not a bird in earsight,
but the wind is quite insistent

as the leaves rustle and chatter in
conversation every instant

the sky is blue, the sun elsewhere
your eyes are dry, face bare.

the clouds are few but lazy as ever!
hope to stand and watch forever,

the perfect wind that flips your hair but it's
welcome as home, the
silence that fills your head with talk.

a beautiful day!

you're beautiful. beautiful
it's all i can see when i look at you
is this all you have to do?

i see the way you stop and smile
i don't think i've seen anything
quite like that in a while

it isn't just in the curls of your hair
or your eyes
but the colors that you wear,
the way your words shine

you're a sun, you are goldleaf
your presence gives me relief
from the parts of life that hurt me,
you're the one that fixes me
up

bring me up, up, up, up
i'm flying
on my wax wings
closer to you
and when they melt, i fall, falling right to
you,

you
are the golden ocean,
the sun on the waves, you set
me into motion

you're beautiful.
you're beautiful the way you are
your soul is the color of fireflies and
sunlit dew
it's why i have to write a golden song
for you.

your very blinks
send fireworks into the sky
you breathe in hurt, exhale
amber incense
this poem doesn't
even make sense,
anymore

but that's okay
because all things aside what i wanted to
say, was really i do hope you're having a
nice day.

delicate folds into endless
creases, the wrinkles
in mother's hands. asking for
more, taking
& creating new faces
when you think the last of you is gone.

& though the world may
    tuck away your
    flaws &
    pleat you into
    origami stars,
take to the earth,
uproot the trees.

stand tall as your last in-
carnation,
become the called bluff
& bloom in the space
between   sky
                   &
              ground.

                     before you hit the earth,
                     become the bird that you
                     are & perch on
                     opportunity.

5 am blue reminds me
how to touch G on the piano.

there aren't many words i can think of to define it, really.

but i do know it's like crying. quiet tears welling and holding someone tight to your chest, imagining what it must be like
to feel something holding you together.

it is gentle, the way you would comfort a snowflake, the center of a child's eyes. the shy flower that unfolds like precious origami in the dark.

it is the silence, sound of breathing.

it is delicate, like trust and empathy and
understanding.


it is what i want to play for you.

there's something magical about
a sunrise with no sun

watching the blinds go from
algae bloom blue to
the color of mustard
(gold.),

to see the colors pass as do
your bruises. (time.)

the healing consumes you,
burning you
whole.

the steam of the shower holds your face
like a pillow.

pushing out the smog, clutter in your head
billowing around you and thawing out
the raw thoughts that you try to freeze over.

the endless patter of hot rain that
cleanses, but also
hurts
in that it's one of the only
honest sounds you'll ever hear
(outside of love.)

the moment you step out into the humid, mediated
atmosphere of a cooling room
the water dripping off your arms,
your hair,
your face,
making you anew.

but as everyone does, you wipe the mirror clear
to see your face, and know that despite life,
it's still you.

it changes you, yet proves your you-ness more than anything else.

eyelids are heavy like
weights dropping on your toes.
sleep and thoughts are formidable foes.
but meanwhile in the haze i can't feel my nose.
yeah.
i guess it goes and goes.

i am a lock

and i have spent so long
pretending
the key
wasn't in my hands

that i
can't find it anymore.

you talk
you talk
you talk
you talk, but do you even
think ?

do you remember? within the frivolous talk you made,
the expression hanging off my face?
did you stop for even a second,
to think about how i felt
misplaced?

i don't need your commiseration,
but there really wasn't even the slightest of hesitation
you couldn't hide your excitement
and forgot that it was my disappointment

you were so happy, i don't blame you
if it were me, i would be too
that doesn't mean it's right of you
it wasn't very nice of you

to assume i don't have hurt crawling up my insides
whenever i meet you
and see in your eyes,
hear in your tone,
feel in your presence
all the precious little things i've just lost.

the scissor is on your
nape. think away the thought, please

.

.

