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Av Oct 2023
as if a breathe of fresh air
I saw you on the olive stream
a haze of bendy trunks and quiet
not knowing where the roots will cling,
but it travels the soil nonetheless

now, to hold you at dusk and dawn,
in the gaps between the tree crowns,
a robust engine in a tender, muted forest

I hum to the echo of a whispering twitch

and as you run from edge to edge
I wait for you at the center
Av Mar 2022
i said you think you're invincible,
mind is a machine you said, it does
not need rest yet with all
this labour you still
reside in feeble fissured skin
features lacking in outline the
eyes that soak pleading excuses
for delirium to do more labour
of correcting what is
faulty the machine does not
function when it is faulty
but you believe, you said,
if it runs for long enough
it will fix the bugs somewhere between
the night and the morning
then i see it and i see you
fretting down the wires
gusting the leaking chip, i know
you will hike the circuit again so
i leave trails behind but
you pick them back up, you said
you are tired of cleaning
up after me, i said
i think you are just tired
insomnia thoughts
Av May 2021
you're in the final rest
before the ground swallows you back
whole, in pieces
stacked on top of yourself,

you,
a huddle as dense as your bones are hollow
a refuge for bugs that fear the light
a lesson for curious hands

weeds inter-stitch between the tiny gaps that you allow
they may be the last life you care to pierce your skin
and the next life that proudly takes over

you,
you cannot give without also being taken

your final rest, so sure and surely uncertain
it is yours, before the bugs come to feast for the last time
yours, before the curious hands set you ablaze
to help them see better at night

it is yours,
as it is a space that you occupy
Av Apr 2021
ego
coddled in this blanket fort, for now
to be contained is to feel bigger than space
fragile fabric slowly fraying at the seams-
meant to protect me, for now

the sun makes it hard sometimes—suddenly,
it's a hug that feels too tight, too warm

nauseous of the collective breathe
that fools itself to being one

a.r.
Av Oct 2020
Keys misplaced from billions of pockets—
open the rusty lockets
piling under bridges;
rockets,
for the palm wide enough to hold them

Bulging eyes are folded
in a chamber slowly dimming like bruises;
black and white,
backs against the walls,
coating palates in dry, brackish tones,
a charcoaled conversation.

The same echoes whipping against skin,
ripping the same warm bodies thin,
the same red-brick teeth
raking the cold, bleached soil

As the ice melts into water,
it is no longer the miner,
who smelts for power;
it's powdered noses that never sweat—
from pounding, bronzed pulses  
too big to leave the net

and as if it’s not enough,
it's stretching out a golden hand,
pelting doubt unto cardboard ceilings,
sealing silky mouths
and plaiting amber limbs,
felted so tightly to cushion Your seat

a.r.
Av May 2020
Paint me in hues
of red, paisley clouds
over the ragged linen
wrapped around my
small, limbless body

Tell me I'm an older man,
enough to grow my spine,
tire my eyes,
break my skull
and still make it home in time

Touch the leather, know it's real
feel the bumps, fill the cracks,
reminding you and I are the only colours
when the lights switch off
and the universe turns blind

For now everything is matter,
for now, nothing even matters
so feed me what I can't ever say
and show me the parts of you
that would never rot in clay

a.r.
Av May 2020
We stood on the flowerbeds
rooted in my ripe, velvet spine
We danced in waves of milky lilac,
the world was yours and mine.

For once, my mind was serene
although I heard a tiny whisper.
A whistle-blower distorted and mild;
I think you drowned her in the river,

Striking tapestries unscroll from your lips,
blindly shedding colours as the leaves fall
Lies were tucked snug under your tongue
and so was I, (it gets chilly after all),

You liked to pace ahead,
in a rush to build a promised fort.
I trudge behind you, stitching our skin-
a needle too dull, a thread too short

Thumbs hooked in my sunken stomach;
a snack for every time I strolled astray
but you were laced around my throat,
and so my hunger seemed to stay,

I drank from your stretched-out palms;
I waited for the day that it quenches me.
But a blade of grass in that barren patch,
is all that I will ever be

We went for these walks so often,
(I might as well have walked in all fours)
we danced in waves of milky lilac,
the world is only ever yours

                               a.r.
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