i used to write about him
endlessly
in tattered journal pages
and in cheesy poems
but i didn't want to admit it

i didn't want to admit
the fact that he was gone
and writing him into paper
wasn't going to bring back
the person i once knew

i didn't want to admit
that i wasn't in love-
that instead, i was cold and lonely
for endless summer nights
in the pitch black vacuum of my room
when everyone else was sound asleep
and i should've been, too
i guess at that time
i just didn't want to admit
the fact that i was too busy writing
to realize i was just lying to myself

so this is me finally admitting it-
this is my apology letter
for blindly lying to myself,
for believing the miserable lie
that writing about him
would bring us back to life

because so far it hasn't worked
and i'm undeniably sick
of lying to myself
and ignorantly believing it will

maybe one day
i won't have to wait for a call
glancing at the clock
as empty seconds pass by
because you'll be calling me
from the kitchen instead

maybe one day
i won't have to wonder
what our hands would feel like
intertwined
because we'd be too busy
not letting go

i'm still waiting for the day
that i won't have to write
poems about missing you,
wondering if you still love me
because you'll be lying next to me
whispering the hundreds of reasons
why you do

if you can hold her hand
without feeling torn at the idea that
one day, you may never feel its warmth again,
then you are not in love with her

do not keep muttering worn-out
i-love-you's
under your breath
just to fill the empty spaces in the air
even if they no longer beat with passion,
do not try to explain the thousands of reasons
why you love her
if you don't

because if you can live with the thought
of her name being engraved in
someone else's mind,
her fingers running through someone else's hair,
the thought of those beautiful words
whispered into lips that don't belong to you
then you have never loved her, even for a second

and the bitter fragments
of the love she gave away
were never worthy to
belong to you

on the night train to Vienna I dreamt
as the soft tangerine light bled into the windows,
tumbling down infinities of Italian countryside
absorbing into my retinas in summer shades
of dusk-colored haze


entranced I was--
a nervous girl of sixteen years,
uncharted valleys sprawling ceaselessly
at the beds of my fingers,
love languages my tongue could not yet
stretch its fibers around
freedom forming its hunched silhouette
just outside of thin glass windows
cooled by the night’s apprehensive breeze


endless, it seemed
the rumbling blur of possibilities--
my hands sedated for the first time in years.
quietly existing in the jolt of a moving cab,
the subtle ricochet through the faint lamppost glow
of fragile Austrian dreams.


home-- four thousand and forever miles away
and yet here was fine, just fine
a girl with stringy hair and a steaming cup
of midnight European tea
as her mother sighed to herself in the
peak of her American afternoon,
wondering whether her baby had found sleep
in someone else’s morning.

I remember the first time I discovered poetry,
bolts of electric affluenza coursing through soft fingertips
and into the skinny blue lines of fascination
meaning nothing at first, yet transforming into the spillage
of emotion, the invention of color,
the budding metamorphosis of the artist’s apprehension.


I remember telling everyone about the honey-tainted metaphors
that exhaled yellow pigment through our film noir madness
of ravaged years cementing over irises
and I remember the revelation, saucer eyes and trembling hands
after discovering the faultlessness of magic
that tore at heartstrings and furrowed brows,
the mumbled prayer of stitching entire blankets of words together
to keep our souls warm even as the frigid ice of Time
burned in desperation to freeze our heartbeats.


You are a poet
but to the world, you are wasted opportunity
you only know of words that slip through tied tongues like silk
and mending excuses to make up for heartbreak
You are a poet
but they never stop reminding you to keep your feet glued
To hollow ground, shaking
To find something that tastes of reality, the human flesh
sweat of long lost longing
You have to stop living in your head
In the spaces where you breathe life into promises
You are a poet
But that has never been enough.


The poet is used to this--
the knowledge of failure always shoved under the doormat
numbers that collect under crumpled paper,
the rotten look of misunderstanding as they wonder
where the science of living went missing
When did art decide to invade your insides,
Leaving no room to calculate meaning with mathematics?


Oh, but only the poets understand
That there is no formula to meaning
No theorem to calculate suffering,
Only words that get stuck and disintegrate into whispers
only all-consuming madness, write me a storm
That rages through afflictions
Write me an ending where
We are older, in the house we dreamed of, buried
Under blankets in the forgotten fog of Decembers
Write me an ending where my voice is steady
Instead of constantly wavering past the silence of goodbyes
hellos
heartaches


Love me
And I will love you
Lose me
And I will turn you into poetry
stretch your bones into feelings,
follow the lines in your palms into futures
Where we end up together
I will hold up your eyelids
so they will never feel heavy at the sight of destruction
I will shelter your heart to keep it beating
As we watch  as the words I could never say
flutter at your fingertips like moths
with broken wings


The world does not understand love


nor the poets that create it.

