early grays choke me uncertain
numb daybreak, phantom sheets
dipping into the cool crevices
your body used to fill

your breath once tasted sweet on my lips
but in morning fog it bleeds ice
dancing transient across my tongue   
it breaks against this raw, hollow mouth

i curl into the shirt i never gave to you
frosted with empty memories --
                    stolen nights
                                           sanguine skin
     swirls of smoke escaping your fingertips
and your voice in my dream last night

someday it won't hurt but
                this morning it is chilly sharp

i. you will miss him in drizzles and monsoons, in swells and tsunamis. you will listen to his favorite song for hours; it will hit you every unexpected moment. it will hurt, stab, ache, and you will suppress constant screams with strained lips.

ii. you will collect everything he gave to you and wonder if it is dimensionally real. you will sleep in his shirts, retaste saltwater kisses, and reread conversations as if there's something you missed the previous thirty times. absence does not make the heart grow fonder; it rips it apart and you cannot stitch the ragged halves with no thread.

iii. you will feel his touch presently in everything you do. it will be soft and cruelly comforting. it will constantly and inescapably linger. it will haunt you in early rainy mornings and dark lonely evenings.

iv. you will read endless musings on love and philosophy. you will entirely understand foucault's prison. you will live in steinbeck's tide pools and stars, and relate to simon bolivar trapped in his labyrinth. you will wonder why everything is like this, ugly and broken (and also if you are becoming delusional).

v. you will drink tea that scalds your tongue and stand outside on freezing nights, numb and overfeeling at the same time. you will ask the silent moon a thousand questions. you will see him and blink, head swimming, heart pounding in surges. the stars will wink and the wind will mock you.

vi. you will have blissful afternoons you forget and sorrowful nights you remember. it will still consume you in bouts, devour you in spells. nighttime will become both your enemy and remedy: it will wickedly remind you, yet help you heal.

vii. you will try and fail to make sense of him (and the universe in general). you will grapple with reality and yourself. perhaps you will never know why he stopped loving you: you will keep wondering how some things can just be left broken.

iix. slowly, slowly, you will sprout on your own; you will be tender and nearly whole. most importantly, you will realize his love brought you an entirely different kind of happiness.

ix. you will stop worrying and trying to piece together an empty puzzle. even the deepest scars find their way of fading. your mom was right: stop picking at the scab and your wound will heal.

x. you will learn to love yourself in ways he never could have loved you.

as the night quells, soft and gentle,
the incessant humming in my head subdues to 
a murmured hush, and the white noise is but 
a grey    fog  veiling hazy promises and barbed fears.

the darkness seems to hold its breath as you say: look 
       at the meteors,        they fall so heavily tonight!
it is because we all placed our wishes on them.

yet i only see your tired orbit
set in the horizon of your stony shoulders;
like shooting stars burdened by wishful thinking,
you bow under a burden of universes:
          phantom hopes and frayed strands,
          as if you were afire from within,   the moon
      alight in lining of your skin.

tonight the waning moon’s gentle glow flickers
as if in stop-motion, like confused blinking.
in a lingering afterthought I find —

in solitude time is all-consuming,
and i am in an hourglass; time, a thief,
creating a vortex beneath my feet
and in solitude i find myself wishing desperately again.


the darkness is so softly suffocating as you say: look
at the meteors, they fall so heavily tonight!

this bruised ballerina forgot how to dance.
            her lithe body a marionette
artfully conducted by threads in her back
   at the nimble fingertips of some perverse desolation
       she moves mechanically
   to its twisted touch.

she is told to somehow turn scars to flight --
    mend wounded wings
             and glide, carelessly soar
      through painted skies and fairy clouds
sweet as a songbird's melody
    reborn, a fresh starling

(listen: she weakly sings)

I breathe in all shades of purple
and exhale in all shades of blue;
faded plums to cornflower petals—
a bruised kind of exchange
that makes you look up to the sky
and feel something for no reason.
A contusion I keep fresh for
whenever I let someone
close enough to press it.
And if the pain makes my skin
sing notes only my conscience can hear,
then I’ll write lyrics to match;
they'll say
*I’m alive.
I’m alive.
I’m alive.

i lose myself in the titter of your raindrops tonight
who listen to me more intimately
than any being ever could

for your dark a.m. streets breathe
a musky scent exactly like my broken love's lips
and a sip of you is fresh as your wry scarlet sunrise
which whispers secrets of espresso and brick
and aged thrice-thrifted books and the dim glow
of ***** neon signs who call to no one in particular;

during lonely nights when you drink me in, i melt
into a solace of wet pave and unlit alleys
and emerge among sinuous swirls of painted walls
and hazy lights, a blur of chilly comfort and
being perfectly lost between
you and the moon