my hours grow by the sea
fetal harvests, debris of the shore.
they bear me nothing,
i do not want them anymore.

plucked from the root,
the moon purrs and the waves coil

necks stretched, bobbing
they grow longer and longer.
they do not know how to swim.
paperweight of thought floats,

sanguine languor
languid stings

unravel me to the swell of the moonlight.

from the threads of my lashes i weave my night, perhaps a fishnet bounding the legs. perhaps a veil hindering the breath. perhaps a blanket smothering the dream.

no.

not heavy enough.

there is more of me to spare, the air is ripe and our tears are young. gut my love on a daily. harvest my rest on a nightly. dissemble my consciousness perpetually.  

no.

not rough enough.

i am reconstructed as the sun slithers in, a dewy, melted apology filling in space between the limbs. what i lose in mass i replace in volume. grow loudly. this kind of volume.

no.

not sly enough.

one day i will be small enough that i can be made into nothing, and nothing can be made of me.

i cannot merely float.

the oceans bob,
close in: volatile embraces, limpid spoons of
breaths forced back into the throat, a frantic crumple of
cloth over the nose and the mouth. forged slumber.
i am on a sleepy seesaw.

the tides puppeteer,
enter: rough strokes, blistering strings of
insides tossed out of reach, a damp slither of
fingers into the skin and the bones. artificial fluidity.
i am on a reluctant voyage.

it’s hard to decide if i want to beach or set sail.

then again it’s not my choice but the sea’s,
then again it’s not the sea’s choice but the moon’s
then again it’s not the moons choice but

i don’t know how big the infinity is.

eventide i drift faced up.

borne me to the edge of the waters
beyond the earth where it’s senseless of ponder
where could you be, i’d wonder.
i cannot fold the thoughts of you into quarters.

a moonless night
my mind rowing through crippled legs of time
perhaps seasick by the slight;
i’d hurl a ripple of rhyme.

the oar of my chest throbs out of song,
the shape of this planet is far too round.
as i cease to wander i came to found
that you hold me adrift all along.

the horizon remains out of reach
contentment sails as we come across a beach.
as long as i may lie upon you, unfolded, in the sand
bit by bit i no longer fear the land.

a driftwood into the sea
we balance barely with your lanky limbs
and my flailing heartbeat.

wavering hours and quavering bowers
within me was the naivety of an embryo
squandering mass and volume,
upon your chest i was savoring ours.

the land i am from,
how i wish to preserve it in such a matter that
i could keep the dehydrated oceans from
enclosing my crisp pigmented limbs.

the light cannot be reflected from wings in the dark.

hang up your coat by the door, you say.
pin up the membranes of your past under the glass.

radiate upon me as hues pump through my vessels, old and new.
as i seek for the land i am from, a land with you.

it's a bit past midnight, i feel myself as an infant Moses, bobbing up and down on the Nile. there are no fresh cries nor an Egyptian princess to hold me to her chest, just smothered breaths within the bedsheets and a giant stream gradually converging around me.

You had fallen asleep. I guess so. Your breathing is smooth, if I could touch your breath, if I could touch the nightfall outside, the sensation would be the same. I no longer throw a fit for not receiving attention. I used to, but you had said, "Don't tell me that humans should treat each other equally. That's Utopic." At that time I told you to cease talking to me for two days. However the same afternoon you texted me your thoughts after reading 1Q84 (you emphasize you finished it in a week, twice the speed of me), and I accidentally forgave you. I still loathe those words, yet I grudgingly let it influence me.

"Am I kidding? I hate you," I say, pushing you off my bed and onto the ground. You sleep like a corpse. The bugs outside cease colliding into the window after the lights are off, remaining the bumptiously round moon. I imagine myself as Aomame, stepping into an alternate universe with two moons. I squint my eyes, maybe I'll see two that way. The orbed moon becomes clearer. I might be too near-sighted.

"You're too stupid. You have to space out to see two moons." Your voice comes from the ground. I pretend not to hear you but I try anyway. I really do see two moons.

You spend that night at my place, using up one-fourth of my handmade soap. I cut you a piece of frozen cheesecake, said: "The fool saved you." You say nothing. You have the fork in your mouth, staring at the bugs outside persistently slamming their bodies against the window. Your eyes are a cold desert after wind, clashing with mine, a murky swamp. "Tell me things about you," you finally say. I rub my eyes for a bit.

"A friend recently got a cat and specially brought it over for me to play with. That was the day I discovered I've been allergic to cats. The same night, however, a stray barged into my house and coiled up in my stomach. I couldn't see him clearly, but I hoped he was a tabby. Hoped that he had almond-shaped eyes. He was quite vain, didn't like me much. I met up with the same friend after a while and noticed quite a few fresh scratches up her arm. 'I heard that's just how it is when you have a cat," her helpless smile was peculiarly fitting against her flushed cheeks. I also subconsciously looked down at my own arms. There were scratches too. I quickly pulled down my sleeves, for I didn't know how to introduce a cat that even I couldn't see with clarity. 'But I really love it, that's why I'm fine with it scratching me all it wants,' the friend proceeded. The scratches throbbing under my sleeves suddenly came in contact with the scruffy material, reminding me that, me too, I also love my cat. Bliss flowed obnoxiously out of the friend. I abruptly became bored of her and made up an excuse to lay in bed for the remains of the afternoon.

