That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
The urge to deprive yourself of food because you don't deserve it.
The tightness in your neck and spine, unable to loosen.
That jitteriness in your veins that won't dissipate.
The disassociation between your eyes and brain, as if they're underwater.
The longing for an unnatural, impractical early death out of exhaustion.
That searing headache wrapped around the circumference of your skull.
The simultaneous hollowness and nausea in your throat and below where your ears meet your jaw.

Sometimes, I’ll fall asleep on my couch,
while my bed sits a couple feet away.
It reminds me of the sleepovers I had,
of the holidays where the house was filled,
of movie nights and drunken collapses,
of the Proustian disorientation in misplacement.
I’ll sleep next to my ashtray of Marlboros,
my dropped keys, and haphazardly placed gloss,
my leftover coffee and capped waxy candles.
I grow a fondness and rapport with my mess,
a familiarity I sought with myself for ages.
Make yourself at home, I’ll say.
Stay a while.

I have this theory,
of spirituality,
that it is what we decide
it is.

I decide to
accept what I believe
and what I love,
what I've seen.
And then,
I begin to base my
previous understanding to my
current experience.
I have discovered that
God and hate
never collide;
they are
opposites.
And, I have learned to be,
and understand,
that my God
wants nothing but
the best
for me.

I found him in the dim-lighting of a meadow.
His skin, his breath, his kisses
were dreams and berries to me.
Poisonous and plucked from nature's own *****,
I crushed him between my teeth,
felt his sugary rush in my mouth,
and spat him out for fear that his essence was dangerous.
Oh, poisonous berries, strip me of life,
place me in the deepest slumber,
so that I may continue to dream of this infidelity forever.

Red is the color
of the blush on my cheeks.

Orange is the hue
of the time of day that we part.

Yellow is the sun
that runs across your skin.

Green is the pigment
of your eyes in the light.

Blue is the vastness
of the sky that we watch.

Purple is the mark
you leave on my neck.

And there it is.
I warned you.
The gap between us
Is a chasm.

There we go
Falling into
The void
I told you about.

Here we are,
Standing amongst
The strangers
We talked about.

There you go,
Trying to sustain
A life,
Which is dead.

Here I go,
Walking away
To find something
In motion.

There we went,
The life we had,
The ground beneath,
Crumbled.

when you are
stumbling
constantly,
without break,
and you
look back,

you get
to see
all
the damage
you have
done.

when you
are
running,
you don't
notice
the scars

that you
have
left,
until
you turn
around.

In the blink of an eye,
our life is gone.
We live the days,
pretending they don't run out.

Death promises us one thing.
It is a final justice.
We beg, and we ask,
and in the end, it delivers.

Fair or not fair,
there's equality in death.
To postpone or meet halfway,
the grave is patient.

I could live multiple lives
And make up for all the sins
I'd ever committed,

But in none of them,
Will I ever
Deserve you.

I want to scream,
"What have I done?"
But I know,
Deep down,
It needed to happen.

But ****,
I knew not to get involved,
But I wanted it,
You brought me sleep,
And I didn't want to leave.

And now that I've woken
Up from my dream,
I know
That I cannot disguise
that I am awake.

I have dreams about my father.
From my point of view,
the dream picks up in the middle.
I never see him when he returns,
only after I’ve let him back in.
We’re laughing and hugging.
These are my nightmares.
And last night, I had a dream about you.
We were walking a trail barefoot,
clinging on to each other for balance.
I woke up with that sick pit in my stomach,
as I always do with the others.
There was a time when I feared losing you.
Now, my subconscious is left fearing you,
hoping to God you’ll never come back
and that I’ll never be weak enough to let you return.

I guess you're right,
what should I expect from you?
The world is cold,
nothing but a pending tomb.

I guess I just
thought after all we'd dreamed,
watching me grow
might have been a priority.

I guess I expected
fatherhood would have come
before humanity,
but I guess I'm wrong.

I guess I'm flawed
for thinking you owe me anything.
I assumed that after four tries,
you might hold some accountability.

Oh, love,
You are my
Favorite thing.
The skin beneath
Your eyes
Is as soft as your
Lips that press
against mine.

Your fingers,
That wrap around mine,
That pull my hair,
That touch my cheeks,
Are as lovely as
The topography
Of your arms,
So precisely structured.

