sunbitten fingerprints all over my hands.
my body is my transport and everything in between.
i am a passenger in lethargy
fallen away sleeplessly
staples in my bedsheets my skin its paper
sunken in teeth
heavy rapid quick quickening shaky breathing
shamed to be burdened and carried
but all the same burned by the sun
by the son
aimlessly to wander where i first began
handheld and handmade but i am just an automaton
writhing in my own flesh.
give me a piano and i can return it new
but God, tell me i'm not alone in this.
all of this is so lonely.

paperback spine.
you have a paperback spine.
it is creased with liquid white.
liquid moon.
i trace my piano fingers
to feel your used.
the used is how the white came about.
the stories you've lived and told.
you wouldn't tell me that it was
painful
but i've already read it.
your paperback spine.
there was bad.
and there was good.
you've seen colder winters than i.
i've asked before if you regret
your paperback spine.
if it becomes unbearable to show
vulnerability as a color.
as the liquid moon
dripping down each crevice
you said no
because honesty
was what made the liquid moon white on your back.
you were proud of that.
and i didn't ask anymore.

whenever i think about you,
i always remember when
we danced in your front yard
at 9 pm
in front of boys
in front of your dad
in front of people
i didn't even know
and just didn't care.
we just didn't care
how bad our moves were
or how awkward
the stares were.
we just didn't care
how grainy the music was
on your broken phone speakers.
and of all the memories i have of you,
this one's my favorite.
and one i'll remember
with a smile.
because even though you told me
you didn't need me anymore,
i will still remember
fondly
but maybe
with a touch
of bitter sadness.

whenever i feel content
with it just being me
and God in the same room,
i know i have succeeded.

when a friend becomes a stranger
and bitterness always lingers
when the sweet becomes sour
and all the brave seem to do is cower
when a heart breaks and heals
and all the skin can do is steel
be prepared to scream
you can win no other way
if you don't have a battle cry,
fighting as if you're
prepared to die.

You could throw me in a cage
and grate my skin from my bones.
You could eat my heart raw
in front of me.
You could let a lion ravage me,
tear me apart, piece by piece
with my ****** ashes
soaking in ocean water.
You could feast
on my madness
but I will not be truly scared
unless you take my tongue
and my pen.

it's the anchored sound of piano tiles
hit
struck
gently
by eagerly peaceful fingers

it's the pedal and it's sound
aching
breaking
groaning
under the pressure of beauty

when all has been stripped of
goodness
kindness
loving
it's the sound of tiles and pedals

that
remain.

i'm as dull as butter.
there is no more poetry
i can squeeze out of me anymore.
where did it all go?

falling out of love
with this tongue
aches to no end.

being ashamed
of something beautiful
is poetically
disgraceful.

letting me tattle tale on a bad day
with your telephone wires
and frayed soul edges
glistening in the starlight.

her guilty greys spoke millenia
of catastrophy and destruction. her shattered soul and tattered mind
granted shifty eyes and unsteady feet
to her lean physique.

nothing smiled quite like her in the courtroom. if ants could taste the sickly sweet scents dripping down her lips, they'd infest her entire body.

a tear on her marbled cheek ran away from her lazy eyelids like grass runs from the wind. the tear would not bow to her unending sorrow, but it was aware that it would not be missed if it disappeared.

her guilty greys were on fire in the courtroom. a wild forest fire. she was her very own arsonist. oh she basked in the burns it blessed her with. the jurors didn't know of the flames they were being consumed by (mercilessly, i might add). their bodies were too plain and too close-minded to see the in-between like a guilty grey's creation. she liked that. she liked that she was the only one who could see her own faulty destruction.

monochromatic themes, paranormal and sweet. hathi married it eons ago, when a fairy tale was merely gossip amongst the curious whispers of a neighbor.

in shackles, drenched in shame and jeers from her spectators, hathi stood proud at the prisoner's box like a mountain peak.

a smile danced a ballet across her bright pink lips, two crescent moons waxing upwards. her guilty grey eyes glittered gold dust as she opened her mouth. coughs spilled from her ashen lungs and a warm, bright red trickled down her neck.

but that would not take her voice away.

hathi would talk guilty grey until the day she died.

don't look down,
icarus.

trust me
and fall.

this feeling
pertaining to you
is peculiar.

i know you must be gentle.
i feel it in the pit of my stomach.

i'll be in the background
and waiting for you to say hi.

hourglass,
what are you doing here?
my mouth is chalky white
and wooden beams block my sight.
why do you try so hard
to rip me from the pages
of my notebook?
let me write in peace!
how else will this madness leave me?
it's no easy feat to run you away
but i am desperate for this.
if i let you haunt me,
i have lost all time.

claim my starry soul
until it fades away.
wear my heart in strings
until i snap and break.
fly away with wings i gave
fly into the cliffside
and into the cliffside cave.
break apart my geodes
i hold beauty inside,
fill me with your all
and i'll give you
my most contented
sigh.

