He asked her what it's like living with anxiety.

She smiled sadly, "It's a never-ending pulse-race. Like knowing you don't want to jump off a cliff but not being able to talk yourself down from it.

Your fears take on a nebulous, unidentifiable form that tightens around your throat and incapacitates you.

There is no calm. No peace. Only the edge of a very strained thread."

pain turned into insight
scorn into soft pity, yet
curious how fever dreams
of desire remain the same
after so long, still pulling
from the same well

she often finds herself awake in the middle of the night. solace with indigo skies. how the universe breathes the same breath as her. contracting and expanding until the hues of dark fade.

Late at night, when distant memories surface, she pulls at the tug of nostalgia.

In a different life, maybe they stood a chance. Maybe she didn’t walk away. Maybe he didn’t let her leave.

In a different world, maybe they could have been. Maybe she would have kissed him. Maybe he would have fought for her.

In a different universe, maybe they’re in love. Maybe she’s his heartbeat. Maybe he’s her home.

How lucky you are to be written about
shaped by someone else’s words
that you affected them so deeply
they had to write you out of their system.

it creeps up on you
like a vine, resolute
and winding through
crevices and vulnerabilities

you've taken
the bloom between us
and ripped off its petals
one by one

you sit there
looking down at it
wondering why what's left
is so naked, lonely
and uncared for

it's you
it's all because
of you

there's nothing to say
except that it's just sad
when love turns into
brittle resentment

no one grows up
thinking they would
experience the worst
and then they do

I feel older lately
composed of more failures
and fractures than successes
all the mistakes dotted
together like constellations

we become acutely aware
of our own existence
when it’s too late to go back
and there’s nothing left
but what’s ahead

all to say that time
is our one and only
common denominator
a heavy lesson to learn
willingly or otherwise

Tortured but golden like a cursed treasure.
A glimpse of starlight can be seen submerged
in the darkest of caverns. The void is deep and threatening. It’s hauntingly beautiful.

Between the reverberating hum of anguish
deep in the core, a soft pause touches feather-light. Fleeting but present, it feels like a quick tap of silk against the heart.

It is there. The supernova encapsulated tightly.
Enveloped in shadows to cast a balance on
its wild light. Always, two sides of the same coin. Tortured but golden.

How many unspoken words exist between us?
A trail of feelings we don’t want to admit.

Some days it is fine.
Other days it is unbearable.

She hated that he would always be the unanswerable question in her head. The lingering enigma that taunted her before sleep. It never mattered the amount of time that went by or the happy memories she made after him.

The night that she left him behind, she learned a lesson about rationale. The right choice can be the most painful—she was prepared for that. What she didn’t expect was the anguish of freedom; for the mercy she gave her heart to haunt her.

Bravery is getting through the day
unscathed by monotony and routine.

sound asleep in the night, your breathing has become my lullaby. the gravel timbre of an old guitar, the crinkle of a turned page in a well-worn book. you are the sound of an endless field of lavender, the very cusp of a summer equinox. softly, softly, softly, I can close my eyes and drift into you.

A poem a day makes the doctor go away.
Three poems a day makes the doctor send you to therapy.

Dreams of you
like a spectacular
adrenaline rush
crashing into me
at high speeds—
both breathtaking
and fear-inducing.

Just when it feels like a landslide crashing over everything everything everything the world suddenly opens up again.

all the fireflies have gone
and I am abandoned in darkness
here, I can feel the emptiness
of where love used to live

meet the gaze of your reflection
the weariness and exhaustion
a hammer suddenly pounding
your poor, overworked lungs
what did time steal from you?
how did someone familiar
become so unrecognizable?
like amnesia except you remember
every mistake that has led you here
the destructive pattern of self doubt
accompanying every morning
the moments of happiness lingering
but never staying long enough
the realization flashing like an ugly,
neon sign on a run-down side
of your pre-frontal cortex
in slow motion, the atoms of your body
devoured, eaten away by reality

Thoughts detached from emotion;
a visual of white against white—
the color of lacking, absence,
one single sigh.

I write to take the edge off,
to peel back a layer
or two

the dull ache of thinking,
and over-thinking,
again and again

a rhythmic anxiety
that tortures
me awake

too much time,
too little time,
all the time.

The sun seeps through our blinds
and I can see the touch of light
upon your sleeping face.

My tender, beating heart slows,
admiring all of the ways
that you make me yours.

It’s melancholic how life is made
of a million fleeting moments
but very few are like this.

when you’re the one
that has done the hurting
it takes time to heal too

it takes time to accept your faults
the pain you contributed to
the ending of it all

even if they hurt you too
even if they forgive you
the guilt inside you lives on

you might spend your life
hoping your sorrow
can be felt by them

What we had was not real. I realized this because I thought about you today and instead of pitiful longing, there was heated spitefulness in its place. I thought about how carelessly you treated me, and in that moment, I wanted you to never be happy.

