
i breathe what i feel, i am what i want, i am wanting
and oh dear, there is nothing wrong with that.

the wilderness is violent, and chaotic and
vapid
fireworks crackle in the golden brown sky
i don’t want to kiss in a busted-up mustang
with a cracked windshield
don’t want to bathe in beer or get drunk in love
unless you want to carve your name on my chest
leave me hanging on the drywall in your bedroom
or leave me outstretched in the dessert
left to my own vices
the heated sun burning marks on my body

from the day we became mirages of our inner selves
and our demons fought in ****** battles that ended in calamity,
we have hid each other in line breaks and kingdoms

the rising sun the single witness of our togetherness
and of the
blisters on my chest
from the tattoos you engraved on the foreign body of mine that didn’t give you the consent

when the taylor swift concert ended
and you didn’t even ask me how it was
that was the second i knew
when the only thing you commented was how
far away the stage was from my seat
your jealousy creeping up like a monster
you only talk about yourself, never ask me how i am
i might be asking for too much, but maybe you don’t ask for enough
and you didn’t ask about it once just, “how was the show?”
the most bluntly asked question ever
do you ever consider how you make me feel
when you constantly degrade and insult me?
wallowing in my own loneliness feels better than being around you
i’m sorry i don’t know who you are
wait—of course i do
you explain every detail of your life
lamenting over your “struggles” and your stupid little petty dramas
spouting out nonsense like a fountain
do you even know i have a brother
or that he beat down the walls
and the tears from the years of his constant fist fights and head banging?
do you even know about my love for taylor swift or lana del rey because it feels like they actually listen to the things i have to say
even if it’s just their lyrics that i sing to the dusty mirror by my bed?
do you even know i have anxiety festering underneath this forced porcelain skin?
do you even know how sad i get, just how unwanted and melancholy i feel when i pace around my room having nothing better to do?
do you even know how much i cry at night, just ripping myself apart and not even for anyone else’s sake?
do you even know the pain i feel knowing that even my best friend won’t ask me how i’m doing, won’t let me get the flames off my chest?
do you even know my dreams and aspirations?
do you even know that poetry twinkles in my soul and brings light into a vast void of nothingness?
do you even know how much i vouch for you in the vehement conversations i have with my parents?
do you even know my favorite songs, my favorite shows, my favorite movies, my favorite foods—the most basic facts ever?
how do you even sleep a wink at night knowing the lack of details that you know about me?
i saw my favorite artist two days ago and you didn’t even ask me how it was.
you didn’t ask me if she played my favorite song, if it was loud, if it was as fun as i expected, if it was the first time i’ve seen her, if it was a sudden realization that letting go is beautiful?
do you even care enough to ask me anything at all, or should i just keep asking about the boys who constantly blow up your phone, about the “friends” of yours who don’t want to see the best in you, of your “totally unfair” parents supposedly wronging you over and over again?
do you even care about the girl you call your best friend?
do you even care?

teach me how to drift in the wind
how to build homes out of charred wood
teach me how to dream
how to change stuck mindsets
teach me how to grow as wild and as old as the aged sycamore trees
how to paint stars in gloomy night skies
teach me how to capture saturn on film
how to be the best i possibly can
teach me to be unbothered like the ocean tide
how to make imaginary planets with the cellulite on my thighs
teach me how to love myself
how to love you as well
teach me all you know
the waves, the breeze, the undertow
teach me how to adore love
how to preserve nature
teach me how to be carefree like dolphins
how to roll in flower fields
and how to feel beautiful
teach me everything you know
everything

i know you have a good heart
your eyes are set on a victim
but perhaps you are broken
a wheel spinning out of control
whiplash
i’m a forgiving pacifist
seeing good fortune in the corridors
of your darkness
is it delusional to give second chances?
you wouldn’t know how to write my eulogy
you’d be tapping the pen
and
sighing
and
giving up
i walk the downtown streets with a frown
and my cheeks get bumpy from the stress

but i know you’re good at heart
and it just tears me apart
because i want to
resent you and your fanatical calls and your abrasive nature and obsessive behavior
and i’m trying to ***** out words
but it won’t let me
i’m mourning my intuition
around you it’s like i almost have none
i’m a delicate wanderer who wants to love you
more than you’ve ever wanted to
appreciate me

it stings like listerine in my mouth
as i try to flush out
the parts of you that taint my pores.
i can’t call you anymore

i lost one ghost inside these sickly-green walls
who makes me
forget how to keep being a human
and i’m pathetic and we’re all pathetic
smiling behind disguises
misguided
and misleading truth
i don’t wanna speak
to you and i know that would hurt to find out
that i don’t love you as i say i do

i know you have a good heart
so just show me it
in the words you say to me
in the conversations we have
just please.
just please.

