soft foam glides gently
along the pearly shoreline;
gentle, bobbing calm

the moirai thread life
from it's birth to termina;
the knots of kismet

as the gunmen circle around my fragile corpse
and my ichor seeps out my hollow vessel
my eyes will be forever trained on you
as i ask one final question:
is my love to be
paid in blood?

they hand you the script before you can read,
press it into your small, shaking hands —
heavy, bound in iron-spined expectations,
dog-eared by generations who never asked why.

they teach you to walk with your shoulders squared,
chin high, voice deep, footsteps firm —
a monument before you are even a man.
they teach you that softness is a sickness,
that hunger is a virtue,
that the only way to be enough
is to be more, more, more—
and never too much.

you learn to swallow silence like whiskey,
bitter but burning,
learn that weight is worn like a crown,
that fear is something you bury,
not something you name.
you learn that strength is measured
in clenched fists and bitten tongues,
in carrying the world without letting it show
in the corners of your mouth.

they call it the masculine dream—
to build, to conquer, to become,
but the dream feels more like a tomb,
more like hands that push you forward
without asking if you want to move.
you wake up every morning and pull the mask on,
the one stitched from responsibility and expectation,
the one that fits too tight against your skin.

there is no room for breaking,
no space to be small,
no air for the boy you once were —
the one who ran barefoot through the grass,
who cried without shame,
who laughed without restraint.

they hand you the script,
but no one tells you how it ends.
only that you must not falter,
only that you must not fail.

only that a man must hold himself together—
even when the cracks run deep.

as far as i can tell,
it's a waste of time
to give your heart
to people who will
crush it and leave it
to wane and wither

seeping through brown-riddled veins
flowing a gently fervent stream from
my wrist, a perfect red
dreams of an escape from all of this
turmoil and stress can be attained
through a single temptation from
the acquired gaze of a small blade

ever-so distant, light chimes in the dark
   it whispers to me from all of this distance
      messages of a sadness evermore in null light;

there is no true spark in the darkness of night

here, beneath the shadowed bough,
you reach —
a single, red glisten,
heavy with promises.
the weight of the world lies
in your palm,
unspoken,
sweet.

but the skin, oh —
it is too thin, too thin
to withstand
the breaking.

a bite, a ripple
through the quiet,
unhinging time,
unraveling the silence
as your teeth sink
deep.

your tongue tastes
the truth of the earth —
sour, sharp,
forbidden.
and from your mouth
pours
a flood of knowing,
flooded with the weight of seasons,
lost, swallowed whole
into you.

a garden crumbles.
the roots,
now tangled,
burden you —
bent, broken beneath
the fruit you’ve borne.

and so you stand,
in the ruins of choice,
eyes wide, waiting
for the consequence
to catch up.

the apple rests still,
forgotten,
waiting
for your next
bite.

she said: "i'm pretty when i cry"
oh , how i relate to her so deep
for when i tear up, i feel weak
and yet i feel so warm and in
my skin, so comfortable and
all the more scarier through
my convulsing body
at ease

light-bound revered idol in the sky
preaches velvet soft respect for all
and  yet, it seems all too wrong
considering all believe opposite
but then call themselves  
              'saved'

my heart is a lie;
a false adoration for
all, but riddled in
silent sharp truths

i've realized that
me weeping out
in the form of ink
and words won't
make a difference
for my betterment

and yet, it feels
all too beautiful
to spread my tears
in the form of art
everywhere i go

once, you were small enough to fit inside a whisper,
bones soft as moonlight,
fingers curled like question marks.
the world was too big to hold, so you clung to a name,
wrapped it around you like a second skin.

but nothing stays.

you learned that when your voice stretched,
when your laughter cracked open,
when the mirror started asking questions you couldn’t answer.

your hands,
look at them now
no longer tiny, no longer trembling,
big enough to shield your own eyes,
big enough to wipe your own tears.

the caterpillar never asks why it must split apart,
why the body it knew becomes a coffin,
why change feels like dying before it feels like flight.
but still, it unthreads itself into something else.
still, it breaks to become.

