i never really liked my mind much -
too loud, too full,
too distracting -
until i discovered algebra.

my first love was factorization.
my second was l'hôpital.
my third, ramanujan.

i fell in love with numbers
before i fell in love with you
because they make sense
when you don't.

fruit on the sidewalk
fallen from the trees above
bleeding from too many footsteps
(of people who didn't care)
staining the cement with
the bright spring shades

and i'm saying "please don't leave me"
and you're deaf to my words -
crushing me under your heel -
but the colors i bleed are not spring
(they are summer heartbreak
and winters lost)

i'm fragile, about to break,
on a one-way street to the end of the world -
but i'm great at hiding the cracks in my skin
with fool's gold and cheap paint

i've learned to love skydiving
because if i close my eyes,
if i tune out the air whipping by,
it feels just like falling in love.

do you want to be invincible?

i want to turn my skin to diamond
so the only thing that can hurt me
is myself.

i want to become adamantium
so i can walk through the fire
and pull you out.

i want to be bulletproof,
laugh at those who would challenge me
with weapons.

but at the same time -
i want to be as fragile as a flower
so i can be touched by the sun.

i want to bend with you
instead of standing, unflinching,
in the face of love.

i want to feel pain and sorrow and heartbreak
because then i'll remember how we laughed
and push the rest from my mind.

do you want to be invincible?
*why don't you ask achilles?

sorry about the blood on my hands
i swear it's not yours

i've spent 6 months
observing you with her.
i've come to this conclusion:
yeah, you talk nice,
painting pictures in the air,
but you are just that -
air.

you are just that -
insubstantial.

white knuckles and screaming
over rickety wood supports,
the rush of air in my face
trying to pull my glasses away -

adrenaline does funny things.
i see the world in black-and-white
without any splotch of gray.

adrenaline does funny things.
people i haven't talked to in years
are suddenly laughing next to me
as we spiral through loop two.

adrenaline does funny things.
it shrouds memory in a golden glow
so that you forget the terror
until you get back on again.

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.

imagine that you live in a world where, until you reach the age of sixteen, the food orzo is forbidden.

you've heard about orzo. how could you not? it's everywhere, because it seems like everybody loves orzo. orzo this, orzo that. for your whole life, you've heard about the glory of orzo. most people you know can't wait to try it. they talk about it all the time.

you, though, you've never had the overwhelming urge to eat orzo, not like it seems your peers do. still, you go along with it, because everybody else loves orzo and can't wait to try it.

eventually, you ask your dad whether he's always liked orzo. "yes," he says, "of course. you might not like it now, but you'll love it when you're older." he then shows you how to make orzo, even though you're not at all curious.

your peers have begun to try orzo. they all give glowing reviews. but despite their enthusiasm, it still seems kind of odd to you. why is everyone so worked up over orzo? what makes it so great?

life goes on. maybe you tried orzo. maybe you didn't. either way, you've decided it's not your thing. the only problem? no one else gets it. they all say, "what do you mean you don't like orzo? everybody likes orzo. maybe you just haven't found the right recipe yet." but you know that you don't like orzo. you probably never will. and everyone else thinks you strange for this.

this is what it's like to be asexual in this environment.

i want to be a wildfire.
i want my existence to burn.

i want to be a volcano.
i want my apex to be an eruption.

i want to be an earthquake.
i want to take the fault lines
and make them chasms.

i want to be a tornado.
i want to **** the air from your lungs.

i want to be a hurricane.
i want to rage and rage and rage
but always protect my core.

i want to be a force of nature.
**** anyone who stands in my way.

i used to long for quiet.
noise was infuriating -
people breathing, speaking,
doing things i couldn't control.

now i'd give just about anything
to feel that type of anger,
to hear my sister talking in her sleep,
to listen to music in the air,
not through the soles of my feet.

now i'd give just about anything
to be able to talk to my friends
without reading their lips
to fill in the blanks,
without needing my best guess.

now i'd give just about anything
to ensure that "could you repeat that?"
never passes my lips
into a world i can't hear.

you think with your lungs
and breathe with your heart.

every day we begin a war.
we are the staunchest allies,
the most formidable of foes.
i fight to clear you a path.
you fight free of my shadow.

my mind is a river
with predictable course
and clear motivation.
your mind is the sun:
draped with golden flares,
burning even when unseen,
powered by something cosmic.

you say you see silver
out of the corner of your eye.
i don't tell you what i know:
you see the stars that one day
you will conquer.

no matter how many times i fall,
by my mistake or someone's push,
i will rise again.

i'll rise with blood staining the ground;
with the taste of iron on my lips;
with the knowledge that
you can't fool me twice -

and when i rise...
castles will crumble beneath my fists.
oceans will rush to greet my blood,
for my body and the sea
share the same kind of power.
i'll pour magma onto the cities
and build them anew.

after the fall,
i will be better than before,
and the ones who pushed me down
will be nothing more than
faces in a crowd.

perhaps i should thank them.
without my collapse
i would not have remade
myself or the world.

FIRST: the backstabbers. "trust is so easily broken."
// her eyes are not windows to the soul, but to the galaxy. her skin, when examined with care, holds twelve million maps of stars, all lightyears away. the isoceles triangle of freckles on the hip bone are you. the delicate scars on the inner wrist are her.
// "i will find you," you tell her, one among other promises whispered to her skin that you have no way to keep. you memorize the outer scars of her inner soul. "***** gravity."

SECOND: the victims. "give until there's nothing left."
// she ***** you dry. she is no vampire. no, not a vampire; a succubus does not feed on something as mundane as blood. every time you fall in love with her, she digs her fingernails into your skin and drains it right out of you. and you can't help but fall in love again, and again, and again, until you are a withered husk of a being. you are someone who died too many times and no amount of electric lust can save you now.

THIRD: the soulmates. "you love too deeply. it will destroy you."**
// you hurt each other, yes, but no one else has the antidote to this particular poison, and that's okay. he completes you, and you him. seventeen times he's told you he loves you and you match him for each one. your love for him cannot outpace his for you, nor vice versa.
// then there is an accident, a hospital room, a marble stone with an epitaph that's not right, and you crumble under the weight of all that love.

i wear nothing but my words
somehow, they hide me from you
better than any mask
i've had before

maybe you are afraid
to look beneath

people had always told her to hold her breath.
now she knows that you do not stop on the inhale.
when you are a monster, you breathe fire.
you watch the world burn.
you do not apologize for being.

people forget
that in order to rise
you had first to fall

i think i fell in love with an idea
and i thought the idea was you

i think i fell out of love with you
when i realized i felt more alone
with you than without

trigger warning: themes of ****/noncon.






sunlight tilting through chlorophyll
unseen water smoothing stone
and i think that if i stand here long enough -

the tears on my cheeks might
flow into the river and go out to sea

the impartial sun might
burn away all the handprints
you left on my unwilling skin

i sorta kinda want to die
but it would be a decision
that can't be undone
and i'm not good at commitment

the living are dying.

maybe that means
the dead are living.

secrets on your lips,
tremors in my hands -
we'll shake ourselves alive
and watch the earth burn

if i tore away my human skin
would you see stars beneath?

if i stitched myself back together
would you find gossamer galaxies?