He doesn't burn photographs
He doesn't join therapy sessions
He doesn't smoke too many cigarettes
Nor he drown himself into alcohol
He scratches his wounds daily
And never let them heal
He doesn't try to get rid of the pain
Instead he let it grow on him
He waters the seed of sorrow with his tears
He feeds it with the manure of old memories
He takes it to sleep with him
And nurtures it in himself
Till the moment when every single drop of his blood gets replaced by this pain
Until his fragile heart can bear no more
And his soul starts overflowing with emotions
That's when he dip his pen into this pain
And empty his heart on a piece of paper
He bares his soul for us to feel
He creates poetry that the world would cherish for centuries to come

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

To the women who dismantled the world
with their bare hands
just to build it up again.

May we know them.
To the Eleanor Roosevelts,
to the Marilyn Monroes.
To our mothers
and our grandmothers

May we be them.
Women who speak with fire
and revel in the flame,
who shatter the glass ceiling
and dance around the broken shards.

May we raise them.
To our sisters
and our daughters.
To the women who came before me
and all of the girls who will come after.

Here’s to strong women.

The first time
you said you loved
me, it was as if
I had been pulled aboard
a life raft after being
lost at sea. But
I see now that this
raft is littered with
holes and
we are sinking, but
you are convinced
that your love is a
teacup to scoop out
the water pooling around
my ankles and you will save
us, but the teacup has a crack
down one side and
do you see where I
am going with this?
A tablespoon of water
will never put out
a forest fire; I am burning
through acres.