i wish i’d bled enough;
my wrists — sore from scratching,
from trying to crawl
out of this treacherous skin
my lungs — dry from screaming.
my lips — chapped from chanting prayers;

one for each gravestone in my brain —

different dates
for a single name.

and i wish i’d bled enough —
died an enough number
to never die again,

but my wrists, they still have spaces for my wounds
and my mind, it still has spaces for my tombs

and tonight, i will hold funerals
for the parts of me that bled to death,
for the parts of me that in the caskets lie
and for those that still
are yet to die.

a sheer curtain caught in a crossfire,
i stand here,
pure,
still,
and burning tenderly —
burning softly before your eyes.

i liken myself
to a child's laughter falling
on patches of sunlight —
to persephone giving in
to the licking flames,

but she is no more than
a fading ghost,
and my skin —
no more than a haunted woodland.

i hold on to the flames,
to this perplexity:
how can immolation
look so soft,
so cleansing,
so **** hypnotic?

when it feels everything but.

a sheer curtain caught in a crossfire,
i stand here,
pure,
still,
burning tenderly
into oblivion —
just as softly before your eyes.

the ghostly whisper of despair
lingers on ice-cold neck,
like lead, creeping,
like vines, crawling
like veins on quartz.

bash it. bash it.
bash it on my wrists.

lately, i try to write poetry but all that spills is violence;
i am a woman possessed. *******. all foul, sulfur scent.
this lace nightgown is weary from holding together
loose bones, loose skin, loose soul.

and the sunless sky has buried its dead,
all in bleeding, black mourning veil ensemble.
and i am gray — gray as a body drained of blood.

and with all these autumns i've spent bleeding, god,
have i not bled enough?

she is what
black holes look like
and in the deep space of her room,
she writes poems
made of meteorites
and sings to playlists
made of stars.

My mother’s white, quiet patience sways,
tantalizing before me like a well-lit crystal chandelier in my grandmother’s house.
I never take a bite of it,
an ever so-careful child, my grandmother used to fondly describe me,
a picky eater;
I never grew bigger than I used to be — still so small and scrawny,
a shivering child left crying in our bahay kubo, awaiting my mother’s return.
She comes home and laughs at my innocent anxiety.

It is a promised heirloom, it seems,
my mother’s white, quiet patience — well-kept in my late grandmother’s bedroom
where my father can never find
for his hands to choke and tear like an old 90s letter —
I was in her womb and he was in Egypt
down with the mummified pharaohs; she sent him poems
and I got a tiny glass pyramid, a snow of gold dust
I spun it — turned it upside down
until it broke, bathing me golden like a tiny sun.
I hid in my late aunt’s room, next to my mother’s mute patience,
it spills like milk, drenches like tears, blinds like a ray of light.

I can never inherit my mother’s patience but I wear her skin now;
twenty years, I have grown bigger, taller
and her sorrows and regrets fit me well like a brown, fur coat,
a pocket full of resentment, of repressed aching, of fingers numb from writing poems;
my mother was a poet, I know this now;
my father — an ordinary man,
his chest is a hollow chamber in a pyramid far, far away in Giza.
Sometimes, I think he’s still there, lying next to pharaohs
for all of perpetuity.
Sometimes, I think I have inherited his mystery
his tendency to perplex the eye, like a pyramid of secrets and secrets,
the archaeologists have given up after unearthing empty chambers after empty chambers,
Maybe there is nothing here to see
but dead, young, unloving bones
next to earthworms burrowing on my mother’s poems.

I can never inherit my mother’s patience; sometimes I think
she has left her aching somewhere in our bahay kubo,
in my dollhouse, perhaps, and I have picked it up
like a spiral seashell,
like Barbie’s tiny suitcase looking pretty in glitter,
swallowed in a single gulp, it’s still here inside me,
growing and poking and tearing and disfiguring,
I refuse to spit it out.
How do I carry it when she herself has not?
I scratch my limbs at the injustice.

My mother’s white, quiet patience sits in Lola Glo’s room,
like a ghost that never haunts but I wish it did —
sometimes, I still wait for damning screams, for broken windows,
for love poems burning in hell for its sins,
taking me down with them.
Sometimes, I still wait for her to leave
like a Macedonian queen fleeing Egypt and never coming back.

Then, I would have nothing to carry, nothing to wear,
nothing to ache for at starless nights —
no poems to open and seal like a stone entrance to a pharaoh’s chamber.
My mother’s white, quiet patience is an unlit crystal chandelier,
a few feet on top of my head. I laugh and spin like a tornado,
like a mad girl, swinging and raising my arms like I was five —
I hit and shatter everything in sight
then blame it on the fairies.
I eat the fine, hand-cut, polished crystals, I bleed poison on my tongue,
and my mother is Cleopatra nowhere to be found.