Your eyes,
Which look right into mine,
Down to my lips,
And over my figure,
Are as mesmerizing
As the way your mouth moves
When you laugh
And speak the unknown.

Oh, love,
Your spirit is
My favorite thing.
Your laughter is
A manifestation,
An oral representation,
Of how beautiful you are
Without even being here.

Feminism is
Not the absence of men,
But the abundance
Of women.

Feminism is
Not narcissism,
But self-love
And activism.

Feminism is
Not just political,
It is social
And critical.

Feminism is
Acknowledgement
For all the women
Lacking enfranchisement.

Feminism is
More than equality;
It's a future mindset
For women forthcoming.

You ask of me
The one thing
I cannot give.

I cannot give
You the rest
Of my life.

Moments
cannot dictate
Years of growing.

I must live
and learn
On my own.

My mom and I
sat talking at a coffee shop
for six hours.
We'd never gotten along
so well.
We discussed all the good things,
marriage, babies, degrees.
We said this in a world of
divorce, death, debt.
I said,
I wonder what awful thing
will happen next.

i write of sad things,
lust, or mishappenings,
but there is life for me,
and it makes me happy.

i did not know you would say "i love you" back.
i did not know that God was still with me.
i did not know that my family forgave me.
i did not know i could be so happy.

poetry comes easily
from my sadness,
for it is my remedy
amongst the madness.

but i am actually stable,
for i can finally breathe.
i am allowed to live
my life without apologies.

I always thought relationships ended with anger,
but you know they say the opposite of love is apathy.

Like the death you confront after your fall from religion,
there is no fear, nostalgia, or sadness - just a void.

To not be thought of is to be dead.

I'll become like that pesty buzzing in your ear
that reminds you every now and then there's a fly in your house.

I'll ask if you remember those times together,
and you'll look past me like a foreign stranger asking directions.

You won't even need to say goodbye because you said it a hundred times to yourself.
When you finally say it me, you'll be hanging up the phone, but I'll be crumbling under all the weight of what was left to be said.

I must admit that
I try to ignore
Any urge
To look over at you.

I resist looking up
When you say something,
Or acknowledging
That you have thoughts at all.

I pretend that you
Don't exist
And never existed
In my territory.

Because looking at you,
And remembering how close
We lay at one point,
Haunts me.

It tugs my heart,
It slaps my face,
It wakes me up,
But I ignore the urge.

And suddenly, as if waking from a child's dream,
I am thrown into reality,
not awoken softly by my mother's warmth
but startled and bewildered to find her not there.
I exit the hazy surrealness of midnight rendezvous,
and the disillusionment snakes its way around my heart.
As if struggling to find my breath or finding myself alone,
I am starkly confronted yet again with my naiveté.
I am transformed into that little girl who trusted so easily,
and now, it is not just disappointment but also shame
that, like a vapor, evades every corner of my being.
To have believed in a dream and my own competence,
I am still that foolish little girl who never learned.
Perhaps, the worst part of gullibility is the knowledge
that the fool and the fooled will always be you.

You looked right past me,
Actually, you didn't look at me at all--
Not in my direction
And not in my eyes.

I had to write a poem,
Because you couldn't bear
To hear my voice
Or watch me say it.

I disappointed you,
And I am so sorry.
I wish that you had at least
Let me apologize.

Like soap, your poetry cleanses my soul.
On paper, I'm filthy from your touch,
and your honey is sticky on my fingers.
But, your words and your laugh are a spring
that douses me in bubbles and gold.
I sip from your tears and sweat,
and youth revitalizes my skin and bones.
You are an oil that enriches
and cannot be rinsed away with water.
You are the dirt that gets under by fingernails
and houses the seeds of a hundred flowers.

I'm the best thing for you?
Well, so is medicine,
But the tastes makes you
Spit it out.

Don't you claim such things,
And then spit me out.
Don't speak with your eyes closed,
And cry with your hands ******.

I am your medicine.
I heal, I fight for you,
But my existence is nothing
If I'm refused.

Night comes for us all.
We watch as color and saturation leak from the world
until just a half sphere peaks in the horizon.
When the sky touches down and up rises the moon,
it is only its reflective glow that we have to light our walks.

Night comes for us all.
Whereas stimuli and light override my senses,
the coolness and silence of night dampens them,
and with it, my thoughts race.
As my body relaxes against cool sheets,
my mind is buzzing,
and my heart tiptoes from one place to another.

