If there were a formula
for the way her lips seek out
for mine while I am still attached
to those of a boy,
I would plug it through with
the determination
of a scientist, feeding it
back and forth through the
machines until someone
could give me an answer.

She visits me
in my sleep, bleeds
through the walls of
our separate dimensions
until she finds a way
into my heart. From there,
she rides my bloodstream up
into my brain, she puts
her hands on my controls
and guides my dreams

through to her childhood
home, where she knows
I'll fall in love with the gap
between her teeth and the way
she practices the word
"kindergarten"
when she thinks no one
can hear her.

I could never find her
through the keys
of my Macbook,
she calls to me
through typewriters in
store windows, when I think
I've lost her, I go into bookstores
and flip through the pages
in the poetry section until

teasing

she gives me a word,
just enough
of a puzzle to hold me
until next time. I think
when it's completed
it will look like her freckles,
the eyeshadow she spreads
over her heartache, the lipstick
she wears to feel like a woman
on the days when she needs to act
like a man, if I were a man.

I'd no longer be captivated
by the mysticism
of their skin. No longer see
the revolutionary twisting
through their spines. But
if I were a man, I wouldn't have
the same parts as my lover.

Maybe then
we'd be
just different enough
for me to tell her
how I feel.

You are the type of boy whose got saltwater in his bloodstream, bones like coral, and a heart made of driftwood – and at this point I’m just hoping someday you’ll wash up on my shore. I have seen the broken glass and beer bottle caps tucked in the folds of your sandy skin. I know how you left cuts on the feet of those who walked all over you. They were never sorry and you always were. Everyone else was too busy molding you into mangled and misshapen castles, only to stomp on them. Your soul was tangled in a mess of seaweeds and deep-sea debris. No one ever saw the brilliance of the sun's reflection in your smile that made you more dazzling than a million diamonds. But I noticed from the beginning that you were more than a temporary vacation spot or a convenient photo-op. and the shark-infested waters in your head shrank to puddles when you spoke to me in words like waves. To this day I can’t figure out what I did to deserve to be the only one you’ve ever allowed to explore your ocean floors, but I am grateful. I pressed my ear to your chest like it was the mouth of a conch shell, and heard the entirety of your ache without you saying a single thing. Violent storms churned in your belly at the hand of faceless puppeteers; made seasick by countless careless captains. But the sky cleared instantaneously the moment I came aboard. The same sun whose rays you’d always been wary of, now kiss your face the same way i wish to, taking utmost care not to burn. Your laughter is a school of fish filled with more colors than I can count and the sound of your sleeping breath is an ocean breeze. I am in love with the perfect shoreline curve of your mouth. Every day I find various buried treasures in your hidden coves and sunken ships, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of discovering you.

- m.f.

I have tied heart strings around my neck
and hoped the blurred vision of my
somewhat self destructive nature
would take away the optic curses
that disallow me to see what I cannot heal.

Sharpened question marks
hook into the aged rings in my flesh.
Left out for too long; forgotten.
He tries not to cry as
suspended interrogatives pull at limbs
and hang body over a myriad of "who?" or "why?"
(I forget which).

I am both the antique puppet and the
incandescent hole in the puppet master's chest,
taught to love my wooden creators
and fall in love with anything
that helps me forget about the skeletons
within my bloodstream.
Pull my strings.
Watch me come undone.

my arms remember razor blades and spiked needles
and my veins ache to feel the warmth of her
swimming perfectly through my bloodstream
and engulfing my every fear, my every desire
until i am nothing but a pool of sticky tar

my nostrils burn without the powder
flying into my brain, and dripping down my throat
keeping me awake for days on end
and opening up my mind for my pen
shaking as i hold it to the paper; scribble

my tongue dwells on the bitter taste of hallucinogens
that made me dance in the coldest rain
and swim in the smallest pools of warm blood
that erupted from the belly of an orange tiger
who held my hand, and danced to the beats

my stomach remembers the feeling of pill bottles
emptied out; the tablets dissolved
coaxing me into warm slumbers, and forgetfulness
i miss the feeling of letting go
of love, of pain, of regret

Dear pomegranate,
How much of your bitter, bitter juice must I drink,
To prevent the free radicals from entering my bloodstream,
And ******* up my system.
Like water, I drink you,
Still that free radical looks my way.
You stain my lips red, and if anything,
Make me more enticing.
Dear pomegranate juice,
You lie.

