this cold sunrise will choke on all the dark, sunless ways that i am in love you. sweet one, let's watch the light as it falls apart and crawl, like ether on our golden skin. this is us sitting in the last of september's lights — this is us in the finitude of poetry, and i have never seen anything as beautiful.

We were always so good at pretending, weren’t we? We would always climb rooftops and pretend that we were stargazers, christening constellations with our favorite songs. Look, there was Somebody Else. There was Nobody’s Home. There was Chasing Cars.

We would pretend we were souls from the 50s, reincarnated into another life — into another happy ending. We would pretend we were art critics, as if we knew **** about Klimt; as if we could tell apart baroque from classical. We would tell each other our weirdest dreams and analyze them, as if we were Freud or something, that misogynistic pig. Oh, you dreamt about us drowning together in the Black Lake? Oh, that means we were gonna have *** tonight, in the absence of the moon. We would pretend that we’ve circled the whole world and that Italy’s got the ******* blandest pizza. We would pretend that we were rock stars, surfing on the crowd.

We would pretend that we’d read the classics. Was that Harry or Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray? Yeah, Hamlet was pretty cool, but who was Ophelia? ******* pseudo-intellectuals, we were. Nonetheless, I loved pretending with you. We loved pretending that the whole world wasn’t crashing down — that we weren’t stuck in this ******* of a small town, and that the world spun for us. We loved pretending that everything would be okay — that we could leave someday without looking back. We loved pretending that our lives weren’t all over the place. We loved pretending that we were the brave ones, that we could **** ourselves by 40 because the world wouldn’t be kind when we’re all old and saggy.

We loved pretending that we were too cool for mental breakdowns and for any kind of feeling. Honey, we loved pretending that we were psychopaths, too voided for love and all that other crap — that we hated clichés, while doing the most romanticized clichés anyway. We loved pretending that this was where the chapter would end, and that we were together in our make-believe ending. We loved pretending that we were the ones who stayed and made it.

Now, sometimes, I would pretend that we did. Other times, it would be me pretending I was all there ever was — that you never were here to pretend with me, and that I was okay. I would pretend that the rooftop wasn’t too high, and that I didn’t need your help to climb — that the company of city lights and the empty space were enough, honey they never were. Honey, I would pretend too that I never missed you. But I did.

I always did. More than that I would ever admit.

I would look at the stars, the ones we named but I guess they all had already fallen to the earth. You said that when you died, you would live in the shooting stars so that you could crash to the earth and come back to me. But it had been more than a decade since the angels took you away and I no longer stargazed, except tonight. And maybe, just maybe, when I would catch a glimpse of a falling star, I still wouldn’t wish that you didn’t chase your meds with *****. I wouldn’t wish that we didn’t find bubbles coming out of your mouth, like they were a part of your soul. I wouldn’t wish that I didn’t see you die. I wouldn’t wish that you were okay; we both knew we wouldn’t have clicked if one of us was happy or okay.

Heaven, hell, we didn’t believe in those. But when a star would fall unto my chest, I would wish that wherever you were right now or wherever you would be in the next life, darling, you would no longer feel the need to pretend.

And with no lies, no masks, no pretenses, I loved you. Here. And in the next. And in the lives after that, until we lived in one where we would both have the courage to abandon all pretense and just sit on a different rooftop, sharing silence — sharing honest thoughts — sharing the luster of distant stars. And tomorrow, our demons wouldn’t rise with the sun. And we would be okay.

the weight of your breaths is burning its way inside my skin. this is a catastrophe we're in now, darling, and i resemble all of your crestfallen asters, dried and dusty in your altar — now caught in a forest fire. this is a catastrophe we're in now but heathens like me don't burn down, and i have loved you with such fatality i didn't once possess. i have loved you like stray dust in lilac vapors. i have loved you, like stray wind in a firestorm.

this is the calm we're in now darling — and i have loved you to the point of no return.

