1.
The seasons changed,
but he kept wearing a sweater
during the steamiest weather

He spoke in three languages,
but has only felt the word:
Melancholy,
and the joyous absence of it

He wondered who he would
be without his sweater,
and the word Melancholy

2.
He never uttered the word father
for it was heavy on his tongue
like heavy rain on a bleak midnight

His mother loved him dearly,
or ruined him and called it love

A man has fallen in love with him,
and he felt for the first time; the
warmth of equally returned love

His lover tore apart his heart, and
told him it was the final act of love

3.
After eleven years of insomnia,
he stopped measuring happiness
based on how many nights he slept
A funeral rose in his heart as he wept

He muttered the word:
Suffering
as if it were
a prayer
or a lullaby

4.
Drawing road maps on his skin
was his only consolation,
he chose the color red
to find his missing path

Scars between his thighs
like hidden treasures—
Centuries deep
away from people’s sight

5.
His new beloved was in
the shape of a knife,
they embraced and
the gushing blood
was his final act of love

She was named after love,
and letters were exchanged
between lovers in her name

Poets found their muse
when she visited their hearts
and I was one of them

But my love never
reached her heart
like hers did mine

And so she left,
when my stubborn heart was
aching to be laced with hers

She left,
and my eyes were searching,
yearning for her

Dear Heyam,
I swear on love letters
and you
For it is the last poem
I write about you

Mother gave
me a blade

Mine was pink,
hers was purple

It was a useless sharp thing
that’s always in my drawer

One night,
I reached for the blade,
and it felt like my
mother’s embrace  

Every time I used it,
I was being released
from all my pains

Thank you, mother

Why shall I stay alive if death is my fate?

The thought of you lingers
like a ghost that haunts
its old lover’s house

I spit your name
out of my heart,
and hope to never
remember you

A longing-pain
took hold of
my anguished heart
for I’ve missed you terribly

A rosebud
bursts into bloom,
and my thoughts
wander towards death

You have forsaken me
in May,
now I know that every
love is prone to decay

Maybe my heart will
stop crying all night long,
and I will be able to sleep

Maybe you will stop
walking in my dreams
like you’re still mine

Maybe my eyes
will forget yours,
and I won’t weep

Maybe my skin won’t
crave your touch, and
my hand won’t ache
to be held by yours

Joy overcomes me
born out of agony

Still I am burning
underwater,
I cannot be saved

When my soul departs,
alone,
know that I am glad to go

A heaven for an hour
for when I’m with her

A long desired kiss that
turns pain into a song
I have never heard

I would not long for death as
long as you remember my name

I scratched my head,
and a memory got
stuck under my nail

I sang to my aching heart,
it is yearning to be broken, again
Call it love

If I leave, I wonder if
peace will visit my grave

Those eyes,
those cold almond eyes,
that once were welcoming
at the sight of me,
like a warm welcoming home

But now they swallow me,
like the sea swallows
an old forgotten treasure

I am all the dreams
you had at night,
but forgotten
in the morning

And when she left,
I kept her lucky bamboo alive,
and wished that the leaves
will speak to me in her voice

But the leaves has grown quiet,
and turned into my favorite color

Does that mean our love has withered,
or have I been speaking with the dead?

I thought of you after a year,
but this time I didn't weep

Only my heart ached
over your absence
that left me breathless

I held your scent in my lungs
till you suffocated me
with your crooked smile
and broken promises

I swallowed your name
under my tongue,
and now my words
rhyme with your initial

I thought of you after a year,
but this time I weeped

I am yearning with
an ache for something
sharp to caress my arms

My heart sings
the bluest song,
but no one is
around to hear it

I hope one day,
my heart sings
a yellow song
that rhymes with
happiness and serenity

Keep thy head underwater—
staying afloat will not
quench this thirst of yours

A rotten skull
wired to feel melancholy

A nightmare self
that only saw freedom
at the tip of a kitchen knife
isolated from this life

A mind
with death plants
flourishing inside it

A garden of Angel's Trumpet
abloom with a deadly touch
recherché but poisonous

One of Azrael’s early visitors,
I’m now a flower in his graveyard

An angel,
spreading her wing
to take me under it
to ease the anguish
of my heavy heart

A heavenly creature
fled from a lover’s hell
to purify her stained heart

I never felt loneliness
till my lusted angel
flew back to her realm

Will she ever fly back
and risk losing another feather?

