There's a riot behind my ribs
a symphony of shattered thoughts
conducted by anxiety
in a room with no doors.

I wear silence like armor,
but inside-
drums beat with no rhythm,
memories clash like cymbals
and fear hums like a distant engine
that never runs out of gas.

Voices I never invited
shout louder than the ones I need.
They argue in my mind
like lawyers with no case,
pleading guilty to crimes I didn't
commit.

I laugh at the wrong times,
not because I'm happy-
but because laughter is louder
than the screaming
no one else can hear.

Some nights,
the noise is so loud,
I pray for sleep to come
like static to a broken radio.
Not to fix it-
just to blur it out.

But every morning,
I wake to the same frequency-
a mind wired wrong,
but still tuned in.

The shape of your love’s image
Makes one imagine,

The many brushstrokes –

Painting out such a masterpiece
like you, Love.

Do create something

beautiful, just practise and --


pay close attention.

Drip
Drip.
No water needed.
You cry in colour now.
Grief mixed with pigment—your palette was pain.

You are in the bathroom,
Fixing your hair the way you like it.

The steam from your shower
is setting into the bedroom now.
I can smell your shampoo.

The skylight casting an early summer glow
across the tiny water droplets speckling your skin
makes you look studded with rhinestone.

The subtle shifting of your weight
creates a curve in your side
and as you drop your hip and bend your knee,
I think for a moment,
that you look like art.

That moments like these are what inspire
The greatest artists in the world.

That I might be like them
if you were my subject,
But I am too busy loving you
To lift a paintbrush.

An artist cries the most tears,
For art is a painful thing.
I wither my fingers to bones,
Perfecting every line of poetry.

I want it all to be perfect,
So much it starts reflecting onto my life,
The way I walk, the way I talk, the way I care too much.

Yet I am not perfect,
I'm afraid I never will be,
All this trying,
Is killing me.

Oh how I dream of us.
I imagine you purely you,
Among your dreams
And among mine.
You, my muse.
Me, yours.
How artful would it be?

I picture you entirely,
Captured still in photos,
In paintings, in sculptures.
I, in your writing,
In fabric, in drawings.
You are my art,
I am yours.