Everything is an accident, even my intentional carelessness,
now paper-white and porcelain-clean.
Everything is forgiven, even my father’s loud, beer-laced cruelty,
even my hands, closed in a fist.
My mother’s smile was bright and comforting,
but everything is an earthworm feeding on her poems.
And every poem is a poem till it rots

beneath a far-off, sun-swept Egypt.

i.
pluck the aching out of my ribs — one by one
as though they were teeth that had sunk —
latched themselves onto these bones,
until it is but a pile of bite marks,
a pile of mildewed flowers —
festering like sins, like punishment.
pluck each bruising bone,
some things belong to my chest.
some, to firelight.

ii.
pluck a rib,
make the sweetest, purest, brand new woman —
all lace girdle and nectarine lips,
stepping out of the outskirts of my skin
as i watch from the other side of an exit wound — the inner side.
maybe in another life, that can be me.

thou shalt not covet.

i close the window.
i zip the skin.

iii.
tonight, i kneel in a confessional —
screaming away all banal sorrows,
screaming away all banal sins.

pull the aching out of my ribs —
it's in its rawest just before the dawn.
pull the aching out of my ribs.

a corrupted sight
for awakened flowers. ringing church bells. hummingbirds.
oh, a corrupted sight.
and mornings will hear its aftermath.

and i sat for many years
on the passenger seat
of our ford ranger,
letting tears fall
down on the pillow
of silence and sadness,
of swears and talking downs.

and i sat for many years
on the passenger seat
of our ford ranger
waiting for it to crash —
wondering if i would crash it
or drive off a cliff
had i been the one driving.

and i sat for many years
on the passenger seat
of our ford ranger
disregarding seatbelts,
and wishing it was
the very last ride.

and i sat for many years
on the passenger seat
of our ford ranger,
you, meeting the snow storm, head-on
headlights fading
or maybe it was the last of bits light
ensnared by
the crashes and the blood
and the cars burning
on the side of the road.

and i sat on our
passenger seat
for the last time, dad.

and not anymore.

And maybe one day,
when the storms
are gone
and the sun
shines brighter
and the waves of
self-loathing
ebb and subside,
I’ll run short of sadness
to write poems about.
And maybe then,
I can finally
step out of this ark
Maybe then,
I’ll be okay —
maybe then,
I will be fine.

It's been 40 days and 40 nights.
The rainbow is still
nowhere
to be found.

sometimes, she resembles artemis
taking midnight walks
in a sea of moon glint;
her laughter, pale and silvery
as if they are made
of the moonlight itself.
they say that ohio is for lovers
so tonight, she will leave languid kisses
on sadness' flesh and bones;
they are made of all the seas
and all the beds
she has ever drowned in.
but tonight,
she will walk with the moonglades
dancing on the waters of cincinnati,
hand in hand and coming undone,
as the moon rises
from the ghost towns in her mind.

she goes on — treading waters,
and somewhere in the background is her silhouette,
a flickering shadow of the candle fire,
slowly melting,
the darker half of the moon,
setting in the west,
drowning in the tides.
and somewhere in the background is her silhouette,
slowly crumbling
to a heap of mess.
and somewhere in the background is her silhouette,
pallid and gray —

sinking
and sinking
beneath the waves.

It all makes sense now — the foolish way I repeatedly gathered my broken heart and laid them at your feet like wild roses, the cold feel of beer bottles, the anguish at the heartbreak trying to escape my chest, the desperate need for your cruel hands, the way new Decembers kept on hurting — it all makes sense now, the miserably intense way that I loved you, and how it was never enough.

I needed to be hurt like that. I needed to live your cruelty in order to love myself more.

Our lips met
in a cosmic collision,
like the sun and the moon
in an eclipse;
we sensually nibbled,
and ******,
and licked,
and tongued,
and got a taste
of each other's sadness.
I could almost swear
kissing you felt like
drowning and yet,
never wanting
to come up for air.
Our hands were frantic,
like ballerinas
made to dance
under the tune
of insane rock music;
we fumbled
on each other's
zips and buttons,
'til they were
ripped
along with our clothes
and the masks
we wore.
Our skins grazed
in sweat and despair,
like the earth
good-morning-kissed
by the sun
after an entire night
of raining;
we caressed
and clawed on backs;
I was pretty sure
I had glimpse
of your soul,
and you probably
saw a void
where mine should be,
but we let our demons
dance 'til two,
like figure skaters
gliding gracefully
over thin ice
during a winter night.

And I thought it was love.
God, I almost called it love,
I even wished it was.