Night comes for us all.
United but separate, our experiences are the same.
We look at the same moon and spy the same stars.
We linger on the same wishes,
and in the anonymity that darkness grants,
we dream and ponder and hope
that something hears us, sees us.
And in that dark anonymity of night,
that subtle weight we constantly carry grows,
and we are anchored to the Earth’s core.

Night comes for us all.
We wait for it to pass,
yet every day, we welcome it gladly
for rest or fresh eyes.
It is a gift and a gurney,
a calm and a casket.
Night is what we make it,
and night is what we need it to be.

Outline my body with your hand.
Do it again.
What do you feel?

Do you feel my heart beating, the one that's been broken more than once?
Do you feel the stitches in my skin where my happiness and weight fluctuate?
Do you feel the bones and joints that have held me together for years?
Do you feel the skin that you take for granted?

Outline my body with your eyes.
Try again.
What do you see?

Do you see the creases around my eyes from laughter?
Do you see the places I grip because I hate them?
Do you see the discoloration in my skin from working beneath the sky?
Do you see my breath move my body, keeping me alive?

Outline my body.
Commit it to memory.
What do you think?

Poetic canvas,
Embarrassed
About my newfound love.

I think about you
Every afternoon
Until I close my eyes to sleep.

I cringe at others,
But with each other,
Our infatuation doesn't seem obsessive.

Your lips are mine.
You change my mind
When your hands are hard to remove.

Brown eyes,
Don't look so surprised,
When I kiss you like we've been apart.

Laughter is free.
I'm allowed to be
Whomever I **** well choose.

Not animalistic,
Just passionate,
Without crossing prepositioned morality.

I love you,
The same as you--
A shame we didn't have a choice.

I always wanted more for myself,
wanted to be memorable,
but now I barely remember most of my life.
Sometimes, I consider who I am,
study my reflection hard in the mirror
contemplate whether it's really me
and then ask if this is who I want to be.
What a responsibility it is
to carry this human flesh to the end
and to act in favor of this restless, desirous mind
for the entirety of a life.
Most of the time, I hardly register my life and world around me
and thus behave mindlessly,
and now I'm realizing that time is more than a concept
and that age will one day take me by the throat.
I've tried so hard to figure myself out,
but I suppose I should spend less time in my mind
and more time taking up space in this body.

I run my hands
through the grass,
feeling it's genuity,

Knowing the dirt
is underneath my nails
and bugs crawl along.

I feel it
because I want to feel real,
and real things feel.

They feel pain,
they feel pleasure,
and they feel touch.

I just wanted
to remind myself
that I am real,

And I can feel,
I can touch,
and I can be.

Replace me,
I beg of you;
Believe that someone better
Will come along.

You'll replace me,
I promise you;
My image wasn't meant
To stain your eyes.

I'll be replaced,
If not by you,
Then by force
By someone who loves you.

I am watching us
Fall apart,
And there is nothing
I can do.

I am watching us
Weaken,
And I am clueless
About what to do.

I am watching you
Distance
Yourself from me.
What can I do?

I am watching us
Fall,
Like an empire,
Into ruins.

I love you.
I do not love you back,
I just love you,
with or without
your permission.

Whether you love me too
is besides the point.

I wish my love
was reciprocated,
but whether it is or not
does not change
that I love you.

You ask
Why I treat
You like
A stranger.

It is because
Your voice
Doesn't sound
Like it did.

Your features
And mouth
Don't glide
Like they did.

You look
Different,
Worn out,
Strange.

I have never
Been met
With such an
Empty expression,

And I simply
Do not
Recognize
You.

I wish I could break out of this
Thing.
This thing that keeps me from
Breathing,
Writing,
Living.
I want to feel that thing again.
That thing that reminds you you're
Living,
Breathing,
Being,
That you are a
Living,
Breathing,
Being.

Relax, relax,
You will be okay—
Maybe not us—
But it has to be this way.

Do not forget who you are
Just because I leave.
Do not think that losing me
Erases your identity.

Others will not pale
In comparison.
This is how life works.
You’ll fall in love again.

Right now, yes, it hurts,
But it won’t last for long.
Though I leave you now,
Life moves on.

Yes, I know you loved me,
But I am also aware
That a relationship includes
More than just a pair

Of people who are compatible.
Once a spark is gone,
Interests can’t sustain
A relationship for long.