of course it's painful,
watching him dance
with another star,
but i'm content
watching from afar.

i promise i'm okay,
though i know i'm hurt.
i like smiling when i think of him
even if it makes my chest contract too.
i was the one pushing my raft out at sea
and hoping he'd be the one to reel me back to land.

i'd consider myself less foolish
this time around.

i promise i'm okay.
all i need is chocolate ice cream
and a sad movie
and the pain will ebb.

write yourselves into dust
and fly away with your ink
and paper cuts.

a toast!
to the brave cowards;
for they know true courage in a lion's den, lined with clouds.

a toast!
to the nonstop criers;
for they know true sorrow and the effort it takes to grieve.

a toast!
to the ones who fear the world;
for they know it isn't unfounded, but still try to walk with the waves.

a toast!
to the desolate landscaped;
for they know they'll grow flowers again in their bare deserts.

a toast!
to all of us,
because we've seen another day.

you know,
i should probably give you up now.
it's just a game of rings and roses;
i fall deeper into your ocean eyes
and i don't know when i'll hit the pavement.
blue is my favorite color,
but only when it's on you.
love is my favorite feeling,
but only if it's you.
the seaside is my favorite place,
but only if i'm with you.

and maybe i should give you up.
because i'm dragging us both down.

everything is pausing
hesitating
cautiously.

when will we give this game up?
this game of pride and greed.
throw your walls down
and break down theirs.

don't wave goodbye
to a chance you never grasped.

we might still be ignoring each other,
(is that what we call this silence?)
by the time it comes around.
i might still love you
and you might still not know,
but despite this heartbreak
and shaky hands of mine,
i will still wish you happy birthday.

we were never friends consistently
and yet i loved you most ardently.

"Yes it was," said he.
The girl looked into his eyes
And wondered at his naivete.

Who was this "boy" that
she'd mistaken for a man?
Had she fallen for a rock,
or a pit full of sand?

"You think it was your smile,
That caught my heart that day?
You think it was your hand
That led me down astray?

You think that I by my wits
Couldn't outwit you
When you cracked my heart
When I didn't want to?

Nay, my love for you was not,
not for outward appearances.
I was deceived by it, however, and now
my heart is full of grievances.

You arrogant donkey, full of ****
and full of wicked thought.
You call me a kettle
when you yourself, sir, are a ***!

You have no intellect worth admiring,
yet you talk of it admiringly.
And because of my own shine,
you only see yourself in me.

Putrid scents in your mouth,
and all I hear are roses.
To have me depart from you
like sea water, I ask of the prophet Moses!

You drool like a child
when you stare inside the mirror.
If I ever bore you your firstborn,
you wouldn't even see her.

Nay, I loved you not for your face
for now I only see ugliness
wrapped in beautiful distaste."

And so with a wave of her hand,
she left with a soft-spoken goodbye
as he slowly sat down and decided to cry.

i tied my heartstrings to your neck
and dragged you everywhere i went.
any step away from me you'd take,
you would end up dead.

i have been doused in gasoline
the moment i fell in love ;
and you took a match to me
the day i fell in love ;
held it over my head ,
teasing teasing teasing ;
now i suffer ashes
oh the burning
burning
burning .

YOU are so tasteful.

so majestically bitter and slick like thick honey. ferocious peach preserves with ghost pepper infused inside. your tears salt the ocean. your verbal ***** coat a lilac scent on my tongue.

YOU are so delightfully enigmatic.

you write your letters with your own ****** ink with a scandalous smile, agonizing and anticipating the ****** of a sentence you don't dare finish. i stare with a trembling gaze at your fingertips dipped in crimson hue. your lazy eyes stagger my weight onto my right side—the weaker one.

YOU are as enlightened as a nova.

"it's a crabapple world out there," you said to me one night. doves flew in and out of your heavy-lidded eyes with hemlock threaded in their feathers. you call yourself golden wheat because you are beautiful and rare, but easily reaped when harvest season comes. when they come with scythes and pitchforks.

"revenge," you said, "for my mischievous antics."

YOU are so arcane.

there are no secrets in between the hairs on your head, a dense forest with predatorial dangers underneath. my own hairs sought those secrets as hands crept up your neck and into the golden wheat field on your head. i ache for your tell-tales. my wounds fester with the hunger to be satisfied by your apprise.

YOU are mine and wild.

for no particular reason, the atmosphere stretches thin. two heartbeats irrythmic and syncopated with the lapping of a tiger's tongue in tainted jungle water.

my hands aflame with your gasoline blood hold tight to your maverick ways. unorthodox and unkempt you are. fallible and illogical. cathartic and despotic. as much as you are all this, i ask to love it all.

