My chest is heavy,
and my throat tightens,
Breathing ragged,
head light.

I punch you until my knuckles bruise,
I scream until my throat bleeds.

I shout ‘WHY’
as if you owe me an answer.
I beg for a reason behind this hurt.
‘I hate you,’
three powerful words,
but they barely scratch the surface
of what I feel for you.

I look up.
You’re just a person,
like me.
You have scars,
flaws that don’t fade.
Just like me.

Then I catch the softness of your eyes,
vulnerable, full of emotions I don’t understand.
I feel sorry for you,
in some twisted way.

I blink and realize—
I’m in front of a mirror.
Because the only person I can never escape from
is me.

“Right person wrong time”
I like to make myself believe that.
I like to come up with excuses or justifications as to why we left.

It wasn’t in a snap of a finger,
or overnight.
No..
it was a painful slow burn.
A fire you didn’t know you started.

It started through small actions.
We talked less,
hung out with other people.
We lost our connection.

Then was the second phase:
The realization.
When I looked back and realized I forgot our intimate jokes,
the road that used to lead to your house,
the roughness of your laugh.

I couldn’t control it.
I mean I wanted to.
I wanted us to go back,
I wanted us to restart.
But I knew it was inevitable.

Then I tried to remember you,
I learned all your favorite songs by heart.
I remembered your birthday,
I printed our favorite pictures together.

But when I came back,
and showed you everything I did for you.
I recognized,
you weren’t that same person.
That person that knew exactly when and how to make me laugh,
my favorite color,
or favorite song.

I took a step back for good.
Because I knew that no matter how much I try to deny it,
or justify it.
You wouldn’t come back.

But I’ll still remember
the person I used to know.
And every time I pass by your street,
I’ll cherish the times I had to drive you back after a long trip.

Every time I look back at our pictures I’ll remember them,
almost as if I had gone back.

I know we haven’t talked,
but just know I love you.
In every way I can.
In every drop of my soul.
I lay myself to you
a stranger I knew.

Maybe your stay wasn’t permanent,
but the mark you left on me was.
Because the people you least expect to
can change your life irrevocably.

My chest is heavy,
and my throat tightens,
Breathing ragged,
head light.

I punch you until my knuckles bruise,
I scream until my throat bleeds.

I shout ‘WHY’
as if you owe me an answer.
I beg for a reason behind this hurt.
‘I hate you,’
three powerful words,
but they barely scratch the surface
of what I feel for you.

I look up.
You’re just a person,
like me.
You have scars,
flaws that don’t fade.
Just like me.

Then I catch the softness of your eyes,
vulnerable, full of emotions I don’t understand.
I feel sorry for you,
in some twisted way.

I blink and realize—
I’m in front of a mirror.
Because the only person I can never escape from
is me.

We grew apart—
not physically, but emotionally.

I watched us fade away,
from each other,
from the world.

Our old photos became antique memories,
hidden in the back of my mind.
Your touch is still engraved in my skin.
Your voice still echoes in my brain.
Your presence, your spirit, still beats within my heart.

The hardest part of change
was knowing it wouldn’t go back.
You wouldn’t be the same person
I once knew so intimately.

I tried to justify your departure.
“This is for the better.”
“We need time apart.”
But nothing filled the comfort you left behind.
No reassuring words or hopeful phrases
could change the irrevocable fact:
you were gone.

I begged the universe for one more night—
to hear your words,
to feel your touch,
to be in your presence just for the sake of it.

But deep down, we both knew—
this was the end.

You were like sand slipping through my fingers.
No matter how tightly I held on,
you were leaving.

I got down on my knees,
pleading with the emptiness,
Stay.
I wanted you—
no, I needed you.

But no matter how much I begged,
you still left.

And so we returned,
to being strangers we once knew.

“Never love anyone more than yourself,”
Mom always said that to me.
When it came to relationships,
she always saved 10% of herself.

That’s where I got it from—
my issues to trust,
to give, and to
fully envelop myself.

She taught me to be cautious of
those I let into my life—
those who held knives behind their backs
and drew me in with sweet words.

She also taught me to stay strong,
that even if people left my life,
I was never alone.

…

Ma had her own struggles.
She never talked about it openly,
not even to Dad.
She kept the facade of a strong woman
and rarely shared her vulnerability.