Swallow me whole,
and let me dissolve into your bloodstream.
Let me flow into your brain,
and the rest of your body.

Your pupils will dilate,
your pores will open
at the realization that I am inside of you,
and I am taking over.

Swallow me whole,
and I will show you that I am not a temporary fix.
Just swallow me whole,
and I will show you what real happiness is.

I've never put myself out to such a degree
And the lightweight that I am, the gun that shot my nerves
With the sheets in my hands, the rhythm burned in my veins
The ink in my bloodstream bled through onto my paper heart
And blackened all the confidence I built
So when I got the news
The pages were ripped and so was my strength

i have flowers in my veins.
many have them tattooed,
others just imagine the blue lines
as forget-me-not roots.

i have flowers in
my veins but i have
the sweet aroma
coursing in my bloodstream.
the petals disguise themselves as white
cells. the roots are deep within my
heart.

i have flowers in my veins.
and you planted them there.

a bean like no other
bitter and white;
a microscopic dynamite,
peristalsis using all its might

my cave so suspenseful and hollow
ridges lined along its curves
churning to my so-called mental benefit
those gastric juices now released,
microscopic dynamite
simply had one more muscle to defeat

a match at last perceived
microvilli yearning love ,
in, it took the dynamite.
yet confused it became as
micro relations only last a short while.

"Nutrients" absorbed,
betrayal on its way
the bloodstream sent in shock
oh such bloodless atriums
oh such vaulted ventricles.
oh how my blood flow met its end.

Although deceiving it had been
no promises were riven
the dynamite exploded
and at last
no longer was I broken.

my descent into Darkness;
i remember how beautiful It felt.
being swallowed into The Pitiful Abyss
until i was sealed underneath Its surface.
it was pure Bliss.
numbing my emotions,
Its darkness encapsulated my feelings,
keeping them buried out of sight.
falling   diving   sliding
              sinking.
the days grazed into nothingness.
the agony was gone.
It felt wonderful.
there were fires burning above the surface
but no longer were they felt by me,
only others.
It was a beautiful descent.
yet as i slowly began to lose my breath,
Its pain began to to pierce my lungs,
asphyxiating me by means of emotional strangulation.
my unbearable grief fired into my bloodstream,
the effects worse than ******, and without the pleasure.
It's flooding through my veins
as tears endlessly cascaded down my cheeks.
"How did I get here?"
the pain became unavoidable, unbearable.
but how can you become what you already are?
it was then when i realized:
i wasn't sinking into the Abyss,
i was drowning inside of It.

i can feel his words
like water
on my skin
dripping between my fingers

i feel them sway
and ripple when i touch
yet pouring into my bloodstream
my soul

he's thunderous
electrifying
zapping me with emotions
i never knew the names of

his movements are a breath of fresh air
carrying whispers in the breeze

and yet he packs his things
and leaves with the seasons.

Take a whiff of your death
As you spritz the liquid over your skin
The liquid that seeps in
You're not going to win

It intoxicates your idle mind
You'll do things you've never done
As it slowly eats into your bloodstream
You should never cross me

This little present will help me presently
Bringing your death to the present
As you collapse on the floor
Dead and reeking of regret

I am afraid of speaking.
I am afraid of the texture of my voice, and the effect it will have on you.
I don't want to be pressed into the caricature of an angry woman; voice raised in what they call a hysterical display of emotion.
Calm down. Be rational.

Stop being
So
Dramatic.

Well let me tell you something:
I am an angry woman.

Because all I can see is my best friend’s blonde head, coming within an inch of becoming the crushed drywall beneath his fist.
All I can see is the false piety painted on his pastor’s face, asking, “well… did he hit you?”

I see her eyes closed in the darkness, fingers gripped in the sheets he tore off of her body to wake her. She has to hold on to something.
He says, “Show me you're enjoying it.”


Calm down. Be rational.

Like he wasn't gaining access INTO her BODY by FORCE. Like, of course it's her job to lay down and take it. Like it. Lick his lips for the taste of honey, because honey, he told you to.

but it's poison. It enters her bloodstream, weakening her will to resist it.

She looks at her phone, at a text she did not compose herself, or send,
“Hey hot stuff. When you see this, let's have ***.
“If I pretend I didn't write this I'm just playing hard to get.”

Do you get it?

Yeah. I am an angry woman.

