1: shallow beach

our little talks
have always been like
little waves,
secretly desperate for height,
something passionate surfers
will never learn to like;
and like a lonely muddy puddle,
desperate for depth,
hoping that someday
it'll swallow up all the boots
stomping on it.


2: gutter

our exchanges have
always been trippy as ****.
every word we say floats above our heads
and we would smirk as we watch them position themselves.
they form these neon swirls
that our pupils **** in for us
to share a nirvanic high.
as we see the post lights beat different colors,
our monochromatic mindscapes
dramatically turn into psychedelic voids.
on this elevated surface,
on this gutter,
on this place most people perceive
as a spit spot,
and on this cemetery
for cigarette corpses,
our chaotic souls
have found a dwelling place
and
our cluttered minds
realized its capacity
to be eloquent like a fluid pen,
to be sad yet tranquil like somber nights,
and to be embossed like keloid scars.


3: airplane

our
conversations
taste
exactly just
like the view
from a window seat
on a starry night flight.
our sentences never failed to leave
trails of cerulean glitters on our tongues
before they came out of our mouths.
but as we moved above
the dots of city lights,
we could only think of how
depressingly ephemeral
everything is.

4:  mind palace

our intertwined thoughts
built a helix bridge
connecting a place of infinite stairs
to an abandoned house of mirrors.
i can't forget when you told me once
that i was your favorite trespasser.
but to me, you're just one of those strangers
who tiptoed his way to get in
just so he could try to figure out
which mirror door led
to my most honest labyrinth.

5: rainforest

every time our letters fall like raindrops
and land as paragraphs on the dry earth,
the petrichor is sniffed by pine trees  
and as they happily sway,
they discover their capacities to dream.
they aspire to be the blank moldy papers
that only the two of us can fill.
they desperately want our words
tattooed on their skins.
our hands, their spine.
their home, our minds.

6: dance studio

we agreed that we were the world's
most horrible dancers
because we danced with our
two left brains,
not with our
two left feet.
i could only come by night,
and you could only come by day,
but our opposite timezones
never prohibited us to miss
this dazzling performance
only our minds can make.
sitting cross-legged together
in front of a wide mirror,
we see
two people
dancing
two different genres
but somehow magically
complementing each other

7: bedroom

we made our discussions
with our spontaneous feet.
each aimless step
summoned a plethora of paths
that we promised we'll take
i can't seem to forget
how happily  lost we were;
not because we are products of a consumer-obsessed era,
but because we are products of the realization that the Earth is made of unlimited wormholes that we can zap through to discover things.
i can't also seem to forget
how our days would end with our toes touching the
chipping paint on your wall
while we stare at the photographs we took by the sun;
while we listen to music as our souls spun.
it has been our personal routines to remind ourselves
that we are not slaves of superficiality.
but as what i feared...
we expired
just like the stardust we basked in.
we used to bleed dreams,
but now, what are we?
we have become two cogs left to tarnish
in some corporate machinery