I've spilled your name
and my feelings
on fallen lashes
and wishbones.
I've read 1950s
love letters and wondered
if we would've had
exchanged some
had we lived that time.
I've stayed up late
in air-conditioned rooms;
a ****** for midnight voice
between your broken smiles.

But boy, this isn't
a confession of how
enchanted I am of you.
This is just me realizing that
somehow,
you can make a dismal world
look a little less messed up;
god, you're beautiful for it.

This is just me realizing that
I can stay with you
for all the reasons
they left you for.

This is just me realizing that
I can fall for you,
so, so deep,
if allow myself.
and feel like I was falling to the clouds.
Boy, this isn't love,
but somehow, it's so much more.

This is a saving grace
wrapped in chipped nails
and stories that make you feel
more human.
This is a silver lining.
This is chance.
This is light,
This is hope
for damaged people
like us.

This is us —
surviving.
This is us —
living.

Your hands are a spare room for grass blades and wilting flowers —
they wound just the same now,
die just the same.
One day we will too.
I breathe you in,
stale air and brimstone fill my lungs
like the flood that came after us —
it has our name on it:
a misguided retribution.

I remember leaving,
the soil turning parched as our soles,
the shadows' first treason,
the cold, cold air,
the distance between our clothed body,
drifting away like continents.
Soon, you will speak in tongues,
a language you cannot love me in
and still, I'll call your name, softly,
like a desperate counter-curse.

I am still here,
a darkened rib for the devil to collect.
I am yours first, before I am his.
But you are worth the fire and the first sin it's ever seen
the crash site, the rock shards buried on my arms —
I am good as a dead woman — a wide-eyed mortal
I will walk to you on skipping stones,
sinking stones
with my bones set on fire and the world up in flames —
this is our undoing in the colors of a sunset
but it's nothing we've seen before.

I know good. I know evil.
I know flames and the way it burns. I know death and its finality.
I know a lot of things now,
but only one of them matters, Adam —

I know you are worth the fall.

february is inside me like a cursed fetus. it eats away at my ribs, making a gap big enough for me to sink into a quicksand of motionless hours and crumbling bones. i hate myself for having written these words, but february beckons with ghostly arms and i shrink to myself like a well-trained beast — step into my hollow chest and crawl farther and farther than before never to be seen again.

dearest stranger,

i am too abstract now for my own good. i feel and hold myself, in place, in my hands and i slip right through like sunlight, like tiny moth scales, like the delusions of a sauntering ghost, like all things unreal and untouchable, like a madwoman, laughing away in her free fall to an unsteady ground.

and all the flowers are cheering in their surreal, psychedelic scarlets, and all the rocks are breaking, and all the words are failing to capture what i truly feel.

am i still despairingly corporeal, like paper napkins and panes of glass? am i still in actual flesh, now that god doesn't exist? am i still as tangible as this last, frantic breath of a letter?

am i still actually here?

bidding my farewell now,
ginia

i had missed too many sunsets hurting in silence. to this day, the sky is in a graying shade of blue. to this day, it is mournful and decaying over me — or inside me, i do not know. i had lost count of the months i shunned the sunsets and headed straight — disgracefully, to the arms of the dusk. besides, falling apart looked harsher, and messier, and more vivid in the light. and so i had missed too many sunsets; this too, is becoming a wound.

i wish i were kinder to myself.

i wish i could forgive myself.

You deserve someone who can look pain in the eye — an insignia of heartbreak with your name written all over it; your trembling sighs — like rust, lingering over their rosegold lips, and still, not forget that they love you.

the dusk wastes its pity on me. in its muted retiring lights, i have learned a terrible habit of forcing poems out of my mouth,
when maybe all i wanna do is be as quiet as the wounds nesting inside my head.

these days, emptiness is beginning to look more like a poem that writes itself. the irony is it is everything i can't be and everything i am

how can i constantly forget something as innate, as natural as breathing — how do i stop holding it intimately and finally see self-transgression?