It was very hot, even with the windows open. So I just lay there wearing nothing. That was the first time I witnessed the cat without question. Witnessed his claws pierced crudely through my translucent stomach, so much that my stomach also flushed red. I remembered my friend's happy flushed cheeks. Perhaps my body was fading out, for I could even witness the shape of his ears within my guts. They were big ears. He might be just like me, good at listening. I let him penetrate me. When I next regained consciousness, I could finally see what he looked like, because my guts had long been hollowed. Seconds before fear took over, I glared at him hard.

He was a grimy cat, indescribable in pattern, with a pair of murky eyes. It was as if he was laughing at me. 'You're so ugly! You're so ugly!' I cried, my own eyes shifting from murk to ripple. 'You just want my body.' I tried stuffing my scattered organs back into my open stomach. The cat stops in his tracks upon hearing this. 'Not just your body.' He leaves without a care.

From then on, my stomach always seemed eerily hollow. My organs remained but he did not. Yet the scratches on my arms began fading. I had the friend never bring her cat over, nor speak to me about such things."

grab me by the scruff of the neck and retrieve me from the gale outside.

the glow of the night clenches the window panes and wets the curtains,
the membranes of dusk and dawn blurred like your shadow and you.

i was born to you with my eyes shut and ears closed,
ensconced to your chest it did no harm.

the glands in my mouth dissolved the membrane and resolved the remembrance.

in the womb, i was bobbing up and down.

i washed up upon your shore,
amniotic waters rushing out of the closed canals of my downturned ears.

handed you my wee sailor cap and on your head it perfectly perched.

smear me with tallow

steer me through wallow


there is no anchor other than you

my body is a pond

pondering body of



a pastime of skipping stones

rippling raphes

limping lips

collapsing clavicles



pop a lilac on my iliac crest.



how many hops can you make before sinking in my ****?

how many stones can I take before drinking from your stash?



[Stone skipping (or stone skimming) is the art of throwing a flat stone across water in such a way (usually Sidearm) that it bounces off the surface, preferably many times. The objective of the game is to see how many times a stone can bounce before sinking.]

*

my wellspring is a floodplain floodplain floodplain floodpain.

it’s almost as if i can see through you at times, it seems,
your translucent, slender torso leaning on a rim
with a **** of your head, you look at me through the eye of

a dripping jungle, a tropical storm gargling
a homely beating, a nostalgic scene brewing
a solitary pension, a forlorn siren searing


“it is i,” you say as we pass by the lips


yet it’s almost as if i can see through you no more, it seems,
your opaque, flimsy torso bending on a rim
with a sleight of my teeth, you look at me through the eye of
the shreds of a battered bond; nothing more.

chirrup,

youth of the spring,

come sensitive pores and

sensible glands and senseless fun,

cheerup.

If you are lying on the railways, eyes shut and coiled as a newborn feline, life itself is flimsy as the wing of a moth, yet your eyelids assure oblivion to all visible threat.

Perhaps the fool by the rails who gleefully mimics the traffic patrol will tug on your sleeve with the curiosity of a boy in the zoo, or perhaps he will simply pass water on you. You’ve seen him **** by the roads twice. Once he received a kick on his glaring bottom by the patrol.

Eventually, he takes a triumphant leak on your body. Brisk as a sleight, your despair is now fury. It quenches your parched determination. You pull up your frame (ever since your decision to be oblivious to pain, you forbid us from stating you possess a body, how petty could you be), connecting your drenched, frictionless fists onto the fool’s face. His head drops to the side while you throw in a few more damp punches.

They are catching up with you.

You do not know where to go, possessing nothing but a few noisy coins. You ****** yourself towards the quotidian route that will never grow in familiarity, with the unsteady pattering feet of a wounded animal caught in pursuit. You know of nowhere to hide, there is no escape of capture,

especially when you are reeking of sun-baked *****.

You abruptly recall your reasons for lying on the rails, yet what comes before impulse is the tedious task of stacking nerve. Your former wounds beat in harmonious agony with the new, chanting foreign grimaces. You understand this is why you create wounds, though you claim to be ignorant of pain. Physical pain is perhaps, to you, the most forgiving of all pain. You enter a diner, naive of opening hours, and order a bowl of sushi rice with sashimi.

restless summers swimming in lemonade
my shiny janes and your
mud sloshed loafers
swayed like the gulls of our
crayoned fence of a sky

daisies you would crown me
with rings of weeds i'd wed you
lightning bugs stain my lashes like my
fluorescent tears you brush away
dewdrops on my rose embroidered cheeks

i continue building forts armed with flashlights
with puppets of shade that guard me till morn
again i am locked within my tower feeling your
weight of shining armor as you take my locks as your stairway
but the night fades within you

i let down my hair
but you are not there

i wanted to be a princess
curly and pretty and tight-waisted
crying over braces.

But you handed me some trousers
tore away my ribbons

"we ain't got no shillins for straight teeth

stripped from my lashes.
they hurt.       those snowflakes
evaporated twinkles muddled within
his aborted adoration
nevertheless determined to sail his seven seas.

if only my limbs were like marble
so fine against his brow.

suppose I wish to harvest my heart for him
tend it well, pluck its weeds
have visions of him having it
pillowed, tucked underneath
in slumber next to his.

silly of me to
think he wouldn't let it
friend with cobwebs and dust hares.

i never meant to weave you together
i feel nothing as my cloud sags wet
below my tree of sweets and good things i am infatuated
violets with snapping jaws
fluttering tree houses and good-looking deaths
i awaken only as my cloud brushes past my head
mesmerizing me with blazed droplets
speak to me, my violet
do not abandon me in this worldly solitude
my tree house crashes with satisfaction
my deaths leave me with unpainted termination
i pretend to drown
when will the sun of my mind arise from the west
returning me my popped corn shine
leaking out from my half transparent cheeks?