I often think about how and why our lives intersected
and how strange it was that we used to be nothing more
than two bright-eyed five-year-old kids
in the same kindergarten class over a decade ago
and how now we were lying down side-by-side listening to Hozier
through his beat-up headphones and stargazing in the back of someone’s pickup truck

and it’s strange how
neither of us had the courage to point out
the fact that there were no visible stars in the cloudy sky that night
because
that
didn’t
matter


all that mattered was the fact that for an eternity and a half,
I had felt more like a glass left half-empty and yet now I wished
that this moment would never end,
that we could just lie here in the freezing cold that burned my bones to the core
just because my head rested fine on his chest and that was enough

and I wonder why it’s so hard for me to open up to him
even though he unfolds himself for me,
opens up doors to his beautiful soul just so I am able to peek through
the cabinets where he stores all of his reasons to live, and
where he hides the parts of him that he would get rid of, if he had a choice

I want to tell him about the poetry I have found in the way he walks,
he talks,
he breathes, and
how staring into those ocean eyes makes me feel
like I’ve suddenly hit the bottom, permanently gasping for air,
but
I love it,
I love it,
I love it,

and as we stare up at the sky
in the back of an old pickup truck
by an old crumbling church,

my God, his voice matches the silent hum of the street lights,
burning in sync with our imaginary stars
and at this moment, I am no longer an almost-empty glass,
I am alive

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.

he gazed at her
as if she was
a sunset,
and he felt
the universe
in the palm
of her hand

she gazed at him
as if galaxies
existed in his eyes,
and she felt complete
with his hand
holding hers

Love hard, my friends. Love noticeably.


Love does not deserve to be shoved under the rug, to be disguised, or to be quieted. Love does not mean conforming to the idea that genuine affection is “sappy,” “cheesy,” or “cringeworthy”; instead-- love loudly.


The world wants to tell you that relationships are to be silenced. That posting multiple photographs of each other is tacky, uncomfortable, and something to make fun of. That devoting time with your favorite human being is disgusting, overbearing-- especially when you are young and the future does not exist in your hands.


Too bad, future. And how unfortunate, world. Because at the end of the day, the world does not own love. You do. It is yours to have, to keep, to share, and to do whatever it takes to hold onto it. It is mine.


When you find love, shout it from the rooftops and frame a million photographs. Post selfies of the two of you smiling wide and unwavering. Wear its colors on your face and shamelessly declare it to the whole universe and beyond: You are in love. You are alive.
And likewise, this is my philosophy: Love intentionally, fiercely, tirelessly.


Love so hard it makes people dizzy. Take it as a compliment. In an exhausted world that spins with violence, hatred, and monstrosity-- praise its joys. Snap those pictures.Tell your friends. Scrapbook it, publish it, make art out of it. Laugh about it, display it, live it. Put an end to the grotesque concept that something so beautiful, perhaps life’s most magnificent, should be sheltered. Let it grow.


This is a declaration. I am boisterously in love. There is no quiet here.
One day, you will find someone or something that your heart will never be able to shut up about. And that’s okay. Let it scream.

Fear.
For so long, I let it sink its tainted fangs into my neck, drawing blood that dripped to my ankles like something that could make angels tremble in the heavens.
It listened to me speak. I could see the hunched curvature of its spine in every corner of my imagination, watched it swallow the colors of my soul like leftover soup.
Consuming.
It surrounded me, an anchor tethering my heels to hollow ground.


But then I discovered poetry. I discovered the syllabic freedom of bleeding love into the spines of empty journals. I found out that poetry existed in glistening foreheads and moments spent trying to catch my breath again, in split ends and blotted lipstick stains.
I discovered that airplanes do not plummet into the Atlantic Ocean as often as I thought. I discovered that I can ride them without becoming another muted headline, a tragic statistic blaring into the white noise of late night television.
I discovered that my voice had meaning, that it deserved the embrace of a microphone, an eager audience, to be shouted and sung like lyrics to a revolution I had always been taught to silence.
I discovered that proving people wrong is fun.
To the boy who told me at age 13 that I would grow up and become someone’s biggest disappointment, this one is for you. To the despair that kept me wide awake until mornings I wished would be my last, this one is for you. To the same girl who doubted that she would make it, that her brain would ever stop screaming the same addictive chemicals that questioned her very fragile existence, this one is for you.


I made it.
I dyed my hair bright red because I am a fire that refuses to die out, my heartbeats fanning the flames of a life I have yet to conquer. I sing in the shower, with my car windows rolled down at fifty miles per hour, in my sleep. I have tasted tenderness in the form of a heart that beats for mine.  I am loved, I am young, and I am burning fearlessness with every breath.

I remember the day you left me as vividly as yesterday
and how I tried to memorize every detail of your face
when we said goodbye, as if I would never see it again,
because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to live
not being able to remember the person I called my home

I used to think of you as my oxygen,
as tightly-sewn thread,  holding me together,
as a half-finished love story,
you were always something that I swore
I couldn’t live without,
you were always the reason I woke up
every morning feeling brand new,
and I wasn’t even sure life would be worth living
without you

but the clock kept on ticking without you by my side,
and I’m learning to let go, you beautiful creature,
I am still learning,
but one day I will understand
and although my heart still stings when I read your letters,
and even though I feel a pang of emptiness
when the air gets cold and I remember
everything about you,

I am learning how to forget you,
we will always be words left unsaid
but maybe things are better this way
(I will live without you)

She held more secrets than seconds in a day,
mumbling pained confessions in hushed whispers
that bled out like stab wounds trailing paths
on white snow,
painting a china doll façade made of scarlet
as an eloquent attempt to mask the fragility
she aspired to hold

And that is just what she did,

She held,

onto hopes dangling from the edge of skyscrapers,
breath permanently stolen from her lungs
despite shaking hands itching to let go

storing memories made of dust within damaged pockets
even when the weight got so gruesome
she could no longer bear to walk
with a soul made entirely of gray matter,
training heartstrings to stretch
and cradle every delicate moment
she feared losing
before they could even take place