your fists are like cannonballs
hard, closed
you trap me in the palm of your sweaty hands
crushing me
but the warmth is the only temperature i feel
so i stick by your disheartening side

i love you,
and that terrifies me.
pull you by the cars
tell you how i feel
let you contemplate.
even though i rejected you many times,
it was all a lie.
because i love you,
i’m just so terrified.
how would you react
if i texted you right now at almost midnight
and said i adore your company
and want to be your girl?
would you ask me if i was drunk or sick or stupid or dumb
or would you say ‘yes’ in an instant, barely even thinking?
would you apologize for losing feelings because i had told you ‘no’ countless times before?
or would you say ‘i love you too,
and that terrifies me’?

before i go to college, i want to live. i was living in a moment of time, paused to wait along for me. i want to hang out with friends and stay out until early morning and sleep the whole day and meet up again and again. i want to climb the monkey bars and slide and swing on swings and run till my head aches. i want to dive headfirst into a pool, not worrying about how deep the bottom is. i hate to be alone, but it’s all i know. it’s all fear. i live by fear. i let it spoon feed me only soft foods and i can only swallow when it lets me. i let it live pacing in my stomach, letting its claws dig at my intestines. i let it tell me what to do and what not to do even if i don’t want to. even if i want to run away from the suffocating arms of liars who say they care about me. i will remain at their heels, wining like a lost puppy, waiting for my owner to lift me up and pet me and reassure me. i don’t wish to be alone, but sometimes the ache is so immense the only thing i can do is slam the door. shut everyone out. i can only injure myself if i am alone. i do not wish to hurt anyone. i want to dab at pulsing wounds. i want to wash hair in a sink and wrap the towel around a cold body. i want to tuck someone in. i want to love, i have so much love to give. so much love to foster inside of me. i have so much life to live, but i’m stuck walking back and forth in a vicious nightmare. i want to be in your dreams, a warm hand to hold, a fire that’ll warm the bones that you hide away. i will not judge, i will only stroke your hair and love you. i have so much love to give, i don’t want to be alone anymore. i want to spend my entire sweltering summer days lying on picnic blankets and staring at the clouds saying ‘this one looks like a heart, this one looks like singapore, this one looks like a train, this one looks like you.’ i want to live and cry and sing with friends on an open road with the windows down and laughter ringing in my ears. i want my abs to burn and i want to dance in flower fields unafraid to be alone. i was not made to be alone. i was made to be a friend, a lover, a trier, a doer, an example of what wondrous things can do. i was made to belong, even if i try to deny myself of it. i was made to love and live and be happy just as much as the next person. i was made to be myself. i was made to be the person i am now and i should not deny myself the entirety. i was made to exist, to live and love and live and love until i’m dead and gone. i deserve to be loved, i deserve the feeling of belonging, i deserve to live.

by the time i get to college, i want to be able to love you and live.
selflessly, beautifully, and endlessly.

the blue start of the night
stares into my bones.
i’m torn at the seams;
the company i keep does not wish to keep me
and, if it does,
solely like a secret, something to be
hidden, unable to be uncovered.
if i share all of me, what will be
left to say
and who says you won’t leave, let
me disintegrate?
there’s nothing to keep;
the depths of what i love
is unreachable,
unattainable. the
lives of all bodies that traversed
into and completely out of my mind,
left behind a trace of emptiness
that i once interpreted
as love—
a beast that denies itself to those
who ache to touch it.
i’ll lay blank upon the grass,
counting the ghosts of those
who have left.
watching the footsteps of them
get lost in
the passage of time,
sand covering up the heels,
chasing away the memories
that once lived in the dents.

you left footsteps in me;
the funny thing is i’ve tried to
preserve them, in vain but,
i cannot love what is destined
to be left behind,
what is bound to be lost to time.

every morning, it’s the same monotonous routine.
i’ll die and be buried in the soil.
perhaps someone may lay a coffin in the ground
in the shape of my emptiness,
the vast surface area of loneliness.
i’ve loved in spite of every distraction
in spite of every dying emotion
in my brain.
i have walked in hands of friendships just to feel some sense of relief
but all they’ve done is empty me.
i sit on my bed every night,
nothing changes except the length of my sighs
knowing fully i’ll never escape.
i can’t tell the ones i love,
they’ll worry for me,
and they need some happiness in their lives too.
i can’t tell friends, i shove them away,
wondering why people never choose to stay.
i’m erratic and sick of my own games:
to watch on the sidelines and never take part.
so sick of the routines,
all i want to do is donate my heart
to you.
take good care of it and water it and this proves i have no clue what to do with it.
please make it a home, with a hearth
and make it happy,
i’ve tried, but i’ll never bring it peace.
no matter how long i sleep
the same emptiness stays until i am it
and it is all me.
i’m packing my bags,
i’m moving upstate,
i ache to be someone you tolerate but don’t hate.
i can’t be someone else,
i’ll always be six feet underneath as you gaze upon me
and your eyes are so alive
and i love you,
i do,
what has this come to?
my frail body lying in a bed of dirt—
i’m dead before i hit the ground.
the same day all over
can i just lay with you
until night falls softly upon your pillow
and you call me a friend,
i’m someone to defend,
worth someone to you.
i keep the room quite tidy
tidy enough so the emptiness has a satisfactory space.
but you’re in the kitchen
and i’m hugging my knees
i’m scared i’ll die lonely
empty pews in the church,
with the emptiness clinging to my fraying shirt sleeves.
what have i become?
the same monotonous cycle
defining every aspect in my life.
i’ve loved till my heart was whimpering in pain,
and i’ve recorded every sound to revisit its anguish
and i’ve served every doubt till it’s wasted in a bar.
i’ve loved every human who stopped just to tell me that i was worth existing,
even just for a second,
i’ve loved myself more for every joke you’ve ever laughed at
i’ve loved every second with you in it
and i want you to have my heart
because you can do great things with it.
i know you can
because the emptiness feels fuller when you’re around
and it sits down in a swivel chair and it listens to you
and actually smiles.
i was revived every time you’ve said my name
even by mistake,
i was less lonely some days,
just replaying the sounds till my cheeks hurt
and you’ll never know,
but just keep my heart warm.
keep it by the fire.
keep it by yourself
and
it’s certain to be safe.