In fact, I had hopes for you. Hopes that you’d never find someone fulfilling. Hopes that you'd always be searching and never satisfied. Hopes that you’d spend eternity pondering what could have been, with me plaguing your mind.

See? What we had couldn’t have been genuine. People in caring relationships don’t have these kinds of hopes when it ends. No, people who are loved are able to recognize their faults in an ending. Their heartache feels worth it, unlike mine.

At one point, I told myself that I would never write another word about you. I caged my feelings in silence; spurned from resentment. In reality, I gave you too much credit for the sadness I experienced. I didn’t realize that you were a bigger fool than me.

As I grow older, I want to find resolutions for the broken feelings I've archived. Some of them whisper to me as daylight slips past. Others caress my hand as it hovers over words.

Oh, it's so easy to write about the devastation. To close my eyes and relive the moments that bring me the most grief. Yet more and more, I want to stop looking back and trudge forward instead.

There is so much life left to live. So much happiness I haven't penned—not because it wasn't worthy of composition, but because sadness is so much more familiar.

Let this serve as a reminder that beautiful works have stemmed from joy. That the hardest part of optimism is reluctance. I get to choose the feelings that I feel. I know that now.

"everything that I have has come
from everything that I've lost"

this rumination has stuck with me
for days now since I first heard it

it reminds me of love

the kind of happiness that can only
be built on the knowledge of sorrow

a metronome for pain then healing




I wonder if we all had a choice
would we still choose the same?





I wonder if the price of perspective
comes in the form of contrast

she dreams of a feeling
feather-light floating

circular, orbital, a revolution
of aimless ambulation

in her palms, the world
dusted by light and warmth

a language of incantations,
an exchange of soft prayers

her very atoms awakening
flourishing in the existential

There is a comfort
in choosing your fate.
Gripping the rail, hard,
to patch your torn sail
piece by piece until
the wind picks up again.

These days, I get more sleep when I’m awake. With eyes closed, I’m helpless to fear. There’s no escape from the gnawing anxiety and I have to rationalize it or else it would eat me alive.

It grows in darkness and I imagine that it’s like a twisted Chia Pets commercial. Frame after frame of animated letters. A-A-A-Anxiety. The more that I think about it, the bigger that it gets. Except it’s not a cute little plant of a dog or a cat. It’s a nightmare.

Time passes by and I’ve lost count of the little, white sheep that I’ve been assigning numbers to. My head pounds, my body tenses and I don’t bite my nails but if I did, I would rip them off.

Instead, I tell myself to breathe. Wait. Only 8 hours to go.

7 hours.
6 hours.
5 hours.
4 hours.
3 hours.
2 hours.
1 hour.

Finally, the alarm rings a hideous sound that makes me want to slam it against a wall. It’s agony, but a reprieve from the torture nonetheless.

Opening my eyes is the only rest I can get.

An undercurrent
of shivers would brush
behind your ear
against your neck,
down the ***** of
your collarbone.
You would feel it,
the gossamer touch
folding into dusk
across your skin,
finding its way
pleadingly slow.
Umber and sienna,
the feel of your body
against the earth,
as raw and open
as being vulnerable
can let you be.
The fight against
pleasure is a battle
that you would lose,
but I would abandon
my breath just to
catch yours on the
cusp of falling.

All of him ***** her in like a pressed bruise—
that initial drop of pain from stomach to toe,
then the blossoming ache of violet tenderness
threatening to feel good on the verge of torture.

Sometimes, she wanted to be left alone because the weight of her feelings seemed unimaginably heavy for anyone else to bear.

How could she explain the ache of her torturous heart? The memories her treasonous mind refused to let go?

Living dulled her senses; the routine and the normalcy. But moments of clarity always brought her back to the anchor welded in her soul.

the things I never tell you
end up turning into poems

like how your eyes say words
you don't know how to express

how I felt more in one night
than I've felt in twenty-five years

laying my head on your chest
with you reading softly to me

what I wrote about us, for us
voice shuddering in whispers

I think about love and life
how we get so few moments

of soul-shaking tenderness
of certainty in each other

I think about your tears and
how I am genuinely fearless

about everything except
the thought of losing you

Half-written poems made up her life. Fragments of concessions to feelings. All of them, deconstructions of moments that when combined, create a facet of clarity.

