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

A knife
caressing my thighs
to my wrists

A chemical mixture
swallowed down
with a drink

A lover
you’ve never tasted

I looked up at
the starry sky

A lone dying star
has greeted me,

and I promised that
I will see her soon

I cannot utter what
is bothering my soul

Perhaps it is the fire
of my own mind  

The same fire that
kept me warm was
the one to burn me

Or perhaps it is the
unbearable weight of
my sleepless eyelids

For how much longer
do I have to wash my hands?  
                      sleep in the burning house?              
                      carry this heavy heart?
                      weep?
                      bleed?
                      ask for bandages?
                      hide my scars?
                      see my therapist?
                      lose touch?
                      force a smile?
                      see my reflection?
                      try to fix the brokenness?
                      adjust to new meds?
                      wish I was dead?
                      wash my hair?
                      trim my nails?
                      write these lines?
                      avoid my birthday?
                      fight the urges?
                      endure myself?
                      cling to this life?

I’m a light switch!

You see,
when I‘m switched on
everything turns bright,

and when I’m switched off,
I become one with the darkness

I could be
too bright at times,
or a an utterly dark self

It’s hard to recognize me
when it‘a dark, I’m unseen

But I can’t recognize myself
when it‘s bright, I’m blinded

All I need is the a
trigger to turn
a bright room
into a graveyard

So please be more
careful with me

I am a light switch

I have been buried
and grown used to
utter darkness

But I dug myself
slowly
out of my own grave  

I could finally
kiss the sun,
and taste the flowers

I hope it lasts
I hope I last

Every time I hear the word “love”
I think going
warmth
and then going
(don’t)

The feeling
of a hot blade
on my wrist

How gentle is
its sharpness
How soothing is
the stinging pain

Sometimes that’s the
only way I could
remind myself; that
this body of mine,
or at least parts of it
still want to heal

I tried holding the darkness,
and imprison it
in a forgotten place

Empty handed,
I am the darkness
and the forgotten place

How does one choose to forget themselves?
How do I eradicate myself in order to mend?
How do I rid myself of something that lives within me?

A vicious war,

I won—

I defeated myself

—so why does my heart still
beats with so much darkness?

I played their favorite songs,
I wrote them endless lines

I gave them my mind to haunt,
I used my wrists as bait,
and they were thirsty for blood

I shrink as they grow,
I dissolve as they emerge

1.
The boy lived his
childhood inside a casket
His own private hellscape

His face was distorted
by the age of eighteen,
he wished to be unseen

2.
The son of a glorified painter,
an unused color on a palette
               faded and forgotten

He’s been dead
to his father
before he died

3.
At last,
his wish came true,
no one saw the similarity
between his distorted face
and a Picasso’s painting


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

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

5.
Each morning,
he awoke with thousand faces
none of which are the one
he started out with

The boy who is now a man
grew restless of crashing into all
those foreign versions of himself
every time he drifted to sleep

6.
After seven 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

7.
The man longs
to be a boy again,
he couldn’t endure
another day inside—

the claustrophobic casket

—his head

Lone firefly
slowly burning away
Every repetitive lullaby shall linger,  
the boy aimed for a long night’s sleep

nearness

I needed yours

remains abandoned

I can’t remember

  can’t remember

           remember?

What’s feeding on my memory?

I can’t remember anything
                            who I am
                            how I ended up here
                            my friends
                            if I have any friends
                            why he abandoned me
                            my day of birth
                            the way home
                            who’s fault

I’m being eaten alive by an illness
I’m being eaten alive
I’m being eaten

I remember
I remember the way
I remember the way out
I remember ******* my way out

I’m breathing in
all the breaths I lost
over your gaze,

and exhaling every poems  
that rhymed with your name

I do not know
how to grieve you

So I will weep
into my pillow

Hoping you’d hear
my gentle sobs,
and forget how to dream

He spoke in silence
that’s where his fluency
flows out the most  

The lone wolf
longingly howled
at the blood moon,
his cries were
like loud sirens

His inner demons
howled for his blood
During nighttime when
he’s buried in the arms
of his beloved insomnia

He’s met with the alpha
and saw his own eyes
reflected in the other betas,
but his eye color
didn’t match with theirs

The abandoned wolf has met
with the alpha whom he shares
the same blood and eyes with,

but the wolf is a second choice in this poem,
he will never truly belong

The lone wolf
happens to be a girl,
but she never lived like one

You see,
she’s the main reason
why she has no pack
or a place to call home

Melancholy is creeping
its way back through
my veins forcing me
to open up old wounds

And I hope for
something more than
a sharpened knife,
and gushing blood

My eyes ache

they weep

a shedding of a tear

like a silent wailing sirens

“Show us your scars”
When they should’ve said shame  

“Point on where it hurts”
Yet they couldn’t find a cure

“Have you been thinking about death?”
Like my thoughts wander to anything else

“Just take this pill in the morning”
But I‘m up every morning

“You’re safe here”
I felt their eyes under my skin

“Have you assaulted anyone in your life?”
Can’t they see that I‘m the victim here

“Can we send you home without worrying?”
As if I can guarantee them my life,
as if I have a home

“Bring your mother with you in the next session”
But I’m in therapy because of her  

“Have you considered electroshock therapy?”
And now they want to cause me more trauma

“How many times have you attempted suicide?”
“Enough times to believe that I have already died” I said finally

Dearest one to my heart
Can you help, I’ve been longing
for every feather of your lashes?

You’ve deserted me,
and I’ve forgotten what
the word warmth meant

Maybe you are  
the word warmth,
or maybe you are
the word silence

I talk to you,
but you don’t talk back  

So instead of melting into
your cruel frigid hands,
I will melt into your deadly silence,
somehow that’s where I found warmth

The unspoken words
grew in my veins till
they intoxicated my mind

A deadly psyche planted inside
a breathing corpse
that’s perpetually dying

The night came in
and devoured me
like a crow
devours its prey

A dark cloud has
hid the sun, and
convinced me that
I wasn’t going to live

Although I can’t see it,
the glittering sun
is still there to kiss my skin
and remind me I exist

Dearest one to my heart,
you’re so far,
and I’ve forgotten what
the word warmth meant

Maybe you are  
the word warmth,

or maybe you are
the word silence

I talk to you,
but you don’t talk back

This heart of mine
remembers you softly

Despite the dagger
you thrusted into it

And the gushing blood
after your departure

I am repaying my
wounded soul a visit

A distant voice tells me
“I am no longer welcome here”