Bone-silted river bleeds backward,
tide-swallowed and unspooled,
coffin-seamed decades slouch against a cindered skyline—
time, a lichen-laced beast, starved-thin and echo-lost,
chewing the wax-dripped minutes that slip like marrow through dusk.

Iron-tasting hours blister against frost-scabbed bones,
flesh-stitched days unravel, splinter-throated and root-bound,
where clock-hands wilt, tendon-thin and grave-damp,
melting into brine-brittle pools beneath sun-scoured echoes.

Fog-clot visions smear across the moth-blurred dawn,
where hours, once ember-warmed, now lurch husk-heavy,
drift-staggered through hollow-gnawed winter’s crooked teeth,
grinding time into dust, whispering hearth-ruined lullabies.

Mildewed seconds slouch in the tomb-hushed lull,
glass-limbed and unspooled, a slow-rotting memory,
half-woken, slipping between the cracks of lichen-laced skin—
and here I remain,
splintering beneath time’s indifferent weight.

If I die in the jungle,
among the rot produced by ubiquitous living,
among the fragrant green and surging noise--
--my God, the noise--
               then I live on in the ants that
                        section up my skin
                                 to carry
                                    back
            to colony and queen , in soil or up trees.
I live on in the green--hidden, but insistent,
a well kept secret, in the chlorophyll.

I live on in the jungle.

If I die on the tundra,
then, first, it's the foxes, with their
seasonal shade shifting, who will then make
               more foxes.
And, then, it's the scavenging bears (of either hue, earth or ice).
And, finally they'll find me, the microbes,
                         though they'll take their time.

I live on, on the tundra.

If I die in the desert,
parched, withered, mummified,
not more than anomaly among tiny grains,
then, still, the wandering jackal
               --observing protocol--
          will pay her visit and, with me, provide;
          gaping, yawning mouths in hot wind
                         receiving against backdrop
                              of endless, shaking
                                           sky.

I live on in the desert.

But, if, in wandering familiar street maps,
in frequenting my favored haunts, and
               in daily rendering,
     I am forgotten by those I love,
               and who best love me,--
          if my imprint fades for them...

...then dead do I walk upright.

beneath the folds
of aged leather,
a poem of nostalgia
creates a tether
between two strangers
of different eras.
one long gone,
the other closer to forever.
for nameless and faceless is he,
head bowed and laughing,
captured in timeless reverie.

and i know he is gone,
yet i am still left grasping
at the fragment of stolen memory.
twisted, in my fervent hope,
but i still want to remember
the person i will never know.

Everyone I’ve ever loved
Is somewhere in my heart locked away
Parts of them scattered and mixed with my blood
Running through every part of by body
To my brain
Reflections of their persona escape as i speak
I’m everyone I’ve ever loved , that is me

At least the names will always stay,
etched in ink, unchanged, unchanged.
No tide of time, no drift, no day
will shift the echoes once arranged.

They rest within my contracts sealed,
bound to the moments that we knew—
not to the faces time revealed,
but to the souls I journeyed through.

For who they were is who remains,
not who they grew to be, afar.
The past is carved in steady names,
not scattered by the shifting stars.

Try living in paradise

Still recovering from trauma

Thinking about the ones left behind



Feeling sun on brown skin

While buildings burn down

Today was like any other



Enjoying cool ocean waters

While salt washes festering wounds

Fresh flesh like grapefruit is pink



Looking to the distant stars

Trampling on growing daisies

Only to lay in a field of them



Howling loud at worship

While fearing the whites of saved eyes

Lift every voice and sing



To dance and to be joyful

While quakes lulls sleeping babies

When the dust settles what remains

She lived in my inbox,  
a constant pulse of memes and midnight thoughts,  
fragments of her days in a city I’d never walked
a movie recommendation
a reminder to sleep early
a nudge to wake up and try again.  

Even from miles away
she found a way to stay close
weaving herself into my new routine
as if distance was just another setting
to adjust.  

Her life moved forward in photos and captions
shared glimpses of places I could only picture
I watched, I listened, I responded  
but slowly, the messages thinned,  
the spaces between them stretching wider
until silence settled where she used to be.  

Yet
even now,
some nights I still hear her voice in my head:  
“Go to sleep early”  
as if she’s still looking out for me
somewhere beyond the screen.

Red for economics,  
green for English,  
white for ICT
your files stacked in my hands,  
pages filled with notes in your careful script
I never needed to ask; you just lent them
as if sharing knowledge meant sharing a part of you. 

A classroom of seventeen,  
but I only counted one.
I traced your desk with my fingertips,  
opened your pencil case just to see  
what colors you carried,  
what secrets lived between the erasers and sharpies.  

We worked in groups,  
side by side but never quite close enough.  
I stole glances when I thought you wouldn’t notice,  
but maybe you always did.  
Maybe that’s why you smiled so easily,  
why you never pulled away.  

Years have stretched between us,  
but high school still lingers like a cozy
dream  
I wake from too slowly.  
Your files, your laughter, your presence in the last row
they live in me
as if time forgot to take them when it took you.

I remember the rain, heavy on our umbrellas,  
the scent of wet earth as we walked,  
silent, yet knowing.  
You handed me the slippers first,  
a small kindness that opened a password door in my heart.  

In our classroom filled with murmurs and pages turning,  
you sat in the last row,  
your glasses catching the fluorescent light and time,  
your hairband keeping time with your movements
You were a tomboy, you said,  
but to me, you were softer than the world allowed.

A quiet building, an empty hallway,  
fries shared between words that meant everything and nothing
The pull of something unspoken  
led us up the stairs, past the classrooms where fans hummed  
to a moment that rewrote us.  

Afterward, we laughed in daylight,  
separate yet tangled,  
our conversations shifting between equations and longing.  
You had friends; I had you in the quiet.  
And then time carried us away,  
first to different cities, then to different lives.  

You reappeared in pixels and midnight messages,  
a voice from the past steadying me in my new world
But distance is a slow tide,  
pulling even the strongest memories apart
I spoke too much, stupidly shared too much, or maybe just enough,  
and you drifted again,  
this time with no promise of return.  

Now, I hold you in flashes
the rain, the fries, the hush of a stairwell,  
the echo of a name I can no longer address.