I whispered to my heart
filled with yearning,
“Be still”

Even if the curly ropes
of his hair
leaves you trembling
with an unsatisfiable hunger

“Be very still
dear anguished heart of mine”,
but as a leaf
I quiver
clinging desperately
by a bleak bough

For soon I’ll flutter
with the wind,
and fall down
along with my sorrows

As the fallen leaves
withered and loveless,
I shall crumble and disappear

I’m accompanied
by two tonight,
agony and her
beloved insomnia

Nothing lives inside
me any longer  
Perhaps I orphaned
this heart of mine,
when I didn’t listen
to its desperate cries
in need for a shelter

Cursed with homesickness,  
an abysmal void grew within me
that’s where I found refuge

Anxiety wraps
itself around me,

like a coat that
doesn’t fit me

like a lover that
doesn’t love me

like a fire that
doesn’t warm me

I am on a diet
from sharp knives

I have been fasting
for about two months

Here is my clean
untouched wrists

But what if I got thirsty
for a drop of my blood?

What if I got hungry, and swallowed
all the knives in the kitchen drawer?

Hot summer breeze,
long sleeves, and
scars you cannot see

To be kissed
by your eyes

To be touched
by your voice

To be held
by your lips

To be tangled
by your hair

When my eyes met
hers for the first time,
they spelled the word “love”

The thing about
a sunflower and I

Is the sunflower would
wither if the sun stopped
kissing her every morning

And just like the sunflower
needs the sun to flourish,

I need you near me
for I bloom by your kisses

And just like the sunflower
worships the morning sun,

I worship your
cold almond eyes

I write so not to
suffocate on my
smoky thoughts

I write so not to
forget that I, too,
have a voice that
won’t be silenced

I write so not to
use the knife
as an outlet

I write so not to
choke on the thorny words
that linger in my throat

I write so not to
be hushed by my—
inner demons
—sweet seductress

I write so not to
burn alone in
my own inferno

I write so not to
die

The chained ankles
are heavy and aching
with ****** bruises

The chained ankles
would rather break free

Christopher is utterly wrapped
within the cocoon of his own mind.

One can vividly see him
as he struggles with
understanding what
others think, feel, and believe.

Therefore, his self-identity,
his idea of himself,
is practically the same as his
sense of the outside world.

2.
Unlike everyone else,
Christopher does not seem to care
about being identified by other people.

He prefers to spend his time by his lonesome,
it somehow keeps him more connected with
reality which is something he struggles with.

3.
Christopher is quite an observer,
he views the world
in a distinct, but a unique way.

4.
Christopher never uttered the word father,
for it was heavy on his tongue,
like heavy rain on a bleak midnight.  

His mother loved him, or
ruined him and called it love.
He cannot tell the difference
between these two things.

So whenever he loved someone,
he’d unintentionally break their heart,
and utterly ruin any chance of love.

5.
Christopher beloved was
in the shape of a knife,
so he used her to write this story.
The gushing blood was his ink,
and the tears were his last silent screams

Let me whisper
my last goodbye
between your lips

Oh, won’t you let me
bury this poem along
with our dead love

And pour my salty tears
upon your naked shoulder

This morning,
I’ve shed the heaviest tear
after twenty-one years
of deadly silence

Mother
was the first
to steal
my innocence

Death
will be my last
silent cry
to regain
my purity

I break myself with each line
I write because I can’t make
pain rhyme with happiness

The thing I use to fight with
has turned against me,
and is winning the battle

The enemy—
my own mind
—is about to attack,
and I’m unable to act

And now all I’m left with
is scars that never seem
to be healing,
I never seem
to be healing

A handful of pills
in my palm,
their color is a sign
of truce, purity,
and surrender

And I surrender

So here is my shield,
my sword,
my soul,
I no longer want
to fight this battle

Blood is red
Veins are blue
Mix the two colors together,
and they will leave a bruise

I heard you call my name in a dream
Did you need me, my dear?

I stayed up night after night
just to hear your I love you’s
just to hear your repetitive lies

Won’t you come back again?
Lie to me my dear darling one

I beg of you,
my dear,
my light,
in the shedding bleak midnight,
come to me with your wounds

Or at least get me a cigarette,
and leave me to drown along with my sorrows

I wrote a poem
and named it after her
because it ends too early

Being mentally ill is draining,
so is breathing,
so is staying alive,
so is being hopelessly hopeful

But I will decay gracefully
for this pain is more than I can bear

They reminded you
that you are still here,
still one with the livings,

and now you sleep
with a knife in hand
to feel safer from the ghosts
that perch on your bed

And later you will use that
knife ‘cause you will never
be safe from your ghostly self

