Whenever I must add new people to my life,
I feel that it is my duty to be my most likable version,
And because of that, I wear makeup, straighten my hair,
And lose myself in aesthetic immersion.

I feel better when I feel pretty,
And that breaks my heart.
I never thought my happiness,
Was such a simple and vain art.

4 Fried stuffed avocados.
Migas enchiladas.
A craving,
an appetite, a hollow
vessel.
Fresh Tres Leches.
Packaged chocolate donuts.
*** after work. 30 minutes.
Flaccid existence.

Found humor
in it all.

I saw a goddess amongst humans
At first glance
She gave me a feeling my poetic mind couldn't put in words.
I wondered why she walked this earth—
I wondered why a precious being was amidst human beings.
She stood out from every soul that walked past her—
Her eccentricity only made her more alluring.
Thousands of mysteries were hidden behind her innocent face—
I hoped to unfold them.
Her seductive brown eyes made me inquisitive—
Inquisitive about what went on in that beautiful mind.
I yearn to see what was hidden beneath her clothes
I yearn to explore her unblemished body if she let me,
And kiss those full lips till it became numb.
She was Oh-so distant yet she attracted me
She was Oh-so gentle yet easily recognizable in a crowded room
Why ?
I guess because her skin glowed like the moon in the vastness of space—
The depths of her eyes told a story that will never bore—
Or maybe she was just a goddess amongst humans.

Nightingale, oh my blue nightingale

How wondrous your songs make my day

You let my troubles left astray

Oh nightingale, blue nightingale now off we sail


Through the seas and blues we together wander

Off and on shore storms yet your night songs provide me refuge

That's why I kept going each breakfast through supper

For the night I wait for your songs to cure my somber


Oh do I sometimes wonder why such night you only sing

But not for the day where my troubles are on its wing

Blue nightingale oh you're such full of mysteries

Yet I shan't bother for I cast you always my sea stories


After a long while my senses poked for you don't sing no more

Nor your colorful blue wings spread nevermore

The storms went, wrecked our ship now we're only together

My poor heart grieves, my poor soul hungers


Then I realized you only sing for the stars

Not for the morning sun, not for you, not for our poor ship and oh not for me

You've always dreamed to fly, fly away from here

To the stars that is, to the ambitious stars you always loved


Oh nightingale, blue nightingale from this false abode now I've awaken

From the lust o' spell I've once trapped from your songs forsaken

Now I have to let you go no breath ever taken

Away now you fly and let me forever alone freeze on this cold of ice


Oh nightingale, my blue nightingale now you're gone

But now I suppose, so am I

Nightingale, blue nightingale in my dreams you shall now sing and fly high

And now let I be put to sleep and alone sing this last cold sigh.

she doesn't do it for you
she doesn't wake up for you
she doesn't paint her lips for you
or add that sparkle to her eye for you
she is the sun
she is the moon
she is the Stars
and she does it all for herself

I watched my father scrunch his eyebrows together
whenever my mother said something he didn't like,
his impatience seeping through his dark skin,
apparent in the way he turned his body away
as if he wanted to run from all this
but he's trapped now, trapped forever.
I listened as my mother told me she did not want to stay
and my brother and I are the only things anchoring her unto this godforsaken house
of peeling white paint and crumbling walls and endless shouts and burning words.
I watched them hold each other when things got tough
and I knew it wasn't because of love—
it was because they were the nearest things to each other.
At a very young age I knew love was something that dissolves,
a flower you water everyday,
a story you never stop writing,
And some people, they don't know,
that they have stopped watering,
and they're running out of ink, only on page 3.
Little girl me knew.
Big girl me continues to watch it unfold,
dead petals in their hair
and dark ink between their fingers—
dry