the first second of life must feel like a lifetime–
and all minutes after, faster rushing by
hours into days, and days into weeks
as the calendar takes flight; its pages leap
into time: an hourglass, a river,
and soon enough you'll start to wither
wrinkles and memories deep

I am infinite lives old and my days are a blur–
is this what they call growing up, losing track of who you were?

gold grass, purple flowers
a white butterfly, flutter–whirl–
–not even may showers
can bring dead rivers back to blue

birds speak, spilled wind shudders
and gleaming ghost water mutters
as I sit, shy still and wonder
what this place was years before

before houses, metal fences, and red curbsides
before children learning and hoping
before everything went dry

I've started to use capital i's when writing recently because I realized that even if I'm not that important to myself, I'm important to others. it is one of the small things I do to remind myself that I am worthy of all the things I dream about and long for. sometimes I still forget and have to delete a hastily typed i

2. maybe am too much of a dreamer; there is a thin line between reality and fiction and though daydreams are constantly blooming inside the pages of my mind, I really ought to pause the songs inside my head from time to time and remember to cherish what is real(ly), meaningful. in truth, my wonderings are nothing but desperate attempts to find myself that don't lead anywhere and ultimately cannot satisfy the wanderings of my restless mind

3. (what am I looking for? if I stop searching, will I be waiting for the answer to come to me or will I be giving up?) well, how can you ever find yourself if you're the thing you're looking for?

4. the universe we live in will surely self-destruct someday, someway. it was born, after all, so it will also die. we too are all minuscule worlds, earth-shatteringly unique in the way we talk, breathe, think, exist. there are galaxies inked on the back of our eyelids and supernovas exploding in our eyes, shivers in our skin waiting to be let loose, libraries in our minds. we live with volcanic blood and tidal tears and drowning lungs, earthquake hearts shaking our chests

5. we are catastrophically human; always living in fear of the endings of our stories, forever forgetting our own I*mpossible beauty.

I am sitting in my room, lights on
a cloudy day, a little rain,
and the fish tank whispers
and splashes; a simple song
replaying through the house
and I am dreaming, a long
train of thought that glides by,
is lost. and found;
I'm floating with
my head up in the clouds–
proud. sometimes I forget I
am only sixteen, because
I feel so old caught in between
a million instances of sound and
words and wonderings;
wandering through dizzy daydreams
I slowly remember:
life is simple, nothing grandiose,
I'll do what I will while waiting;
a happy ending is all I crave,
and no more hesitating.

we were matches that didn't match and we smoked each other out;
you were long gone, a shell of a boy looking for warmth,
and I was a desperate flare lighting up the night,
blind

your emptiness–what a mess–

lies
now I've left our meaningless memories behind,
filling up with doubt instead: tell me darling future lover,
will you too spark heartfire, a funeral pyre, then turn leaving me to drown?

every day I long for the night
and every night I yearn for the stars–
seems like they're the only ones that calm my roiling thoughts these days;
my tumultuous
heart
drowning on fire; my mind is lost
in sky, clouded words,
long goodbyes,
dark.

and though I have a soul of
few wounds I somehow still
manage to learn this
inexplicable
oceanic sadness–
why is it that we exist
when we are so flawed, why is it that we
must dedicate ourselves to pursuits of no meaning,
why is it that though happiness is all we desire
we don't share, we're just liars–I sit here torn,
close my eyes,
crackle and burn.