world-weary,
we sipped coffee,
one black,
one milk and sugar
brewed tentatively by hearts not quite unbroken
in an effort to mend the damage.

As usual you are fluent and fluid in words my tongue could not replicate,
You are a waterfall when I am a drought.

One day, maybe you'll speak to me, you say.

One day maybe I could tell you,
I held earthquakes and landslides in my bones
and clawed my way above the mud and debris to breathe again.
I emerged the sun of my own universe
and I am afraid to ever let that go.

I basked in the light
Of the present moments sight
But all of a sudden
Your words triggered a bitter memory
And now I want to visit an infirmary.

But oh wait this can’t be bandaged to heal
For it is a resurface from a wreckage.
It crawls from the breakage
With a clinging message
that causes landslides
and scrapes my insides.

My thoughts collide
as my emotions become tide.
My lips become sealed
As I no longer want to speak.

But then I’ll lose my mystique
And become invisible;
Vincible
In the hands of my shadowy past.

The wind howls to the craters of the moon, wondering if its lack of breath is another respiratory disease waiting to happen
As bodies crash into the ocean and casualties increase by every bottled up sensibility
The cracks of cardboard doors fill up the voids of emptiness,
Emptiness of washed up filth and five days worth of street toxic meant for the guts too vacant to feel
Their doors quiver to every knock and exhale, families too hungry, awaiting to devour assurance of safety
Just this once, they are asking for a little more
Than numbered days of handfuls of rice and rock salt, enough to feed the mouths of eight
Teeth clicking to every bite, bones clashing together to prolong the food not more than a mouthful
However this time the clicking doesn’t stop
It intensifies as street light poles plummet into windows and shards are washed away, seeping through soaked doors
They are told to leave these places without titles but this unnamed land is their entitlement and home
Their mother whose tongue is a symphony of lullabies remains silent, hoping for the storm to pass
Lips swollen from biting, she looks at her children with fear in her eyes, tears reflecting the shattered bulb that hangs by the kitchen ceiling
She links her arms to her children’s, grips their skin tightly hoping to warm their shivering exterior while whispering the words “they’ll come for us”

Time elapses and the water rises, their properties enveloped by the disease
Their house disappears along with it, in a downward current of pitch black and rotten forestry
What is left is a family of seven, arms linked and accompanied by the howling wind,
Slowly diminishing with its lack of breath, becoming a nationwide debris

n.j.