She is the girl who will collect your voicemails,
hoarding letters like seashells
resting along abandoned shorelines
due to the danger of losing the soft breaths
of the only one who was capable
of breaking all of her rules,
who whispered her name like
unfinished stanzas of a poem
she did not know how to write

Fear,
and fear alone-
of the potential that the ocean could swallow
the glass shards and kiss the remnants of her joy
goodnight
before she could even feel them
splashing against the same skin
she never felt at home in

the woman with ancient eyes cradles her rosy-cheeked daughter,
wide-eyed and bursting with the innocence of the youth--
she is a tenement child, raised gracefully in the shadowed slums of her father's mistakes,
wears a tattered dress, spinning alone in a whirlwind of dust mites and silenced laughter.
and when she hears tales of the children with taffeta dresses and China dolls, she
smiles--
out of love, replacing envy with euphoric contentment, because
she has her mama's eyes, the voices
of the fatherless children
singing along to her same song,
shouting cries of hope against the crumbling walls
of a broken world she is beginning to heal.

There once lived a girl
Barely even three
Who wore childish, innocent smiles
And ran around freely.
She spent summer with her sister
Picking lilac flowers,
Rolling down grassy hills
Endless fun for hours.

There once lived a girl
Finally thirteen
Who wore gloss on her lips
And said things she didn’t mean.
She spent summer all alone
Never picking any flowers
Claiming she had better things to do
With her endless summer hours.

There once lived a girl
Sixteen, impossibly thin
Who painted scarlet on her wrists
Because she could never ever win.
She spent summer locked away
Bawling in her room for hours
And there was nothing in the world she wanted
More than lilac flowers.

There once was a girl
Who tried so hard in life
But she couldn’t bear to live
With her sugarcoated strife
And one day she just vanished
So her sister cried for hours
And upon her solemn grave
She laid withering lilac flowers.

she was a novel
with twists and turns
the kind shoved behind
library bookshelves
and under heartsick beds

she spun words
into velvet
and they seeped
right through her lips
and onto his lonely skin

and oh, how she loved him
with the passion of a sunset
and the bravery of a child
and her words craved him
even more than she did

he was the reason why
her eyes strained a torturous fog
and her words clogged her throat
and a dozen unsent letters
desperately cluttered her room
and her words weren't velvet,
they were just word
and just like her,
they were not worth loving anymore

Sometimes, when the world is still
I find faces in the tile cracks
of the bathroom floor

Tainted with age and despair,
they are trapped where ceramic
meets skin

It is with them that I worry,
crushed like expired cherry blossom petals
that litter the streets of early summer

It is with them that I sigh
for freedom,
Maybe we have time
but it does not
have us.

I look at you and I see half-finished poems and words that don’t exist, your eyes are like indigo oceans I keep drowning in but somehow I don’t mind not being able to breathe.  I wish I knew more about why you are the way you are, what terrifies you the most about yourself, and why I find it difficult to catch my breath when you look at me as if I am a stolen daydream. You make up for a lot of things, really, like going through fourth period half asleep because last night it took me three hours to stop thinking about you. You make up for that, and everything else. You are made of electricity and good intentions stitched together with a voice that could shatter a million hearts, and I am just a lost soul wondering why I trust you with mine. And I do, I do, I trust you with my stupid old heart, and I want to memorize every single corner of yours like the back of my hand. I want to know how a heart like yours could love such a wounded one like mine, but maybe that’s what love is, sacrificing perfection for something tragically real. I look at you and I see fluctuating potential, like the morning sun peeking out behind tired gray clouds, and how sometimes that has to be enough. Ever since I met you, my heart has remembered how to beat, my hands have remembered how to hold, and you love me enough to make me forget how much I don’t love myself. Maybe you are temporary and maybe you’re an illusion, but I still cling to the hope that maybe, this is why I held on until now.

even now, there are days I spend floating
in unfamiliar skin that never stops
aching to crawl away from me,
plagued with thoughts that sit
like clumps of undissolved sugar  
in tea that tastes different this morning

outside, I can hear the love song
of snowflakes caressing my windowpane

and it is strange to think that
somewhere, someone is
holding their newborn child,
tiny hands and dark hair, with eyelashes
fluttering like trees in blizzard wind,
and someone else is hearing the ancient voice
of the father they never got to meet
at the end of a static telephone call

my heart leaps for the little girl
with pink dimpled cheeks,
her favorite polka-dotted dress
spinning in unpredictable circles, eyes up
at the kites dancing against the baby blue sky
somewhere warm, whimsical, and
dreamed of

today, there is joy
but it cannot find me

You have always dreamed of aviation,
cellophane wings glued to your heartstrings--
my marionette lover of hopes hanging high
enough to abolish the air from heavy lungs.

I watch your cavern chest rise but never fall,
tsunami tides engraved permanently airborne,
intertwining hands with time as suspension
silences destruction.

Time does not exist here--only periwinkle
veins illuminated by morning light,
wispy eyelashes beginning their ascension.

You are all light, and altitude, and grace.

I am grounded, tethered to comfort, but
the curvature of your spine breathes sanctuary.
Your shoulders-- broad, significant--
as if to fingerpaint the alpines you will ascend
once the wrath of gravity is conquered.