It made me feel so invalidated
in my own struggles.
I felt isolated because I thought
I wasn’t supposed to feel this way.
Since she never shared her experiences,
I never knew she too
suffered.

She did a hell of a good job at it though,
better than me.
When it came down to it,
she never cried.
Not even when the dog died.

She wasn’t much of an emotional woman.
“Crying is for the weak.”
The worst part is…
I believed her.

The only reason she felt this way
was because, as a young girl,
she was never to share
her wars.

But when I see her dance—
oh, she shines so bright.
Her radiating aura
surrounds her.
I can feel it.
In the flicker of her eye,
in the rasp of her laugh,
I can see it.
In the lines of her smile
and her white hairs.
She’s just as young as she was
yesterday,
and the day before,
all the way to the little girl she used to know.

She’s everything she claims not to be…
Human

If you cut open my arm,
I would bleed out poetry.
Lines of sacred poems from authors such as Bukowski, Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver.

I am a poem.
I like to think of my life that way.
Romanticizing it
makes it a little more bearable.

Maybe it’s easier to
articulate my thoughts,
when it rhymes.

It’s easier to express myself
in vague terms
and mysterious stories.

Poetry is my favorite dead language.
Rarely seen nowadays,
yet still stays so beautiful.

Exotic in its nature,
but exquisite in it’s simplicity.

It explains my most vigorous notions into gentle and sweet words.
Music to my ears.

My writings of poetry feels like
saying sorry before I threw the rock.
Kissing before stabbing.

My poetry is raw
and unfiltered.
A gentle ray of sunshine,
that also burns at the touch.
Yet you can’t move because it’s so entrancing,
you know it doesn’t mean to hurt you
it just does.
A kind of unintentional love bomb.

My poetry is a reflection of who I am,
my aspirations and goals.
Struggles and flaws,
challenges and obstacles,
but also my good moments.
Where I truly feel alive.

It’s also a reflection of others through me.
My parents and family.
Famous poets, authors, musicians.
People I look up to.
I am just a filtered version of them.
While still being authentically myself.

Ultimately my poetry is who I am.
Painfully tender
and
Sourly sweet.
As I am all of the contradictions within myself.

The night that she died, she was in my arms. We were in the hospital bed. We both knew this was the end—all the months of pain, the endless treatments, the medication. Every hour I spent taking care of her was for the smallest chance that she might get to see another day.

That whole night, we stayed intertwined in that small, stiff hospital bed. She caressed my hair and whispered memories from when I was a child. She talked about how happy she was with the life she lived. In that moment, it felt like things were fine—like maybe, somehow, she could miraculously heal. But we both knew the truth.

I spent my part apologizing, begging, loving. I spent my part regretting. I kept looking at her, then the clock, back and forth, praying for just one more day. I begged her not to sleep, knowing that once she did, it would happen. She HAD to die, and I couldn’t understand why.

She held me as I cried against her chest, like a child, sobbing and pleading with the universe to trade our places. Then she went cold.

I looked at her. And I realized—this was it. She had left.

I was sixteen, lying in that cold, cramped hospital bed, holding my mother’s lifeless body, wishing for a different world.

The day of the funeral, I was surrounded by people offering their condolences. As sweet as they tried to be, I was bitter. I rejected their help. I wanted to be alone. The worst part was the strangers—people who didn’t even know her—standing up and speaking for her. Speaking about who she was, like they could ever understand.

I ran out of the church and kicked over a trash can. I fell to my knees, sobbing, screaming silently to the sky: “Mom, I wish things were different.” “Mom, I wish I’d shown you how much I loved you.” “Mom… you were everything.”

When they buried her, it felt like a seal. This was final. No countdowns, no approximations, no hovering uncertainty—just an undeniable fact. She was gone.

After everyone left, I stayed behind. I knelt in front of her grave, pressing my head against the cold tombstone, hugging it like I could somehow feel her warmth again. I clawed at the dirt, burying my hands in the grass like I could dig her out. I knew she wasn’t there, but I couldn’t accept that she was really gone.

She would never see me walk down the aisle to the song I’d told her about since I was a kid. She would never meet the people I promised to introduce her to in college. She would never see me graduate high school.

And I hated her for that.

Even though it wasn’t her fault, I hated it.

It was easier to point fingers, to be bitter, to blame the universe, God, or fate. Even if, deep down, I knew there was no one to blame.