we often forget that suffering
is not mutually exclusive.
it feels like looking at a star
and not seeing the sky.

i'm not looking for your pity.
i just want to you acknowledge
that you are not the sun.
the earth doesn't orbit you.

maybe you're hurting.
don't forget: i can hurt too.

in another world,
words are weapons.

haikus are like hand grenades.
five-seven-five exactly
and the world can explode.

my free verse has become
a biological weapon,
infectious and changing.
the people you were before
won't survive this apocalypse.

sonnets scream just like
nuclear warheads.
limericks adapt just like
amphibious vehicles.

couplets seem innocuous,
but the power they hold
rivals that of a bomb.

in another world,
words are weapons,
and instead of blood
we spill ink.

you were a network
of supernovas and stardust,
bound together by light.
you would glow, baby,
and your light burned
through the velvet sky.

it's so easy to forget that
in the game of life
we are ephemeral.

it's so easy to forget that
galaxies die too.

it's so easy to forget that
light lives for eons
after a star's death.

if i could capture you with a metaphor
i'd say you were like the sea:
hidden power, tides moving with the moon.

i'd say you were like cliff diving
because i live for this temporary suicide
and the adrenaline rush halfway down.

i'd say you were like magnetism,
sparking, bending light,
drawing me in without discrimination.

i might even say that you were like a metaphor,
because they try to make sense of the impossible
and that's what you do with me.

if you value me less
for what you see
then the problem's with you
not with me

sometimes i imagine
what the world would be sans us:
a species so self-destructive
that we **** ourselves
in the name of peace

then i remember:
we alone try to capture
the impossible
with words

and maybe?
maybe that's enough.