When your parachute soul finally gathers
enough strength to pilot the destined flight,
I hope you remember to save
a window seat for my heart.

they ask me if i love you
and i am quick to shake my head
no, not anymore,
but my dreams still revolve around you
and my stomach feels like cherry stems
tied loosely together, and even though
the words that leave my lips scream
no, not anymore,
the empty feeling in my heart
feels like a snare drum of contradiction

you are fireflies in the backyard dusk
and i am barefoot and flushed cheeks
trying to catch you in my hands
you are red sunsets that fade into dark skies
and the sky seems as though it is bleeding tonight,
and so is my heart,
all for you

it's like i am holding you still, forever
cupped in my hands like fireflies in the summer
and i am sorry,
i am sorry,
i am so sorry,
for holding you captive in
this jar of broken promises

they ask me if i love you,
and i am quick to shake my head
no, not anymore
but i still love you,
i still love you,
i still really love you,
and the reckless, dangerous part of me will always love you

you are my firefly,
and i cannot bring myself to let you go

I have never believed in the principles of physics because they do not apply to girls like me. Girls who disobey Newton's straight-mouthed rules with scarlet leaps of blind faith, girls with hopes soaring past our pastel heavens, never weighed down by any mystical force of gravity measured by dead men. The audacity of the physicist's rotten rules anchoring themselves into thick velvet skin-- as if to stifle the daydreams that keep twirling unpredictably even if acted upon by an unbalanced force. There is no way to silence my momentum, I will keep blooming-- slender hands outstretched toward the flickering sun, past all of the white numerical lies and formulaic cages that ache to confine me. What a perfect contradiction, that a soft-spoken girl can rise at the break of Einstein's miscalculated morning, illuminating the sky with the poetry of her defiance.

She, who loves gracefully without friction. She, whose bones cannot be broken by the laws of heat. She, who keeps herself warm when the cold mathematical wrath of their graves fails to keep her quiet.

It’s strange, really, how I find myself tangled in a relentless cycle of pause and play, of fast forward and rewind. So often I envision myself with my hands reached out in attempt to catch a moment in the air, to take hold of a feeling before its color dissolves into another collective memory. Emotions flutter anxiously between my fingers, like restless fireflies trapped inside glasses they cannot escape.

But I do not wish to steal their euphoria, only to preserve it.

They say I was born with a soul incapable of finding rest, possessing an interminable wanderlust that refused to dwindle. A blessing and a curse it was, the perpetual desire to hoard memories like expired love letters in the deepest trenches of my mind. I chased Love until my legs would give out beneath me, and even then I found myself crawling to graze its touch.  

Pause, play, rewind.

A lethal dose of nostalgia. Each solitary moment dances to the tempo of my blood flow, the erratic heartbeats that remind me how alive I have become. I have taken them hostage.

Each ephemeral moment, possessing a life so fleeting and bittersweet. The mellifluous echo of my favorite song being shouted at the top of my lungs, the familiar scent of the first book that stole my breath away. The first rush of freedom, the bewildering taste of loss, the initial weight of a damaged heart.

Like fireflies, they emit an effervescent light that radiates through the darkest chasms of my mind. A focal point. A distraction. Something beautiful amidst the murkiness of tears and unrequited love.

And I see their light shining through my fingertips, illuminating the gaps where nothing but absence exists, and I let go. They are free, an autonomous ray of light that floats through the spaces where I once felt so alone.

But I am not alone anymore, I am never alone, because I’ve created something permanent. A home in the middle of nowhere. A shelter for the explanations I could never bring myself to elaborate upon. A dazzling luminescence that will never die out.

We are everlasting.

Wrote poetry and decided to turn it into music.

Link: https://youtu.be/BadmCkoPOdE

LYRICS:

You hear me through the silence
Bleeding down the streets
That used to know your name

Can you see me through the fog
That's anchored to your eyes
Oh you can feel me sighing

Take me back to you
Take me back to then
Take me back to midnight
Dancing on the rooftops breathing blue
Like heaven's sin
Let heaven in

Your veins, sweet surrender
Summer catching rain on
Skin that's tasted freedom
Young, but why are we so
Quiet--
You are still my words
When they are left to die
Your phosphorescent smile

Can you love me
When the night holds steady
When my hands are trembling
When our hearts burn lonely

Take me back to you
Take me back to then
Take me back to morning
Dreaming in the sunrise living reds
Like heaven's sin
Let heaven in

We exist within—  
the hollow spaces between dissonant piano keys,
love notes hidden under dusty bookshelves,
the underside of the mattress
that has never been dreamed upon.

I gaze,
not at you—but through you,
translucent skin beckoning to encompass
the opacity of my own being.

I can no longer pass minutes
without blurred illusions of your face,
laugh lines and rose petals in silhouettes
that beg to be understood.

and there you are,
a familiar face in every fading photograph
I keep tucked within the musty pages of my journal,
in crowds of strangers and static radios,
within the cardinal’s scarlet flight
and oceans of words that can no longer describe
even fractions of your importance.

I can keep pursuing synonyms
to paint you porcelain poems of my love,

but then it is cheap,
nothing more than a human
worth writing about.

and you are everything
and everywhere— you and those hands
that refuse to loosen their grip.

on days I lose track of time,
you become a mirage stuck somewhere
between heaven and reality,

the remaining shadow  
of everything I cannot bear to lose.