.

water. there's a drop stroking over the rim that is your forehead. down, down. a

tear. slips down. a tear of

blood. down more. it edges toward your jaw, neck, throat, into a

vein. crawling, descending. throughout your self and your legs,

crisscrossing. spiderveins. open into

roots, white fading to spruce. your feet are gone and you are a

tree. millions more of you but look up to your leaves, flickering green to the sunlight like

a school of fish. silver in the surrounding black. a cold, encompassing, holding, embracing

ocean. you are the water once more. only this time you meet the sky, through a gate called

horizon. endless. infinite. edging, but it only follows you and you it.


are you one with the world? if not, be the world.

you are a world.

day is coming and i am night, apocalypse, contained collapsing chaos candlelight. i am the shadows in the corners of your sleep paralysis plights and i am your hallucinations. i can't seem to find the root of it all. take me to the stars and leave me there so i can find some truth in the nothing. i am night, i am no one. i don't want to be afraid anymore and can you do that for me? i'll close my doors and crack open the windows and find the dust of my bones on the shards. take my hands and melt them into copper, bronze flower stems. cut my throat and pour the red clay into your palms and shape me a ***. place the flowers within and throw the whole mess out the window for me. maybe they'll be discovered by the darkness and the stars will come out in despair, delusion, delight. maybe one day we'll all disappear and no longer Be. maybe one day we'll figure out what it all means.

loneliness is the worst kind of pain
because there is no one to hold you while it hurts

touch
the most dangerous
of them all

fall apart at fingertip glance
skin peel under sunlight &
moonlight kiss
clouds caress scars
rain pours into

golden wells, blown to kingdom come
shattered your eyes.

i wish we were all just constellations

strung up in the dark with
silver strands we
imagine,
holding us together (in a frame of hope).


for every star you pluck out of the night,
an image forms

in the shape of who you want me to be.

(& i can be your Polaris,
lead you to the truth.)

i hope that every evening, your
hands cradle a tired
face, that your legs find themselves warm and
tangled,

that you have the freedom to
kiss those hands,
palms, knuckles,

trace scars and forgive straying from the path,
rub shoulders and hold til it's all right.

to know
that it's okay to feel this way,
it isn't a sin to breathe this way,
it's okay to Be
in this way.



i pray that you can love yourself at night.

forgotten
sometimes it's a place i'd like to be
alone and unafraid
floating through the inbetween.
silence is noise, but never alarm
a place where you can't give or receive harm
lose all your friends, but it isn't the end
someday you might see them again!
but for now this is better, to shield your soul
from what's through and done.
what's left is a hole.


(you don't know if this is for the best, but.
you really, really. really just want to rest.)

tilt back
tears slide
back,
back,
back into your eyes, from the harrowing place
they were siphoned into life. they
seep through your skull,
slide down your throat,
swallow.

just swallow them, like they are
pain,
sugarcane.

feel the burning in your head
feel the burning in your lungs
feel the burning in the heart
and the hurt that makes you start

see the white on your arms
and the creases of your palms.

trace the lines of regret. the small sting of
control.
spite.

silent thunder.

everything is anger.
you are anger.
everything is fire.
but you are even worse. the silent dark.

feel the snake rise up in your stomach
to your chest. blood flows down
into the abyss, iron tang
and black shine.

it's always your fault, they say. the way you present,
the who that you embody,
the tone you project,
the everything.
the coarse words scraping around
in your lungs.
(they're actually screams.)

search for red, red but only
find black, black.

ink.

fade,

but not away.

I am
the fading ghosts of fingerprints on cold windows,
the colors blooming ever so slowly in the sky at dawn,
the murmuring voices of family through walls of safety

I am
the sun that meets your waves at the horizon, no matter how far it seems,
the warm breeze wandering down from clouds to caress your arms,
the comfort of lost doodles and poetry in the quiet of night

But it all changes when I see the oceans that are your eyes,
and the warmth that is your soul, bared free for me to see
the hand holds and careful gazes that we share,
the knowledge of “together” and just being there

I feel beauty in ways that are impossible to describe.

But I can try,
try to put these feelings into words,
just for you

how lonely it must be to
know,
and know alone

dreams in sight
stagnate
why am i falling ? ,

every time i take a step i find
myself back in this room

white walled white washed
whites of my eyes,
half asleep in the
wake of what we could be doing.

daylight hours endless night.

stay apart if we
ever want to meet again.

somehow, i find
that i would rather breathe at night
holding stone-still in a cell of silence
drifting off into the
murky black of
everything
between the stars.

and although it is cold,
and dark,
and i oftentimes find my pulsing soul
sinking dangerously in temperature,

i would much rather embrace
this world of empty
than lose myself in
everything i must face in the morning.

it was never there.
you were wrong,
there was nothing.
it was always gray, gray.
and the blots of color you thought you saw were just
refractions of light.
gone and by.

the world is as still as stagnant water,
made of thoughts instead of mosquitoes and bacteria.
the thoughts itch in a way they could only dream.

it was always this way.
no surprise.
humor, maybe even.
why?
the most hilarious word you've ever heard.
because,
say the gray walls, gray floors, gray ceilings, gray doors.
because.

the little girl
took towel in
hand

scrubbed away tear drops
watered down

melted snowflakes

rubbed away until nothing was left.