awkward and easily misunderstood,
he only eats fried food.
hates exercise with a vengeance,
"you're gonna die before me", i always tell him.

he weaves something out of nothing,
in him i found what i was lacking.
pushing through stress, pain and fear,
with pvc, glue, pen and paper.

while the world dreams he's awake,
structures, rhythms, games he creates.
even when he sleeps his eyes are half-open,
his heart in the stars and his mind full of wonder.

to the you who constantly creates,
even when darkness inhibits;
i'm proud of what you've done and made.
you with your weird blue chinese jacket,
unkempt hair and dark eye bags;
constantly tinkering,
shining from within.

have you heard about the goldfish,
with the three-second memory?
lost, helpless, forgotten...himself.
they said, "in this unforgiving bubble, give it two days, he'll be dead."
he swam around aimlessly, swallowing their words;
waiting for death.

but he came upon an orange fish, much like himself;
and then another,
and then another.
he stopped and realized, he was not alone in his woes.
they supported each other through the cold waters,
for they knew they could not make it alone.

emerging from the depths not many have been,
they could finally say it with enough certainty -
"PS: did you know?
goldfishes have months-long memories."

you shunned when the light came through,
tousled hair, eyebags hanging loose.
you were always good at navigation,
your future though was in the opposite direction.
your smiles were fueled by smokes and dreams,
effervescing in snowglobes of sleepless mist.

i was merely a fly attracted to fire,
hoping your tendrils could propel me higher.
when you learnt that i glowed in the night,
eyes shut tight, you extinguished the light.

he was a fly who wanted to be a dragon,
his gaze held beats of 25 per second.
they said it'd sting when he touched me,
the devil's needles, they called him.

whoever believed in those stories,
couldn't be any more sorry -
dragonflies can't hurt fireflies,
for they're both creatures of the night.

Hearts are
Wild creatures,
That's why our ribs
Are  cages

once upon a time,
there was a tiny cactus in a large valley.

the tiny cactus lived day by day,
going about its cactus routines.
he wasn't happy, he wasn't sad;
he didn't feel, for he didn't have to.

one night, the tiny cactus felt little droplets of salvation
free-falling from above.
the water droplets filled him up and embraced him,
from inside out and outside in.

soon, he himself started to produce tiny droplets as well.
he remembered now,
he had experienced this phenomenon - rain - before.

he had waited through
countless waxing and waning of the moon
for the rain to return again.
but it never did, and his walls grew tougher
until he didn't need the rain anymore.

and now that it was back, now that he could feel again...;
despite the thickness of his walls,
gentle streams of fluid were flowing out of him.

now that the rain finally came back,
all the tiny cactus could do was cry.