When it rains, some people run a little
tucking sighs into their collars  
my knuckles tap lightly
on the backseat window
shattering a string of clammy
question marks
you said, we met too soon
before we’d learned how to love
and now I’m grinding restless days  
sharpening them into matchsticks
waiting for a sunny day
to strike some sparks
the rain, keeps stitching up fissures  
while the city slips and slides in puddles
our conversations hang  
like wet clothes dripping on the laundry line  
awaiting the next sun to dry and turn them into  
transparent answers.

She lived in my inbox,  
a constant pulse of memes and midnight thoughts,  
fragments of her days in a city I’d never walked
a movie recommendation
a reminder to sleep early
a nudge to wake up and try again.  

Even from miles away
she found a way to stay close
weaving herself into my new routine
as if distance was just another setting
to adjust.  

Her life moved forward in photos and captions
shared glimpses of places I could only picture
I watched, I listened, I responded  
but slowly, the messages thinned,  
the spaces between them stretching wider
until silence settled where she used to be.  

Yet
even now,
some nights I still hear her voice in my head:  
“Go to sleep early”  
as if she’s still looking out for me
somewhere beyond the screen.

Red for economics,  
green for English,  
white for ICT
your files stacked in my hands,  
pages filled with notes in your careful script
I never needed to ask; you just lent them
as if sharing knowledge meant sharing a part of you. 

A classroom of seventeen,  
but I only counted one.
I traced your desk with my fingertips,  
opened your pencil case just to see  
what colors you carried,  
what secrets lived between the erasers and sharpies.  

We worked in groups,  
side by side but never quite close enough.  
I stole glances when I thought you wouldn’t notice,  
but maybe you always did.  
Maybe that’s why you smiled so easily,  
why you never pulled away.  

Years have stretched between us,  
but high school still lingers like a cozy
dream  
I wake from too slowly.  
Your files, your laughter, your presence in the last row
they live in me
as if time forgot to take them when it took you.

She was August, I was February
months apart, but tied by the same number
Eleven, like a thread linking distant days,  
like Pepero sticks she loved,  
thin, sweet, and gone too fast.  

She was the girl who handed me slippers in the rain,  
who lent me her red, green, and white files,  
who sat in the third row while I sat in the first,  
but somehow, we always found our way to the same place.  

She was fries on one eventful canteen day,  
laughing about weight neither of us really cared about.  
She called herself Snorlax,  
but to me, she was Eevee  
full of possibilities, always shifting, always bright.  

She sent me memes, told me to wake up,  
to sleep early
to try again tomorrow
She saw Natsume in me
though I never watched Gakuen Alice to know why
Maybe she saw the quiet fire I never named.  

She was there,  
and then she wasn’t.  
Distance, time, then silence
life pulled us apart like a ribbon unraveling.  
But somewhere
in the space between eleven and eleven
she still lingers.

I remember the rain, heavy on our umbrellas,  
the scent of wet earth as we walked,  
silent, yet knowing.  
You handed me the slippers first,  
a small kindness that opened a password door in my heart.  

In our classroom filled with murmurs and pages turning,  
you sat in the last row,  
your glasses catching the fluorescent light and time,  
your hairband keeping time with your movements
You were a tomboy, you said,  
but to me, you were softer than the world allowed.

A quiet building, an empty hallway,  
fries shared between words that meant everything and nothing
The pull of something unspoken  
led us up the stairs, past the classrooms where fans hummed  
to a moment that rewrote us.  

Afterward, we laughed in daylight,  
separate yet tangled,  
our conversations shifting between equations and longing.  
You had friends; I had you in the quiet.  
And then time carried us away,  
first to different cities, then to different lives.  

You reappeared in pixels and midnight messages,  
a voice from the past steadying me in my new world
But distance is a slow tide,  
pulling even the strongest memories apart
I spoke too much, stupidly shared too much, or maybe just enough,  
and you drifted again,  
this time with no promise of return.  

Now, I hold you in flashes
the rain, the fries, the hush of a stairwell,  
the echo of a name I can no longer address.

A girl with a crush
every pure thought in her heart
she buries deep
until she misses
the warmth of spring
the romance in the summer
and the fall season comes
only to realize that love is gone
the days
when she didn't have the courage
to say
the words
bloom in regret
black blue grenade
shrapnel wound
seems an eternity
when she carefully peels back memories
wrapped so tightly in time
she starts to see
a scintilla
pink and odd
a clutch of stars
dark red and blinking
every bit as pellucid
as the teardrop coalesced
in her eyes.

The bracing raindrops
dripping
onto the wooden trellis
then hitting the stone table
i happened to have just woke up
when dusk is brewing quietly
outside the windowpanes
vestigial sleepiness dissipating
just as gradually
the fluorescent light that's turned on
stings my sense of taste for a second
and i hear the sounds of a busy kitchen
the summer heat is gone for now
i kept myself occupied all afternoon
checking and reading on my phone
if time could stand still
I'd actually like it to stay
like this
people are in a smooth
peaceful mood
it seems
like they were years ago
it also seems perhaps
it will happen again
like years from now.