i don't remember how it felt yesterday,
with its empty windows and laughing winds,
lonely pedestals and creaking floors.

i don't remember what you said yesterday
when we whispered suicide to the earth
and prayed the stars might explode.

i don't remember what i did yesterday
when my eyes were pumping blood,
and i used a heart-shaped telescope
to see beyond today's hurricanes.

yesterday i lied. today i do too.
i remember everything yesterday
so i lose myself in tomorrow.

there are skulls and ghosts
and an aura of death

and the king, he walks still
along the rooftops and gallows
until helios chases him dead.

and ophelia, she went gasping
beneath the weight of her thoughts,
finding air only in death.

and hamlet, he screamed his lungs out
before taking his mother's legacy
and drowning in her blood.

and if you think for too long,
you'll learn the real poison is...

fighting my sister for chasubao
capturing lobaco with chopsticks
and your memory, always,
telling me i shouldn't learn putonghua
because "this is america
and you'd better learn that fast."

irony's got nothing on
this dramatic, overblown
love of ours.

algo diferente en el silencio
después de su muerte: en bosques vivían
treinta especies de pájaros, pero
ahora trece viven sin canción y

diecisiete han desaparecido. no
te muevas ni llores. el aire ahoga
entre el silencio y el discernimiento
de la luna. intentas esconder las

estrellas con el polvo que encontraste
en la sombra del sol. me dijiste que
sería un substituto para un techo,

su propia versión del cajón que atrapa
ella del cielo infinito. ¿recuerdas
que un castigo debe ser más caótico?

i can't say i loved you like some hero of old
the greatest beast i've had to fight is a
man who told me girls couldn't do
anything (and yeah, i proved him wrong, but
he left thinking me the exception,
not the rule)

don't treat me as othello, far from home and struck
down with words stronger than desdemon's love
the moor was everything i'm not

don't call me boudica
don't call me scathach or aoife -
the reason their once-bright flames are
so captivating is that their hearts were strong and
more alive than their eyes (which
danced with fire even as they died)
they were heroes and i am here

i couldn't love you like a warrior,
conquistador,
ruler -
yet.
but it's what's coming that matters,
not what came. (of course i can't love you with
fire not yet mine.

it will be.)

life's like a ferris wheel
the apex is breathtaking
but when you slow, stop
you don't go back up

i used to think that i could beat my depression.

roll the dice and lie awake until midnight
thinking of all the ways tomorrow could be worse.

skip a turn and sneak down late at night
to steal a kitchen knife - just in case.

take one, three, seventeen pills
to reach the unknown bonus round
where for once i might win.

and if i lag behind the players beside
just cry until they drown in my tears.

my handwriting changed
after you left.

now, it runs rightwards
as the words strive to
escape my pen.

now, any letters that
stand upright
are left so very empty.

now, the ink i use is blue
because i needed a break
from the black-and-white
i used to live.

now, i showed someone else
the things i'd written
for you.

she told me my words
could be beautiful,
even if i only write
in the margins of
old books.

my letters dance, now.
just another thing
that changed after you left.

(they are still not enough
to tell the paper what i hurt.)

(they are still not enough
for my forgotten regrets.)

ley lines,* she says,
and i say they're not real.

but i remember
whispers at three a.m.,
making each other laugh
when we just want to cry,
secrets told on sidewalks
and ski lifts.

but i know
that she's the only one
i can be not just myself,
but anyone with.

but i know
that she's the only one
i've shown my words to.

and maybe -
maybe invisible strings
that laugh at distance
to connect us together
seem a bit more
real.

here and on the far-off stars,
it is always you and me -
forever burning,
forever living with things
that we'd rather forget

your bones are burning
from the inside out.
watch yourself be consumed;
don't feel anything.

your lungs fill with sunlight
but only in the day.
at night it turns dark,
tar coating your lips.

the gray clouds recognize
that you are one of them.
no blue sky will keep them
from dragging you down.

take care, my dear,
that you do not underestimate a hurricane
if it wears human skin.

i am more than
the middle ground
of my extremes.

