Pain is not what we feel
But who we are.

Torches lit the night sky,
A glowing river of flames
Burning with the passion of hate.

Body after body marching on,
Faces devoid of any humanity
And a grotesque amusement
Sparkling in their eyes.

Senseless chants piercing the air,
The place quickly becoming a gathering
Of ignorance and hatred.

The minutes tickled by,
The violence spreading like a wildfire—
No act of kindness strong enough to
Extinguish it.

**** flags painted the sky a ****** red,
The white no longer a sign of peace,
But rather the symbol of white supremacy.

America.
This is what the place we call "home" has become.

You were the delicious taste of sin,
Resting softly upon my tongue,
My ***** lips savoring the profanity of you.

I swallowed you in one drink, finally
Erasing all that once pervaded my mind,
Blissfully clearing my conscience of all your evil.

I made myself be the proud sinner,
Conscious and rebellious
Against the god that made us.

Not you, honey.

Tell me, love—

How many more poems
Do I have to write before
you realize that it is
you I write about?

How many more lines
Describing your stormy gray eyes,
Your heart-shaped lips—
Those lips my body is aching
To kiss?  

How many more meaningful looks and
Stolen sidelong glances
Before you look into my eyes
And see the love that has glazed them over?  

How many more times
Do I have to see your hand
Interlaced with someone else’s
Before you realize mine has been open,
Waiting for yours all along?

How many more unsent texts
At midnight when I can’t sleep
And all I need is you?

How much more, my love?
I’m afraid I cannot wait any longer.
Love is a monster tearing at my heart,
Soon to destroy me if I have to see you
With him once more.

Her light was extinguished by the dark
In a sudden implosion of madness,
And all of the stars that once dusted her sky
Now lie as the dying embers of what used to be
Her fiery soul.

They say love is the trigger
For a thousand chemical reactions,
The spark that ignites our bodies
With the force of nuclear bombs.

They say it is an explosion of
Electricity jolting life into
Our nerves.

But, there is nothing chemical
About us, love—
Not in the way our bodies
Are pulled into each other,
Or in the way our hands
Melt into each other’s skin.  

Our love is pure physics, and
It’s as if we were meant to
Break every law of the universe.

Physicists call ‘electromagnetism’
The attraction of masses, bodies—
But, that word does not even begin to
Describe how badly I want
To get under your skin,
To become a part of your very being.  

It’s not enough to explain that force of yours,
The way it seduces me
And reels me into you;
Into your soul.

You are the sun,
And I am every star,
Every moon and planet and comet,
All of me gravitating around you.
I am space-time bending for you,
I am every speck of dust slowly
Floating toward you.

And my love,
You have no idea how my hands
Long to burn with the touch of your skin,
With the heat of a thousand suns.

And when they finally do—
When my fingers can at last trace
The constellations in your collarbone,
Brush through the galaxies woven into your hair—
Only then will I allow the atoms of my being to dissolve
And become one with yours.
For it is only inside of you
That I can live.

You are the debris
Rooted in me skin-deep;
The remains of my explosion
Against you.

Somewhere in the reign of sleep
Lie the remains of broken verses,
The skeletons of unfinished poems
And the ashes of incomplete sentences,
Destined to be forever forgotten,
Swallowed up by the unconscious mind
And left to rot without a second thought.

How strange, to think that our minds are nothing but thought graveyards...

Slim waist.
Skinny arms.
Thigh-gap legs.

“Perfect bodies,” we call them.
“Beautiful” and
“Real.”
But there is nothing real in plasticity,
Nothing beautiful in being ashamed
Of stretchmarks
And imperfections.

Self-hate is not beautiful.

Self-hate is a bunch of weeds,
Growing on the outskirts of our minds,
Slowly inching their way
Into the flowerbeds of our lives,
Killing everything in their path
And leaving a trail of burnt nothingness.

Self-hate is the wandered gone astray,
The lost hiker desperate for a path
To lead him back.
It is panic and despair;
The road for self-destruction.

Self-hate is an ignored cry for help,
A stumble into a dead-end street.
It is staring into a dark void—
Only to be stared back by your own tormented eyes.

