i am not sure who i am
or if i ever will be

i'm asked all the time
and it only cements
how little i understand myself

but should i?

ive lived from boxes
for the past five years
laying my head on unsteady ground
(in my childhood home)

my posters and photos
stay rolled up, packed away
the walls refuse their intimacy
(the paint is peeling)

i sleep in this room
but i keep my distance
insulated by a thin film of uncertainty
(like the skin of an apple)

(but)

when im truly temporary
only a few days, a week
i feel more permanent
(when im with you)

it anchors me and tugs me forward
through the slog of life
towards any kind of permanence
with you
(it doesnt matter)

and i think that after decades
we'll look at the walls
past the photos and posters
and we'll smile

(the paint is peeling)

i write my comfort wearily at night
the gooseflesh brought upon my skin by cold
a broken screen, the splintering of glass
all held together by a feeble glue

i find it easy to forget my place
within the realm of things that really are
at midnight, maybe past an hour or three,
when white noise drones within my empty skull

they ache, my eyes, and tether me to earth
one second gone consumes the midnight whole
the crowbar glow is wedged between the lids
the fading world resigns to pure mirage

in hours' time, the cycle will repeat
my sense of who i am will surely ebb

though just a patchwork poem of different lines,
this sonnet shall begin my journal still.
it lacks in structure, not in rhythm or rhyme
and serve it's purpose i am sure it will.

"a journal?" you may say, and ask "what for?"
and i reply "i got bored on a plane"
my grandfather suggested that the lore
that university brings should be lain

within these pages, if i ever write
these out on paper which i may just do
once i return from durham and alight,
this metal bird that brings me there unto.

i don't recall how many lines to add,
though with this quad i think i shall be set
my future works will be more thought ahead,
and probably not from inside a jet.

all things considered, i quite like this poem,
and if my father asks, i'd surely show'im.

to all my siblings i never met and never will meet
to all the people who never got to find themselves
who lived and died under a name other than their own
to everyone whose fate was decided at the hateful hands of others
or their own hands in hopeless sorrow
to those who spearheaded change
and to those who never knew another like them

i'll keep living for you
i love you

at least sisyphus
only has one
boulder

the windows are shut
the blinds are drawn
the door is locked
the lights are out
but the house is awake

the floorboards ripple
the walls squirm
the ceiling shakes with nervous energy
the doorways twitch

night has fallen
the people inside are fast asleep
but the house is awake