Words reach flesh
Like red fodder
Since they feel just
thinking
Caught a mouse under
Lion toes, caving in
You're mine to crush

To belittle

Give me a Catch-22
And I'll give you
Twenty
Two
to
Catch
- and inhale

Respect those around you with nimble toes, gentle hearts of melted iron
With faces touching, seeing, and consuming the nearby
Earth that dyes green and blue, gripping the sky
Children reach bones as adults crawl, searching for necessity
We try

Because there is a hope that cries true and loud.

That this is what we will ever need.

So inhale. And feel.

Around me are trains, going everywhere with people of means
Huddled in their puffy coats, face glistening from kisses
The snow on eyelashes of haze, making them cry
For something in their lives stays silent and loud
All I see is just a blur, clearly the movements of a crowd
The train arrives clack clack clack clack clack cla-

        I sit next to a man, broad sloping shoulders
        Staring at bright coloured slogans against the harbor
        My eyes noticed them, and linoleum floors abundant
        his child, bubblegum candy in her hair, eyes closed
        and our ears are attracted to her breathing

        A boy in blue against the blurry water view
        Raises his eye upwards, grinning
        With a paper patch, a Crayola work of gauze
        Fatherly hands ruffle the head, both smile
        and yo ** yo ** a pirate’s life for...

My mind jerks back to what it once was
The conductor’s voice seeps through the corridors
A toned down velvet mixed with earthly undertones
As we all stepped back to ground, and the platform
       carries away the distance in something so close

Walking on stone pavement, rainy, swift
some parts smooth, some parts eroded
pebbles at the feet of sandaled soles
umbrellas swipe the view, fogging you

Cars, bikes, children, zooming against
time, and the rush of voices, tones heard
and I lose myself in this wave of
foreign yet such familiar interference

And I find, curled like newborn babes
But wizened, people, like in prayer
head down, on red, white, blue bags
with hands dangling in peace, towards earth

Their hands, aged like leaves in a distant land
cracks down the back, underneath rough cotton
and skin touches skin as I pry yours open
only to find a single coin, crumpled with pressure

My feet falls behind yours, slackened
Your face is filled of golden sand, ready to
burst, and I know that your veins know
no mercy, as they course hopes through labor

At the ground, pitter patter, are the
sounds of your breath and gaze
And I know we are alike, only
difference, decision, the coordinates

Pitter Patter
Raindrops calling out your feelings, louder
than the commotion around us, drenching
the ground, drizzling the man-made
louder
and
*Louder

Colours have no direction.

I see.
A flash of dashing white

Dark skin crashes
against white tank top,
pressing forward
And her braids fly, cutting
air, slicing to let her
go

And she goes, one single
Breath, fleeing cars, unyielding to
crosswalks and lights
Never side glancing to the honks and
the white man, orange hand

Her feet makes ripples
on pavement, noting
to go, to go, she must go
A human life, ten toes
Whenever she wants, she goes

She is the apparition
She molds herself through
Graffiti and concrete, leaving
trails on others' shadows'
Feet

What makes a human
want something so bad
To run away, to get to
And to forget all the things
That can end you

She must be alive.

My eyes climb upwards and meet concrete
Like passersby on a shooting star
As the lights seem to flicker, so dim, so bright
My breath gets caught as gravity sinks
and I can see the space between the Way

My world trembles as I inhale
Torrents become art as the moon phases
linger on my very fingertips
Murmurs of a prayer on my lips
As I dig and mine deeper and deeper

My skin sways as my bones are suspended
In the fabrication of all the crevices and faults
Break into fragments becoming the past
Only for it to remain in the present as dust
A cover for me to sleep under my layers

I see Icarus flying downwards with the
Sun on his back, and the wax becomes milky
Frothing the darkness and leaving trails
A bird brushes back its ash, combing through
Dark velvet as it awakes the candle choir

My hopes are on a flying comet
Soaring past infinity and through
Your lens, the sand flowing nearby
would one day capture the light
I have in my life, and we can all breathe

Yes, that is the way to go