The day we fell in love, the world stood still for the first time.
No movement other than the midsummer air humming electric,
the warmth of our words rising up into dense clouds
and gray atmospheres of sticky potential.
I remember thinking, as our dewy skin melted into the grass,
how strange it was that the world kept turning constantly.
Cars speeding on hazy interstates, babies being born in porcelain bathtubs.
Screen doors slamming in distant houses, ivy crawling across
the windowpanes of writers who will never see their name sprawled
across musky paper spines. Houses torched, brakes cut, hair trimmed.
Somewhere, an arthritic old man sets his newspaper down. It is raining.
He dances, flood water cascading around his ankles. He only thinks of her.
City lights paint taxi exhaust bright green. It is nighttime in the city
and teenagers drive recklessly through underground tunnels,
hands raised through the sunroof of their father’s cars
as the yellow light bleeds into their corneas.
Everything is set in motion, the day’s suffocating inertia of color,
a spinning top cacophony of mindless rebirth.


It is different today. You kiss me softly, velvet-lipped and eager,
and the world stops turning. The streets of Mumbai are silent.
There are no babies screeching in the quiet rooms
of church services, no hearts in the midst of being shattered.
The old man stops dancing.
His eyes are closed, her face still sketched on the backs of his eyelids.


The sky sees nothing but us.

I am here to tell you a little secret. It really shouldn't be one, but perhaps that is the main problem. I hope to somehow fix it. But here it is:

You are beautiful whether you believe it or not.

Here is a dangerous lie that our society and culture endlessly romanticizes:
• Beauty is skin deep.
This is the part where I prove them wrong.

Beauty is not skin deep.

Beginning at a young age, I developed an unhealthy concept of what true beauty was. To this day, I can still recall being twelve years old and devastatingly unhappy at my physical appearance staring back at me through my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. I saw nothing but ugliness glaring at me, the glass revealing all of my visible flaws. I didn't look like the girls in the magazines that scattered my bedroom floor, faces glowing like angels on glossy paper. I wanted to. I wanted more than anything to be comfortable being myself.

There was just so much that stuck out to me, so much that needed fixing. Curves in all the right places? Forget about it, more like a stomach that hung over my jeans. My hair was so thick that it snapped every single hair tie and couldn't hold a single curl. My nose sat awkwardly on my face, always something to sigh at whenever I would catch a glimpse of myself. My eyes were too dark, too brown to be beautiful. I couldn't grasp this idea of unattainable perfection, the kind of beauty that only exists on the airbrushed models on movie posters.

And because I could not love my appearance. I could not love myself. My self-confidence plummeted at this age, causing a wave of hysteria to envelope me. Trapping me in its embrace, this flourishing hatred began to consume everything that I was, distorting the visions of the potential I carried within me.

There was nothing beautiful about it, hating every single inch of myself. I was so busy trying to fit into the mold of the most gorgeous human being, trying to wear a mask of a person who turned heads whenever they entered the room. My mind had been wrapped around this idea countless of times to the point where I could no longer find anything worth loving inside of me.

But while chasing this idea of flawlessness, it was almost as if I had forgotten about everything else. The things that composed myself during that time period, the things that were not visible to the naked eye. The magnificent things that were present in me, that made me who I was- hidden by a wall I had put up by myself simply because I felt the need to hide from the judgmental eyes of an imperfect society.

Years have passed and now I love who I am. I am no longer twelve years old, but there are still many painful insecurities that plague me, except now I am strong enough to look at them and smile.

I have so much to be thankful for. Though I do not stand 5'7 like I had wished, I feel tall when I radiate kindness to the people around me. I do not have runway legs, but they are strong enough to leap through the air and run away from everything that no longer respects me. I do not have piercing blue eyes, but mine are capable of finding art in everything around me. I may not possess an hourglass shape, but I know how to use the time I am given to impact my peers in a positive manner. I may have bad days, but that doesn't mean I have to give up every ounce of faith and hope left within me. I may be ridiculously imperfect, but I am so outrageously real- and surprisingly, that is all I ever want to be.

The skinny girls in magazines and shirtless poster guys are still beautiful, but that doesn't mean that you aren't. To my boys- You can be attractive without a six-pack or a six-foot stature. And ladies, you can be stunning without a Kim Kardashian figure. You cannot be defined by a number that reads on a scale or the way your hair looks like when you forget to brush it in the morning. You are not labeled by the color of your skin, your athletic abilities, or whether or not your thighs touch when you walk. You are beautiful because you are you. The way you speak passionately about the things that keep you breathing. The way you laugh with your friends on the bus ride home from school until your sides feel like they're going to cave in. The way your eyes light up at the desire to understand, to learn, to grow. The way your smile spreads like the flu, even the way you fall asleep at your desk when you spend four hours finishing up the homework you could have finished two weeks ago.
You are made of blemishes, scars, imperfections, and insecurities- but they are just as wonderful as your soul. They are constant reminders of how far you have come, and the journey you have yet to fulfill. This is your life, and it would be a shame to go through it without leaving a mark.
They are the flowers growing in the sidewalk cracks of your mind. Do not let them be overshadowed by the debilitating weight of the world's words.

Let them grow, Let them be free.
Let yourself be beautiful for who you are
rather than who you are not.

