From the moment I met her, I knew
she was more than the discreet wind she poses to be.
She was a storm brewing, sleeping it off
until the next rainy day arrives.

My skin tingles whenever she’s around
and my whole body screams,
“Run away! Run away!”
but I knew too well, I couldn’t be saved.

I was already in too deep,
caught up in the eye of the storm.
Steady for safety,
though loving her is never safe.

She rains on asphalt roads
and shoots electricity down people’s spines.
She kisses earthquakes awake
and she blows roofs off of hearts.
She breaks walls down with her breaths.
And she scares me.

My whole body screams
“Run away! Run away!”
but my mind is off wandering,
writing poems and manifestos
about apologetic winds and loving every storm—
and living through all that.

I used to drink a lot in the afternoons
when my breathing was both too shallow and too deep,
when the house was empty and my radio was breaking
and the song kept etching itself onto my skin,
when I’m alone and lonely and filled with ennui
and I’m nothing but broken strings
that pricked my love when she tried to strum me,
when I’m wishing for something
a little less than sleep but more than death
and I’m waiting for my blood
to be as hot as the brandy caressing my throat.

You sleep too much because you want to cry less
As if your bed could absorb the sadness from your skin
Despite waking up with tears tracing your cheeks
And frost sealing your bones regardless of your twenty quilts
You’re hopelessly naïve if you think sleep can save you,
Thaw you, end the winter swirling in the pit of your stomach
You are only making everything worse for yourself
You need to get up and start moving your gears
No matter how much it hurts, no matter how much it aches
Soon all the rust and frost will fall away and melt
And you can move again as much as you may wish
Dance to the beat of life itself,
Sing the songs you’ve buried inside you
You are not an old machine fathers try to fix but eventually give up on
You are human, you are alive and you are on your best when living

Is that really all I am?
A passing thought,
a memory,
preserved so well,
you needn’t seek any proof
that I am still around?
Do you not need me around?
Do you not want me at all?
When strings are being pulled taut
and you can barely even breathe—
When the night is all you feel and
your palms are cold and dry
and you say you need me alive—
Do you need me alive?
Or is the memory of me
enough
for
you?

I was named after my mother because she hoped
that I could fill the hole inside my father’s chest,
make him smile the way she used to,
and make him feel alive again,
after leaving him alone and fragile.

My mother loved my father enough to leave,
even when she didn’t want to–
especially when he asked her not to.

She said, she said,
“I’ll never be the song that heals and rouses you
from the sadness that has taken root
in the space between your lungs.
I can never be, I will never be the one.”

My father loved enough to keep her still
as he painted her image in his mind one last time
–loved enough to shake the thousand chips of paint,
dried up from years of waiting for her return.

But father knew, as the last wind blew
and tore the last traces of mother away,
that there was never a hole to fill,
just a hand to hold when it’s getting cold
and tiny fingers to clasp as life goes fast
towards the sweet, sweet exit lane.

Mother was always going to leave,
in every lifetime we would re-take and re-live,
but father was never going to be alone.

you're the sweater that got buried during hotter days
under textbooks and novels and journals,
under things i tried to **** your memory with
you're my oldest sweater, i never threw you out
come september, i will long for you again

I wonder why you're not used to me yet.
It's not like I ever really change, I merely evolve--get worse , like most catastrophes.
Remember that time you joked about comparing me and the Cold War?
That never really left my mind. Not that it tainted anything worth keeping clean.
I am a war. That's something you got right. But I am not a war against anyone else.
I am a war I wage against myself.
A weak tornado, a broken tsunami, a civil war of sorts that none will ever win.
No one will ever win. But I will always lose.
It is a fate I have come to accept in the past few years I've had to deal with broken bones and torn tendons.
None of these is really new.
I wonder why I'm not used to it yet.