I do not wish to be
an emerald, pressed firmly against
the flesh of someone else's finger,
to be marveled upon by eyes
that only see beauty disguised beneath layers
of self-inflicted ignorance.
I do not wish for a life
sitting gracefully upon its pedestal,
or a striking face behind a glass display
that has never tasted the sweat
of reality.
I refuse to pass days behind
white picket fences trapping me
from seeking out scarlet horizons
or to live by the shout
of a clock that is running out of words
to tell me that I mean
nothing.
I am not going to sit, confined within
the peeling floral paper
that embraces the same walls that suffocate me
nor will I let my heart sleep
within the cavern walls of a chest
that is starving to set it free.

I want to crawl towards comfort
with scraped knees that do not bleed apologies
and earth trapped underneath my fingernails
like a joke no one ever broke silence to laugh at
I want to harvest gratification
with these same hands that have taught themselves
how to let go of the ones
who have tried to set it on a silver plate
for me to eat.

I desire to be dizzy
on the last day I will ever grace the air
with my breath,
blinded by joy I had spent a lifetime pursuing
with shadows cast beneath these hungry eyes
that have realized--

that it takes a revolution
to be able to say that I did more
than just exist,
I conquered.

there are still words knotted in her stomach,
tangled cherry stems waiting
for shy hands to unravel them,
the pungent scent of fear dancing slowly
in a dimly lit room where you
cannot see her

but you feel her,
innocent, blameless—

a soul with runs always sneaking
down the sheerness of her tights,
the one who revolved her days
around messy diary entries crammed underneath
the mattress she grew up dreaming on

and right now,
you can feel the weight of her eyelashes
fluttering against the warmth of your cheek
the desperate wings of an injured butterfly that knows
that there still exists something called love
drifting soundly down a river of juvenile apathy

it is at this particular moment in passing time
that she decides to dedicate her youth
to the one with enough courage to hide it
in the pocket of his brown overcoat

tell her you love her
before you grow old

I am holding onto minutes
as if they consist of
a thousand red helium balloons
ready to ascend like mumbled prayers
into the atmosphere
the same desperate way I sense that
maybe,
you are ready to leave me

I have conquered time with a death grip,
dripping sourly with words
that cannot form at this altitude,
with worries that feel as if
they have both feet hanging off the edge
of a New York City skyscraper,
plummeting the way my stomach feels
every second that passes without
even a glimpse of
your fragile existence

for I am a windowpane
that will shatter because of
a gentle April breeze
or the caress
of a perfect lover, destined to break
like the fragile bones
of a skeleton that has forgotten
the knowledge of living

the last time I kissed you
I tasted blood in my mouth.

when I was a child,
I used to gaze up at the man on the moon
peeking through the gaps
between the bedroom curtains
that sheltered me from the rest
of the whole world

and I remember feeling small,
pressing my hand against cold glass,
against waves crashing along shores I hadn't yet met,
people swarming around dinner tables
with faces I couldn't recognize;

how we were all just tiny specks of dust
frozen in our beliefs
that we meant something
bigger than just our bodies

and now that I am older
and my skin has tasted the warmth of other voices,
I have built myself a box made of other words
from lives I entered by accident,
simply by trekking around cities
and falling in love with strangers
that once felt so unfamiliar

here I am,
and now I gaze out the window
of the house I never felt at home in,
feeling the embrace of a thousand worlds
I somehow met
even before I truly learned how to wander.

so much slander
is ****** upon the poet,
who sits uncomfortably
at the tip of every tired pen
aspiring to run out of ink

she will suffer
for as long as our streets
remain flooded with the blood of the innocent,
for as long as our wrongful hands
desire to invent new ways to tighten the ropes
of our own expired dreams, hanging exhaustedly
around the same necks
that have since forgotten how
to support us

and because of this,
the poet will sob
violently, the way she prayed
to destroy the sight of her own words
sinking down the clogged drain
in her bathroom sink

how willingly it swallowed
every remnant of everything
she could never bring herself
to understand

from the thunderous sound
of her father's kind footsteps
escalating the stairs after a long day
that will leave his back stiff,
to the absence of her mother's voice
the moment she finally decided
to listen

pain, she thought,
is a remembered affliction

and it is the poet's sin
if she refuses to shelter it.

I wonder what my life would be like if I could feel constant in-betweens.
Not scarlet or neon orange, but instead,
a warm, friendly wall of peach or something grey and familiar.
You always seemed to climb through my skin from the inside out,
clawing at reminders hanging from my limbs
to stop taking everything so seriously.

On hard days, I do not cry.

Thanks to you,
I spew lava from my eyes until it feels
as if my tears could burn entire highways
down the slopes of my cheeks,
my anger the epitome of a pyromaniac's paradise.

When I am afraid, I do not tremble.

Instead, I am a nine on the Richter scale,
a category-five hurricane of fear
that cannot be shaken away.

And like lightning striking the top of an oak tree,
the next moment I am filled with so much joy
that my heart begins to burst
into four-thousand yellow balloons
and learns how to fly away,
performing a salsa with the hummingbirds
and a waltz with the rays of sunlight
emerging from inside of me.

Never have I felt the calmness of the lake.

Instead, I harbor oceans within the crevices of my palms,
scraping out entire planets from the pupils of those
who have spent their entire lives feeling too little.

And thanks to you,
I wonder how my life would be
if I had been blessed with the capability to feel
just okay
just fine
just something other than
out-of-control.


But my heart keeps pumping
in tsunami waves rather than puddles,
and when I finally stumble upon peace,
it consumes me.

on the 4th of August 2015
at 3:39 in the afternoon
you said your first hello
to me

I replied,
uncomfortably;
and advancing five months,
I am wrapped up in your arms
the way a butterfly resides
in its chrysalis

A summer hello,
a friendly greeting
has turned into the kind of poetry
I fear losing
the most.