I have called you the the best, the worst, and it’s strange now I call you nothing.

2 Being reduced to echoes of nostalgia forces me to stitch up the last five years and all the while looking at my Frankenstein creation, I always long to go back.

3. As if this graveyard trembles inside distant fogs that old friends and family cannot bring themselves to mourn over.

4. They call my soul a lake of toxicity. Not once have they asked how I manage to swim through the current of life, but instead look away as the drowning begins.

5. I tried creating my own vortex, but finding myself at the end of a wormhole with no idea how I got here yet alone return to the person before every bad choice, flawed reaction, and bottles tsunami inside of me.

6. Tactless comments, a thoughtless act, a reactive tongue; each transgression building stone by stone until I created this sentinel walling myself with an invisible shield so nobody can come close to me.

7. There’s no winning this war. The battles have always witnessed a type of loss, bloodshed or not.

8. If we touch again whose the reaching hand? Nobody. There’s no oneness without wholeness. And this fortress remains guarded, empty.

9. I cannot keep counting these days anymore. I am a prisoner against the bedroom window. The sepia tones of streetlights taunt me, and I’d rather speak to ghosts than answer the phone these days.

10. We knew how this would end. The white room will only cast my shadow. I don’t know where I will drift from here.

crowded spaces,
familiar faces,
and sometimes
when my mind runs races
when this heart is tired of chases,

I cannot help
but wonder
if this too, is how love ends:
two dimensional,
as if
as if
as if
fairytales are just that;
tales, fabricated, lies.

How profound is it
to see your lover
intertwined with someone
that looks like you.

there's nothing special
between wanting to be alone,
alone with you:
if that doesn't make sense,
then i take back
all the love stories and
fragments of fickle phrases
stating the difference
between genuine, and selfish.

i am tired of dousing flames.
let me burn.

Part 1

Some of us love badly.
Sometimes the love is the type of love that implodes.
Folds in on itself. Eats its insides.
Turns wine to poison.
Behaves poorly in restaurants.
Drinks. Kisses other people.
Comes back to your bed at 4am smelling like everything outside.
Asks about your ex. Is jealous of your ex.
Thinks everyone a rival.

Some of us love others badly, love ourselves worse.
Some of us love horrid, love beastly.
Love sick love anti light.
Sometimes the love can’t go home at night,
can’t sleep with itself, cannot contain itself,
catches fire, destroys the stomach,
strips buildings, goes missing.
Punches. Smashes heirlooms.
Tells lies. The best lies. F*s around.
Writes poems, impresses people.
Chases lovers into corners.
Leaves them longing. Sea sick.
Says yes. Means anything but.
Tricks the body.
Kills the body.
Dances wild
and walks away,
smiling.

Part 2

Why should you apologize
for the monster
you’ve become when
nobody apologized
for creating
the monster that
you are?

But the serious answer to that
is because you make monsters too.

And that apology you never got
is the apology you never gave.

It ain’t even about me.
Remember every single time
a person ever done you wrong,
and any st part of your life, you gotta realize
that you can’t control that.
The only thing you can control
is your own self.

I know where this path leads.

I want to look at you
but I find myself
with closed eyes, staples
sewn against eyelids
and crimson stains
this dialect of innocence.

I am tired of crying pretty for people,
as if my sadness manifested through poetry
is only acceptable because I transform
life into art, paintbrush to verses,
transparency to kaleidoscope
and all the waterfalls in the world
could never drown
dead bodies as if
rose petals camouflage graveyards.

I want to be alone.
Alone with someone, as if
my mouth remains wide open
filling with rainfalls of hypocrisy,
and if someone were to
steal my soul
I'd hide myself inside their
treasure chest.

I don't know what to do -
when my name falls off lips
and into my million mile stare.
Clouded with the distance
and even so, I am so tired of running
from their kisses against my neck,
gold chains against my flesh,
and if the sky could
water our grave, I still wonder
whether roses could grow again.

Let me crawl inside your skin,
as I do not see beauty in people
rather muscle and bone, always
draining the marrow as if
I could continue finding pulses of summer
within this heartless winter.
I always build walls
and given a ball and chain
I will hold you like a hostage -
you're my Stockholm,
I am the syndrome,
and this is us between the distance
and a one time message
because Mercury is falling
through my bedroom ceiling,
and the stars above remind me
that despite the darkness,
we are still here through the distance.

I stare at the empty side of my bed,
and wonder about the things
I would tell you
if you were laying right
Next to me

(1) when I was little
a flowerpot fell from the balcony
and i stared at the beautiful mess
all the pieces had made
until I became sad
it wasn't until I got much older
that I started feeling sad
for the balcony too

(2) I remember in November
Knuckles turning purple as the leafs turned orange
My hand, a bruised, gnarled, yellow and indigo mess
How did this amazingly unfortunate injury happen?
I was punishing the walls
That saw my loss
But stayed quiet

(3) the world is too bright,
so I filter it into sepia tones gentler to the mind's eye and swim to where the water meets the clouds.
I am drowning,
but not from the ocean's relentless caresses,
but from the world's relentless stresses:
beauty that is measured and calculated,
saturated with standards that burn like the sun and are as intangible as its rays,
a paradise built on sand as quick as it is to judge.

I swim to where
the water meets the clouds.
where the water
is still water,
and I am still me.

you're slowly losing me.