And on a bleak morning you
will search your bed for that
knife with your scarred wrists

You see,
you have already swallowed that knife
after years of starvation, but you still
couldn’t satisfy your hunger  

It is now stuck in your throat
along with every lingering word
you buried inside your foreign heart,
and now it cuts from under your skin

And this is why you have no tears
And this is why you cannot sleep
And this is why you hate love

You teared yourself apart,
and forgot that you could heal

She madly loved you,
and now she loathes you

You told her the truth
about your soul, and
how you don’t have one

How your heart has died,
but started to rapidly beat
when she held your frigid hand

She tasted the pain you’ve warned her
about for so long, yet she stayed

Till you poisoned her pure heart
Till you suffocated her by breathing

He loved you to death,
but his hurt brought you
back with the dead

You’ve forgotten them,
and yourself too

I might’ve inhaled her scent
when we were making our
soon to be last goodbyes

Her scent filled my lungs
So I held my breath
and counted to ten

Countless tens,
I lost track

Suffocated,
I inhaled the smoke

Broken,
I buried what she felt like

Abandoned,
I exhaled her out of me

When breathing felt
the same as drowning—

and I’ve drowned myself once

—I gasped for her scent
with each breath I took

All my years, I’ve been preparing to die,
and now they’re forcing me to stay alive
Claiming they can heal my wounded soul
by shocking my brain causing more trauma

How do you go back
from being buried?
How do you find peace
when you know what’s awaiting you?
How do you love
when your heart has stopped?
How do you remember
when you’ve lost your mind?
How do you cry
when you don’t have tears?
How do you overcome your past
if it’s still your present?
What do people do with their lives
if their whole being didn’t yearn for its doom?

How do I start?
Where do I begin?

This is the first day of my life
where I’m not suicidal, and
I don’t know what there is to do
when death was my only salvation

I don’t know this new version of me;
the one who doesn’t find it impossible
to stay for another day,
another endless night

I’m scared of shifting back;
I’m scared of being buried
by my own deadly psych,
I’m scared of dying again

Things are more lighter now
The elephant in the room is no
longer perched upon my chest,
and my wrists are no longer
bleeding, only the scars remain

What if I get hungry again, and can’t
find anything to feed on but my own blood?
What if I woke up in a casket again?

I can’t help but wonder
for how long is this going to last?
How long am I going to last?
I hope this lasts,
I hope I last

I can hope like others do!
I’m hoping again
which is a sign of life!

Am I deluding myself?
Am I better or worse?

I need someone to squeeze my hand
just so I know that this is real
It’s dangerous to get stuck in
a state where nothing feels real
No matter how deep
you went to draw blood,
you still don’t feel like you’re here

In my head I’ve already
killed myself, long ago,
and now my corpse is
somehow trying to breathe, again?

This goes against logic
This goes against my own head,
my head is going against
its own suicidal thoughts

Am I going to look back at this,
and not believe that one day
One day I felt alive enough to breathe,
and not wish I wasn't

A pill in the morning,
and one before I sleep

Pearly white and motherly,
I like them better than me

I awoke today,
and felt a strange force pulling
at my stomach and tearful soul

Hollow and motherless,
the pills have left my body

Is the side effects the body’s
way of refusing to heal?

Am I swallowing bombs
or chemical kisses?

Will they mother me
and bring back my mind?

Dear my aching body,
I promise you,
this is not another suicide

So be still,
be very still,
and keep the pills down  

Don’t whine
Don’t cuss
Don’t fuss
Don’t resist
Don’t fright
Don’t fight
Don’t cry
Don’t die

This is not a suicide

There used to be butterflies
living inside my chest,

but they turned into bats
when it got dark

The bats fed on my blood,
and my chest was their cave

There used to be orchids
blooming,
flourishing,
above my ears and to my short hair

But now I am dead,
the weeping orchid bled

As it withered upon my grave,
and emitted the scent of death and I

Its decayed petals dropped,
like blood from cut veins

The corpse flower,
scentless bloom of death belongs

My lover’s name is Depression,
and he clings himself to me,
like a ghost that still haunts
its old lover’s house  

I wash off my mouth,
but still taste him

I wrote him endless poems,
but he demands that
I **** myself for him
so he knows it is real

“I don’t want to see you with other people”
he yelled and his face turned blood-red

“I want to engrave my name in your heart”
he said with a knife in hand

“I want to consume you”
he whispered in a flirtatious way

“I want you to disappear with me tonight”
he said as he grabbed me by the hand,
and we disappeared together