i trudged through frozen rivers
passed through red oceans
i bottled up my feelings and tossed them into the wrathful sea
fishing ships skimming through the vibrant bay
caught wind of my hopeless message floating meters away from where they cast their nets
tiny thoughts floating through levels of salty sea foam, devoured by the vicious waves
breaking, scattering and tossing seaweed into the briny air
“land **!” they bellowed, tying a thin rope to the side of the vessel
wonder if that truly makes a difference or that the boats just don’t really desire to depart
with unwashed fingers and hands, they ripped the bottle from the ocean’s greedy grasp
observing it with curiosity, they tapped on the glass of the object
the bottle cap popped open, revealing the suspicious contents
pouring it out onto the dock, they whispered when they saw the small yellowish letter lying flat; my letter
the captain read it to himself quietly and deemed it unnecessary to repeat to the rest of the crewmen
“perhaps, it is time to rest. the moon is almost at her peak.”
the captain uttered a couple words, for he was astonished such a hopeless thing could float ironically in the most teeming ecosystem to ever exist
my feelings were daggers, and not knowing where they originated from worried the captain

but everyone rises and falls
everyone lives and dies
everyone hopes and becomes hopeless
water carries secrets,
and in that, it holds stories

  -happy ever afters don’t exist in the ocean

-(read the text in the parentheses if you care hehe)

the gates are opening
and—i don’t mean to sound crass
but the tainted and staggering woman
and the saturated spineless specimen
are ****** and plastered with poison
their corpses are decorated in holly leaves
they won’t be eligible to enter
i hate to be the pointer
the dog in the marsh
but their faces are melting
like molten lava
they will bring this disease through
the golden gates agape
i promise i am not the
burner-at-the-steak-er
i won’t aim the musket
with silver bullets
at them
and their porcelain skin
their lies are painted on them
my sore eyes make assumptions
i am shaking my throbbing finger
at your dismayed face
claiming the woman with the
squid-like back
shouldn’t enter the golden gates
but i am here
the hypocrite of the century
taking accountability
but only in privacy
i should be tossed out of the
weightless sky
not banging the gates loudly
declaring that i have a ticket
when the man in the front
says i am denied access
shrieking
demanding
appalled
who am i to say you won’t
be entering the king’s castle?
who am i to judge a soul
just as damaged as mine?
these gates were destined to
keep out stragglers
strangers
thieves
but we are catfighting
because we both think
our ways are more superior
this is such a waste of energy
how dare us both avouch
that our paths to our houses
are the correct ways to travel
ah—yet he took the road less traveled by
and surely got through
to the other side
i might know for sure
that i have the right code
to the front door
but i shouldn’t assert my dominance
on such a similar being as me
leave it up to the guard
(the one with slicked back hair
and a watercolor smile
the one with medallion teeth
and jewelry sculpted from
lemon grass, brass and gold)
at the opening of the golden gates
to call upon us disoriented people
(or illusions as i call us)
and punish and kiss and love and miss
those who
are plunging to their eternal death
the guard will decide
and i don’t think i will make it out
fully alive
or at least without a single rash
or cause of decay
or a single slap on the back for
not trying hard enough
(not a pat on the back as i would
hope for at minimal
for
getting to breathe
the same air as saints and
“paying their way” passengers)
but anyway
the women and i will give
each other fair grins
and maybe even shake twisted hands
mending the wounds we caused
by (maybe) being ignorant?
my wings will start to be restored
but i know i will probably
tumble to my eternal demise
just like the same people
who tried to dictate
other’s lives
or tried to play the guard
in a playwright
dangling the keys
but not taking the time to
review the sign up sheets
hypocrites!
(i included)