"you brutal sky. so far away, yet everywhere I see. nothing but blue with white clouds dotting your silk skin every so often. rain will pour down your marble cheeks when monsoon season comes around the corner and your eyes will flood. you cruel sky. you cause my blood to run into glass castles attempting to feel the pain you tease my senses with. clouds aren't soft on you. ceramic edges slicing your sky and porcelain dolls shattering on the bathroom ground of your heart. how strange you've made my words. even now, when you've left, I still ache with your pain and suffering. I didn't need your pain, but I asked for it anyway and here I am. a raining monsoon season filled with old memories that were never mine. this inheritance is prideful and I have built my great wall high above your sky and ceramic edged clouds. so leave me behind. I won't see you leave. I won't look behind me when I am too fragile to watch you fade away. it will be painful, sensing your absence having never said goodbye."

the sand is spilling ocean
the sky is leaking sunlight
the earth is seeping life

and to those who have
sorrow escaping from
their heavy-lidded eyes,
do not hold it in.

the sand can't hold back the ocean
the sky can't contain the sun
and the earth can not prevent
a life from blooming with all its might.

bright and glorious
we shine

gentle spirit,
break my heart.
With kind words,
unspoken art.

child-like i wanted to stay
as childish beliefs blow away
and my empty shell cracks
as the world of darkness
invades the light in my eyes
child, i wish i knew everything
yet nothing at the same time
i want to heal the world
of its bruises and scrapes
but i’m scared i will bleed
the shield will protect the wielder
but who will protect the shield?

Cutting my neck open wide
to let you see and touch
what is and was inside.

Staring into universes
to taste what blessings are
that will eventually turn into curses.

Gasping in the foul air
that your lungs provide;
you lure me into your lair.

Feeding me maggot-ridden,
crying, destructive and putrid words
lain under the depths of your tongue.

Falling into my eyes
a devastating force of gravity;
falling into your own lies.

Your empire will sink
and your kingdom will scream
for its own destruction.

And until you admit your defeat
you will never walk in light
and I will no longer
stand by your side.

FALLING into darkness
SPLASHING in your pools
of murky depths and nightmares
where your ghosts roam free
and feed on your flesh.


LOVING the configuration
ADORING the form you've taken
in a twisted, perverted way;
your eyes called me their own
just to rob me of my dilation.


DESPISING the height I had to fall
HATING the way my skin curled in
when I hit the pools inside of you;
soft and malformed in the north
deceiving astronomy in the south.


WALKING in your atomical views
RUNNING with your wolves
was pleasurable to my psyche
but just a sheep in wolf's clothing
you shed your lies in the darkness.


HERDING the doves in my soul
SHAPING my head to fit in yours;
I am not of the essence of clay,
I can not force my spine to bend
over and backwards, under and forwards.


SO just let me swim in your smoke
—you're cyanide dreams
too poisonous to love
right now.

there's a seat waiting for you
at my dinner table.
there will be a feast.
my soul will be the main course
and my heart will be dessert.

i hope you come.
even though you'll be
the death of me.

as brightly lit as i am,
i was forgotten
among the stars.
a ship lost in moonlight
searching for a skylight
that will never reach the dawn.
take my hands,
and do not regret
pulling me to shore.

you have golden fingertips
and the touch of midas
in your hands.

Don't get me wrong,
Even though I loved him,
He never dictated my happiness.
He just—he made me happier.

how ironic is it
that a girl
who gets so easily seasick
and is terrified yet hypnotized
by deep waters,
is so perpetually
in love
with the ocean?

i have a horrible habit
of writing poetry about
the boy i love.

my tears
watered
the roots
of my love
for you.
so please
don't let me
waste away.
harvest me
when i'm
ready.

it was then that i realized
if he couldn't bother
treating me like a queen
then he had no right
to stand in my kingdom.

let another queen
decide your fate,
my love.

you waste my time.

i am madly in love with you
so please
treat me well
whether you love me back
or not.

When I tell you
That I'm in love with you
I will do so with a poem
Because that is the language
That I speak.

you wrote your soul
on my skin
with a silken paintbrush
and sky blue paint––

i'm sorry.

i wrote my soul
on your skin
with a sharpened knife
and blood red paint––

i'm sorry.

let out the air you've been
holding in all your life.
you're free now.
you live in the clouds
with the sky as your lungs
and the sun as your oxygen
soak in the world's worth
and drop into the depths
of your endless blue soul
like a stone in the ocean
swim with the birds
fly with the fish
and breathe.
breathe.
you're alive.
so breathe

hug the sky
give as much love
as you would a puppy
because the sky
cries just like you
sleeps just like you
gets lonely just like you
because the sun and moon
are too far away
for the sky to talk to
hug the sky
and the sky
will hug you back.

i can't say i won't cry
because of you
but i can say i smiled
because of you

and i will never
forget that.
even when
you forget me.