girl, when did you let
your love leave you?
did you think that there
was nothing you could do
about your sweet imperfections
the focus of your obsessions
that make you wish to be born anew?
girl, why do you shrink
from your mother’s touch?
have you lost your faith,
think it won’t do much
good on you, her sweet child,
too broken for prayer
she’d tried to raise a witch
but you only see failure
girl, open your eyes
and clear your head
why not give yourself
some warmth instead.
use ginger, mint and cardamom,
honey and a stick of cinnamon,
to concoct a sweet brew
that will return to you
the love which you are due.

going through motions
doing what i must
or have been told
i should waking up
eating working
working sleeping
day in day out
is it april
is it november

is there really
any difference?

take pills talk
about scars bring
up hurts from my
past that might
have been better
forgotten take
pills increase
dosage wake up
brush teeth eat
food take medicine
work sleep work work
eat **** is this april
is this november

**there is really
no difference...

if they knew all they would become to were
some scars i regretted and did my best to forget
i wonder if i had known would i have changed my experiences
would i have tried to be colder stand straighter more upright
chin jutting out, daring the world to try one more time to put me
down, defiant and confident in my struggle that it was for me alone
but then the thought strikes me is that if even now all i gather are scars
instead of the cooling aloe that i need to heal past burns, some ice to cool
the heat under my skin from the betrayals and hurt i had felt once upon a time
a heat that still burns my insides today, the sharp tears of which left scars on
insides of my eyelids, a movie on repeat whenever i close my eyes to sleep or blink
in the middle of a good conversation with a new person standing in my casual self wishing
i could be somewhere else the moment i remember the slashes, the quiet shattering of my insides

circling the boxes
expectations
ideas and fantasies
once dreamed

pain strikes thunder
a roar of noise
flashing of future
beyond this now

darkness and substance
both cloak
heart racing skin warm
chest not

enough to contain this
feeling which
spills out like a full
stop ending a

sentence and like some run
away in its own trance the
water precipitates flowing
into an ocean of movements

cut off like a highly
irregular sentence.

i'm tired mom
i'm tired dad

i cannot stand to hear the birds sing these days
could not bear the hot sun for the past week
my heart danced when it rained and was quick
to stop with the rain and now i feel like
the colors bled out again but was this not
supposed to get better? i have been trying
to not live inside my own head and the hole
at the bottom of my stomach, the pit inside
my heart- i have not succeeded but i try to
fill up the spaces in my head with music-
that does not work either- and was all music
this flat? i lose sight and my hands are
shaking- now, i notice the gaps in pores,
the lines of my hands and- mom, are you there?
can you please talk to me for a bit now?
i am sorry i can only speak about my work
but i cannot tell you how i feel and how
i am alone and the only person in this mess.
dad, are you hearing me? i just wanted to hear
your voice to remind myself that someone cares
about my dreams and passions, someone who would
go above and beyond to ensure i am not crying
myself to sleep at night. brother, can you
scold me a bit longer? i am sorry but it has
been a long time since someone cared enough
to tell me how to do better and be better.

is friendship meant to be this hollow, this
easily brushed past? is it meant to be so
fleeting and brief? i do not want summer here
for i appreciate the coldness of winter instead
that tells me, gives me an excuse, to have hope
because summer comes with bright sunlight and
no excuses but with resounding harsh silences
in the pauses between the bird song and the
baking heat of the sun. love is too hard
and friendship is a lie-- so mom, dad, brother,
would you stay on the phone a bit longer?

birds are chirping. this is familiar. you can do familiar. "it's a mess" I say. quickly you reply "it's not a mess, it's pieces of your life." my life's pieces; not mine. It's taken shape as hundreds of tiny copies from the same **** story. you're fragile. you're the yellow copy of a receipt. stupid little paper girl.

this is going to be terrible and that's going to have to be okay because death is open to interpretation now.

there is something to be said about lying under every window sill in the house just to follow the sunlight and pretend it hasn't been dark since you left.

you look back in five years and realize that "you" in every poem has become yourself. everybody grew up and moved out of the sadness except for you.

dress up as yourself when you loved someone and stare in the mirror until it cracks. you never thought you'd be leaving the lights on waiting for yourself to come home. you'll never understand and that's the whole point.

always leaving never really arriving. you can stay only long enough for them to know who you are. nothing can remain the same because that's not real, is it? they say nothing lasts forever. let's be nothing. stop existing. we'll be timeless.