in a dream i saw you smiling
as bright as the life you once radiated.
you sat in your favorite recliner
and the rocking chair on the stoop.
though i know you are a vagrant
wandering between realms of the animate,
the organic
the decaying
and the remains of you in a vessel
furnished with powdery human residue.
i could not think of a better word to describe you as
than angel


in this dream i saw my father
a fervent believer
in the one they call the father
in all the world’s creation.
and in this dream we argued,
for i am not “the daughter he raised”
under biblical predisposition.
i have freedom of doubt, no faith do i worship
except the good in people to make life worth living
and mourned respect for the departed.


never have i thought we’d be met with the father of all the world’s creation.
in fact, there’s nothing to be met with after drawing in our last breath.
i told my father his faith was *******
while you sat there behind me
looking as alive as you did
the day before you died.
and my mind couldn’t understand
how you were here
when god is a phantom
and angels aren’t real.


and yet, here you were.
tethered to my conscious.
i couldn’t look you in the face and deny your existence.
your face smiling that same bright smile.
same as in the memories that remain.
memories as real as your remains.
i do not believe in angels
only electric bursts in my cosmic web of neural branches
but your smile felt more real, more tangible,
than your actual, physical ashes.


to my beloved brother,
and my dearest uncle,
i know you’re not with me anymore
but have you really gone?
not from this heart, not from this dream.
if i should see you both again
in the realm of shut-eye,
i am grateful for the spiritual confusion
you besiege me,
for i shan’t be concerned with the existence of angels that i disregard in my waking time.
because when i am asleep, and reality is unbound,
and you appear to me as clear as materiality,
heaven is real
heaven is in my mind.

i wish there was something to do
when i sit around with nothing to do.

yet when i'm free from the clock
and my hands are unglued,

all i do is nothing
and nothing will do.

you’re no longer in my life
and im the better for it
but **** if i can’t cut you out from my mind’s leaking faucet.
i can’t be around you because even when im not
traces of your essence always drip into my thoughts
cause if your hands would touch my skin
i would fall right back again
into the same old dance that plays in my head when im alone in bed.
so stay away from me.
i know im better without you.
and im only better now in case you wanted to notice to me,
to remember me as if you missed me,
and make you wish you never ghosted me.
i just want to forget you
but if i do then you might forget me
and moving on to something better
would seem all for nothing
if you didn’t even miss me

all the **** from your mouth that you thought was inspiring
slowly broke me down until my hope was expiring
never opened my mouth to come back with inquiries
just kept my head down and wrote my thoughts in a diary
and you read it, pathetic,
invading my privacy
called me out for feigning sadness and my ‘bogus’ anxiety
cause “im a better dad than mine so shut up and be quiet kid”
“you’re lucky im the head of this dysfunctional dynasty”
well congratulations dad, you’ve earned notoriety
for forcing my respect in the form of compliancy
and disbelieving science and the facts of psychiatry
so i ran away from home to join the freaks of society
where else could i escape from your emotional piracy?

******* hanging lower than your elbows
but who cares? i don’t
just more for me to hold
and rest your shoulders for a moment

i'm addicted to the critics
the ones that compliment me
and the ones that contradict me
and the ones that just forget me

painting pictures in my brain
from the brushstrokes of
a ***** pen
dipped in watercolor rain
aquifers of ink
dye the reservoirs of dreams
seeping underneath the layers
of magnetic black earth
if the mind was a planet
and ideas were a shovel
digging holes
through the gravel
to find my inspiration
a secret golden treasure
buried in a rotted
wooden box
with a broken lock