Collaterally damaged.
I took damage to my system.

Using the grit of my finger nails to claw myself into a stable position.
Observing the impact through my palms.

My hands discolored—not bleach.
Discolored.

A damaged nervous system, navigating it like the amazon.
The goals I went to and from are all forgotten because of my accidental backpedaling.

Riding a bike backwards is inferior.
Only going farther away from your destination and all the way back to your shelter.

With all these task in hand…
The success ladder a loopy event.
Like climbing Jacobs Ladder but without the visions of angels and streams of light.

I thought I was empty—
but the way words
poured from me onto the page
proved I was, in fact,
overflowing.

Brimming with ideas
echoing inside,
begging to be set free.

I spilled them all,
and now,
I am truly empty.
And it feels
so much better.

It’s hard for me
to read good books—
the kind that pull me in,
where I live inside the characters’ lives.

I begin to become the story,
and then, suddenly,
the urge to write bursts open in me.

Ideas tumble over each other,
and I rush to my notes app
to catch every drop of inspiration
before it slips away.

A book I could read in an hour
stretches into days,
because reading
always makes me want to write.

Hi, beautiful—
how have these last days been?
I’ve been thinking of you,
you know?

I confess—
I’m a little lost.
I don’t know what I want from my life.

Today I see myself
in a profession that maybe
wasn’t what I truly wanted,
but what I chose
to avoid discomfort.
Now I’m left with frustration.

So I ask you—
what did you want to be
when you grew up?

I remember—
besides being a ballerina,
we used to write so much.
Whole stories.
Whole books.
Our imagination so vast
that today I’m still in awe.

Would you like
to write those stories again?

I will be completely open
to you,
to whatever you want to tell.

Let’s color the world
with our words.

With love,
Me.

I write poetry
born from a feeling, an emotion—
I’m not even sure what.

Almost like a kind of rapture,
the words come,
and I pour them onto paper
or into my notes app.

I wonder if one day
the poems will come with nothing—
existing just to exist.

Will this feeling, emotion,
or whatever it is,
ever arrive
separate from the poetry?

Sometimes I think my verses are bare and raw.
The same way I believe I have a way with words,
I feel I don’t.

Sometimes I wish I could shape them,
so they wouldn’t be so direct—
that I could mold them
like water atoms between my fingers.

I don’t know.
Strange.

I just don’t want to be
so dry,
sometimes.