Let us remember Aristillus & Timocharis,
Like Halley & Galileo.
Of Zhang Heng & Dao Lee,
Like Newton & Max Born.
Of Werner & Yermolyeva,
Like Curie & Oppenheimer.
Of Paracelus & Fredrick Banting,
Like Tesla & Pythagoras.
Of Richard Feynman & André Ampère,
Like Michael Faraday & Benjamin Franklin.
Of Payne-Gaposchkin & Joseph Swan,
Like Ignacy Łukasiewicz & Kikunae Ikeda.
Of Takamine Jōkichi & Berners-Lee,
Like Robert Hooke & Gutenberg.
Of Talos Attalus & Perrilus,
Like William Bullock & Franz Reichelt.
Of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī & Ibn al-Haytham,
Like Archimedes & Johannes Kepler.
Of Aldini & Henry Russell,
Like Edison & Graham Bell.
Of Carl Bosch & Richard Fiedler,
Like Mr. Hyde & Dr. Jekyll.
Of Brokkr & Sindri,
Like Gullinbursti & Hephaestus.

Step 1: Sign away your rights

Step 2: Take your medicine

Step 3: Don’t tell them you’re a witch

they'll give it a name,
but a name doesn't mean
they'll take it more seriously
now that it has a place
in the common vocabulary.
it's still something
they don't understand,
since they can't relate
to battling the heaviness
just to stay present,
they don't know the weight
of staying awake.
now they put it on screens,
they promote it commercially,
mass-produced relief.
it still doesn't equal acceptance,
and just being able to live
shouldn't need to be paid for.
they give it a name,
but a name doesn't mean
they're no longer afraid to say it.
though it has its own place
in the vocabulary,
the victims remain unseen.

She is a medicine that I must take in small doses.
A prescription that I've hated the taste of since I started it years ago.
I can't stop taking it now, we've gone so far together,
And I don't want to cause any issues.
If I take my medicine more often than usual,
She will give me stomach aches.
I hate the taste of my medicine,
But if I take it every once in a while, it's tolerable, and I don't mind it.
Then I think about the fact that I'm taking medicine,
And my body aches once more.
If I don't take it, I'm full of guilt.
If I do take it, I'm full of pain.
She is a prescription that will pain me forever

you're not sleeping well,
every next new pill
is but a means to an end,
and it barely means anything at all.
if you dream, you fall,
and that fall's prolonged
by every mantra that someone
advised you to try,
by every breathing exercise
to the sound of the rain or the sea,
and the only thing you see
is the fear of losing your mind.
there's no chemical relief
as there is no magic spell,
for what it's worth
you've tried everything
just to keep your eyelids closed
a little longer.
nothing's working,
you're not sleeping well.

When one self-medicates,
Sometimes they grab the nostrum
Rather than the cataplasm.
Trying to clean the well, they mistake belladonna for myristica.
Perhaps it was the region or the season,
Maybe the water table atop which they were building.
Were it a town,
Perhaps its citizen lacked hygiene
Or had no care to maintain things.
Maybe they sparsely talked things over
And thought little of one another.
Of the many circumstances,
It could've been the building materials
Or the architects.
The dictates we lay out
For ourselves and those around us
Rarely are truly followed
In the case of relations between each other,
And typically less so
In the case of the larger world.

The juxtaposition betwixt
Hope & agony is often sharp,
Short but sudden.
Yet, is pain not longer suffered
All the times worse?
And of the flames snuffed?
Is this not the worst?
Of our fatigues,
They are addressed only in comfort,
Dressed by the garbs of one who understands
Our needs for medicine.
For the soul downtrodden
And the body corrupted,
As healers or like doctors,
Those whom we love enough to be as companions.
For the best remedy of any wound is care,
Borne out of love & not necessity
But because they wish to be there.

there's this theory, my mom once told me,
that liars are always reincarnated as dogs
i've been thinking a lot about people dying lately
and i've also started counting time in dog years
according to such, it's been about two long dog decades
i don't miss you anymore, and i'm about done grieving you
(you would've just called me out- i'm a liar through and through)
and i found that if i drink enough, you're still here, well and alive
your mom never cries or loops your old playlists when she drives
your dad never comes over to gift me souvenirs from your life
your sister never learns to shape grief into an essay in one night
no, you're still helping her brainstorm what exactly to write
we stay up together, on facetime, stressing the the entire night
and she chooses premed because of a torn ACL, not a torn family
and we spend hours debating if she should submit her SATs
and grief is only ever-so-distant, yet only oh-so-familiar
we have it our way: it is never more than a recognizable stranger
i write you in present tense, you agree: dogs in our next life
i gaslight, i lose my mind, i'm convinced anything's worth a try-
so, how many poems do you think i have to write
for it to be enough to bring a friend back to life?

The fat of the land
In a handful of beauty's toil
Worth the weapon, the wish in the sands
Of marvel's and erudite silence we foil...

Turns of children, into a barbaric claim
With the simple to play, we are a habit in cream
Spare to finish the season of a southern name?
Can, a song and dance with redoubt begin our dream?

For an ancient first to lately the order of final worst
Sidelined with a careful love, the strength we dote
In a clandestine seem of what God meant for theirs
Sitting with charisma's anger, the head of isn't a vote...

A world of sense, with one more step in mind?
Can a stone play in your lap...?
Lent the redress of tag, is our fate the voice of kind
Upon the hurt future, we select from seldom's hap?

Is it me, or did the future just fall in love, with meant?
Quiet spaces and tarter rooms, to pray for a calling bird
That has spoken like a king has remembered its covenant
A harrowing house of freshness and its vex, has made lurid?

War has a beautiful voice until ******...
****** is a wisdom to fetch remorse, like a pride had moments...
Moments with a tilling grace, are a hidden play for copious worlds...
Worlds that ought a heed of mendacity, save a heart by irony relents...

Silence...?, and a medicine in a bottle
If you have noticed a circumcision as a foil of worth
Spare to these, and with a promise in chides and prides, so rotten
But met in the sight of a wishful friend or lover, is an angel yours?