Stay calm, dear sister. Be rational.
Rationalize the gaslighting, because the big picture doesn't look beautiful when you hang it above the sofa; and her home was staged to look like a family so that when you look in the window, you don't see that she was a hostage.
You don't see that her son was asleep in the bed when he grabbed her face between his hands and crushed it,
And called it “gently redirecting her gaze.”

From the window, you can't see his body blocking the exit.
You can't see her baby, with his little fingers curled around her *******, begging for comfort.

I will not calm down. And in case you are so damaged by devotion to comfort that you can't see it, it is right to be angry.

It is righteous.

I am angry, and more rational than I have ever been in my entire life- rationally, righteously begging for justice to flow down like rivers.

I am an angry woman.

To me it feels like a worm
Wiggling its way
Through my bloodstream,
Making it icy and cold
And my heart turn
To frigid emotion.

It makes its way into my
Mind,
Slowing the thoughts
In some parts,
But giving the other parts,
The nervous parts,
The parts that hyperventilate
And have panic attacks,
Caffiene.

Breathing gets hard
Because
I'm underwater,
Or underground.
Buried alive,
Or sinking slowly.

I.
Can't.
Breathe.

The worm,
The worst part about the worm?
It feeds on my life.

Shoot me, You might as well, cause I'm a threat
A threat to your system, a threat to your net
profit and status quo, so pick up that gun shoot me and pray to the ground I go, and when you bury me you better call me a madman and pray that the martyrs don't grow

You may as well shoot me Mr.Police officer,
It may put your employers at ease
One bless black man with a heart of power
One less antibiotic to your disease
Don't forget to tell me I'm resisting, don't forget to tase me til I fall
Don't forget to choke me so those listening won't hear my struggles, my calls
Don't forget to have the media depict me as a ****, and a criminal and a menace to society
Don't forget to  reprimand and berate me
Remind  your older white listeners that my kind, my skin color
is still not considered American Propriety
But more like American property, disposable goods

So **** me, the cameras are recording but don't worry you'll get off free
Might be just a conviction but your *****'s new henchmen and ***** still got the key
A couple months paid administrative leave so you can sit on a beach, drink some ice tea
Mad that you can no longer put chains on our wrists so you put handcuffs instead
No longer pulling whips across our backs so you bury hot burning lead
No longer working your fields for all to see but instead privatized free prison labor with your warden holding the key.

Martin told me when he us that he had a dream
I got his same DNA in my bloodstream
And in every cell in my body I feel the effect, I teem
I boil I scream, when I see a black mother or father gunned down by police men and the children witnessing the death, the blood, the stream.....

I scheme, and when I sleep, I dream
And when I dream it's bad news for you
to avenge those we lost by crimes, undue
To put a stop to all of you.

They teach you in school that the building blocks of life and matter are atoms filled with subatomic particles
But believe me when I tell you that they're lying.
"They" are claiming to be your saviors from what is actually fueling your bloodstream.
Protectors of your sanity
But believe me when I tell you it's fraud, a scheme of words that are meant to prevent you from discovering the actual monsters buried beneath your fingernails and hidden in the cracks of your bones.
You see, what the evildoers trains the neurons in your brain to understand is that the demons in your skin cells are atoms filled with subatomic particles.
This is what you know and you know it for a fact until the time comes for the poltergeists within you to attack.
They line up and pluck away at the petals of your once "protected" sanity one by one until you're convinced he loves you not.
Your defense has been destroyed and the demons flood in with no intention to come back out.
The swarms of beasts taking over every aspect of your being is what is now going to cause a new feeling called "numbness."
Your last memory of peace is permanently shattered.
This is called growing up, kids.

My father was an artist
He was Johnny Cash
He was Elvis

Every photo of him was
Black and white
And I'd cry at night
God how much I missed him

My mother took me to mountains
Where she'd hold my hand and
Tell me to sing as loud as I can

My father gave me my Martin
My Art and Lutherie

And before I knew chords
I strummed that guitar
Hoping somehow he'd hear me

I owe them everything
Every bone in my body
Because of them
I hear symphonies

I am the poem
I refuse to write.

My skin has formed itself
as sedimented book pages,
quietly injecting
our unspoken metaphors
into my bloodstream
of Murakami, of Plath,
of everything that hurt too much
to even whisper to my typewriter.

I am a poet,
and I will type you
into the night sky.