i'll always love you like you were the fullest sunlight laid gently on the dark bruises of december. my crystalline hands are bound to start wildfires in your name. and finally when the world burns down, i'll mark your spine with these lips made of sunburnt flowers. in the ruins of it all, you still have all my misguided kisses — all my unbidden words. i'll always love you, until azaleas grow on the softest spots, in the mundane collision of our bodies. i'll always love you, until my ribs fall apart to your autumn eyes, like a babylonian temple that has seen the miracles of god. i'll always love you — in state of both madness and kalopsia. in the explosion and rebirth of the stars. i'll always love you — this is my bareness in the most prosaical state. this is my constant, darling — this is my truth.

someplace else, icarus has taken one look at the sun and recoils like a banished angel. lo, the cheerless shadows befogging. lo, the waxen wings he clipped — swallowed by solid ground. lo, the skies melt above the sea, in horror, as he falls in place over his bones and sinks into his sunless chest.

Without so much as a burst of white light, without so much as a beclouded face, lingering — I want to go quietly now, like sawdust in a country road — like seafoam under a gray sunset.

My mind insists on leaving.

i have inherited pandora's careless melancholy, her tiny box of regrets, her white-washed, quiet horrors and terrible decisions — staining like a memory passed down from her reckless hands to my old, ***** claws, digging for something raw, something parasitic, something miserable, something always goes wrong beneath my ribs. it wants out, like a beast, a misplace fragment, an aphid. and these days turn their heads away — blur themselves blind before my many blunders.

before the wrath of a false god, will my bones ever learn the art of being unapologetic?

i spend my days sighing away, digging away at each layer of disillusionment. when will i get to the bottom of this? when do i get to see my bones, all bleached out to a lifeless tan? when do i get to poke them around like live coals, desperately reviving a dying fire? when do i get to see myself, in my highest, truest, most foolish form, and have the closure — both underwhelmed and overwhelmed?

i've lived longer than my younger self would've allowed; tell me, did she know me much better? did she live just long enough for me to inherit her despair? have i gone dancing too much with illusive lights, only to get home heavy, burning, and blinded? did she know it all along? did i know it all along?

tell me, was it all for this? tell me, in the name of all my splendid highs and in the drawn-out silence thereafter  — is this it?

will my hands ever forget the habit of clawing my own wounds for warmth? i lay my vulnerably human skin on sun-dried poems written to breathe, breathe, breathe in — breathe through january's oppressive cold.


i breathe out a mouthful of asphyxiated flowers

skipping back and forth
the stages of grieving
but my body is bottomless —
endless where it hurts the worst.
it continues to grow
like a skin abnormality
over which i trip, head first i tumble down
these words in repetition
their despair, in repetition
in ever so artless ways.

too many indefinite things
gone too visceral
gone too deep these skin layers —
there is an (over)production of them,
to make room for
more. more. more. grief
popping here and there:
an obstacle course.
a grafted stem. a blunder.
what deformities might i uncover
as i dredge myself clean,
as i mow over me?

but my body is bottomless,
in perpetual, grave disquiet —
endless where it feels the worst.

There was something bittersweet about tangling my arm with yours as we finally crossed (or zigzagged through) the lines that had been blurred for quite awhile now. It was nowhere near a fairytale. Maybe it was something about you being the most beautiful, saddest thing I’ve ever seen, and maybe it was me being drawn to everything sad. Maybe all we had been is a cocktail of alcohol, terminal loneliness, and pent up ****** tensions, brewed somewhere between these nicotine-scented sheets and a series of bad decisions. It’s not love, just wanton desire, I’d say. And you’d agree in the mid of hitched breaths and sloppy kisses. And that was the last thing in our minds before we fumble over the zippers and get lost in each other’s uncharted skin.

