"I am, I am, I am."
  her words rest on the page
she wrote this at peaks of hopefulness,
     when courage wrapped around her
neck instead of a rope.

but for me the words keep beating
     through me, endlessly, with my heartbeat
            but I am not hopeful,
       nor being held by courage.

           What am I?
I am ... alone
     I am ... empty
            I am ... missing him

how cliche of me to say.


I think of him,
    I can't help it.
his scent washing over me,
     drowning in his cologne,
choking me.

    "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart,
                           I am,
                                     I am,
                                               I am."

I'm 'sophisticatedly' sticking a pen
in my mouth, pretending
to smoke a cigarette.
I don't have the courage to hurt
myself, but
I do.
In 'subtle and implied' ways, he
says.

I make watery coffee and convince
myself, my happiness
lies in there,
floating. And I pretend
I'm in a Parisian cafe.
But these are pipe-dream dregs,
nothing else.
I guess they can't substitute the
vividness of being,
living.
Of sharp technicolour experience that can be
smelt.
Dregs, indeed.

Today, I borrowed Birthday Letters by
Ted Hughes from the library.
I'm wondering if
salvias were his favourite
flower.
His favourite.
I can't figure it out.
For his words are only stricken,
messy with the rawness of
too-technicolour experience.
Beautiful.
But sharp
enough to pierce and
poison,
like Paris.
My Paris, your Paris,
our little Paris.
So startlingly, breathlessly
red.

I suddenly know why I have written this.
The colour of salvias,
of Paris,
of me and you,
is my soul's favourite.
His favourite.
And salvias, their fragrance, it
douses the fire that's threatening to
suffocate, swallow my
life whole,
incomplete.

Red is my favourite colour.
And it's yours.

But I really don't think I want it to be.

I tried to write a poem
to get the feelings out.
They said poetry
Went with angst
Almost as well as
Sylvia Plath
and-
Repetition.

But I wrote a poem
And another
And another
And another.

And they felt wrong
And got shorter and shorter
And less and less creative
And didn’t look much like art

Painting is art
Sculpture is art
Music is art.
Whining isn’t.

That’s the thing
With poetry;
It’s art
Or it’s nothing

And I seemed like a nothing
And I must have felt nothing
Because nothing was on the page
And I had nothing left to add

Because “Why do good people die?”
Is trite
And “Is war such a good idea?”
Has been done
by the Beatles.
“I can’t stop crying”
Mostly rings true for babies
And they rarely
If ever
Read poems.

So I had only one word
That could sum up the tight
and the hurt
and the lost
And a word’s not a poem
At all-
is it?

I wish I were eloquent
I wish it were pretty
I wish my hands
could heal you
And my voice
could soothe you
And my laugh
infect you
And my heart
reach you
My words
touch you
My arms
hold you
and
fix
you
but
all
I
have
is
“you."

I have adored you since the first day I saw you, with your hair redder than a sunset.
I didn't know your name, your age, even your grade, but you were so intriguing and from that moment on, I saw beauty in a different light.
So when the other girls said they loved you, I let them.
I let their words wash over me knowing that I could never be girl that you would choose first, why would you?
When those girls touch you, I hope you get butterflies and smile and feel good about yourself because you're beautiful, you're wonderful, you're infinite.
When she touches you on the dance floor and you don't smile, push her away, slap her in the face, tell her that you do not want her.
When you shine on that dance floor like radiance and hope and new sunshine, keep shining.
Don't ever lose that light.

Let's stay in this prison of blankets
and un-remember our meaning
to this existence.

I have walked all the parks
and I have swam in all the seas.
I have slow-danced in all the bars.
I have seen all the cosmic dreams.

My bones are tired of adventure.
My soul is tired of the new.

Let's ignore the changing colors and trends.
Let's arrest ourselves in this bed.

Somewhere where the jazz is fine
and smooth kids wanna spend time,
I had lost my ignorance and my pride.
Patience bit me. I grew a mind.

The world is a vampire and we only knew
after a thousand cups of coffee
and a thousand classrooms.

Let's forget. Let's die.

my heart goes out to my soul sister,
who took the heat to the head,
and leaves me alone in this bed.

i wish you were here instead.

my heart goes out to your words,
that tattoo themselves onto my mind
and heart.

words that catalyzed my art to start.

even though i've never met you,
i feel like i do,

because if i could go back in time,
if there was something i knew

i would abandon all
to stop and save you.

She was like the wind, everywhere at once and suddenly not there at all,
She was madness, she was irrational, she was blinded by love,
She was passion in itself, her soul always one step ahead of her body,
She was the girl who always loved too much, always gave too much and always hurt too much,
She conjured up lightning with her words,
She spilled oceans onto pages and then drowned in the storm,
She was the dreamer who never really woke up,
Love was always just out of reach, laughter was always a step ahead of her,
She was madness, she was lightning and she was love,
"I must get my soul back from you", she said, "I'm killing my flesh without it".
She still lingers on, in between the pages of the Bell Jar, hiding in poetry that touches your soul,
She still lingers on, waiting for the day he returns her soul back to her so she can laugh in colors again.

what a life it is
to live in love
with an ideal self.
to be in love with one
who doesn't exist,
not even in fiction,
only in the realm of your mind.
what a life it is
to look in the mirror
and feel your soul shatter
but when you look away,
you can pretend you are
the version of you that you see in your head.
I'm not the only one. I know it.
Biographers say that Sylvia Plath was in love with her dream self, encompassed in a strange egotistical fantasy.
I live in that same fantasy.
How do I make fantasy me
the real me?

A week and a half, a year before ship sails
Azalea path was already paved
Soon I found someone in the same state of mind as me
All insane of astrology, all insane of metaphors

There's this delirium episode going inside of me that made me
slash what carried me far to see if I could survive worse
even tried the continuum oblivion
till I dare my hands to drive me in to an atom collision

There are times when it wasn't all about wars
I spent it combusting to few places
When and where snow is an empire usurped by crippled leaves in the fall.
Fall, fall, fall
It was him who falls and leaves.

One night, or one day, I don't quite care
but that is when I got away
I ran with flames not yet ignited
I barricade the commotion out with flimsy threads, all I can think
Didn't even thought threads spread flames (if it's ignited)
(Well now it's ignited)
And someone caught up in it

I can still hear him even now
That's the end of my life
The rest is posthumous
talking me up