can I swallow your pills / you can swallow my pain / watch thunderstorms travel hills / watch me vandalize old trains / swim with city lights and / smoke night pollen / give up all your fights / don’t hear the daytime callin

Could you tell?
That the air one night didn’t smell like purple daises
But rather orange melons
Or how the dust on your bones was starting to melt
Even the way the glint of the moon was once stark white and showed me the ways of the staircase up to old castles studded with green vines and rotting stories
And now only threw me the keys to the doors underneath the grass in the backyard to show me the way down
Hoarding wooden panels and abandoned notes
So I could stop climbing and start wondering
Could you tell at all?
How the rhythm of the beat of the night
Turned from black to metallic
And you didn’t even blink an eye
So when time broke all barriers
And oceans evaporated
You were still blind
You don’t want to grow up.

I was never told how I was to grow
I was never told which heart to sew
Grow up strong; grow up weak.
Grow up happy; grow up weeping.
Strong heart, hard face
Run faster, you're in a race.
What if every word that flew out of your mouth
Was written on your skin.
I'll tell you, they're engraved in me.
On every wall within
These words are not boomerangs,
You can't ever have them back.
But these words are boomerangs,
They will be thrown at your back.

Pens running out ink
But my words are just running
Out of spaces to put themselves in
Trees are grown in allocated spots
So we have room to pick apples
Never sad in their growth
Unless something is wrong
Even bumpy roads are still solid
So if you trip
You’ll end up on the ground
Not beyond the earth
Regardless of the hollow
Veins on the inside of your
Elbow my make you feel
The yellow sprinkled on green
Sprouted on brown
Can bring back home in
City lights and iced coffee
Maybe you’re none of the above
And maybe you’re all of the above
At least know that the wind
Blowing in your face
Could be forever
If you wanted to stay
And allocate your own design
So your branches can also expand
The way your eyes hold
More and more galaxies
Every time you blink

Candles keep on burning and smoking
Birds keep flying and singing
And the silver of the black of yesterday’s night
Comes out only on pinned on the times
I seem to miss carnival rides of ecstasy
And stuffed bears with little orange bows
And ring tosses that lack aim and ring and tosses;
Just throws
While the rooftop I now sit on
In the final times of empty streets
That smell like stale popcorn
And paint from fresh vandalism
Will not take me back
Refuse to take me back
To school-less days
And fresh air that hinted purple dreams
Open oceans echoing full laughter
Wild hair, barbeques
Raw stories
Energy / Love / Energy
Even the floral print on my leggings
Is turning white
In fear of loose memories not sewed on yet
And a silver-less night of tomorrow
Maybe red will be the next best thing

Find outlets when you are sad or angry.
- You never did well when you wanted to talk and no one save the craters in the moon would listen.
- I’d have to walk, sneakers thumping on the main road into 3am putting your shoulders back into place.
- The stardust on your nose was almost gone and your smile out of place.
- Who stitched your words shut without threading through the electricity you exert in the carefully thought out letters when they shine volumes on all the little things that make you see solar systems in coral oceans?
- I love any excuse to hold you, reminiscent of the nights I crave the coldest ice-cream, we buy two scoops, and you let it drip down your warm hands after holding the cone too long without licking off the excess that craves you more than mountains wish for valleys even at the highest peaks
- When you’re looking towards the red of the sky and talking of answers that to me taste like blue dreams and fears that make me envision yellow stop lights blocking off speeding trains on the corner of Freedrive and Bluckoren Lane next to the corner store, rope stitches hold my heart in puzzled rows while I figure out how to piece you together
- But I can’t fix people, though 4am can only try.

I like to sip my iced coffee
Without the lid
It seems to look more accessible
Unlike the strings of stars
That remain in the sky; the ones
I trusted do not shine anymore
A box of Oreos sitting across
The wooden table sits nearly
Vacant and once again I’m reminded
Of you and your
Carefully drawn departure
Trailing you went all the ways
You worried that the plants
In the corner of my apartment floor
Would not get enough water
(I made a pond one day,
Scared to deprive them of your
Love like I was).
And how you only ate peanut butter
With sliced bananas
(The air smells like tangerines now).
All the soap in the world cannot
Erase the paint stains you left
On the bathroom counter next to
Your blue-orange toothbrush
Canvases are just better off
Untouched / Uncarved / Unloved
And always accessible.

Hair string across your bathroom floor
I never hated the yellow light
Like your other friends
But the tiles were always catching my criticism
From the time I spilled oatmeal granola
In your kitchen while you held the milk in your
Hands, laughing as I stumbled after the mess
(Now I know that Sunday mornings aren’t supposed
To be neither clean neither spotless)
To the Wednesday afternoon we spent holding
Galaxies in our palms by your door while it rained
(Now I know music is not just
For sounds or dry escapes)
But most of all, to the Friday I walked onto your
Tiles and felt vacancy in all but one spot
Where you left behind a map as if to
Say, clean up your mess this time
(Now I know that these lettered days
Are just pathways, not destinations)

You walked through every tornado
So you could say that you made it alive
Through wind and rain, snow and ice
Did you bother acknowledging the
Warmth of the sun in your two melted brown eyes
And that you don’t always need to be
Struggling or fighting or competing
With something bigger
Than yourself to win
It might look like glory
Because it tastes like fresh clouds
And small lights hung in the middle of the night
But you’re tougher than tree bark
Put together stronger than bricks
Your cement must be the opposite of an escape
Only, you’ve trapped yourself hunting for a release

Letters scribbled down on
Paper as the pen engraves its mark
Even when it leaves the paper
The colours remain
The shapes linger
You tore the clouds from
Their places in the sky
While the purples, blues
And pinks bled
Like red lipstick marks on tissue
Stamps on new bought
Postcards that stick where
They are stuck by flying through
Time, countries and air that
Smell like metal and lemons
But the colours couldn’t show
What thunder and dirt
Showed up under the
Doorstep when you
Decided to walk away
And no matter how many daisies
I watered and loved and caressed,
My veins will forever be painted with
Rotting petals
Discoloured leaves
Like old sunsets
And falling telephone wires
Those do not leave
Even when they are left
I will shine the broken glass
And wash the buried fire
To me you’re still home.