But darling, it was the bottles on the floor. Probably *****.

all the weight of the night sits on my shoulders,
like a ****** of crows pecking on a graying bruise —
i cave under; my entire skin —
it falls apart, in grace,
from the constant touch, like liquid mercury;
such an anomaly, such an irony,
such words mused, lying there in a trance-like state
under all the weight of the night.
i wish it takes with it my sorrows
the second it lifts itself.

yet, i remain.

soon, the dawn will creep and break, eventually,
from holding me up in vain.

such a pity

maybe i will break with it.

i am so tired of
my wrists being a battlefield —
the shrines for all the times i fell —
they all keep falling apart,
and nothing lasts long enough
for all these wounds
to turn into scars.

maybe the problem is that scars mean you're healing.
maybe the problem is that i'm not.

i have worn this skin away —
long shunned by softness
and each day, i cannot fathom how
i can ever manage to hold gentle things —
press them against my chest
when everything i hold
bleeds and breaks,
including me.

i wish my tongue was more made for poems
and not for dry-swallowed poppies;
the moon flinches at the very sight.

i flinch too.

and i am so tired of my entire skin
being a battlefield
when no one can see the casualties
buried quickly —
buried well.

and oh, what i'd give to be
soft enough to grow flowers on graveyards —
and soft enough not to break myself.

The world is an archery range and
Artemis' throat is a target practice.

What is this pale and moon-drenched skin
but a carcass to howling wolves —
their sorrows grow hand and grab her by the neck.

I always told myself to lie still
throughout the attack —
it'll be over before you know it,
but my lips are wounded from biting down a scream
and a carcass still weeps
long after it's dead
and my lung still bleeds
long after it's dry — lie still, my love,
because what if the calm trembles in a storm
and what if the storm brews in the calm.
Lie still, I say
but my legs weren't made to be a hunted prey's.
Lie still, I say
but my hands weren't meant
to carry the moon and all the sadness
she was ever told.

Lie still.
No, it's not only Atlas who breaks.
The world still is an archery range.

And tonight, Artemis takes her last arrow;
perch her carcass on the grieving moon —
a carcass, regardless, to all howling wolves.

a carcass — motionless;
a carcass
lies still.

And all of Delos mourns.

hold at your risk; it's such thin skin —
delicate until it's not —
until beneath each layer,
gracelessly peeled back
isn't a doe-eyed girl
but chaos,
coming undone at the seams of a cold, pewter dress.

stare at your risk,
until what stares back isn't a doe-eyed girl
but lashes made of papercuts;
yet, wounds don't heal in silhouetted figures —
all barefoot on the ground where peonies fall.
all cold and bruising skin where the daylight hits.

wounds don't heal  in silhouetted figures
and the quiet morning cliché is that
it's the softest thing that leaves you hurting the most

lately, these poems are becoming mere abstractions
but the wounds, they remain tender
and the chaos still tries to find its way
outside this skin.
after all,
delicate things aren't meant to hold
this much obscure aching,
these much fragile bones.

lately, these poems are becoming mere abstractions
but the wounds still remain tender
under this cruel, pewter dress.

and they are tender, until they're not.
they are delicate, until they're not.


this is soft. until it's not.

My heart is a shrivel of miagos bushes,
uprooted, shoved, chucked in new soil;
the leaves between my lips,
now, in an unhealthy shade of chartreuse.

Regardless, I have taught myself
to shear them into tiny leaf crumbs,
making trails —
marking the houses, the buildings,
the roads of this foreign city,
safekeeping directions
into a catalog of things that aren't home.

My feet are weary and somehow,
they manage to find their way
back in this cold, oppressive room.
And yet, how does one sleep under the glare of these walls?
How does one revive a dying garden
in a city that only knows
the language of tires as they kiss the pavements,
in a city that only knows
the walis tingting's weary sweeping
of these crumbs of miagos leaves —
the ones leading back home?

Yes,

I can teach my tongue and all its browning, dying leaves
to remember these new ways of growth,
these new words, new schedules,
new routes, new streets.

Alas, even the waters, even the sun
can't teach it to love the language it doesn't speak.

here lies asteria.
and her falling stars —
they crash faster than they rise
here inside this starless chest —
a foreign place,
a refugee camp —
all leaden lungs and a leaden sky.

here she sleeps
under a blanket of nightfall one might mistake for the golden fleece,
but then again,
alchemy is a long, forgotten lover
all bag of tricks,
and sleight of hand,
all doves and swords
and a fickle heart.

so what of her?
what of a lonely girl?
what of her history and all her scattered bones?

what of a fallen Titaness?
what of this diaspora of all her dying stars?
what of this sepulcher for all her nameless stars?

here lies asteria
with her unbaptized stars —
here, where the dark side of the moon
goes home.
here, where wisterias and howling wolves
and stifled screams
go to die.

here inside this starless chest,
these pallid lips,
this leaden skin of mine.

here lies asteria. here lies her host.
and this is how a black hole sighs.

i have a graveyard of letters;
relics dug up from plath’s oven
now, trapped
in the gaps of my ribs,
paper-cutting through the bones;

some are reduced to debris
coming undone like angels,
falling from crumbling buildings —
crumbling minds —
columns that snap
like they’re the threads of my life

nevermind the punctures,
nevermind the fall;
broken spines
and fractured bones —

they all hurt
just the same.

nevermind the metaphors,
nevermind the words;

poetries,

and suicide notes —

they all look
just the same.