Sinking deep
in flesh and bone,
I can only cling
to the sinews of faith
to keep myself awake.

What I desire is buried
not solely in needles nor smears of ink
but in the rapture, the jubilance,
the reckless vigor that it yields.

Gracefully, it dances
along the outline of my being
rhythmically
imprinting thoughts
never spoken -
of courage and passion,
of triumph and empathy,
ideas which
I never had the chance
to utter
to the ones I hold dear.

Tonight, I drowned myself to sleep
with oil and
the prayers that
I keep
suspended in regret,
my faith
I steeped
with hopes of
grain and blood,
I reaped
the vast
shadow of the past, I creep
beneath
the scrying eyes,
I weep
for broken arms
raised to the sky, I leaped
without clinging
to the land I loved,
I sweep
the poison of my men,
I seep.
My heart lies in the dreams I heaped
Tonight, I drowned myself to sleep.

She was buried in walls of pitch and snow,
shunned by the moon which she holds dear.
She stretches out her hand every night
to reach her innermost desires.
She stretches out and cry
for nights and nights, through sun and rain.
She stretches out and cry.

Words once trickled from her fingertips -
letters, of every shape and size,
dance eloquently on stone and sand.
They bathe in ethereal curiosity at dawn
and sanguine discovery at dusk.

Now nothing drips from her fingers, long and slim
but soot as dark as her gleaming eyes.
She smeared the walls with hatred and grief
and sorrow seeped from within its cracks.

Agitation wells from deep within her.
It overflows and spills into her cup of tea.
The bitterness that it brings
is rivaled only by her fear of staying alone.
There is no end to her suffering, and she knows
the walls she made were too steep and too high
and yet the moon expects such a fragile frame
to reach the pinnacle of this ordeal
and stares blatantly at her demise.

And so she rests under the shade
of mounds and mounds of pitch and snow.
She lays supine while cursing the sky,
bereft of words, letters, and ink,
with soot trickling from her eyes.

I.
Grandiose, grandiose
The moon shines bright
Poison drips upon her thoughts
A thousand paper cranes to fold
Fingers, trembling in distraught
“to keep or to unfold?” she thinks
But the issue ends in naught

II.
And as the light basks our very existence
I can only materialize
Nothing but a figure,
lithe,
of dreams
eccentric taste,
maturity.
beside me
beside me
Petty situations like these, I must hold dear,
I know
No
I know

III.
The waves, they crash onto the shore
There is nothing less, and nothing more.

Breathe in slow
enough to hear
his voice - ichor
dripping from beneath

his lips sewn
with incessant thoughts
of the looming
shadows that he sees

at night, with heavy

gasps
drawn deep within
his lungs, he dreams
he's awake