Jonah asked me,
‘Thomas, do you wear sunglasses all the time because you don't have eyes?’
In my head I said ‘yes Jonah, you’re right!
I wear them because I don’t have eyes,
I hide behind mirrored glass because I’m scared of the world, Jonah.
I am terrified that maybe someone will understand me--
But I can't stop you, can I Jonah?’

Those words circled round and round in my head and heres what I did say:
I have eyes, Jonah, they’re blue.

In a dream I dreamed that I was Odin,
That I gouged out my eyes in exchange
For all the wisdom and understanding the world had to offer.
Jonah I have ******* holes for eyes,
Big empty spaces where every thing goes in and nothing comes out.
I have dark pools of disbelief and
Grown-up thoughts and
The pictures in my head have edges as if they were film
Instead of fog blurring edges with reality,
And all the caffeine coursing through my bloodstream
Cannot possibly give me the energy you have, Jonah.

Maybe I was Odin once, maybe I was a god--
But that was long ago and I grew up, jonah,
So, I don’t have eyes anymore,
But these blue-black-holes will watch you grow up,
And each year they will grow darker as you grow older,
Until finally I fade to nothing more than a name painted on a wall and
empty sunglasses staring out of the past--
Watching,
Wishing I had told you:
Don’t ever, ever give up your eyes, Jonah.

Well my mind is a cage enclosed with fragments of my soul
drifting away into the infinite amount of nothingness
that flows through my bloodstream and
embodies my mind and soul.

Her freedom had yet to be discovered.

i'm restless
four hours till breakfast
and i smell the last of the tonic
wasted on her breath
instead of her bloodstream
i watch my mind fly away
still stuck on this pipe dream
while a slow sad song plays
in the background of my memories
i'm weighed in with only make up
caked in the cracks and crevices
in spite of this and my spitefulness
i'm still a *****
and i'm restless
out of billions i'm just a dust speck
so i'll fall out of my clothes
to watch you disrobe
and break a sweat
the window to your soul is not your eyes
it's under your shirt sleeve
it's the lust
disguised in your bloodstream
and i'm screaming
there's no honor among thieves
you must be dreaming
i sit in this space and wait
while the butterflies congregate
into my heart
instead of my stomach
where they belong
the weightlessness long gone
i'm just another twenty-something fatality
fighting a war
armed with only my shaken sanity
and i'm restless

I don’t want to hate daisies.
I love daisies.
I love daisies so much they might even be my favorite flower.
And I don’t want to hate daisies.

But I have to hate daisies.
I have to hate them because I was stupid enough to let myself fall before I looked at where I’d land.
And before I even got my eyes shut I was laying on the ground with a spinal fracture and bullet holes in my chest.

And I didn’t know how to continue living,
feeling the breeze, that would’ve given you tiny goosebumps, and made you fold your arms across your chest, whistle through your exit wounds. Hearing it whisper every time I hold my breath.

So I went and I broke the last promise I made. And I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.
And I didn’t do it because I had a choice.
I did it because I cant get the image of the layers of all the shades of green in your eyes out of my head. And how do you expect me to continue living knowing I’ll never feel the heat radiating off the trees burning in the forrest that was the symbol of happiness.

And I’ll never tell anyone this,
but before I ripped out every sane thought in my head that always put the cap back on,
I prayed that if there really is a God up there, that he would stay with me, and keep just a gasp of air in my lungs
so that I’d wake up.
And maybe you’d be there holding my hand and I’d get to see you smile at me one last time.

But God is just too good at his job I guess. Because I had swallowed those things an hour ago.
And I sat in peace, contemplating the probability of the existence of heaven and hell as I waited for the final words of the book to dissolve into my bloodstream. And to finally, print the all-too-predictable ending of the story in relaxed letters of black ink.

I will not be sorry that I don’t want to live in a world where I have to fall asleep in the cold air that has seemed to take place of ones lullabies played in their chest as they were wrapped in welcoming.

But God is too good at his job. Because the blackness I needed never came over me. And instead of feeling my broken heart slow to shallow beats, and my breaths become as slow as the seconds did in every moment that had been between me telling you I hated you and waiting for you to say it back,
I only felt nothing.

And I frowned at myself for being relieved at first.
Because in the morning when I lose the temporary escape from every cell in my body screaming for any touch that sleep will bring me, I know I will wish more than anything that my lungs had been idling for hours and that my body was as icy and stiff physically, as my every move will feel, having to function without feeling the air vibrations caused by my laugh.

