In all honesty I've never been good with words. I never knew what to respond after the doctor would ask me what hurt, or what to tell my mother after I saw her cry when my dad left. Poetry is placing words in all the wrong places in order to build something right. Poetry is taking apart the puzzle and forcing the pieces into spaces they don't fit. I tried to write you a letter to tell you that I miss you, the problem with poetry is that there's no metaphor that makes this emptiness inside my chest any more beautiful. There's no personification real enough to make my sheets feel like you're laying in them. There's no simile literal enough to make my heart feel as though its healing. I wish I could place these words on my tongue and roll them out for you to hear, but since I've last kissed you I can't even find the motivation to part my lips. I always find myself questioning why I keep writing; because the problem with my poems is that you're never the one reading them.

i keep telling myself to stop using you to self medicate

but the sound of your name is enough to close my wounds

remember the night I told you that you're my home and that

i wrote my poems on my skin because i wanted to place them somewhere you would notice

i asked you to take me to the mountains so we could fall in love at the highest peak

you said you wanted to reach into the sky and pull down a star for me

i don't even know who i am anymore. i'm stuck between the person i was before you and the person i am with you.

and now you're gone

sincerely, a girl who could never apologize for loving you

You know poetry is your life
when you initially wake
and you're already in a conditioned mind state
reciting lines in your head

You know poetry is your life
when you go to bed
and rhymes are drifting you
away into a sleeping state

You know poetry is your life
when you are driving along
and you suddenly pull over
just to scribble down some narrative thoughts

You know poetry is your life
when you are at work
and you refrain from doing your job
just so you can jot down some formal expression

You know poetry is your life
when you are reading the mail
and even names and numbers
inspire a distinctive phrase

You know poetry is your life
when thy words of choice
become rapid fluency
and part of the Shakespearean language

You know poetry is your life
when random collections seamlessly take over
and are scattered everywhere
from journals, to loose papers, hard drives, & accumulating memory

You know poetry is your life
when you begin to realize
and everyday you must traditionally release
the spoken word writes to its divine legacy

You know poetry is your life
when you are typing away
and all of a sudden,
you lose your precious work
yet you can still retrieve the files
from one's own mental database

Poetry is your life
Life is your poetry
Whether you live a good one
Whether you live a bad one
Poetry is real
Poetry is fake
What is it really?
What is it not?

Poetry is your life
A therapeutical salvation
Cycle through the emotional manifestation
Peddle away from the soul's padlock
A spiraling staircase that leads you to freedom
The universal process of exhibiting experience
It's a divine intervention
Revelations of truth and discovery
Creating artful expression of one's existence
You know poetry is your life

I wonder
how many words
have sat on the tip
of your tongue,
waiting to take the plunge
into the world outside,
but have held back
in fear of the fall-

and I wonder
how different your life would be
had those words been set free.

They say to
write what you know
but I'm just so
sick of
tragedies

I was born into a nation,
therefore my nationality is theirs.

But my parents originate from across the world,
And so my origin is theirs.

More importantly though,
All of our souls have the same home,
Till death,
from birth,
We've resided on Earth.