you will not be who you were yesterday.
you will not be who you are tomorrow.
but somewhere between the unraveling,
somewhere in the spaces left behind,
a pair of wings are forming.

it ruptures within me like a sweet abyss;
to you an undesired whole

how long will you be blinded by glimpses of heaven
before you realize the tainted blood of your words?

why must i hold on to a light
that doesnt approve of me?

it     starts with  
            a whisper       no — a            blink,  
the line — no, the edge— curls,
twisting like a thread that won’t stop unraveling
oh, it pulls at something deep,
something dark,
but soft—

            i am standing in the space  
where things don’t hold still,
the air bends — or is it me
bending it?
i try to speak but words bleed
out in
pieces —
broken sentences scatter, like
glass that never shatters.

"does it mean something?"
     i think it does.  
            but how could i know  
                       when time itself  
                    is        no longer  
                        the same?  
         clocks melt,  
                     but they don’t drip,  
                   they hum a sound  
       too far away to hear.  

        the sky— i think it’s still the sky—  
                  twists like a blanket  
           that never fully covers,  
   and underneath, there’s a door, but it doesn’t lead anywhere,  
   only back to a place i’ve been before,  
                  but forgotten how to leave.  

                 am i waiting?  
            or is this waiting for me?  

the mirror is smiling—
i didn’t know mirrors could smile,
or that they had teeth
but it’s there, behind me,
always behind—
trying to speak
but its words
are mine —
twisted backwards,
stretching,
thinning out like smoke.

there’s nothing to hold,
so i hold it all.

it drips down like honeyed poison
this dysphoria of mine, a weeping
guillotine;           a mourning blade

two faces, two egos
to my face you tell me everything is fine
for every flaw i perform, for every mistake
and yet, you spit venom behind my back on my name

how funny, am i right?

interwoven bodies everywhere
frightening weights of "love"
they almost make me gag, this
fake admiration for another
and yet, i find myself wishing
for that same close company
all despite my irks

the sky split open like an old wound,
light bleeding through the cracks
golden, sticky, slow.

i reached up to touch it,
let it drip onto my tongue,
let it settle in my throat like a prayer
i never learned the words to.

                    (they told me god is warmth —  
    but warmth and fire feel the same  
            when you’re too close to both.)  

the ground swayed beneath me,
soft as a mother’s voice in the dark,
but lullabies are just soft hands on your
shoulders, keeping you steady before you go.

                           so i walked,  

barefoot over cinders,
over embers that called me darling,
called me home.

and the fire
curled around my ribs like a whisper,
like fingers laced together in sanctioned halls,
like someone humming my name just low enough
that i could pretend
i imagined it.

                      (but i didn’t.)  

                           i listened.  

hellfire sings sweetly —
and i hum along.

i live in my own mirage of countless bees
and their honey-touched compliments,
the delicate petals they bear—the
only solace i'll find in this sad
dulled hive of a recluse

the mirror melts.  
  no — not melts, but pools,  
         a golden spill of reflections,  
a syrup-thick mirage     clinging to my skin.    

              i step forward,    
      (or maybe backward?)    
  my footprints fizz like swallowed stars,    
                 glimmering,  
       dissolving into the amber flood.    

who am i today?

             a prism refracting selves,    
   each face a sugared echo of the last.    
          i touch my arm,    
    (but which one?)    
                my fingers bloom into moths,    

their wings dipped in honey,
their voices whispering my name
in fifty-thousand flavors.

i am not one.
    i am not many.  
            i am—    

                  (i am?)

the river laughs,  
      its voice thick with golden light,    
            dripping into my throat,    
                 seeping into my bones,    
     rewriting the marrow into something    
           sweeter.

how long will i have to live,
knowing that i am forever
incapable to attaining the
same feats as the other boys
who stand before me?

how long will i have to cope
with the fact that i will never
cure myself of the boney skin
that have distinguished me
from the fit and the brawn?

how long will i feel my envy,
like violent waves crashing
onto the still shore, brewing
inside of me at the meer glimpse
of his glorious "belonging?"

how long will i stay sorrowful
how long will i stoop down to
my lowest level
and how long will i never try
to change, as if
this sadness is eternal?