When I first started writing this a half an hour ago, my intent was to express the unexpected paralysis and comfort that was flowing too quietly under my skin and how, while it was only temporary,
I almost felt okay.
I could barely feel the dull ache hanging in my ribcage, and I felt like maybe I would even genuinely smile again someday.

And I’d always loved gambling but I’m pushing my luck too far. And things are starting to come into focus again.

And I’m racking my brain desperately trying to come up with something I could do that would convince the universe to give me back the privilege of feeling my body temperature increase again.
But the only thing I am able to understand right now, is that I’m never going to be able to live a day in my life that I don’t wish I had spent feeling like this.
And that I hate daisies,
Because they remind me too much of you.

there's something about you
that buries itself in my chest
growing its roots somewhere deep inside
blooming and blossoming
reaching and tangling around my veins
wrapping its vines around my bones
spreading its pollen through my bloodstream with every gentle heartbeat
seeping through my fingers and toes
crawling up my spine and flowering in my thoughts
I carry you everywhere
and as I fall asleep at night,
I think about the way it feels
to have you next to me

Depression suffocates me
until I am begging
for just one more breath on the floor -
the aftermath of my overdose taking its toll.
Poetry is my oxygen tank.

It is a bit challenging to accept
that after feeling so low,
I felt that getting high was my only choice.
To wake up to hell for 16 hours a day,
only to have nightmares
I have never found myself able to outrun,
no matter how fast the alcohol seeps into my bloodstream -
it's almost scary to realize
that my life has fallen to this.
Long nights in basements
filled with scarlet red cups become synonymous
with dreadful episodes in the bathroom
staining the sink blood red -
We're merely trying to escape.
Depression, however, isn't just a phase -
It's a lifestyle.

Depression isn't feeling sad
when everything goes wrong -
it's not being able to accept
that everything is alright.
It isn't crying over spilled milk,
it's being the delicate glass
that was tipped just too hard,
rolled over and cracked
with a resounding smash
on the ground.
What people don't get
is that no matter how much tape or glue you use,
that glass will never be the same as its original self -
It isn't temporary - it's permanent.

It is hard to admit that I am sick.
The pills won't help,
the drugs won't help,
the people won't help -
the scariest part is that
I have to help myself.
When you've fallen into a hole this deep,
you don't simply climb out -
you claw and fight
until you can finally get a grip
on the beauty that life holds for us
and keep it to you tighter than ever.
Whenever I love something,
I hold onto it like the Earth
keeping the moon in perfect orbit
until the end of time,
in the hopes that it's not
just another wandering asteroid
that accidentally found its way into my atmosphere,
in which case the impact
leaves permanent craters on my psyche,
splashing the debris into the air,
covering up the sun
until I'm done tripping out and finally come to.

On one random Wednesday,
I blacked out.
Hours of my life in my memory
are simply gone.
Over the course of two hours,
I found my way
to the 5th floor of an unknown dorm,
face down and unresponsive in my own *****.
The next two hours consisted of EMTs
trying to force me to keep going;
all I uttered for those 7200 seconds:
**** me.

When they held my body,

Long detached from conscious thought,

I felt like I was being pressed into nothing.
As they held me down
with enough force to subdue my thrashing nervous system,
my world slipped away,
l i t t l e   b i t   b y   b i t .
I felt the dry heaves push out
any remnants of life I had remaining.
When they stuck me with the IVs,
needles pierced every inch of my body
for hours on end.
I saw hell for one night -
scary enough, in my period of unresponsiveness,
I crossed the threshold of life and death once.
I lost my heartbeat for three seconds.
Who knew that one **** hit
would almost give me one last night on Earth?

We all have our ways of coping.
Some cut.
Some rebel.
Some don't care.
I write. I speak. I live.
Poetry is my lifeline.
Somehow, words become much more
than just a collection of letters;
they become my heartbeats
translated into English.
It's almost scary that the only words
besides '**** me' that I remember from my trip are,
'you have to write about this. people have to know.'