I have been at war with my brain for as long as I can remember. A perpetual massacre, crimson annihilation, whatever sounds best bleeding from your tongue. No matter how many casualties you can find staining my fingers, there is no tragedy here. Words are what the carnage always leaves behind.
I have always had words, too many of them-- always left hiding behind my overbite in fear of crowding the world. It is a torturous thing, to be a writer in a world where people are not made of paper, where transparence is sacrificed for conversation.


I think in different shades of contradiction.
I want to talk to you but my brain keeps telling me to pretend my phone is ringing so I don’t have to talk to you anymore. There always seems to be an escape plan I cannot help but map out. I want to speak my mind, to watch my opinions soar into morning skies, but my brain gathers all of my words into paper boats drifting into shark-infested waters. I am full of synonyms and definitions, of pretty cursive words inked on skin. Perhaps it is hard to see this. I am, in fact, too busy picking my eyelashes out to realize that you are speaking to me. My heartbeats have cold feet when they try to serenade my thoughts.

Forgive me, for the paradox of my friendship. I am listening. It is just that sometimes, I am a telephone line with both ends in my hands.

I am having trouble writing.
It is as if there is a wall of bulletproof glass separating me from the words that are dying to escape the metal cage they are kept in. I am the only one with a key sitting comfortably in the pockets of my jeans, but no matter how hard I pound my fists against the wall, I do not get any closer to quieting the agonizing screams emerging from the trap. They get louder, aching for liberation, tethering their syllables around the bars as they sit, confined within a reality I am desperate to free them from.

They are starving to live. I can see the outlines of their bones through the transparent letters that blanket their elastic limbs, each day growing more tired, forgetting the taste of hope every minute that passes. I can feel them collecting dust, shrinking down to fragile skeletons that have begun to lose meaning. What if one day I will no longer be able to see them? What if one day I have nothing left to save?

I am starving to live. I cannot feel love without a knife stuck wedged in the back of my throat reminding me that I have nothing to describe it with. I can give all of myself to the one who thankfully accepts it but my teeth chatter at the thought of having to apologize for stealing joy from the cookie jar. I am sorry for having no words to say sorry. They told me to tell you that they are sorry for their absence, but I do not know how to say this without them.

For now, I am waiting. The same way I do for Fridays, for your call, for my heartbeat to obey the speed limit, for time to run dry.

I will continue to wait
patiently, tiredly, averting my eyes to the hopes that maybe tomorrow, they will be small enough to squeeze through the bars and set me free.

i think i'll always think of him as the ocean
with his eyes made of tidal waves and
a voice like a current that could always
pull me closer

i was the weather,
a pair of glass eyes that would rain
when i could no longer find reasons
to fall in love with the sun, and
i remember the days when he would
hold me in his arms when i could no longer
find shelter inside my skin, and
how our intertwined fingers became
my newfound reason to live

and letting go always felt
like i had run out of oxygen, gasping for
a feeling i thought i would lose
because i was taught that
love always dies, that it would only be
a matter of time before i would be left
suffocating in silence alone once more

but i am able to breathe on my own now
without feeling as if my chest could collapse
and swallow me whole
because i know that even the darkest skies
hold beauty within them, and if i just look up
a little farther,
i will see the moon

I.
a calm darkened room, curtains drawn
outside, the sky is crying-- its tears
slamming white noise on our rooftop
there is a mattress and blue cotton sheets,
a cloud for a comforter and two bodies
clasped together like refrigerator magnets
as icons dance on the screen of our
static television minds

II.
here we are again, hands intertwined within
the streets of Rome, ivy crawling across
yellow edifice recollections, Italian
sun scorching her liquid tongue upon
our baking shoulders-- home
is across the Atlantic, a plane in the sky,
my head on your chest as a passport
to a place forever engraved on our eyelids
and in photographs where love
never fades with time


III.
our hometown has our hearts memorized,
the coffee shop at the corner where past
Augusts had melted our whipped drinks
into fumbling infatuation, the trees
we kiss madly against, the empty grass fields
that know the shape of our spines as
we gaze up, fingers tracing wispy trails
of our blue sky canvas

IV.
do you see that cloud? the giant one near the sun;
what does it look like to you?
like you, like you,
like proof that God adores me.

some seek art in sidewalk cracks
or between fragile spines of old books
and some search for meaning
through the gaps between the oak trees
where solitude exists and melts
together with the prismatic hues of
every sunset fading into memory

some find purpose in silence
or rather, the center of bustling conversation
and some find beauty in the enigma of the ocean
and the shy touch of the sun, warm,
like butter coating our lonely souls

everyone but her,
she never had to search, for her masterpiece
was herself.
her love was made of notes strung together
and played colorfully, radiating through the air
as smooth as mother's finest silk, and
with every beat, she painted the most beautiful
of images, dancing along to the hum of her heart
that never understood the meaning of silence

and her paradise meant being blinded
by stage lights and pride, each song
a testament built by bones
that taught themselves how to bend
but remain vigilant,
because breaking was never an option
in her pink-ribboned world of piercing perfection

but they will continue to search for happiness
in howling wind and steady rain,
never bothering to find her smile
fluttering effortlessly in the music,
that smile- the one that could put
the world's most beautiful dance
to shame

The first time you mentioned forever,
I attempted to measure it.

