Her smile is
an unlocked door in
a city of barricades,
a lighthouse
humming lullabies to shipwrecks.
Even when her thoughts are
galaxies away,
orbiting errands and
memories I can’t name,
she leaves fragments of calm
on my skin,
like lavender drifting through a riot.

Her eyes are constellations
teaching my darkness
how to kneel
before something gentle.
And when I hold her hand,
it feels like dawn threading its gold
through my clenched storms
Our fingers, a bridge
no sorrow can swim under,
each heartbeat of mine
whispering:
stay, stay, stay...

-

The room tilts
like it just
remembered something heavy.
My ribs forget how to hold me,
the air thins,
like it's scared to stay.
My vision flickers
like it’s caught between
then and now.

I see your face
in the blur between blinks.
Even now,
my body chooses your name
over oxygen,
like a prayer
it knows
won’t be answered.

-

And then there are nights
when the ceiling
feels closer than the stars,
when tomorrow is a maybe,
and the heartbeat sounds like it’s
writing a goodbye note
in Morse code.

life doesn’t send save-the-dates.
sometimes it just folds
quietly,
like a letter
you meant to send
but never did.

-

She smiles like it's an accident
like joy wasn’t meant for her but showed up anyway.
It’s crooked, a little shy,
like a truth trying to sneak past fear.
Her collarbones?
She walks like they’re scenery, not sculpture,
not knowing I’ve seen oceans break softer
than the lines of her shoulders.
She never notices,
but I do.
Every. Single. Time.

Her eyes are full novels
bound in silence.
There’s grief swimming just beneath the iris
but she still looks at the world
like it’s worth forgiving.
And I
I love that.
I love her.
In the kind of way that doesn't ask for permission,
just stays.
Quiet. Constant.
Like breath.

-

There were days I treated myself
like a house I was ashamed to come home to.
Let people track mud through my ribs,
hang their insecurities on my spine like coat hooks.
Called it compromise.
Called it love.
But really,
it was me trading my peace
for a seat at tables
where no one knew how to say my name
without folding it in half.

Now
I guard my boundaries
like heirlooms.
Say “no” like a full sentence.
Wear my self-respect
like my grandmother’s earrings
not for approval,
but because I come from women
who never got to keep theirs.
And I’ve decided:
the first person I will not abandon
is me.

-

My father did not leave
he became the silence between my sentences,
the pause before I say I’m okay
when I’m not.

He was not soft-spoken,
but he held his rage like prayer beads
turning it in his palms
until it became patience.
I think I got my anger from him
not the kind that breaks things,
the kind that protects.
The kind that shouts only
when it’s teaching you to survive.

Two years later,
grief still arrives uninvited
in the middle of laughter,
in the taste of chai he once made just right.
I carry him in my spine
when I stand up for myself,
in my hands
when I fix what’s broken.
I am not whole without him,
but I am everything he hoped
I would become.
And that,
is how he lives
still.

-

She lives in my heart
like a planet no one’s discovered yet
quiet, spinning,
pulling tides in my bloodstream.
I don’t always see her,
but my chest shifts around her gravity,
like my ribs are learning to orbit.

She doesn’t speak often,
but when she does,
my bones rearrange themselves
to spell her name in braille.
This is not a crush.
This is architecture.
She is the blueprint.

Every time she smiles,
the war inside me
forgets what it was fighting for.
She takes up space
like sunrise in a dark room
slow, certain, impossible to ignore.
And my body remembers her
like prayers remember their gods.

-

Her eyes are brown,
but they’re more like storms.
The kind that
sit quietly in the distance
until they arrive,
and when they do,
everything
is soaked in their presence.

They are the thunder
that follows lightning,
the moment before you realize
you’ve already been caught.

-

I’m screaming at the clock again
like it owes me answers,
like I’m entitled to closure on a deadline.
But life doesn’t work that way.
It’s messy,
a knot of “not yet”
and “almost there.”

I keep wanting to skip the waiting room
and walk straight into the cure,
but all I get is this whisper
"everything in time."

And maybe that’s the cruelest kindness
maybe it’s what I learn
when nothing happens right away.
Maybe “everything in time”
isn’t a promise
it’s permission to breathe.

-

You stood behind me,
bare chest against my spine,
guiding my hands as I stirred the sauce
slow, like you were teaching me how to love you
without words.
The steam curled around us,
but it was your breath on my neck
that made the kitchen burn.

You tasted the pasta
off my fingers,
and I swear
if the world ended in that moment,
it would’ve been enough.
Salt on your lips,
hunger in your eyes,
and your name soft in my mouth,
like a prayer I didn’t know I was saying.

-