If Cinderella
Was a cooking slave
Instead of a
Cleaning slave,
Her name would be....
Mozzarella.

I hung up the phone

And collapsed into myself, sobbing

The sky was honey gold with rainbows

And the ocean was a lovely royal blue

You don’t think of me in THAT way

And I wish I didn’t too


I was crying cuz I felt myself physically lose something I had come to depend on

And

I was crying with my eyes shut to pretend nothing happened

And

I was crying over that rainy Sunday morning in the parking lot

When I couldn’t flip my skateboard like you

You held my shaky hands

So that when I thought I would fall you would be right there, your calm hands in mine, your breath on my forehead,

When I fell you fell with me,

Cuz when we go down,

We go down together,

But this time, I was falling FOR you,

Tripping over my laces for you,

Head spinning for you,

Breath catching for you,

With nobody there to catch me.

A squirrel offered me
              a *******.

But just fondled my
            Nuts the whole time ..

Two posts emerged on my Facebook,
And sorry I could not peruse both
And be one user, long I stood
And scrolled down one as far as I could
To where it went into a long blockquote;

Then read the other, as just as shared,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was classy and about footwear;
Though as for that the likes there
Had rated them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
I believe with no comments written back.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever tap back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two posts emerged on my Facebook, and I—
I read the one less thumbed-up by,
And that has made all the difference.

The city questions
        the virtue of animals
Islamabad

Emptiness is encapsulating
I don’t want your drugs
I don’t want your help
I want to get worse and worse and worse...
Just a bit lower now
You can do it
A little longer and you’ll do something
You’ll become dangerous
Bleeding for fun
Just to feel something
To wake me from this hellscape

There’s nothing in life
A career is futile
Money is fictitious
My family wants to use me
My friends aren’t there for me
Dogs will age and fade too fast
I’ll always have to be sober again
My faith is nearly lost
(you can’t hear God’s voice when you want to die and your entire being is numb and cold)
There’s nothing to save me now
But the hope that a little more drugs
Will offer enough serotonin
To get through another ******* day

Give me nothing
But time
Everything within

  This wanting to be of something
    And there will be neither writing
Nor ending

   For a summer storm

But combined

      And in giving me a required aim
  When there is sound to be found

And creation to pro

  Then the writing will flow
As if out of a struck desert stone
      And swell