cloudy skies obstruct your eyes
waves are your body,
your irises are the tides.

how much does it take to **** a man?
is it the curves of her body,
or the curves of her smile.

my mouth is
telling you to
leave but my
eyes are begging
you to stay.

Somehow, hell felt better than
thinking of you night and day.

with a couple words like Je T'aime I wasn't really
impressed with the way your tongue glided over
your lower lip or the way your eyes shot up like
fireworks on the Fourth of July, which reminded
me of the last time I met someone like you right by
the Colosseum: was I meant to be intertwined with a
historic love or have my heart coded with places I
wouldn't forget such as your arms during the morning
light when we are hidden under the sheets, hoping your
mother wouldn't come in her satin pink robe and sharp
tongue because she said she was too young to be a grandmother
(she said she loved the color of my eyes, brown like mine
were too rare to find) and for a moment, I believed her when she
said I should pack up my bags and find another city to fall in
love with because you'd drag me under the ground and make me
a ruin just the way your father did to her. It was hard to believe
the words springing from her blood, but I left a photograph of myself
in your pocket and ran to where my legs took me. In a matter of months, when I heard a couple of words like Te Amo, I knew it was to start again.

I gathered up the pieces
of your heart in my palm.
"I love her," oh, how you
sounded so in-love, so
blind, so foolish that you
couldn't see how much I
loved you.
"I love her," soon the words
began to fade. You could
say I was happy, but was
holding you in my arms while
you cried yourself to sleep called
"Happy"?
"I loved her." Soon the words began
to repeat. I got tired of cleaning up
after the mess of broken bottles.
"I love you, now." You told me somewhere after the first snow-
flake has fallen. "But I don't."

We sat at the edge of your bed listening to vinyl records of the rolling stones; I thought for a moment we were stuck in the 80’s and were teenagers pretending to fall in love with the last trace of bubblegum flavor on the corner of our mouths and cheap ***** stains on our t-shirts which was a whole mixtape of our reckless youth and belief of love we could only know from books. It was my favourite mixtape anyway.

The only strength I knew was finding myself in your arms whenever the storm grew, or climbing the mountains to find your smile, but little did I know this was no fairy tale where we could end up together. This was some ******* up reality with my heart bashed on your hands, still pounding because I would live to see one more day and listen to how wonderful you sound, however walls grew between our touch, my second home becoming a tiny room with four white walls, my life fixed on a machine, and tubes swimming through my veins when the only feeling I can remember is your laugh against my cheek which is now fading away into the infinite stars you swore upon with little or no hope in your voice, saying, ‘you’re strong, you wouldn’t leave,’ but God, am I so sorry to break that promise.

Follow me into my dreams, swim in the bed of flowers I’ve built for us, maybe we could look at the stars too and find the secrets you said were hidden in chests of gold. My eyes were your chests of gold, you said. But now that I am awake, I’ve suddenly become an empty box with treasure you no longer want.

I scribbled your number over, over and over again
on a piece of paper, hoping it would make you call
me once more and linger over a conversation longer
than two minutes and I swear I wasn't superstitious
like my mother who hated it whenever I broke mirrors
and walked under ladders; she said I was such an idiot,
I think it's catching up with me like the salty wind to our
skin during the first night you kissed me and said I was
pretty decent and it's okay if I scribble your number a thousand
more times just to hear you say that again.

you told me I
reminded you
of a poem.
A meaningful
yet incomplete
one. And I
Said, "it's only
true because I
love yo-"

I called you up by 1:02 AM just to hear your drunken words and slurry voice. When you picked up the call, I could hear the music play and my heart beat because anticipation was the only thing flowing in my veins along with the kiss you gave me just for the sake of being nice (I thought it was quite sweet because I still touch my lips every once in a while.) The music kept playing and you began to speak, I thought I felt my ears fill with butterflies and my throat clench with all the oceans I compare the depth of my love to. I listened to you tell me all about your Halloween party and how you said it was all fun because it was the only day you had the chance to be someone else. I still listened even when you told me all about someone else and how broken you felt and there was no party and you were listening to the music all by yourself with your half-finished *****. “Will it be okay if you call me up again by 1:02?” and your voice sort of cracked before I heard your breath and quiet snores.

how ironical
is it to fall in
love with
someone who
only wants to
break your heart?

heart's beating so loud, I don't want it to stop

these are letters my skin has hidden in codes i don't think anyone could crack,
but you came into my life, day by day figuring out what every page of me meant.
you loved how the ink felt against your fingertips,
you loved the way it rolled off your tongue.
you loved it even more when my mouth tasted of cheap ***** and god knows what.
but when you put the pieces together and the taste of my mouth grew too bitter for you,
you left me, all exposed with secrets let loose.
now how am i ever going to be myself again?

You told me turning the page would
do me good, but my book is filled of
blank pages and no one can imprint
words in them the way you could.