some of the best recollections i curated is that of chaos.

i know you hate it, so i will make you remember.

how you lolled your tongue at the sight of garlic in your porridge when we’ve got nothing else to eat on a rainy day.

bowls of getting by squeezed out of tired pores, crated palms with puddles of a won day, same palms like coveted napkins on the lap of the rich wiping the long breath of hopelessness from your cheeks.

reed-thin body,
bones as if wafers,
yet we sprung forward.
not a care as we watched
the jowly cheeks of wanting
puff up.

how hand-me-down yesterdays were worn—a tradition tied around a last name like All Souls’ Day candles. they peer from behind the stars, thoughts of them sparkle, they are reminded of fights, they are reminded why they left in the first place, just in case boredom pays them a visit.

i’ve come to know, the most practical way to get a golden ticket to the land of happiness is to have it handy in my heart.

but you locked it up in a gilded cage and you chased a star not knowing it’s a sunset and it just kept dipping into peaks jutting out of nowhere, you had worn out your heels and you were left with nothing but midnight instead of holding on to your blanket and watch a new day spill out of the sky.

you were insane that way.

remember the shame how magic belts turned us red and purple and upright, and how we were the grinch who stole baby Jesus away from his nativity set and got caught and were taught grownups pick on kids who didn’t know better?

remember how mathematics predetermined our future as undisputed champs of failure courtesy of our clairvoyant aunts?

it mattered little—
inconsequential, so to speak.
we heaved our arms,
hoisted our dreams
onto our scrawny frames.
our bulging chests
were enough
for us to beat,
like bongos,
we fanned the flames
until they voices
throughout the milky way.
our mother
in her innocence believed
we were capable
of many a great things
between the better parts
of her mood swings.

we were mirrors more than we were humans portioned in parts bitter and beauty, we rummaged through every chance hoping we could unearth change, but we never did until it was too late.

yet, i always had your hand in mine. we dropped out of the line and strayed away from paths stamped with footprints of approval and wandered on roads no one can see but our hearts knew.

remember the day you let go so you could hold bottles thinking they were looking glasses, thinking they fermented clarity aged in oak barrels, and day after day you took a drop until you had an ocean dissolving you?

remember how i found real estate in the promises of a girl, how i grew a house there, but then, time mistook her for dorothy and blew her away like a tumble **** into the arms of another boy?

how i bawled out and how you had a ball at my expense, laughing at my silence at open mic night?

remember when we heard a drop of a needle the size of the moon hurtling down the earth when father sat up on his bed for the last time with his eyes open as if he saw an unseen door somewhere. somehow, we heard him skittering away while he left us a fertilizer for everyone to cry about?

remember how we forgot. we dreamt under the same roof before our feet carried us away.

into the mist went we,
threads began to fray,
we forgot.

i will make you remember,
before all that i am unravels.

I brushed off the old dust,
I let in the bright morning sun.
I pierced into the deep solar glare,
I undid the senile spurn.

I tied my scrawny hair back,
I felt the wet leaves of the fern.

My eyelids shut closed as I took in,
the stale smell of mouldy wood and of rusted tin.
I put together compartments of paper boxes,
I made my way around the barren room,
I felt the air brush past my skin
I opened the door and I let the world quietly step in.