a single touch of welcoming
is all i desire, no matter the
strain it will have.
i am for it all

topsy turvy truth
silent lips and shut teeth
sweat swells solemnly  

i beat around the bush

to find the peace of mind
that has fleed in a fearful frenzy

if a tree falls and no one hears it,
does it rot slower?

does it claw at the earth, desperate to be seen
as something more than a pile of splinters?

does it hold its breath,
waiting for footsteps,
waiting for someone to count the rings
inside its ribs and say,
"this was once here."

if i carve my name into the wind
and let it drift softly into the air,
will it hold?

or will it slip between fingers,
another whisper lost before it can reach a mouth?

i am a beacon of hollow skin
of which you have neglected
with your back turned; a
grand shadow cast

mind is pacing
hands are full
calendar ticking
away towards
bound due dates
sweat in sleep that
no tablefan can fix
thoughts of
exams and fears
reoccuring torment
of embarrasing moments
that i want to keep away

why must this be the life
god has carved for me?

we are all half-formed,
tattered in the mouth of the sky,
footsteps scattered like secrets in sand
half-told stories,
flickering like the last candle before dawn.

where do the rivers begin?
do they unravel in the mind,
or do they stretch in the soil of forgotten stars?
your hands do not belong to you,
yet you hold them as though they are the
beginning of something
but where is the ending,
if endings are just names written on clouds?

i have been inside of nothing,
and it was vast,
expanding like a breath held too long,
too thick for the lungs of anyone to swallow.
do you remember the moment before you knew yourself?
was it light or was it dark?
perhaps it was both
perhaps it was neither.

you are a shape that never fits,
yet you force yourself into corners,
into frames,
into expectations
but the walls are always shifting,
always bending like light
through the cracked glass of your understanding.

and when you look in the mirror,
what do you see?
the reflection has no name,
no shape,
no breath.
it is you,
and not you.
it is a thing that waits to be known,
but cannot be touched.

what happens when the self forgets itself?
does it shatter, or does it simply vanish
into the silence of unspoken words,
into the places where truth never grows,
where light has no color,
where time is only a whisper
a dream that never wakes?

kitchen counter riddled in grey marble
a fragrance of burning wood and candy
solar blessings filtered into linear lines
fruits spread in an ikebana rainbow
a jar of sickly saccharine sugar atop
a syrupy taste lingers in that air

i long to breathe it in once more
that sweet air of my grandma's
house from all these 11,285
kilometres away from home
and ten years from those
first moments of life

i am forever a balance of weakness and soft skin
with scales forever still as a statue, carrying the
burdens of heavy insecurities that i can
never comprehend and understand

i.
basilisk of steel
blades of fury
brisk justice
broken pact

this life is a maid of iron,
and i am the trapped husk

do you see it?

the ghost of a body still pretending to be whole,
stitched together with breath too shallow to hold,
stitched with nights that never end,
with mornings that never mean anything at all.

do you see the signs?

the moth drawn to the wick,
wings already smoldering,
the glass filling too full, too fast,
spilling over onto hands that do not flinch.

the rope hums its song in the rafters,
the blade dreams beneath the bed,
the sea sings with its mouth open,
waiting, waiting, always waiting.

and oh, if only you could see
how the body answers.

it leans over balconies,
toes curling against the lip of the abyss,
wondering how it might feel to be air,
to be a prayer half-spoken and swallowed whole.
it lingers at the water’s edge,
feeling the pull,
the old song of the tide,
the voice of god in the undertow.

this is how it happens, isn’t it?
not in fire, not in fury,
but in the slow and quiet way a candle drowns in its own wax,
in the way hands stop reaching,
in the way a name turns to dust on forgotten tongues.

why do you watch,
and why do you wait,
if not to stop it?

a simple answer, truly,

"because who can catch a shadow
when it has already learned how to slip
through the cracks?"

in the mirror

my body morphs into the male fantasy

bones to muscle, muscle to brawn
skin sturdy, many a mind merit

perfect teeth, the perfect male face
one to please the crowd, to forget
the harmful dysphoria plague

oh, to be the reflection in the mirror

HIS dream of gold
is mistaken for dirt
that taints the hearts
of the most clement