as i rushed to build a new community of my own, filled with sticks, stones and my own bones, i forgot to mourn what i had left behind. you tell me nothing lasts forever; yet, i will find a way to salvage what i had poured my heart and soul into building, because i refuse to --i cannot-- believe that it is over, that i am no longer a community but my own person, that i am now inherently and deeply alone.

i couldn't wait for my community to fall apart, so i could rebuild a new one. i convinced myself there were too many cracks in the foundation, that it was imperfect, that i truly didn't belong... but love is love, and even black sheep like me can find it in the oddest places. People are not jigsaw puzzles, i realise now, and neither is love; we never fit, there are always roughed edges, sawdust-- We manage to love anyway.

Interesting,
how I can only
bleed on typewriters
when my heart
has ripped into shreds,
as if pieces of tissue
are spurting into
strings of nonsensical,
literary madness.

What might have been lost?
if I never see you again

I call your eyes
one of the dreamers
and your eyes dart
across the room

always above my head
like you're watching
shooting stars collide

I learned you are
a body of water
elusive and mystical
flowing between the gaps
of my fingers

always slipping
through my fingers

I know that
your life will rotate
perfectly
without me

But I wish
I could be the compass
always guiding
you home

I like words.
I like watching them
f
   a
       l
           l
together
m e l d i n g    i n t o
                   one
large collection
of feelings
thoughts, emotions,
               d
           r         e
       a      m       s
and stories
that you whisper
before I drift
                      to
                          sleep.

Better than you;
always considered myself superior
--a delusion I nurtured
with vicious remarks
and cold sniggers;
within the remotest of land,
full of dust,
you learned to bloom
with your youthful flowers
growing larger
than me
and yourself.

caramel skin
like the sweet scent
of toffee & warm sugar
during a summer festival.

you called me exotic,
with black eyelashes
******* my even darker
raven eyes.

no other woman
could ever compare
with my soft voice,
strong principles,
and thoughtful nature.

you called me exotic.
but I wonder if you know,
I am a stranger within my skin,
within my community.

I am exotic
in an unsettling way--
halves and quarters,
of thoughts and ideas,
and never whole enough
for anyone.

my parents
are whole people
with a fragmented daughter;
to them,
I am a stranger--
I am exotic.

I am both
sickened and liberated
by my difference.

but mostly,
terrified.

i’m a quarter lifespan
half human
and too delicate to be
broken.

can you find
the paradox in that
statement?

and in the times
you measured my
force against oceans

I carved soft footprints
in the sand

and watched the
lavenders
grow in them.