I’m a deep sleeper, like sleep-through-
three-alarm-clocks deep,
but as soon as u-hit-me-up,
I’m here and ready to go,
dreams cracking like brittle eggshells,
Snap & I’m awake,
pixels sifting me through a screen,
ghosting me into the flow-of-a-glow,
of what? I don’t know.
Blurry muscle massaged messages,
folding my body into u.
Text me awake & i rise like
auto-corrected prayer,
like the night forgot to be lonely,
to u.
where do u go when you dream?
Snap & i’m gone,
chasing a buzzy buzzed flash,
just a ping of wssp
in the bed we used to share,
in the reply where sleep
pulls me under again.

*** is summer lightning,
not a moment of release,
but escape into earth.
Let me bury my thoughts
in your movements,
awkward/copied until I find the pattern.
Practice makes perfect,
and I am the starving artist,
forgetting self when synced,
flesh memory taking over-
Until I’m thrown back,
watching murmurs fall from the lips
of my lover.
Waiting for you
to say the words
that I can’t say,
and repeat them back
to you.

Silent coyote, and the sky snaps- everything changes,  
the air slithers like a prayer unspoken,  
and you call it devil’s camp of ensnarement,  
but what is a serpent but the muscle memory of gods we’ve forgotten?  
It’s just a fraction, a fissure,  
blowing up a single syllable, queering the sound,  
singling out the shimmer in us  
that refuses to be erased.
A child wonders how human it is  
to be kind when kindness tastes like venom,  
the kind that burns slow, laced with quiet revolutions.  
The opposite of human-kind is me-in-hell,  
but what is hell but the tongue of my sisters,  
licking salt from the wounds we’ve carried?  
Still, I rise-
the smoke from this scorched earth sings my name,  
still, I fight-  
the fists we’ve forgotten to unclench hum under the skin,  
still, I glow-
the light leaking from the cracks they tried to sew shut.
Justice  
Our history should define the stars we carve into the sky,  
not chain them in the iron of yesterday’s grief.  
Fear is a bruise we press into until it blooms,  
but even bruises fade,  
even men remember the softness of their beginnings.

I salted the *** until it screamed,  
Angel hair writhing into
jellyfish tangles, threads of
sea anemone twisting kitchens
into aquamarine mausoleums,
inverted zoology splashes
against the stovetop.  
Spine cracks, brittle coral peeled,
Shedding like skin I never wore,
Bubbles blur, steam whispers
I never needed it anyway,  
wet dreams boiling over
in the saltwater womb.
Weight of bone shrugged off,
the burden of standing-
became something soft,
Wax-melt back, fluid as water,
I dive deep-
Monkey crawling back to sea,
Beneath the waves
descent into salt and fire,
madness seasoning the soup.
inky kisses like forgotten sins,
brushing against soft lights lost in the deep,
Bone-trade freedom,
Wave-crash lullaby,
Saltwater womb rebirth-
Spine-less, floating, free,
another dream lost in the soup of the sea.

U’ve painted urself onto my walls,
I cry most nights when ur not here
and i fall apart, again and again,
where your shadow used to finger.
But I won’t tell u
I hate myself for loving u like this
for loving you enough to fill the spaces you’ll never touch.
U only love me as habit
But I adore u with the madness of an open wound
obsession carving its name in every breath.
i wear your indifference like a second skin.
U should break up with me
you should take this ache and cut it loose,
break the tether.
tear me from this unraveling,  
i love you too much, and it burns-
the way you never reach back with the same.
I watch u drive past my apt on ur way home and
pray to a god that doesn’t exist
or maybe just the silence
that u’ll surprise me and stop by
But u never do
I should leave
I don’t
I can’t
I won’t
I’m scared to go
the thought of leaving swallows me whole.
so i stay.
i stay because i don’t know how to move.
because i’m too afraid of what I broke to fill you.

I’ve built my life in towers-
towers in breath- unlearned bricks,
faith staggered sideways,
and the sky: fingernail-thin,
bends, an unspoken groan.

all my gods are earthquakes-
their voices breaking at the root,
asking submission to the law
of gravity, or grace, or grief,
but never to the language
I was born to sing.

I unravel our silence backwards,
into vowels that wilt
before we speak them.

Into exile, skin sewn to the horizon’s rim,
perhaps there are no hands left to reach,
only echoes dressed as scaffoldings,
collapsing slow as a prayer unanswered.

And now I wander,  
a stranger in a foreign land,  
searching for pieces of a tower  
that was never meant to stand.

I was wondering of a space-
sepia filled room
away from this city.
Moored to heavenly bodies,
carried along by mobile
souls unfeeling,
keyboards disassembled.
        For all this love ur dealing
        I was never enough-
Caught between the unseen touch
of after-dark calls in oceans-
apart static, desperate
in dials of denial,
        He’s a siren,
Pulling me over the wake.
        spin me,
slipping through your fingers
like the perfect pearl.
        U say u want me?
slumping in the struggle
of a beached whale
sluggishly pushing sand
over belly,
        not enough
to overcome new weight,
relationship weight.
        Do u love me?
or just the familiar space,
and a lazy beached human
dealing with ****.

Welcome to Brat Hell, darling-  
where the cats don’t walk; they strut,  
and we? We sip poison from designer skulls,  
one hand flipping the bird, the other  
dragging someone’s ex through the dirt.  

This grass? toxic, glowing like the last text you shouldn’t have sent.  
Sun’s burning, ink bleeding,  
and the only chase is outrunning the mess we made at 2 a.m.  
Dogs? Dead to us.  
Fetch this, honey.  

Here, we slow-blink our way into fights,  
flicking tails like switchblades,  
flexing in crop tops and poshmark docs,  
eyeliner sharp enough to cut loose ends  
and tongues sharper-
“oh, we’re not sisters, babe”
we’re the ones who eat boys for breakfast.  

Cats? They don’t just claim space;  
they take over, clawing the throne  
while lying flat on their backs-
smug, savage, waiting for someone to touch  
and get shredded.  

And us?  
We ride that chaos, babe.  
Flirting with the edge, daring it to push back.  
Because sometimes, rules are for the straight-  
and the only thing straight here is the dogma.

Purrs with a fistful of fury,  
winks like a loaded gun,  
and all that joy you’re afraid to admit  
tastes better when it’s burning.