say cowboy.
say hot dog.
say ice cream.
say baseball.
see, the step into the sound booth is an awkward height,
about 6 inches off the ground,
and i find myself raised on a pedestal,
sealed in for you to inspect,
watching you and an audiologist
through a glass window,
watching you decide my future
as you face away from me
so i cannot read your lips
and you cannot see me shouting stop.

say airplane,
say sidewalk,
say you might hear static in your right ear
but i know i will only hear a tone,
an electronic beep going on and on and on

say conducive hearing loss say sensoneurial damage say surgery say it might be permanent this time,
like it hasn't been permanent for the last ten years,
say there's a new technique say we can fix this,
say negative impact on social life, say poor classroom performance,
say we just want what's best for you,
say try hearing aids try CIs try cued speech,
say you need to be fixed.

it's been a decade since i first entered that sound booth,
noises not echoing off these walls that take a little more from me with every test.
it's been a decade since my hearing slipped away and
i am done mourning it but i don't think you are.

persistence is a valuable trait but stop trying,
stop putting me under with an x on my right cheek so the surgeons know how to lay me out on the operating table,
stop refusing to turn on the captions because i need the practice,
stop talking to me without tapping me first,
stop screaming at me when i mishear.

i am done mourning my hearing and i don't know if i ever grieved in the first place but you are still stuck in the stage of denial,
hoping against hope for some ******* miracle.
i don't want a miracle, i don't want anything god can give me because i am not lacking, i am whole, i already am the miracle you were looking for and i don't need to be fixed.

but you don’t believe that, do you?

so the audiologist can open the heavy soundproof door but i am still trapped inside this box,
the walls swallowing my words as you decide my future for me because
no one wants to listen to those who cannot hear.

say stop sign,
say hairbrush,
say push the button when you hear the beep
and i hold it down with my thumb,
gripping the clicker like the handle of a gun
until you tell me to let go.
but i hear deserts stretching away from me,
flat sci-fi dreamscapes where there is only one sound and i can hear it too.

say tinnitus,
say psychosomatic because you don't believe that i might hear infinity where you tell me i shouldn't.
say hole in the eardrum say the surgery might have accelerated the deterioration,
say we can try again but
i gave up ten years ago and i think you should too,
and i'm here in this sound booth screaming for you to stop
but you will not look at me,
will not even attempt communication.

no one wants to listen
to those who cannot hear.

twenty-four hours spent on you,
and i think i'm done mourning
the one thing we never had.

i tell you, yes. i know.
alexandria burned
brighter than my soul.

i have felt hanzi in my blood
fireworks in my skin
dragons in my bones

i have looked at a cloudy sky
and thought of guangzhou
of shenzen
of nanjing

walls and death and power are my legacy
i was born the descendant of a tyrant
but i have changed it
twisted it
and now i am the ancestor of a diamond age

once upon a time we bound our feet in rags
and hobbled on dirt-packed roads
but not anymore
not anymore
now we sprint full-out to the east
the rising sun calls us like silken whispers
and we laugh at those who would hold us back

walls and death and power are the legacy
of those who reach for it
of those who write defiance on their chests
in ****** pinyin
and above all
of those who take the fireworks from their skin
and scream them alive

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.

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.

poets are the people with the words in their veins
worlds in their minds beating against the curves of their skull
syllables in their palmprints

poets are the people who look at you and see
the galaxies underneath your skin
instead of the spiderweb cracks
on the surface

poets are the people who fall easy and live hard
(you've always been jealous of them
and you're not sure why)

(maybe it's got something to do with
the wisdom you know they know
and the seventeen ways
they know how to live)

i am not a poet
i'm just trying
to figure out
who might be

one.* the worst thing about madness is that you know it until you embody it.

two. losing people is the hardest part, but it's also the simplest. isn't it easy to let go? never mind that grabbing hold once more is  nigh impossible, especially for people like you. (the people who wrest the night from the moon and spend hours laughing at the stars that dare to burn.)

three. graveyards are strange. who says the dead want to be remembered? you know they don't. when you die, just another body among many, you want to be forgotten, passed over, destroyed with the acid of time.

four. logic is a cage. you break down the bars with the sword from the stone and watch as they cower. they should.

five. it doesn't matter how much armor you wear when your eye is uncovered. you make sure that your own armor is up. words, wrapping your chest, your hands, and your eyes are the most dangerous part of you, because you can see what they won't. the dragon dies.

six. you laugh and drag him down with you, drowning the prince under the willow tree. he was foolish - to think you'd need saving, as if anything here could be more dangerous than a girl with blood on her hands and screams in her head and insanity in her bones. as if a dragon had any chance against you and everything you've seen, everything you've *done.

seven. you hope they will forget you. memories can be let go - don't you know this all too well? there was never a before the madness, only an after.

eight. you die too. you don't hear them any more.

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

this is a love story told in metaphors,
because words can’t say how gravity
pulls on planets and suns and stars,
but they’ll be gone before they touch.

this is a love story told in metaphors.
giving voice to drowning in an ocean
of red will never be possible – despite
our myths of old, we’re only human.

this is a love story told in metaphors:
we are of fire and ice, forever apart;
of twilight, when night and day strain
for each other but always fall short;
of science, faith, and all in between;
of concepts of “peace” and “human”;
of two things that shall never coexist.

this is a love story told in metaphors
because i do not know why i am still
reaching for you when we’ll always be
stopped by something greater than us.

we are a love story told in metaphors.
outside of words, our souls will surely
explode.

you are oil on asphalt.
when it rains,
you glow.

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.

where i am, there aren't
many people who understand
the clean start you bring.

if i could i would
pluck you from the sky,
walk you through my life.

say, "this is where i saw you first.
this is where i turned my prayers
to you instead of god."

say, "this is where i stared at
the pale insides of my wrists
before i matched our glows."

say, "this is where i realized
you are the closest i will ever get
to a culture i'll never know."

if i could i would
polish you to perfection
and push you to the heavens.

i'd cover you with
my mother's silk scarves,
drop them one by one.

dear moon, old friend;
thank you for this hard reboot.
i'll pay you in red envelopes
the next time we meet.

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

you are 17 and still breathing.

you know there are people who have galaxies in their hearts, stars in their hair, and moons in their eyes. you're not one of them. you're not one of them and that's okay.

you? you know where the true secrets lie.

they do not reside in universes humans will never know, in stars light-years away. no, true secrets can be found only in what we think we know. we have never seen many of the stars. we have all seen birds' nests and clouds in an otherwise clear sky. we have all seen someone cry and someone laugh and someone breathe.

we have all seen two people look at each other like the person in front of them is the only thing in the universe. we have movies and books and songs and stories all about love. but we have never known it. we have never understood it.

you tell me i don't know what the secret is? i tell you, of course i don't. you don't either. that's why it's a secret. that's why it will never be solved.

the sun and moon collided,
burning desperate tragedies.

but i think you and i
might have been the real casualties.

although my heart is buried deep
it is not far below -
where shadows shiver, mountains sleep
and flames will simmer low -

i left it all alone one night,
forgot where it was found -
but she told me about the life
seen buried in the ground -

i know my heart is buried deep
though it's not far below -
where bones call out and caskets weep
my body rests, alone -

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.