slice my tongue until the pieces resemble flower petals — until poems tremble on my very lips. on summer afternoons, they will look like the dried amaranths on your bedside table — in a city apartment you left. slice my tongue until the pieces resemble smoky quartz. it will sit quietly — each side showing the wild and quiet ways of aching. slice my tongue until it heals its wounds — until the sunset casts what's left of its light, and maybe my state of decay will finally look beautiful.

it's been ten years — ten long years but all around me lies this casual atrocity of how easy it is to slip back into sadness, as though it’s the only thing my body knows well

i have had a bad habit of grieving things that haven't left yet, my love, and it will be the death of me. i will give you all the dusk skies that fit inside my fists — this the dullest aching that my heart can hold. one day, it will fade into the colors of my loneliest nights. i hope that tonight, i will choke on all the longing i'm yet to feel — and maybe when you leave, no breath will be loud enough stop the time in crowded airports. no breath will haunt you in manhattan's streets. no breath will beg for you to stay. i hope you find someone to love; i hope city lights fall softly on her neck as she hums your favorite song. i hope her skin tastes like daybreaks and poems. i hope sunsets live and die for her, and that you too, live and die for her and all the cosmic flickers in her eyes. i can already feel you loving her and maybe soon, i'll be forgotten, like this letter under your bed.

maybe soon, i, too, will forget the sound of your laughter. in death, it's the last sense to ever go.

i have a bad habit of grieving things that haven't left yet, and this letter is for when you say goodbye my love. this letter is for when you finally leave.

lots of laugh
lots of cries
lots of smiles
lots of frowns
in all the lows
and in my highs
you are there
you are here
in my heart
in my mind
in my spirit
location is far
loyalty is on par
this is for the longtime
this is the long haul
like me?
lock me?
look
definitely this is not lost
it is a sure found
LOVE

xoxo

some windows open
by force
by clicking
by checking
by pushing
by pulling
but this interface needs a user
the user is me
i open my window
i open my heart
i open everything
to experience again
to feel again
to love again
to be loved again
and this is one hell
of a user interface
this user interaction
is a
universe intersection
i found my red string
we found the You(U) and I
on each other
and i can't be grateful enough
for giving me the U in my I

xoxo

yesterday, i choked up my heart and placed it in your hands. my whole self phased in and out of existence but you just kept talking. not a single look before putting it down, a used up, pulsing thing, on your bedside table: a glass of water, half-full; a statement earring without its pair.

i thought maybe you hadn’t noticed it. which is strange, naturally; mostly because i know i would have. i have never liked to be handed things and much less to be in control. and yet i write. what is poetry, if not the art of plucking on a person's heartstrings? if not learning how to make souls sing? it’s power, too, a type of hunger as well as any other — albeit painted in gold. i will say this: a beast, touched by Midas, still has teeth.

but what’s really amazing about this is that tomorrow, tomorrow it will still be there — my heart — spilling blood and making a mess out of your hardwood floors. you’ll make a face when it gets your socks wet and I'll apologize, pale-faced and mortified, yes, but mostly out of habit. you’ll nod, and I'm thinking, really? a singular nod? that’s how this great crusade, this blundering shitshow of a circus act ends? i won’t say it, of course. and we’ll keep on walking around and dragging red everywhere with our elbows and our feet.

you’ll gather it on the tip of your fingers and doodle something on the wall. A heart. and it's nothing like the real thing but i'll still smile. It looks beautiful, darling. you’ll look away, then — how polite! — as i pick up the offending thing and painstakingly force it back in between bruised, unyielding ribs. this is how it ends. this is when the curtains fall, the painter becomes the life model, the petals turn to dust. a secret message, written in the sand, is too forgotten by the wind.

the ocean lays
fifteen miles outside my yard
i know the waves crash onto
the shore as each day passes
i know that the sun sets at eight
and the tide follows
depending on the mood
of the fickle moon
but the ocean may not have me
i have a bath at home
it’s just shallow enough that
the ripples i create in my sandbox
only pose threats to rubber duckies
but the ocean lays
fifteen miles outside my yard

i am a flower, the dream someone longs for knowing, cotton candy clouds pink as the fairy’s magic kiss. the hand which curls over your cheek just as the moon crescents the sun, an eclipse of love, the darkness around which the world turns.

i am a dancer, my dress a costume, the silk covering my insecurities, turning like a top when i prance and skip through the jungle. the leopards love me. they chase the sun, frolicking in the dew-drawn leaves, the monkeys cheering as they watch the race.

i am stardust. my hair is fire, concealed only by my bun, i am careful not to burn you.

this is my reality, my safest seclusion, as to hurt you, i could never. this black hole is a solitude.

II

Blue base and pink hues, black lining, framing the face saw once in dreams, a face with a name that began with the letter M. The other painting – a hazy black, red lips, no eyes – is a man’s face. Flying across shadowed, spiraling stairs, I encountered exits blocked by chairs – all these impressionist paintings hanging along the corridors, where a painter was explaining to his students the woman he met in his dream… they all called to me as a dream factory, dream logic – where everything was bound and unburdened – then we were told to identify faces in coffin paintings. All day we tried matching to no avail, mouth uttering half-formed names. The old lady I was working with let out a wail. She bolted, I followed, and there we saw two creatures known as men – to the man on the right, she greeted with the M-lettered name, and to the left she pointed at the eyeless, ashen painting, said, stranger, this is you – and they wept together.