The sensation of falling while silently standing alone in a crowd.
Cold icy chill running along my spine, confusing the nerves in my skin.
Hunger gnawing at the fringes of my curiosity, eating away my insides.
Ancient giants pounding their weight against my fragile skull.
A magnifying glass focused in on my minuscule existence, observing.
A vacuum, void, opaque blackness pressing my fibers into dust.
Breathless gasping, desperate pleading on deaf ears again.
Don't turn away.
Don't you dare turn away.
Listen to me scream.
Come back.
Look at me.
See nothing.

My body somehow knows
The grief tomorrow holds.
I ache and throb
But I cannot sob;
The urge to cry
Stings my eyes.
My feet drag heavily
In the depths of this valley.
Every year without fail
I remind myself I am too frail.
"You're strong without the numbers,"
Yet I was too weak to pull you from your slumber.
Each March 22nd
Feels just like the 1st end,
When your heart stopped beating
And mine started bleeding.
I'd skip this whole day
But I'd miss the chance to say:
I miss you, lovely little hurricane.
It's all I can do to keep sane.
The smell of mint
Hurts just a hint.
The skinny jeans and hair bows
I could never disown.
I wear your effect  
On my forearm *****.
The pain of loss is akin
To etching you into my skin.
My hands shake with cold,
Though not as cold as a headstone.
Oh, how my body knows
The grief tomorrow holds.

I am not an artist
I cannot paint a beautiful landscape that makes you believe you're looking at the real thing.
You will not stare in awe as you wonder what compelled me to paint those lines so uneven
And I can't make my color choices dance in your eyes like sugarplum fairies
Off of the canvas and into your mind
For you to transpose the choreography
To your own understanding

I am not an artist
I cannot capture a single moment in time with the simple click of a camera.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words but every shot I capture seems to be silent
Mute
But they're beginning to be heard
Screaming millions of words
Hoping someone will just hear one

I am not an artist
I cannot make your skin shiver as my lyrics echo through the room
Your emotions will not crescendo as each note burns nostalgia in your memory
And I will not leave you wanting to hear more

I am not an artist
And I can't create a masterpiece in two hours
I can't write words that will break your heart as they enter your ears and fill your soul with the emotions I'm feeling
I can't make you believe that I'm actually the character
I tried so hard to become at rehearsals for the last three months
My movements on the dance floor dont flow with ease or grace
And you will never give me a standing ovation
Or shower me with roses as you cheer for the art I've created.

But
With every step that I take on this earth
I am leaving brush strokes in the dirt and in your memory
Every laugh
every sob
every word that I speak
Is going through your ears for your own musical enjoyment
My eyes are like cameras capturing every moment and every face each time my lashes flutter
And even though most of we don't have photographic memories
We still remember the precious moments our personal cameras caught on film

I am not an artist
I am art

Shutter filtered moonlight bright and clear as a flashing sword
    my surest guide over the landscape of your body.

I cannot say whether it is my hand that pivots brush and ink,
    or they that carry me along across your back.

This then is what the sages meant by formlessness:
    I am the Brush and Ink and Moonlight.

Let them speak
Then let them die
Let truth pour onto lips so dry
Let who be you
No wonder why
And close eyes, lifeless, no waking

No words said after
No lullaby
Post mortum tears in cloudy sky
As echoed truth
Takes creator’s life
To multiply, undertaking

Let teeth gnash
Let silent rage
Encompass those within the day
To pick up words
For which the slain
Found their souls, like eggshells, breaking

Another chapter
One of pain
New but rewritten, again and again
So that words spoken
From those long dead
Find new hosts for the taking

Her tender skin sprouts
green shoots
a wreath,
at the foot of tree
she was buried.

On the trunk
her face appeared, a
morphed stump.

The bark, her coffin
split, where demons clawed.

A number, worms out
indelible scars, 452.

Frozen chambers of mortuary
await the next,
a child, a girl, a dalit, a musalman.
A cattle herder.
Or, the silent you, you and you.