I wanted to write a poem
because I wanted to test
the integrity of life
when life tests
the integrity of me,
indulge in decadence,
and create a travesty
out of society;
fall in love, like a skylark
does with his sesame seeds...

and it was not until after
I have written
did I realize
I have not written at all.

Last night I went to Paris
with my first ever muse
and held her one hand
while we held the Triomphe
in the other

We basked in books
we bought in the rue de la Bûcherie
and gazed at herons in the Seine

We were two tired birds
that perched atop the Eiffel
one lazy night, ready for a kiss

That's when my eyes fluttered open
like the birds in Paris

There's no Pokémon
here in Rio, much like our
clean drinking water.

117

In rags mysterious as these
The shining Courtiers go—
Veiling the purple, and the plumes—
Veiling the ermine so.

Smiling, as they request an alms—
At some imposing door!
Smiling when we walk barefoot
Upon their golden floor!

The tide rolled in behind your eyes,
their horizons permitting slivers of grey morning light
to bounce off of all you beheld.

You sighed with a brine laden breath
that tickled my cheeks
with dawn's brisk numbness.

I felt a renascent smile sprout from my lips.
I let you wash right over me.

That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken
As I by yours, y’have passed a hell of time,
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
O, that our night of woe might have remembered
My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me then, tendered
The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!
    But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
    Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

If you catch me fishing for compliments or looking for a fight
I just need to know I'm adequate, that everything's alright
I'm anxiously insecure, I easily regret
Mistakes are always on my mind, too heavy to forget
I'm suspicious of the little things, a skeptic to the core
Small changes make me nervous, I feel generally unsure
I'll always keep on asking things when I already know
Because anything can happen, people come and people go
That's why I need your confidence each and every day
I just need some reassurance so that I can be okay