Just how far can heartstrings stretch
when tugged by the blur of passing seasons,
extended arms, and miles of uncharted tomorrows?

No matter how many times I have watched
hands embrace the seconds of fleeting time
I still wonder if a moment exists                                                                                              
when they will finally tire of spinning, trying to find
salvation in the rotation of infinity

if it even exists.

Forever
making pit stops at sixteen at seventeen
in yesterdays expired and the blood red rush
of exhausted mistake.
Forever
smoke seeping through door cracks,
fires of promise, of passion, of fading
Forever
we will love
Forever
until our names run dry of meaning.

Just how many heartbeats does it take
to shelter an angel,
how many words exchanged does it take
to ****** the demons that wish to place
years and age and affliction
between the two who have painted
a thousand forevers between hands
held so tightly that minds forget how to change?

I am still trying to measure even now,
as we glide toward moments whose horizons
we will always be searching for.

we were butterflies
and crimson cheeks
and blooming daffodils
but forever has shattered
and now we are
catching glimpses
unsaid words
and choosing
to walk away

two months ago i swore i'd rather die than live without you
but recently, it's been scaring me
how much i've been forgetting to think about you

i thought that distance meant
gasping for air and constantly searching
for someone else to fill the empty puzzle piece inside of me
since you weren't there to do it anymore
but the empty space you left behind doesn't feel lonely at all
and i finally feel like i'm allowed to breathe
without the weight of your cruel words around my neck

i admit that i miss the fragments of the person you used to be
and i still get shivers when i hear our song on the radio
or when i reread the letter you gave me for the thousandth time
but i'm not hopelessly in love with you anymore
and i'll never stop thanking you for leaving me
so that i could grow to realize with all my heart and soul
that i don't need to hurt
to feel alive

Like the bulls in every existing china shop,
we danced clumsily past midnight.

The soles of our feet sticking
to the hardwood floor of my living room,
twirling, dizzy--
in hopes that if our souls learned how to tango,
minute hands would cease
to spin.

It was holy bliss.
It was the sweat shop
factory of affection.
Our bodies-- luminous in the
palest moonlight, a passerby
might have believed
we were angels.

Even now, as we sit
in the midst of silent tension,
furrowed brows of frustration
with no words left to promenade
out of our jaded bodies,

I watch your chest rise and fall
to the hostile melody of our
fruitless accusations, each breath
a reminder of our dance.

Your soul is still liquid music to my ears.
And as long as it continues to play,
I will stay, the hem of my dress floating in motionless air--
waiting for midnight
to intertwine our silhouettes.

I will one day become a grandmother in a wooden rocking chair,
hair dusted over by the willowy waltz of passing time. A cataract memory,
mind sheltered by the wedding veils of unblemished maidens
long after the receptions have ended.


My granddaughter will see right through my fossilized transparency
and she will smile, for she will only see my frosted forgetfulness,
eternities buried within my scattered steps
as I remember how to walk each morning.


She will never understand--
not until my fragile bones find home within dampened earth,
that her grandmother was a poet.
That I, of countless melted birthday candles and weary stumbling,
was once seventeen with poetry embedded in my irises,
pounding to the cadence of my pulse.


Once, I was a poet.
I ran barefoot in the neighborhood streets,
aching soles on summer concrete, finding solace
in between the sidewalk cracks of smaller worlds.
Once, I was a poet,
and I found comfortable silence within the rhythmic thumping of typewriter keys
past unspeakable hours, graceful ink spilling symphonies onto paper,
every rejection letter promised potential,
every love an image to be painted with the soft brush of syllables.


She will notice my hands tremble.
Here, grandma, let me help you, she’ll say.
Celestial, it was, the pitiful gaze of the naive.
I let her pour my coffee, observing slim hands move with ease,
peaceful, calm, the apricot sunsets I used to chase
at seventeen, forever engraved on the backs of my heavy eyelids.


Once,  I was a poet,
and I wrote of my lover like someone handcrafted
by the calloused hands of an existing God,
how easily the blazing fires of youth melted
into promises creased inside sealed envelopes.


I do not recognize her anymore,
the reflection who pours my coffee today.
She has my lover’s eyes, his unforgettable opals of poetry
that are nothing but faded recollections
of the muse I used to be.


*My darling,
I still see you. You are still here.

It does not matter if you wake up one mile away,
or fifty hours,
or if the entire globe separates the soles of our feet.
My eyes have memorized the language of your love,
the glowing warmth of your arms that is able to be felt
through a static telephone call,
a letter sleeping patiently inside an envelope,
promises sent shooting through the indigo heavens.


I will always be with you--
the rises and runs of your heartbeat
pounding inside your head, the rush of wine-colored blood
through translucent blue veins,
I will be as close as skin meets soul,
as sweat mingles with tears.


The ridges of your hands are roadmaps I will follow
until my heels grow calloused and blistered,
and when the sky darkens, your brown eyes
will become a compass that will point
in the direction of our dreams.


We go,
but love cannot.
We change,
but love does not.
We hold,
and love holds with us.


I will love you all over again in the morning
and we will always be together--
distance breaking nothing,
our faces shining in the same light
of tomorrow’s sun.

