the imaginary
world hurts
when it changes

There have been many days without me
and there will someday be much more
but what has changed is the waning of
my own personal desire
to reach it faster,
instead
I am fascinated by the world
never the same at any given time
obsessed with how the light bends
around my fingers as I reach for the sky
finding new ways to fall in love with the fact
that I no longer want to die
and in turn, hoping to make the days with me
mean more than I could ever have imagined
instead of years ago when I was just hoping
for it all to end

What will we do
When the birds fall from the sky,
Their stomachs full of lids,
And beaks wrapped in bags?

What will we do
When the whales wash up,
Their bodies start to rot
And the bottles spill out?

Where will we be
When the wildfires burn,
Turning towns to ash
And the future to rubble?

Where will we be
When the trees are bare,
Turning forests to stumps
And no air to breathe?

Who will save us
When we go to war,
The bodies pile up
And the skies are stained yellow?

Who will save us
When we fall to disease,
We neglect our health
And we're naive to death?

I’m checking on old friends
Looking them up; asking after them
The girls I knew in my younger days
are women now
They’ve grown, blossomed, and matured
moved away, been to college, found love
married, each have children, a house, a car
Their happiness makes me smile
until my smile turns to a frown
when I see how far they’ve come
and I realize
I’m still here

For all the sake of confinement,
and rules, and laws, and all that is in motion,
my heart rattles in its cage and roars
like a beast, defying human nature.
In a matter of a second,
I succumb to fury. I am rage
juxtaposed to a calm face.
I wail and tear apart the truth,
limb by limb, for denial paves way
to the entrance of my home.

It lives with me, dines with me, sleeps with me;
a welcome resident within my haven.
For when you live through the ways of love,
and love in spite, (instead of loving for the sake
of loving yourself) only to be loved
because of your monetary value and
the vanity gracefully done on your face,
betrayal is strong and denial is natural.

For all the sake of confinement,
and rules, and laws, and all that is in motion,
even in most literature, we see,
only these people come to know love.

On the other hand,
when you are loved despite not having
money, looks, power, and influence,
they tell us it is blind, and sad.
Because our faces are not on LED screens,
and news outlets, or tabloids, or
made into a film adaptations,
in comparison, our love
is fleeting, and non-existent.

For all the sake of confinement,
and rules, and laws, and all that is in motion,
even in the love we see from those around us,
we are also told this is where love is, or where
it can never be found.

So beauty or no beauty; money or no money,
power or no power; some will never be loved and some will still be loved. As human as it is for us to deny, it is natural as well,
for human beings to defy and change and have different capacities to be loved.

So, love as if no screen can ever behold its depth.