Self-hate is not beautiful.
It is your soul begging to be saved
By your own self.

you throw me onto the bed
but i don't want to do this.
you caress my cheek,
say it's okay.

you nudge my legs open
but i don't want to do this.
you keep murmuring that it's okay,
and your fingers start roaming,
leaving a trail of tingles in places
i didn't know could feel like that.

your mouth crashes into my closed lips
and you don't hear when i say
i don't want to do this.

and the sad thing is—
it's not until you're done with me that you say
"i'm glad we did this."

My soul contains all;
It knows darkness and light,
The bitter taste of heartbreak
And the euphoric thrill of love.

My soul…
A black void of nothingness
And an infinite ocean of life—
An eternal contradiction,
The ultimate paradox to be unraveled.  

My soul is
Ethereal and everlasting—
A mountain of darkness to get lost in
And the path of light to find yourself.

It is everything—
And nothing at all.

You are car rides
Across the city,
Windows rolled down;
Both of us drunk in oxygen.

You are crazy sunglasses,
The warm sun
illuminating your face,
Your face aglow with
the light of the universe.

You are the softly sung lyrics
Of all my favorite songs,
The melody my mind
Keeps replaying.

You are the eyes behind the lens,
The beauty you forget to portray
In your photographs.

You are the smell of spring,
The air laden with
The perfume of all
the flowers in the world.

You are warm cups of tea
And feminist t-shirts
And hipster glasses
And old songs
And a million unread books.

In between nights
And in between days—
We stand together
Surrounded by timeless space,
The universe's infinity pulling us into each other.
Our mouths crash together with the force of meteorites,
Our bodies burn with the heat of a thousand suns
And our gazes become pools made from galaxies.

Why is it that I keep tending to my wounded wings
Only to have them shot down by you
Again and again?

Why do I keep seeing you as the fallen angel,
And me as the wicked devil who has wrought
Disaster onto our love?

For is it not the other way around, love?
Is it not you who has torn it all apart,
Who has ripped through the layers of my heart
And snatched my soul into your hellish claws?

Say only yes, dearest,
And perhaps I may decide to lay bare my chest
For you once more.

I poured my soul into my words
But still they went unheard by my love.
I pressed my body into hers,
Not an inch of space between us
But still a chasm split us down the middle.
Entire oceans roared between us,
But still I held her hand,
Hoping my love would be enough
To save us both.

I guess it really was my fault;
For I did not ask you to stay.
Not even when you left the door ajar,
As if waiting for me to run after you.

But it was you who had to run after me, my dear.
Not me.
Not me.

I am here now, waiting
With a head full of unwritten words,
Eyes glazed with blankets of stars
And a heart drunk with life.

The first time you made me bleed,
I thought it was for love.
I thought the knife you were slowly
Thrusting into me was an act of affection,
That you really were doing it to save my life.
It wasn't until I realized that love is not synonymous with pain
That I understood it was I who was saving myself.

Your voice was the poetry
My ears were longing to hear,
The soft-spoken words my heart
Ached to read.

It was the lullaby
That sang me to sleep,
The sound that carried me
Into the idyllic grounds of dreams.

You and I were broken traffic lights,
Our love a collision of souls
Pre-destined from the start.

We were nothing more than the by-products
Of accidents and crashes,
Nothing more than splintered beings
Longing to crash with one another.

How many times can you be let down
By the same person
Until all there's left to do is
Go up?

Sometimes love won't be enough
To piece ourselves back
Together.

You are the poetry
That keeps me awake at night,
The lines that whisper at me
Beneath the moonlight,
Begging to be written.

I tried swallowing
The disappointment
With sleeping pills,
But God, how could I not choke
When every single one of them
Reminded me of you?

How come it's only you
I can think about
In this drunken haze
Of mine?

My soul a shattered mirror,
The shards piercing into your skin—
Almost willingly.

The glass kissing your neck like
A cold whisper,
Tracing a map over your collarbone
With trails of hot sweat and skin.

Your mouth a broken replica of mine,
The pieces scattered across our kitchen floor,
The tiles shining with the remains of our smiles.  

Your warm breath fogging up
Against your mirrored image,
Whispering words of love
To my broken self.

And as you gather my remnants,
I realize that it will always be your hands
That will piece me back together,
And it will always be your love
That heals my soul.