What difference does it make
to be different in a world of equals
if your heart feels equal
to the ones of those who feel different?
The connections between souls
just as broken as yours,
what difference does it make?
They’re just lighter
less than twenty one grams.
You’re just lighter
leaving pieces of your soul
in others’ splintered hearts.
What difference does it make
if they feel heavy while carrying
your love, your grace, your strength?
Because this is what you do
and you still have so much to give
but what difference does it make?

Each night I find myself
grieving the death of
my unborn adolescent self,
the miscarriage of a body
which was already alive
but never dared to live.
How broke do I have to be
to put all the pieces
back together again?
Time’s only direction
is forward.
My mind’s only direction
is backward.
I only know how to speak in words
I didn’t have enough courage
to pronounce in the past.
My eyes only know how to stare
at suns already set and crescents
which are now full moons.
My heart has never loved before
and now it’s trying to do it
like a sixteen-year-old.
My unborn adolescent self,
the miscarriage of a body
which wasn’t really alive
and dares to live now
when it is too late.

Be the thunder that
breaks the silence
if noise is the only way
you have to be heard.
Be the thunder that
breaks the silence
after a lightning
triggers its violence
against your fragility.
Be the thunder that
makes the storm come.

I stopped looking
for my other half
in other people
the moment I realized
I was already whole
within myself.
I find no shame
in my solitude
now that alone
I do not feel lonely.

To all the people who
leave their homeland
to escape from their lives
unaware that they
won’t make it alive
on the other side,
oblivious to the horrific
idea that they will
scream and cry
while watching their
babies drown and die:
may the waves carry you
in a better world
than the one in which
we are living now.

And I am not in the mood
to look at the moon.
Show me the sun
in the hours of its rise
so my eyes will pay the price
for letting the memory of you
vanish from their dark irises;
those which will burn
along with the sun
and will have a reason to cry
while looking up to the sky.

Even now, after all this time
when I see you in the streets
my heart skips two beats.
You haven’t changed a bit
since the last time
you were holding me.
I’ve come to know by heart
the freckles on your nose
or the way you struck your pose,
your countless random gibberish
with that soft voice I’ll always cherish.
Oh tell me now,
how can we be strangers now
if I know you like I know me?
If I love you like I hate me?

Because fear
becomes essence
only if you let it be.
So stop seeing it
as a reliable friend
to whom you confide
how scared you are
of happiness.
Instead,
talk to your joy
and let it convince you
how fearless you are
of the fear itself.

You are the air
which fills my lungs.
What a pity it is
that I am asthmatic
and find it hard
to let you in.
In an eternal effort
to breathe you whole
I end up searching for you
in every spot of my
tyrant anxiety who
prays for us to be apart.

Beyond the walls
you have erected,
through the peaks
of the mountains
growing in your
unresponsive body,
there’s an echo that
has been reverberating
for centuries now.
“I love you”: that’s
what it spells out.

My writing is
a voiceless
cry for help
who dreams
of becoming
sweet melody
to be sung by
someone
whose voice
has not been
lost.

I fell for you
but you were
already gone
as soon as
I got up again,
like a magician
through a trapdoor.
That was the time
I began to believe
in magic.

How do you walk
through a mind
filled with items
without fear of
having to pay
for the damage
if anything shatters?

Odorless ink turned
into sweet fragrance
through this poem
for it smells of you.

Like flowers in
soldiers’ guns
your shooting
left me unharmed
in the war between
both of our hearts
where all that remained
were the ‘love me not’
****** petals.

The soul has
its own weight
and I felt lighter
when you went away
not knowing if mine
was gone for good
or gone with you.

In the coldest of days
through the sighs
of the wind
I still was aflame
for I heard your voice
calling my name.

The ache of a heart
who cannot rest
for it has been apart
from you who were my best,
the best part
of all art.

Why making wishes
on a dying creature
as a shooting star?
So beautiful death
can seem if seen
from a distance.
For me comets are
named after all the
people who decided
my sky wasn’t their
place anymore.

In my heart a
marching band
is playing
“Ode to Joy”
and I can’t help
but sing along.

****** were my eyes
and all their blinks
for I missed you
in those seconds
my eyelids kept me
away from the sight
of your beauty.

Blessed are all the dreamers
who see the sky smiling
while looking at the crescent.

The lion is called
king of the forest
for its beauty only
because it is well known
that the one who
fights every battle
is the lioness
living under her
hungry king’s thumb
and remembered
by no name at all.

What I like about diamonds
are their splinters,
the thorns of the rose
you picked up in winter.

I have been trying to heal
by tearing myself
to pieces so far
and isn’t that
also a start?