sadness brings out the best in poets-happiness, the worst.

sometimes i read poetry
and i think
********,
we’re all going to die

every day i would go to class
i'd walk to my desk,
hands swinging along,
earphones in ear, blasting music
i'd take my seat
next to my friends
say hello, with a warm hug
smile at them
find the humor in each situation and laugh

it stopped.

i walked to my desk
no music,
total silence, a picture of sadness
i took my seat
only glancing at my friends
for the briefest hello
they asked whats wrong
i said nothing
they cracked some jokes
i didn't laugh

i walked to my desk
huddled up inside myself
i took my seat
didn't spare a glance for them
i poured myself into my irrelevant classwork
they said hi
i politely returned the greeting
i quietly did my work
finished it, packed up my bag
said good bye and left

i walked to my desk
their eyes trailed after me
questing my behavior
i said nothing
and i was gone.

i never understood
what strength was

my best told me i was strong
and that i could get through it all

but i didn't understand
what true strength was
until it became routine
to spend my night
hugging the bathroom tub
waking up the next morning
alive and still smiling

i didn't understand
what true strength was
until i realized
my best friend did the same thing
for years on end
and yet she still found it
to wake up
and pick me up out of it

i never understood
what it meant to be strong
until i realized
i am strong

I CAN'T DRAW STRAIGHT LINES
I CAN'T MAKE A CIRCLE
GIVE ME A RULER
OR A COMPASS
I'LL HAND YOU BACK A PAPER
OF CROOKED LINES AND OVALS

THE SAME WAY
I COULD BE GIVEN
ALL THE TOOLS OF HAPPINESS
BUT STILL DROWN MYSELF
IN DEPRESSION
-zzn

i don’t love you, i love you, i loved you.

he took the blade on my skin and turned it into the pen on my paper

comfortable silences
are like a third space
found in the phone calls
of Hazel Grace
and Augustus Waters

they hold their own infinity
with the power of words
unspoken
because nothing needs to be said
in a place of mutual silence

i loved doing nothing,
but with a companion.

my favorite song ever
was “i love you”
sung by you
and only you.

how dare you let her
cover it?

why were you only honest
at 3 am?

because
it was easier
for you to blend
the darkness of your soul
with the dark of the night.

you had a lump in your throat every time you spoke,
it should’ve disappeared but your voice became a croak

you cleared your throat a lot,
for every word that got caught

you stopped talking about your passions;
i think your heart had run out of its rations

you helped others out many times before,
but suddenly your reassurance was no more

your silences grew longer;
i should’ve known you were a goner

you left all these warnings,
yet here i was, in mourning.

what should i be for halloween?

myself: all i need is to lift up my sleeve and show the scars and my costume shall be complete

they say that home is where the heart is
so i guess my home is gone
i tend to call that homeless
but maybe my heart's just gone

my mom told me i look homeless

i told her i was

in school
we learned about hydraulic fracturing
when they would send pressurized chemicals into the earth
until the earth began to “frack”

well that’s what i felt like
when your words rained down upon me so hard
my brain began to crack

the simple truth
of my youth:

i loved sadness
adored its madness

i abhorred its distance
abused its existence

until it developed resistance
and trapped me
with its persistence

i admired it
simply because
it never left me.

in love.
inlove.

maybe we called it being in love
because "in" was a prefix for not
and the space between the words
was the void you created when you left

i started sleeping when i met you

problem:* for the longest time, i was in the mindset where *i did not want to die, i just simply did not want to exist.

experiment: this summer, i did just that. i severed ties with most of my friends, cut off communication, and burned down a lot of bridges.

outcome: i lost a lot of friendships but i found parts of myself.

summary: i had two months of inexistence and it sparked with me a desire to live again, a fire within me that had been missing for quite some time now. it taught me how to be okay by myself, but it also taught me that it’s okay to allow good friends to help you better yourself.

error analysis: it’s not okay if you purposely burn bridges down and end friendships on bad notes. they’ll haunt you later. so leave friendships on a good note. if they’re a real friend, you won’t be leaving them; you’ll simply be putting a pause on the friendship. it’s okay to take time for yourself, and it’s also okay if friends want some time for themselves. you should not ever apologize for wanting time for yourself, nor should others.

solution: if you wish to inexist, then isolate yourself for a while. make yourself comfortable being alone. once you are able to be content in isolation, you will naturally want to exist more, both inside and outside of isolation. *allow yourself to let people into your world again.

I am a tower of Legos

as much as you can break me
you can always put me back together again

but sometimes,
it's hard to tell
if I'm broken
and I'm building myself back up
again
Or
if I've built myself so high up
that I'm just waiting to collapse
again

clouds were notorious for pretending to be something they were not

you were a cloud

the things that come out of my mouth
the things that go through my head
and the things that come from the ink of this pen
may not always or perhaps ever be the same

poetry
is the ability
to strike someone once
and have the sound resonate
inside them forever

prose
is describing the sound
with more resonances

How outrageous it was
that the world refused to stop
Even for a moment
To give a person
one more reason
For their world to turn

i hate how we can’t ******* hang out without people looking at their **** phones
{except i check mine too}
i hate how technology has the audacity to imitate physical presence by this ******* FaceTiming
{except i wish i had an iPhone}
i hate how relationships take place on the ******* phone
{except if i had a relation, i would do the same}
i hate how we type how we feel instead of just saying it
{except i find it easier to see it in text than to say it in speech}
i hate how we spend time on the computer instead of taking a ******* walk
{except i spend all day on the computer}

i hate this new ******* technologically advanced generation
{except i'm a part of it}

5 pm
I want comfort

6 pm
I found misery instead.

7 pm
I want to slit my throat,

8 pm
I think I've lost my head.

9 pm
I seek destruction,

10 pm
Please put me on my deathbed.

11 pm
I only breathe,

12 pm
You might as well consider me dead.

there is a point where
some brokens
can't be fixed

“How come you always stay in your room so much?” a little girl once asked me.
“Because I have anxiety, darling”
“Where is your anxiety?”
I pointed to my head. She nodded.
But that wasn’t entirely true.

I should’ve pointed
to my hands,
full of earthquakes and after shakes;
my arm,
blade rakes and skin breaks;
my smile,
nothing short of fake;
my whole body,
just one big ache.

i washed a lot of dishes at work today
my hands are raw and red
and my fingers have a lot of small cuts

but i’m happy
because better to have
red raw hands
than red raw eyes
and better my fingers cut
than my wrists slit

write by plucking words from your brain
write to read them again despite the pain
write so that your heartache may drain
write for purpose or perhaps in vain
write in a room, a bus, or even a train
write beyond your imagination’s plane