i had missed too many sunsets hurting in silence. to this day, the sky is in a graying shade of blue. to this day, it is mournful and decaying over me — or inside me, i do not know. i had lost count of the months i shunned the sunsets and headed straight — disgracefully, to the arms of the dusk. besides, falling apart looked harsher, and messier, and more vivid in the light. and so i had missed too many sunsets; this too, is becoming a wound.

i wish i were kinder to myself.

i wish i could forgive myself.

i would dip kisses on your freckled back, as though it were an arched door of a baroque cathedral. i would strain my arms cradling the frailty of your sadness. i would weave to my lips your whispers, made of cold and lonely december rust. i would dust my bones and flesh, and i would lie there next to you — a clean slate, in silence and awe and uninhibited longing. my love, we could stay like this for a while.

the streetlights flicker and the sunset blurs. but they know —
my heart has always been yours to break.

We both know you would've broken my heart until there was nothing left to break, and I would've let you. I would've scattered petunias over the wounds you have re-opened. I would've carved you poems on flickering streetlights. I would've set sunrises on fire — kissed you as it died down. I would've skinned your neck open to know what turns my kiss into heartbreak, and what turns that heartbreak into poetry. And we both know you would've broken my heart until there was nothing left to break. It had been years, my love. It had been years on end.

And still, I would let you.

// "December has a softly cruel way of reminding me this."

My hands still remember the quiet aching of these wounds — too deep and wide for stitches and shaky hands. And so, I never learned to unpack my grief. It still is in a suitcase with December dusks and dreary summers — shut in secret library walls. I never learned to unpack my grief because I'm terrified that when I do, it'll be way too messy to place it back where it belongs.


Some things, we never tell ourselves out loud.

Is this the end or is this just the start?
With a demon's red velvet hands wrapped around my throat
It leaves me a ghostly white.
I prayed every night but never heard anything in return.
If there really is a god he'll have to beg for my forgiveness
because I dug my own tunnel and crafted my own sword.
I saved myself from playing anymore of these wicked games.
Tonight you'll hear me cry and I won't pray for nothing.
I reach high to where my dreams are I imagine the light of day and to be saved.
I'm followed by shadows and swallowed up by the blackness behind,
wasting time watching stars collide.
But I swear one day I will be strong enough to raise waters and push through the mountains.
One day when I grow taller, taller than god.
But right now I'm standing in shallow water dreaming of the stars
thinking of the history books I'll be in when I escape these cell walls and finally breathe the earth once again.

I have breathed these dusty walls and cried to many nights.
Blue night, blue moon in the sky
one day I'll see you from a different view
once I escape my imprisoned doom.
I understand my security but I am no longer soulless
so you no longer have the right to treat me like I'm less.
I'll break these walls and break my fist
I know who I am and where I stand.
My weary mind and my heavy soul and a broken heart
will see the face of god and still not believe.
For what is heaven
It must be what holding a lover feels like,
but I know no lover that can live past the flames of hell.

What are, what are these walls made of flames doing?
I'm pure again and deserve a free sentence.
I deserve light.
I deserve to believe in something other than the normal.
I can believe in myself.
I can be my own god.
Hope is not dead,
so I've read.

my heart
beating for you
and blossoms
reaching up like hands from my pulsing heart
growing towards the sun,
(woven in the clouded sky)
flowers blooming upwards from my throat
clusters of amaryllis.
forget me nots
(please don’t forget me when I disappear)
florets and what not
dripping,
spilling
out of my mouth held wide open
as beautiful as fire,
stinging with blood,
sprouting from the cracks in between my teeth
how they flourish as I decay
reaching up until
my heart no longer
beats for you