My words don't know peace. They are the nightshades all over a hunting ground. They are the bending of sunlight as it slices itself against headstones. They are a patchwork of all the cruel things I've done with my hands. They are the birds of prey, circling overhead a wounded doe. My words don't know peace — they are made of every last bit of my chaos, barely contained by my fingers. They are made of every last bit of my violence made to look nonthreatening. Gentle as the wind and tame as a field of roses — the thorns, left buried in your back.

Still, a refugee trembles, hides beneath her battle scars. She recognizes the wars waged in her skin — the cruel way they stay long after the last battle — the cruel way they don't know peace.

so here i am, walking away from cadillacs and city lights, as if skipping through soundtracks and photographs. above, the clouds have worn their black veils and the rain, it has started mourning each car i pass by, each block, each step taken. it mourns all the sorrows i cannot poke, all the letters i cannot write, all the words i cannot say.

the rain, it mourns all those summer days of pure bliss, with the sunlight peacefully fissuring through the trees. oh how we kissed, all soiled jeans and grass on sundresses. sweaty palms, hands on thighs, all yours prayers left on my neck. the cigarettes and dogwoods forgotten on our periphery.



i love you, i love you, i love you. you were the first, the last, the always.



and yet, how did we ever become that sweet summer’s downfall? the cigarettes are now ashed under all these spent lights and faint sunset colors. these mint breaths and sun-warmed kisses, now just bruises on my lips — now just memories slowly flaking off my skin.





and i used to love you. stupid, stupid girl.





now the rain has washed all those fields and the sins they’d seen. it has washed my skin of the lingering cigarette smoke, of your kisses, of your touch, and i’m not sure if i ever wanna forget. but even the rain’s heartbreak leaves behind the serenity of the last raindrops. lush grasses. damp streets. that distinct, morning breeze. that subtle scent of petrichor. that quiet settling of the calm.





maybe that’s all i need to know.

You were my only chance at the calm, it's no secret. Not when my skin had become a topography of city light and anomalies waiting to happen. Not when broken wrists and collarbones had defined my name. And for years, my fingers had held onto rusting street signs, pointing to where my flesh had started to decay under the nipping of the butterflies — places to avoid touching, otherwise I'd break.

But you were the calm.

And for so long, it had evaded my side of the bed. And I know you had tasted dead dahlias and maladies off my tongue. Poets don't write about lips like mine — those that repel clarity and softness — those that had forgotten the words to a prayer. And it's no secret that I had spent years walking on a tilted axis and screaming at the pitfalls of my own doing. And yet you kissed me; for once, my skin had learned silence — raw, and in broad daylight. For once, I didn't have to be the storm that I was.

And love, whoever knew you would betray the calm, when you were my only chance at it?

Now, nightfalls just feel like bruises starting to show way too soon. Now, September nights are just cold and are filled with blunders. Now, this heartbreak seems like it may outlast all my well-kept sunsets, waiting for me at the end of this storm. And it could've been you, still — it could've been us. Now all that we were is a wreck to behold. And love, must all beautiful things rot?

You were the calm, but poets don't write about tragedies like these.

Maybe it's better off that way.

so that’s why you settle with friends who treat you like crap. that’s why you chase after heartbreaks in the form of long hair and lop-sided smiles. that’s why you’re on your seventh cigarette. that’s why you don’t want your scars erased, why you stay in a place where nobody asks if you’re okay and call it home, why you write wretched poems about bleeding wrists and tripping on *** bottles from last night.

darling, you hold onto pain. you hold onto pain, because you no longer know what it feels like living without it.

i want to be as indiscernible as all my aches — as indefinite as the sorrows pressing down on my breastbone. i want to hush all the pain: loud, red, screaming — burning its way out of my throat. i want to crawl inside my own skin, until i feel nothing vaguely human — until bones and muscles dissolve into scattered, tender wounds. i want riddled endings; i want limbs taken down in such secrecy. i want the eeriness of my quiet hurting. i want to implode.