Poetry is my oxygen tank.
*Take a deep breath with me.

oh the feeling of your hands as they graze against my skin
how protected I feel with your arms around me
my legs will wrap around you
and my toes will curl with every move
stay with me like this forever
or at least for as long as you’ll have me
you’re like sugar coursing through my bloodstream
and suddenly I’m addicted to candy

you’ve got me wrapped around your finger
but baby, for once I’m not afraid to trust
I will dare to say that you’ve given me the greatest gift of them all
for you’ve made life a fairytale and I still can’t fathom
how my heart doesn’t just beat for survival
it beats for you

my lungs will fill with the air you’ve exhaled
and I will cherish every breath
my gaze will settle onto yours and I swear I’m close to drowning in your eyes
this must be what living feels like

The stories of your life
Enlighten me
Sic Parvis Magna
Frightens me

A motto of strength
Guile and will
Things I had
Until...

Or so I thought
Prior to my reignition
On Sisyphus's hill
All for not

Until...

you made my blood clot,
so slowly and gently,
coagulating beneath your faint touch.

on flaxen sheets of rough cotton
I watched your plants
rolling their limbs out your open window.
they sprawled themselves, unravelling,
yearning for the gentle kiss
of the suns rays.
an almost ****** photosynthesis.
and for you I would sprawl myself out too,
and with the same eagerness
absorb every scent of yours into my flesh,
and drink desperately from your soul
like a cacti in its first summer shower
since '89.

and your final gasp,
with me, but a sponge
for your every metaphoric suppuration,
and literal secretion.
and you were transfixed there,
spurting auras of sin and love.
a final burst of ecstasy,
you soon became my anticoagulant.

you seeped into my bloodstream,
reversing this gentle coagulation.

In French,
you don't actually say
I miss you
you say
you are missing from me
- you are essential to my being.
you are like an *****, a limb, my bloodstream.
I cannot be without you.


how incredibly poetic.

i.*   i've always loved the way the earth looks from an airplane window, small enough that i can filter through an entire city with my fingers and never encounter a single face that inhabits it. but this time, i looked out and could see nothing but green for miles. it was as if god himself could put his infinite hands together and they would still fill with trees and branches and coffee-stained rivers instead of people. i didn't know it was possible to drown in so much color.

ii.   a man who spoke in splintered english and carried a machete told me that he could survive in the rainforest for a month without supplies, that the jungle ran through his bloodstream as he imagined gasoline and city lights flickered through mine. the day he took us hiking on the trails, he glided through the understory barefoot, pausing just long enough each time to see if we were keeping up.

iii.   some mornings, i lay in bed still wishing i could turn the chorus of car horns outside my window into the songs of howler monkeys echoing across the treetops and into my dreams.

iv.   at night, we walked down a beach, dragging sand and weariness in our socks and watching the waves crest along the shore. i looked to my right and the stars leaned so close into the forest that they simply became twinkling electric lights atop palm tree lampposts. my feet even tasted the stars beneath them; when i kicked up sand, tiny constellations startled scurrying ***** into the tide.

v.   you will always be the first country that trusted me with a bottle in my hand, as i stole through the midnight streets of san pedro with the taste of *** mixing in with the laughter i felt hidden under my tongue. and in the morning, i awoke to a faint dizziness and the memory of boys who bought me drinks and asked for nothing more than a dance and a handful of stories in return.

vi.   *muy exótica, they murmured as i walked down the road, my heartbeat syncing with the wheels of my suitcase as they rolled over the uneven dirt. a pair of enamored scarlet macaws held no magic for them now; the real exotic specimen was the girl whose almond eyes were filled with desert sand, whose skin only became mocha when the sun stared at it too long. they couldn't turn away.

vii.   i still have countless bug bites that dance across the backs of my legs in tingling trails. i hope the scars stay long enough for me to trace them back to the place where they were choreographed.

viii.   only one of a thousand sea turtle hatchlings will reach adulthood, yet i watched one of eight make its way from my hand to the ocean until it caught the sunrise and disappeared. i kept my palm open as i waved goodbye, hoping he would someday be able to read his way back home.

ix.   the last night, we danced under a shower of stars and you told me about a time that you smoked until twilight and saw sea turtles dancing on the beach to bob marley. while we were sitting there wishing the storm would swallow up time, i imagined piro beach was littered with the shells of sea turtles using the moonlight as it pulsed off the waves to teach each other how to salsa too.

x.   i've never written a love song, but i spent my days in a hammock wishing i knew enough words in spanish to weave together one for costa rica. i wonder if i will spend my life falling in love with places and scattering pieces of my heart across the continents like turtle eggs without ever finding the one location i'd like to bury them deep into the sand and wait for life to dig its way back out.