On the evening of my sixteenth birthday
I remember curling my hair with an iron and
burning the tips of my fingers pink,
mumbling pained words under my breath
that I probably shouldn’t ever repeat
unless I desire to live beneath the shadows
of adult eyebrows being raised so high
they might never come back down

as if they had never said something like that
before

that night I put on a silver dress,
and lipstick so red it almost gave the illusion
that I had been bleeding from the mouth
but I felt unstoppable, so why not?

“why not” was the question
that was always replaced with stone-cold silence
and the shrug of a shoulder
instead of an answer

that night, I blew out sixteen flaming candles
and felt beautiful,
surrounded by the smiles of friends I had met in high school
and ones I had known since the days when our only worries
revolved around who had the prettier Barbie doll
and who held hands during recess in the fourth grade
and these thoughts caused my stomach to somersault because,
now that we were illuminated by candlelight and the brightness of celebration,
everything had changed.


I blew out my candles and did not wish
for a car, or a new wardrobe, or for more
faces to call my friends, but rather,

I wished to be taken seriously.

I knew there was a deep-rooted problem
when I became acquainted with real love for the first time
And everyone said that I was too young, too incompetent to understand
What that word even meant,
That I was silly for believing that such a concept could exist
When you’re sixteen and five and a half feet tall
and not that great at chemistry or parallel parking
and can barely even hold up a strapless dress
as if somehow that dictated
that I was too small, too stupid to realize that
love was something much bigger than I am
but I did.
I do.

And there is something so contagiously twisted
That lurks in our society like a epidemic
The idea when your age lies between thirteen and eighteen
you are not really a person
that instead, you are a shadow of ignorance that sleeps all day
and clothes yourself in different shades of apathy
and that the only things you care about are
alcohol-induced parties on Friday nights and
losing morals and hours of sleep while gaining temporary highs
as if that is the highest I will ever go in life

you have to be kidding me.

because you might look at someone like me
and snarkily remark that I never look up from the screen of my phone
and you might think that my taste in music is repulsive or that
I’m only holding his hand because I love the thrill of letting it go,
and you might think that people my age have brains
that contain only a spoonful of intellect and the rest is just
empty space filled up with disease
but maybe it is time that your pedestal falls
and you realize that the older the wiser
is hardly ever true at all

I have witnessed lives spiraling out of control

the truth is not that we are dirt
and no, I am not taking pictures of myself unclothed
or chatting with strangers in online rooms
maybe the reason why I’m on my phone
is because I’m talking my best friend out of killing herself
and I’m researching time travel and why the happiest people hurt the most
and a cure for my own depression
and better words to fit my poetry
I am not equal to the garbage you see kicked to the curb of the street
Or scenery while you ride on by in your horse and carriage

I am just as great
As someone who has spent 80 years of their life achieving
And if time is uncontrollable
Then why am I being treated like somehow,
I have not chosen to be here long enough to know anything at all

And one day I dream of having my words praised for the truth that they are
Rather than having eyes roll back in guilty judgment
Because I have not lived as long as you have
And yet I am the one writing the words

Because yes, I am sixteen.
I haven’t even been here for two decades
but I do not search for happiness in empty glass bottles and clouds of smoke like you think I do
and I do not play with hearts like they’re made of matches
because I know that they burn
and when I tell him that I love him
I am not doing it to **** time
and I know that life is sacred and
impossible to retrieve once it’s gone and I am not going to waste
the precious seconds of my own aching until someone decides
that maybe, I am worth listening to.

Because I know that I am.
And on my sixteenth birthday,
as I smiled scarlet in every photograph
I was right--
I am unstoppable.

I learned all about paralysis
when I found myself waking,
cheek pressed against the wetness
of a blank journal page, aching
with the stifled screams of
my unvoiced muse.

Perhaps it was the cold hand
of my nightmare that shook
me awake, Vulnerability-
who carried himself in vain
and laced his gaze with the
severity of a thousand swords
bracing for impact, framed with
the familiar mask of the Joker-
whom I have become.

Crippled by a force almost demonic
which hovered my thoughts over paper
close enough to almost feel them come alive,
yet distant enough to watch them
disintegrate from the rooftops and
collect as a *** of torment
stuck permanently in the part of my throat
I could not bear to swallow.

To unravel like the peel of
a summer tangerine, lying exposed-
cool air breathing under naked skin
I have taught myself to shelter
from the judgment of  bitter eyes
and words put together only
to criticize.

but in visions I see a girl, dark eyes and
charcoal hair spilling over paper
covered in pretty penmanship
and she is fearless-
hand dancing along to the symphony
of her thoughts, staccato beats
and Allegro! her passion encompasses
more than just ink on lines, you
can see them echo and reverberate
fragmented poetry through the channels
of her veins

and it is so evident- she is free.

and for her, my dream expands further
and I begin to unravel words
stuck trapped under thick orange skin
and invisible walls designed to shelter,
exposing myself to him-
my nightmare, and the retinas
coated effortlessly in judgment

and I am reborn today rather
than tomorrow, eyes a little brighter
and this time, I awaken to the aroma
of new beginnings.

the poet smiles at her reflection
in a mug of English breakfast,
tiny sips of truth as she dreams
of the return of her muse

and as expected,
today he is silent

dotting her i’s with his lopsided grins
she hums quietly,
sealing the thousandth one
she will never get around to sending

using kisses as postage stamps,
she adds another to a pile
of flimsy envelopes addressed
to a ghost
who cannot answer.