who else can I
begin to love like this,
who else can I
begin to bear the weight
of knowing like this?

-

Hey.
This time
It’s me I’m calling.

-

those alone feel
like a magician’s trick;
I’m invisible,
and the night blots me
into an illusion
of not existing at all.

-

hoped my consciousness
would follow suit; it was tired
of running and bending and rolling
in painful contortionist acrobatics.
It flew all day, shrapnel violent
inside the cage of my skull,
smearing through lores and
images of genocide, passion,
psychotic sorrow and fear
of loss and too much empathy;
and it can’t fall asleep
from all the reeling.

-

I’m right here, I
never left; just hid
a tad deeper
where the winds
couldn’t lay me bare.
I just thought
you’d search
a little harder.

-

an echo impostered their voice,
like clicks of memories and time
cruelly fused in a shaky jumble
thwarting my attempts
to find meaning;
like their abandoned clothes
turned into cement and unliftable,
like they went ripping out
all of the world’s colors, joy
and moisture
in their unreturning clutch.

-

Is it relief or sorrow
that a hesitant blink of an eye
or an unsure flap of a wing
ends that moment forever?

-

written in the language
of the universe’s tacit mischief;
either a butterfly stroke,
being embryo to a storm,
or a sanguine water-drop
willed to extinguish
an ocean of flames.

-

the pain that pain-ts me,
the little bands of wariness
drooping my eyes,
the life that curled in first
and then jolted out loudly
as the tattoo of days
punched my skin into wounds.

-

The drone of rain
is perhaps so comforting
out of our longing
to escape our own dirt.

-