"Gusto ko nang lumaya, pero alam kong kailangan mo ako."* -Dagang Electrically Dextrosed

"Pahingi ng kumot, nilalamig na ako." - Kapeng Medyo Mainit (May pinagdaraanan: Evaporation)

"Patayin mo na ako habang wala pang nakakakita, tutal, yun at yun lang din naman ang gagawin mo eh!" - Puyat na Fluorescent Lamp

"Relax lang, sandal ka lang." - Pasensyosong Silya

"Alam ko pagod ka na, tara na." - Kamang Wala sa Lugar

"Hinding-hindi kita iiwan." - Mapagmahal na Eyebag

"Kailangan naming mag-grow! Walang makakapigil s amin!" - Unstoppable Pimples

"Tama na yan!" - **Zombie ko

Jay-Z sounds like he's underwater. And the showerhoses tilt shut and the bathroom door opens to reveal - well, what I thought was a sealing wound thankfully turned out to be headphone covers and my brother's obscured big toe. Trembling.

He walks as if he was the rapper himself - chest hunched, back lurching forward like that of a street cat who doesn't know he's made it. Shaky feet, wet hair, darkened eyes that hadn't been shut for days.

''For my father was black, and beautiful, and beautiful, therefore, black. There was a blackness to him that was beautiful. A blackness entirely clear and his own.'' -James Baldwin, Notes on a Native Son (paraphrased).

His legs if you roll up the pajama bottoms are filled with quilt patched mosquito bites and blacks and blues. Self-inflicted. Eyebag patches punched back into his face resurfacing in the hidden contours of his thigh. Trembling. Allow me to reintroduce myself. Trembling.

He is and he isn't. No native son of ours black but yellow covered, yellow but eyes tinged with red, and awash in shadows black and blue - he is beautiful - puffy eyed, brickfaced boombox carrying screamer of profanity and tongue tied silence all and still - he is black, and he is beautiful.

An underwater mixtape taking shape to be a broken record anthem.

and she said "I'm fine"
but her eyes tells a different story
and she said she's well
but you can see the eyebag under her eyes
and she said she's strong
but you know she cried all night
and she said she's clean
but you see the way she hides her wrists
and she said "I'm fine"
and you said "Honey, i saw the way your hands shake"

some dreams are made for diplomat's sons
some hands are not attached to potters
i have two of those hands
i have no potter's hands
i only have two hands

to hold all the wrong things
from hurt to hurtful
to wrinkle their fingers
like caved in ribs of an umbrella
that will not withstand

or press in the growing eyebag
i have no potter's hands
and it mostly makes me feel bad

(Sonder)
Blue mondays linger a few days or years

I've got too many mistakes I can't begin to undo.

I held your hand of different shades
And watched the life fade from your bones
Without a spare movement to show for it

Not even a spasm, not even sunken skin

Macaw loverboyyy, mamasboyyy
Addiction puppet-strung on a whim
  not caring which direction I was headed,

I was born to use and get used and fate is the hardest habit to break.

I made lighthouses out of tiny chipped pawn pieces
I stayed up for nights trying to define
  Your holy ways in words--
What weight on the shoulders is that of an overnight eyebag compared to all those days lost and wasted?
And while you and all they other muses are dead here I breathe still;

Worthy or not
It doesn't matter.

The only unconditional love I have left is from someone I refused to speak to this time last year

and it's clear that I love 'em too cause I never say that I do

But these days I prefer my own company
  
As you know

And if you've the right reason's there's nothing wrong with that, I'm sure you agree

Suicide isn't a rite of passage but self-harm in some form or another just may be

And I've tried just about every method,

I used to haunt my home, encircling my messy floor skeletal
Not wanting to make a sound as I stepped.

Anorexia nervosa-- I never dealt with it and that's how I deal with it--

Even if every bite makes me sick now

I'll think different when I starve and my head isn't full of too many thoughts to get by on autopilot,
I stay inside when I can and I stay alone and I plan on dying this way

(Blondie) (i is another)

Sunshine washes over my shoulder like rainfall
And ruins my jejune overcoat.
I've got gold on my mind and spite on my tongue for all the wrong done to me

And I believe I'll stay silent again today because I'm proud of who I was yesterday.

I wear my ancestors faces although I'll never know their names

Put cigarette emojis on my grave and those clapping hands that has been misconstrued as praying hands for so long that that is now what they are.

Give me a house as a honeybee in memphis or somewhere else I've never been
And see to it that I don't recall a thing of this lifetime of mine and all it's lazy miracles.

Weakness is a force to be reckoned with if one is strong enough to face it naked.
Anger is a constant that's too recognisable to even be worth getting into with words.