“I woke up in a bittersweet desperation/falling into the sun/that staticky feeling/hum of faint memories/I dreamt of you last night and it felt like torture/everyone’s reality is based on their own circumstances/With me, it will never be easy/I have a worn-down longing for a love that never was/breathe deeply for four seconds/I hope we find our way/We can’t be afraid of losing each other/something inside me felt indifferent/On the verge of collapse/I bury my feelings for you, only to dig them up later/I fall deeper and deeper/You are cruel/a million crushing breaths/We only wanted desire and knew nothing of devotion/the inability to control drives you/7 am alarm goes off wildly/buckling under pressure/My habit of looking back/always devastating/Just a reckless moment, filling me to the brim/So lovely, so tenuous/Yes, I’m a *******/how soul-shaking it would be”

Somehow, the incomplete feels more whole.

on days like today
being with you is enough
(yet I crave you still)

feeling your arm
drape across me is enough
(yet I want you infinitely closer)

waking up slowly
to your sleepy smile is enough
(yet I hope to see a million more)

your breath, your body
your heart—all of it is enough
(even if I feel greedy for more)

you must know that I'd abandon
all the things that I chase after
(just to feel enough with you)

Compatibility is a beautiful thing
when it exists. To feel someone on
a molecular level—their breathing
exhaled in sync with your thoughts,
their imprint inside the space of
your narrow veins. Your nuclei
wrapped in familiar second skins,
circling each other like binary stars.

dreamlike our walk was,
slow steps with the setting sun

a neighborhood of beautiful houses,
a collection of old money

the purple, pink, white hydrangea,
crawling ivy against red brick

I felt it then⁠—the unfolding of time,
of your future and mine

you turned to me and said it's funny
how love can be so physical

you meant beyond intimacy,
the visceral pounding in our blood

the rush, the pull, the need
like echoes calling to each other

and I don't know if I believe in fate
but we walked aimlessly only to stumble

upon a doe, her brown coat striking
against solid, gray headstones

she made us smile, moving slowly,
a tender scene for us to witness

we watched her and then gasped
as a speckled fawn was uncovered

teetering hesitantly to its mother
then softly suckling for milk

an extraordinary sense of life
in an expansive plot built for death

unreal and yet there we were
breathless in disbelief and wonder

all of the things that had to align
for this one moment to occur

I don't know if I believe in fate
but I believe in the feeling of rightness

and on this day, we found meaning
while walking aimlessly, together

sometimes she wondered if her insatiability would ever relent, if it would ever unburden itself from her mind. she thought about how she worked so hard to simplify her life, just to crave the missing complexities during soft lulls. if not careful, she would find herself running straight into a storm with no reasoning except to feel both fear and fearlessness.

I dreamt a morbid dream of my grandmother on her deathbed.

In my dream, she held my hand and said,

"I can only tell you about the happy moments in these 75 years. When it is all said and done, the only bolt in life is a love so voluminous that it overwhelms you."

I woke up, sharply, with a poignant pang in my chest.

I wonder how long the heart
can withstand deep longing
before the wave of aching
inevitably crests and breaks

When you experience one end of the spectrum, logically, you must know that the other end of the spectrum exists. Just as how you can attain something you want, you can also lose it.

a deluge of words like:

youfeellikeeverything
Ihaveeverwanted
andthesungrows
warme­rnexttoyou
themoonbrighter
inyoureyesandI
shiverfromthebreathy
co­nfessionsyouwhisper
againstmytemperedlips
IthinkIcanseeitnow
your­smileinfiveyears
yourlaughterinten
thisemotionrooting
itselfinsid­emychest
howyouhavetouched
partsofmeIneverknew
neededlightandI
oh­IthinkIamfalling
fallingfallingfalling
intothecomfortofyou

a snow-capped Massachusetts morning,
the morning you awakened and turned over
from your side of the bed to hold me,
to tell me you had a dream,
your voice part gravel, part wonder,
a dream about our daughter—
the one we haven’t had—
how she was half me, half you,
how you saw her and it felt like
the proudest moment of your life

I hope she reads this one day
and feels the awestruck feeling
of love between us, for her—
our past, our present, our future
unfolding tenderly, slowly on
a snow-capped Massachusetts morning

I look forward to the day where the dreams of my future take up more space than the nostalgia of my past.

reveling in this feeling—
the butterflies unfurling
touches of light wings
against the heart

fluttering that overlaps,
an intricate gossamer veil,
too vulnerable, lovely
in its meaning

in between
where I’ve been
and where I want to be
the skeleton of our love lies

you exist in the space
between push and pull

come a little closer
but stay a little farther

adore me, feel me
but don’t love me

this may all end
before it can begin

two people loved each other
but missed one another
by a single thread

in the same building
she waited for the elevator up
while he took the stairs down

the ding of a heartbeat
prompts her to walk in
as he walks out

they cross each other’s minds
but there is no glance back
no piercing eye contact

they simply pass by each other
quietly, surreptitiously
not realizing their proximity

to the hopeful fate
that they have wished for
but which remains unreachable

one day you meet someone
you didn't expect to meet
and everything you thought
you knew goes out the window
the logic no longer makes sense
the only things that make sense
is the sound of both of your hearts
beating and the smiles etched in
your eyes and the way little fizzy
sparks heat up inside your gut
like you're about to go skydiving
or bungee jumping, thrill-seeking
like this feeling is an indescribable
black hole that is swallowing up
your heart, your core, your being

“You’re a canvas.”

“If I’m a canvas, does that mean you’re going to make art on me? Am I going to be your masterpiece?”

“I’d very much like to make art on you. And with you. And in you.”