Of course deep down, we know that you’re everything that’s bad for me, and that I’m not the type to stay naked in bed the morning after the night to make you pancakes. But the way your lips drugged mine into kissing back, the way we said things we’ll never say when we’re sober, the way there was suddenly too much clothes and too huge gaps between our bodies all seemed comforting and sinfully magical. Of course deep down, we know that we’ll never stand a chance out there doing real-life romance; I wasn’t the one you were looking for, and you were just somebody I found.  But right now, in this cramped apartment with leaky ceilings and creaky floors, all I wanna do before sanity rushes back give in to "**** this", make all the wrong choices, and self-destruct with you.

august is a map of my fullest aches. it always has heartbreaks for me to feel. it is all the wrong lights hitting all my wrong angles and now i'm facing a mirror of my body covered in torn traces of breaths — an empty space, a backdrop for a sight of star dusts lingering. august is a map of my feet where the sea has buried technicolored glasses — all swelling, all wounds dulled by the salt and the summer rain. soon, august will all wear off like a cruel high; it's done seeing me mourning, and i'll be an empty shell for september to wash away.

walk past me in the shallow seas. walk past me in full aching state. walk past me — look past; i long to be a ghost of something delicate, something not terrifying, something that doesn't haunt.

i.
the scent of sorrow, hanging in the air
rotting away what's left of this skin.
wrists — sewn shut
are wrists undone:
the morbidity of it all pervades —
this i confess.

ii.
look not. turn not, for
each careful stare, each scornful gaze
has me falling back into darkness;
maybe eurydice has found comfort in its arms.
maybe so have i.

maybe this is how it's always meant to end.

iii.
lately, sunsets no longer melt
into an afterglow —
they just turn into the night.
at least it dims
the futility of drawing each shallow breath
from places filled with smoke and dust;

there used to be something there:
this, i confess.
this, i remember.

there used to be something there.

there used to be something h e r e.


— fray // november, must you be so cruel to my trembling hands left with no heart to break?

how do you gaze at the rabbit hole in your chest without falling down into it?

My 11:11s were made for sleepless nights
playing back all these scenes
when your heartbeat still melted against my ears,
every sigh that lingered on my temple,
every touch that lingered on my skin
11:11s were made for asking
this dimmed wall sconces what it would be like
to feel your body close the spaces,
to feel it next to mine once more,
of what it would be like to kiss you in the dark,
with complete abandonment,
like a wolf howling its heart out
to the moon after a sunset that lasted forever

It was 11:11, and now, I know
I should’ve closed my eyes
and kissed you that drunken April night,
and melted in your arms when I still had the chance.
Now, I close them, without you around,
wrestling with these fixations
trying to convince myself
that one more recall of the memories would be the last;
one more make-believe,
one more fantasy wouldn't hurt.
One more,

and one more,
and one more,
I said,

and it was 11:12
and suddenly,

it did.

i'm still building myself up on top of breaking skin. oh how easy it is to slip on this shapeless, humming loneliness until it takes the form of my skin. i'm a forsaken deity, learning to come to terms with what's left of her ruins. crumbling, i tie them together — they buckle in place like my knees: a sight too fragile to be a worldly wonder. i'm still learning to be gentle. i'm still learning to forget all the ways i have ever hurt myself. and beyond this corpse-cold bed, these corpse-cold hands — the world goes on spinning. restless as my thoughts, yet immobile as my feet. it goes on spinning — leaving, never slowing itself down for anyone.

these words come out of my tongue, in fragments. i pick them like aphids on a rose — maybe it's the closest thing i'll get to healing.

maybe some types of chaos do not have to make sense or unveil some semblance of an epiphany. some types of chaos, you just have to feel. some types of chaos, you just have to lie through.

These fantasies always end with you staying. Here, my heart can afford to break itself, over and over for you. Here, I never had to let you go again. Here, my love for you always — always outweighs the heartbreak. My love, these fantasies — they always end with us staying.

I guess some things, I wish we had. Some things, I wish were ours. Some things, I wish were us.

honey,
we do not
burn down
with the fire —
we become it.

And how do you tell them you feel so empty without making it sound so sad?