In Đà Nẵng my friends cradled me like a child.
We screamed Taylor bridges,
tequila-toasted in bars until the lights blurred.
A single candle in the bathroom
danced warm sighs through open windows,
and all felt calm.

I grew new muscles balancing on a motorcycle,
sometimes gripping Harry’s jacket,
sometimes throwing my weight into the wind.
The city flared neon and gasoline in stuttered traffic,
but along the coast
he drove so fast the vibrations in my chest harmonized.
I pictured my bones becoming butterflies if I let go.

Last year I entered the year of the dragon on a futon,
swayed to sleep by a hundred chanting voices from the temple next door
while Bailey burned incense for her ancestors below.
I did not dream of dragons.
I only learned to breathe fire.

The year of the snake slid in with new bones and old habits.
It hissed that suffering could be scripture
until letters slithered free from the page
and coiled like cold jewelry around my wrist.

That was the shedding.
Salt water peeling old skin away,
songs shouted so loud they drowned the ache,
poems that did not start tragic,
nights when my body finally kept time with the moon.

Then at home the dog’s teeth found my hope.
A terrified mouth rerouted rivers
through my soft parts.
A jewel carved from my nose.
Six punctures blooming across my arms like altars.

In Vietnamese stories the snake waits beneath the water
to claim whoever dares the bank.
I wonder if I was chosen the moment
I opened my mouth in those bars,
when I leaned into the bike’s curve
as if danger could be a love song.

Now I lie awake at hours unnamed,
tracing scars that hiss answers back.
Vietnam hums inside me still,
the candle, the coast, the chorus of friends,
but I cannot tell if they are memories
or if the snake is still awake inside me.

They say snakes shed to grow,
but no one warns you how thin the new skin feels,
how everything burns against it,
how you mistake survival for prophecy.

I touch the scar and wonder
if I am still that girl clinging to the bike,
or if the snake has already swallowed me,
patient, sleepless,
feeding on my own venom.

held fast by consequences
the butterfly effect
made choices

free will
a way to go
to make a change

small can be beautiful
full of strength
a shared beginning

Fighting the flesh is one thing
you see the blow,
you feel the bruise,
you know where to strike back.

But fighting what’s unseen…
that is war without a face.
A silence that claws at you,
a shadow that never tires.

How do you punch
a thought that whispers?
How do you bind
a memory that bleeds in the dark?

No sword,
no shield,
just you
and the weight of what no one else can see.

And still,
you battle.
Every breath,
every step,
a victory invisible,
but no less real.

"where love is the petal of a rose"

i wondered where death took life and
life took death. life threw itself into  
the daylight forgot the petticoats of the day
and her ambers burnt to the greys of the sun.  
i couldn't melt before her or she before me
but she ran and i loved to run with her.
death was life without the ghosts of sorrow
and life was death in its impenetrable dreams,
i was swallowed up by the arrival of summer and
i died at her feet, i died
and i lived, i fell and i stood up and life was a
thirst to survive and death was the blue ghost
and the oblivious rose. death was something
i would know tomorrow and life something i
could feel today, not sorry and not sad,
not empty or harnessed, free in its freedoms
open hearted, rain-scented. i opened my eyes
to the stars and fell at their feet,
i opened my eyes and the poetry flew
away like a sky-hungry bird.

This world is mine for the taking, make me king
Eminem

they rehearsed invincible smiles till the sun went down
dressing up in their finest for the banquet
pageantry and glamour innovate the stones of hatred
we are having the hors d’oeuvres of great nations
unbound myths are complimenting the foliage
striving for a better world with clinked glasses
few faces are sweetened by glee, others by awkwardness
here come the tech giants, the cogniac
aren't we enjoying ourselves in the flattery of folly
earnestly the world is splitting itself
rendering incommensurable  realities
unstoppable

The great God number
Is unfolding
In both
Time
And space
Just in time
For the changing
Of the human race

The Cromlech
Of Le Menac
At Carnac
Curves
And points
To where
We have been
Away from the merging
And the future
Serene.

They said I drowned,
but the truth is softer:
I laid myself down like an offering.

I spit river into their open mouths.
I bit the lilies in half.

Silk turned cathedral.
I let my dress balloon with river light.

The earth had nowhere else for me.

If you pressed your ear to the surface,
you would have heard me humming.
They didn’t write that part.

When they pulled me out,
I still had violets in my teeth.
I still had the nerve to look alive.

If ruin was the crown they gave me,
I wore it dripping.
I wore it bright.

You think you know the story:
girl, river, grief.

But the water was warm that day.
The sky was a soft ache.
I was tired of carrying everyone else’s ending.

So I wrote my own.

Not drowned.
Not tragic.
Not accepting their ending.

Alone in the living room
Clean and bare legged,
I’m holding up my end of the bargain.

We always seem to meet this way,
In the quiet alien landscapes of familiar places after dark.
The day’s events have been embossed upon the air in double negative and committed to the house’s memory,
the subjects of future dreams for unknown sleepers.

What is it about the living room at night?
This place vibrates with implied movement, yesterday’s air has been spent and collected,
the new day’s fresh chaos has yet unsounded.
The quiet is so much deeper here in the in between.
It’s the quiet, then.
The quiet is what I’ve been seeking.

So I slow my breathing and wait.
We didn’t plan this, she and I. We never do.
If it is pitch dark early morning and I find myself waiting alone,
I know that I was called here,
That there is business to attend to.
She always shows eventually.

How have you been, she’ll ask.
I’ll take a moment to collect my thoughts.
It’s been far too long.