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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

stuck in an hourglass of identity,
muffled hustling around my eyelids
head buried deep in the shifting sand,
my body wrestles with the happening

stiff legs pulled by horizontal gravity,
brain soaking, turning into electric mush
my eyes bleeding in black as it is
only in my dreams, that I can feel alive

lied naked on the slippery floor of reality,
dipped in and out of the pool of mind
fractals slowly falling off from my vision,
then swaying freely in the air

freed by a different form of mortality,
face sinking, melting into familiar figures
what's hidden below and behind evaporates
to every corner of my shut, rapid eyes

I feel every fibre of peace,
every time the world disentangles from its name
knowing they are all but shapes projected
for the hazy buzzing screen,
that is my present

There is freedom in isolation,
in being idle and invisible,
where one could sit in muteness,
swim widely in dusk and ask,
"Am I really here,
if no one is around to see?"
A different kind of suicide

There is pleasure in being a shadow,
in pretending you don't exist,
to avoid acting like you do

Solitude isn't a time for me
to let myself free
but rather a time to free myself
from who I am

Outside the confinement of company,
I am anyone and anything,
I am someone else, somewhere else
I am alive,
but I am no one
I am alone

a.r.

three o'clock every afternoon,
you would come out to play
only fifteen feet from home,
mother wouldn't let you stray

said the birthmark on your feet,
a symbol for your itch to explore
only fifteen feet from home,
but you have always wanted more

drawing on the ground with pebbles,
making a canvas out of the street
bouncy steps on bumpy, hot cement,
careless of the dirt on your feet

running in wide, drunk circles,
scraping your scarred little knees
forgetting why you were laughing,
but you chased the sun, at least

she shouts your name from the house,
thick orange juice and sweet bread
a small towel on your sticky back,
she tied the wet hair on your head

the daytime moon followed you home,
with its humble clouds not far behind
how vast, you thought, was the world,
but it wasn't as vast as your mind

a.r.

The hair on your forehead is soft umber wheat
with a cerulean sky behind it,
the dent on your cheek is deep-
enough for me to rest in it

You are the emerald mountains
and the tranquil rain,
that calms me down
and hands me pain

You are jazz and blues
and if yellow ochre had a sound,
Lying in between our smiles,
was a place that you found

I miss you
and the little church in Lisbon,
across the lone bench,
with a stick that you relied on

In the back of my mind,
how could I ever?
When I've never met you
and I've never been to Lisbon

a.r.

the loudest voice you know
is the one you'll never hear

it screams and it ponders
for every crevice of your body,
to stain your every wrinkle,

how were you supposed to know
that you're already whole,
but spend your every blink,
borrowing all the seeds
that you can swallow?

seeds to fill up your stomach
so much so, that
they have no room to grow at all?

but the loudest voice you know
doesn't know the quiet sunrise,
as well as you do,
when morning felt impossible

the loudest voice you know
doesn't know you
as well as the sky that
watched you build a shelter from
your bones,
the same sky
that cast a storm over it,
and the same sky that smiled
to find you dry and warm.

the loudest voice you know,
is the one you'll never hear,
so why do you listen to it?