You’re everything bad for me; our idea of love is crashing into sunburnt, rust walls, with hands around each other’s neck. There we are, soaked in each other’s sadness. There we are, all cold, mechanical limbs until we can no longer tell whose hand does the breaking – whose skin is left with scars. There we are, silhouettes jumping off Ferris wheels straight into the fray – all broken bones and the maddest smile.

This is love – in its ugliest form.
You’re everything bad for me; you’re every terrible idea – every wrong decision made seconds before going haywire.

And yet, maybe, you’re not – maybe it’s me.

Maybe it’s me; I lived to come undone and fall apart to your autumn eyes. Maybe it’s me: cold, dilapidated skin after all the havocs you wreaked, and still, I would stand and run to you – despite all this knowing – all this hurting. So darling, break me – leave me in ruins, for another life to see.

I wasn’t good for myself anyway.

honey you never loved me, you simply loved having someone you could write poetry about.



and i gave you that.

Love, I said I wouldn't miss the sound of your early morning voice.
These sheets were weighed from all the times the dawn sent its sunrays
like palms filled with love letters;
but maybe I too, had become all the dawns that lingered too long.
I said I wouldn't miss the outline of your body;
oh how I planted kisses on every uncharted curve
but this bed is now a map of strangers from all these towns I do not know.

I said I wouldn't miss the hands, touching,
fingers picking each stray breath away;
I wouldn’t miss waking up next to you —
all serene, all magical than lucid dreams.

But darling, it's ten to twelve and our memories,
they covet me as the summer rain pours outside
and now,

I miss all these stupid little things;
the brief way you wince at papercuts,
the secret smiles after eye rolls
and radios turned to the max,
the way red lipsticks and love notes
linger on bathroom mirrors;
the water and steam have erased them now,
love, I miss the way you hog blankets;
the threads have now come undone,
taking down your scent with them,
all too painful, all too slow, it slips
even from these memories,

And I know I said I wouldn't miss you
but it's half past twelve, and I'm in your shirt
and the rain had stopped
but I think so far — so far love,

missing you has not.

darling, my notebooks are running out of strings and pages; how many more poems do i have to write before you come back?

"Please don't ever leave me."

And love, I never would have left — not for all the serene mornings unsettled by these shapeless thoughts. Not for all the sanest kisses laid gracefully on scarring skin. Not for all the storms that had dissolved into the calm. I never would have left you — not for the world falling away into a mess of sorrows while the sun watches from afar. But the street lights are spent and mornings are colder and my hands are bruised from picking up all the pieces that you broke.

Did you feel most alive when you were killing me?


Now in the silence, my poems mourn over a loss that isn't theirs.


And in the silence, you say, "Please, don't ever leave me."



And in the silence, I answer, "I wish I never had to."

i hold in my hands all of the sea’s sadness,
press it against my chest;
drench my shirt and then my being
until i resemble its loneliness —
the very depth of it.

soon, the ocean floor will claim
my driftwood bones.



but there are no sunbursts or naive greek boys.
just surreal june midnights.
just water everywere —
nowhere.

i hold in my hands all of the sea
but there are no sunsets waiting
to sink down my spine —
just the cruel way that my skin goes on and on —
its flat, certain vastness
and this ironic drowning.

i hold in my hands all of the sea’s sadness —
press it against my chest;
drench my shirt and then my being
until its loneliness fills my lungs.

​

​i come up for air but it’s just endless skin —
i close my eyes and dive again.

and how do i crawl out of this chest — this skin — this lonely, grave, without choking on all the dirt?

now my ribs recede with the heaviest sunsets; look and miss a missing body. look and miss an unmarked grave. right here where i lie indefinitely, there's no headstone grand enough to carve this grief into. there's a hand, repelled by a poem. there is a grief without a name.

so when you dissolve into a thousand poems you can never write trying to look for the way out, let go. even the moon melts parts of itself, and your skin, it is made from the cracks constellations have between its stars. and when december starts to breathe the last of its sadness — and how it lingers on your skin: a glass so breakable, let go; wilted flowers no longer flinch at a lightning's touch; you are made from the same matter — all cold lips and an ether of sighs. let go, darling. all this, because you are not just a girl. you are a storm without a calm.