Please, just breathe,
Simply open your eyes—
Can’t you feel it too?
How are you surprised?

The talks we have
And the time we share
Are not nearly as long.
You didn’t even care

To ask me how I was
Or see if we were good…
You just simply never asked,
And I really thought you would.

But, time changes people,
And that’s why we’re here.
Despite all this time,
It’s time that you hear

The simple, disappointing truth
That we both failed.
Putting each other on a pedestal
Results only in despair.

So, yes, I take some fault,
And you should too.
There is nothing to gain
By denying our own issues.

Look forward to the future
And the people you will meet.
Understand, we had our time,
But it’s time you let your feet

Move you in another direction—
There’s nothing wrong with that!
Learn, understand,
But do not dwell on the past.

So, my dear, it’s the end of an era,
But dry up your tears.
We have no room for hurt
Or loathing here.

I truly wish you good luck,
Blessings and prosperity.
And I leave you with that,
Resulting in the end of things.

I had so thoroughly studied one rose,
had not noticed there were others.
All the same but all different.

The petals of my own, even,
looked different from other angles,
yet it is the same rose.

I had not picked it yet,
realized I didn't need to,
for I was in a garden.

I noticed the image was not my only desire,
but the smell also,
so I decided to bottle it up.

Carrying with me,
lingering with me on my clothes,
not needing to never leave My Rose.

I missed him.
His glowing presence
And warm nature
Brought back the color
Of the ground.
He brought me
Back to life
After a season
Of death.
His existence
Was clouded by worries,
But he came back
Today.

All of my thoughts had been in secret.
For time and time again,
I let my emotions go unsaid.

I did not want you to collapse,
And no matter how hard I tried,
I did exactly what I didn't want to do.

I broke your heart,
Actually, I shattered it.
I just wanted to lay it down.

However, I guess I squeezed
Too tightly
Before I let it go.

I do not want your respect,
Nor do I care for sympathy,
For at this point in time,
All I can muster is apathy.

I do not care if you stand with me,
For all I need is three.
A couple makes an impact,
But a crowd changes history.

I do not want your mockery
Of the truth, of experience, of pride.
I do not care about your status quo
Or what social ladder you had to climb.

So, the black you wear and the words you recite
Are merely the words of someone else,
So though you may think you are standing,
You have no feelings to be felt.

This fight is simply not yours to win,
For light reveals the Truth,
And according to every moral telling,
The bad guys always lose.

I do not want your signs or pins,
For phrases surely die.
Because honestly, we need climbers,
And the only way up is time.

I do not want your petty posts
Filled with rehearsal and practiced lines.
If you really wanted to make an impact,
Stop creating a shadow and donate your light.

I do not want your constant questioning,
For it sounds as though she’s to blame—
Your investigation compares to abuse.
Would you be more understanding if men and women were ranked the same?

I do not want your selfish pity.
I cringe when I hear your apologies.
I am not looking for someone to listen;
I am searching for a stage to speak.

I do not want your worried guilt.
I do not care that you’ve changed,
For penitence is simply up to you,
But right now, you’re saving your name.

I do not want to be your reassurance.
Forgiveness is merely for me.
Though we have been taught by the same book,
Different from yours, my love is free.

I do not want you stopping our progress,
So, out of respect, move out of our way.
Stop opening your mouth and wasting your breath;
There’s something we want to say.

We want equality and acknowledgement too.
We want a changed world and open minds.
We want to finally remove the glass ceiling.
I want a cause for which I can die.

Sometimes, I think about the envelopes under the bathroom sink
that you thoughtfully put away, to make your ends meet.
I think of the little girl who dug them out,
proudly helping her father to buy another handle.

Sometimes, I think of the papers inside that Nike shoebox,
tucked carefully under your side of the bed, out of sight.
I think of my small self climbing underneath to sift
and finding its stock cut in two at the week's end.

Sometimes, I think of that check that I got for an award
and how you allowed me to keep it, despite your circumstances.
I think of younger you, as if she were myself,
who was suffocating under the weight of a thousand worlds.

Do the trees love the wind,
Or do they hate it
Because it forces them to move?

Do they like the rain,
Or do they hate it
Because it forces them to eat?

Or, do they really love it?
Have they been waiting to dance?
Have they been wanting to drink?

Do they hate their lives
Because all they do is watch?
Or, do they not care
Because they've known nothing else?