(there are churches left standing in war zones.)

there are churches left standing in war zones and
they're a symbol
of far-off war-torn places
because destruction is universal.

(blood stains the walls
but they are still holy
and still there.)

there are churches left standing in war zones on
the front page of newspapers,
shouting numbers and figures
but never tragedy.

(there is nothing more powerful
than a bombed-out miracle.)

there are churches left standing in war zones because
soldiers know that in churches
words cut deeper than bullets,
than bayonets,
and the destruction of that power
would be atomic bomb
ground zero
hiroshima nagasaki
hundreds dead and
decades of fallout.

(hospitals and morgues are gone.
the church still stands.)

there are churches left standing in war zones
filled with dust and rubble
and blood and death and dying
and faith screaming for hope
and the church is still standing
but nothing
else
breathes.

(and the church watches war
and she laughs.)

I WANT TO BREATHE KNOWLEDGE YOU'LL NEVER COMPREHEND. I WANT TO DETAIL EXACTLY HOW MANY HEARTBEATS I LET YOU HURT ME. I WANT TO SCREAM YOUR SECRETS TO THE WORLD SO YOU CAN BURN ALIVE IN THEIR ASHES. I WANT TO CRY THE FLOOD THAT DROWNS YOU. I WANT MY RAGE TO SHAKE THE FAULT LINE UNTIL IT SWALLOWS YOU WHOLE. I WANT YOU TO SEE THE DARKNESS IN MY EYES BEFORE I BRING THE EARTH DOWN ON BOTH OF US.

knowledge is power,
but the truth is terrible and great.

i said you were my bible -
heavy with ignorant words.

there's seafoam in your lungs
but i think you might be choking on
nothing more than air

i love you beyond all imagining.

index finger of dominant hand
point upright
let finger rotate from wrist
flick across the tip of nose
close to touching skin
let your wrist fall into the movement
quick motion, don't hesitate
like you have something on your fingertip
and you're throwing it aside -
you want it over and done with

*liar

she dies on a friday.
gets buried on sunday.

it's bright and beautiful and
she thinks she should've loved it
but you can't see the sky
from underground.

the mourners are insincere
with false words, false grief.
they're the ones who killed her
and now the ones to bury her.

the script is elegant and flowing,
something she would have hated.
she always wanted to be cremated.
it takes up less space.

the gravestone reads:
*MY AUTONOMY.

i wish you understood
that when i tell you to leave
i'm really asking you to stay

the earth gasps in one thunderclap
and the sky cries sunbeamed rain

the rivers run with mourning blood
as the mountains strain to move

the deserts now grow green from
oceans rising with saltwater tears


maybe for the first time we wake
to remember things we used to be

(children of volcanoes and death
worshipers of forests and stars)

or maybe we slumber on
as around us, the world crumbles

las cosas que vienen entreolas -
vidas, sueños y estrellas de amor -
nunca regresarán
a mi isla de soledad

let's start a new kind of revolution.

let's burn idioms at the stake
and throw similies to the wind.

let's be madmen with
ink for blood,
paper for skin,
rebellion for bones.

let's tear down the words
and build something better.

maybe the space between words is lonely.
and maybe that is why i let it swallow me whole.

they have always lied.
heaven is home to demons in disguise.

in hell, at least,
they do not hide their misbeings.

look.
here's the thing.
i wish my spanish were better.

it is always harder to lie
in a language not your own.

and i wish i didn't tell myself
quite so many lies.

why is it that the global things are overlooked?

we are amazed by miniscule creatures,
delicate circuitry tracing green with gold,
replication and division of cells.

we are amazed by stars we'll never see,
men looking down from orbit,
galaxies collapsing in supernovas.

we aren't amazed by things limited
to this terrestrial world.
we aren't amazed by global epidemics,
or people fighting for peace,
or this strange thing we call love.

we aren't amazed by the everyday
but maybe we should be.