I smell you in the breeze,

Taste your soul in my coffee,

And forever want to dance

Among the stars of your existence.

A life spent in your galaxy

Doesn’t draw my mind away;

The idea pulls me in to your gravity,

A point of no return.

We exist, that is all.

Nous existons, c’est fin.

In your coffee mug

I taste your soul’s misty love

As my breath lingers

Let my body drift,

Fall into my obsessions,

Like one falls asleep

No matter the grandness

Of my wanting to leave,

No matter the strength

Of my mind’s morality,

Your fingernails dig in my being

And claw their way to my psychology

And I lose myself to my obsessions

Once buried in my heart, now bleeding out

I arrived before many of the fleet,

The waters holding unfamiliar silence

And a few lone floating boats,

Their flames silently burning with the night.

Never had I known an oceanic view

So devoid of light, of chatter, of laughter,

Of music from those who couldn’t sleep.

I shared my music with the quiet hum of the waters,

With the few lights I could see in the distance,

And I think, we’re all holding onto our music;

It is how we can feel ourselves

Outside of our solitude.

The great whales move across the sky,

A timeless and peaceful migration.

The great whales change color,

A slow gradient of acceptance

Teaching is that we, like the colors,

Are ephemeral parts of a timeless migration.

You never reached yourself to my fire;

I had to learn to hold myself in.

Now, I feel scared to extend my arms,

To lay in the warmth of the bodies of my loved ones,

And I try to warm by my small flame.

I’m now afraid of giving a lot of myself;

I’ve learned that not all arms wait for me.

The vanilla chai fills my senses

With the flavors of autumn,

Every golden leaf crunching beneath my feet,

Every cafe wandering through my being

And flooding my mouth and nose with warmth.

Every pinecone wreath filled with cinnamon

Embraces my heart with sweetness

And reminds me of the cold to come.

Love comes to me sometimes as hunger;

I find myself staring at my dessert,

Its fibers dissected,

Its homogeneous innards exposed,

And I think, “I want to know all of you.

I want to put sense to everything that you are;

I want to merge your life with mine.”

Maybe love was never meant to be enough.

I thought the parasite was the problem

Until I watched it eat away at my self

And realized I had no one to blame but me

For letting it stay for so long.

I wonder when the patterns of arrows

That are shot towards my body

Will teach me to draw my shield faster;

When someone breaks my trust

I am ever the only one to protect me,

Growing callouses on my heart

So that when its fingers pluck the arrows from my body,

It doesn’t hurt as much.

The stars have taught me

To watch over them 

As they watch over us—

Sleeping, or awake,

Nonetheless wrapped in the night.

I’ve never really found the arrow

You shot through my heart.

I wish I could examine its point and dynamics

To know exactly how you shot it

And why it stings

And makes bitter saliva in my mouth. 

The wound is there, clotted over and knotted

But still sensitive and a neural supernova

Whenever I am met with the idea of holding.

Some days I feel unimaginable anger for you,

The kind like the hurricane that knocked down the trees in my city

And killed the power, except for the grocery store.

Some days I feel neutral toward you,

Seeming in moments to forget the love we shared

In the ten days you made feel like forever,

Seeming to forget the times I wrote endlessly

Every poetic line I could use to describe my love for you

And it still wasn’t enough.

And sometimes I even love you,

My being filling with laughter at your jokes

And my heart softening when we sang and gazed at each other

And time held its breath for a moment.

You bewitched my being and altered my brain

After your archery got the better of me for a month

And I try to move past the wound you’ve made in me,

My friends giving me the love you couldn’t give me,

But your poison seeps back in when my heart bleeds love

So I may have to bleed all of the poison out

To love without your arrow.

The early morning rises after me
And I blink away the night
As I make eggs for my sister;
She brings the night out of her room.
I make pancakes for myself,
Buttermilk with bananas,
And my mom makes some to snack on
Before walking into the Sun’s waking light.
The Beach Boys plays in the kitchen I haven’t visited since December
And my family members each go off into the day,
Leaving me and my cat alone with the music
And the Sun’s waking light.
Two creatures of different species,
Never communicating through words
But observing the morning together
Is peaceful and beautiful.

My heart feels light in the shaking of the plane,

A playfulness taking over my body

Like the universe tossing its children in the air

And always promising to catch them.

Gravity and inertia make a promise

To catch me and cradle me in Earth’s bumpy skies.

The slightest changes in gravity

Play the drums of my heart and lungs;

The turning in acceleration pulls me in a waltz.

I’d sit with you and hold the tea you made for me
And we’d walk and laugh and smile,
And it would be my favorite part of the day.
I’d exist with you in silence
And still feel all of our love.
I want to feel your love in the drinks you make for me
And in the rain that falls on our heads.

You worry you’d bore me in the quiet

But I’m entertained by your clothes that tell stories,

Your hair that billows wind currents,

Your freckles that map constellations—

I count and name them to you—

Your hands that hold warmth everywhere you go,

And the waters of your mind

That I swim in in dreams.

Tea with honey is a gustatory love—
The most intimate kiss exists,
Mouths of flavor intertwined together
In an eternal dance of the mind.

My heart salivates for love

The same way the mouth does for food.

Let me eat of the world,

Let every river of the Earth’s blood warm my stomach.

Let my heart wrap itself around the hearts of others,

As we become one balance

Through our hearts’ saliva intertwining in a kiss.

My hunger is a parasite
And I weep for you
If you should ever find yourself
Headlocked in my saliva
So if you see the parasite show its teeth,
I beg of you, flee,
Before the hunger consumes us both;
The parasite does not hesitate
To lock its heart on that emotional supernova.

The stretch marks on our skin

Map out how far we’ve come along

And prove that we change.

Our bodies, like our souls,

Are never static;

Even after death, they return to Earth.

Love so passionately
That the pummeling wind competes with you
To make your loved ones
Constantly feel alive

A quiet symphony—

The raindrops tap the rocks and wet soil

The branches hum in the mind

The koi play the strings of the water

And the leaves, percussion

For the faint petrichor

The night is my quiet lover;
She gives me stars and cold hushes
That sweeten my heart when she tastes it.
The night gives me arms to sleep in
And a symphony of thunderstorms that calms my mind.
The night reminds me that light changes how we perceive space
And that the trees, too, sleep.

I smell the Earth’s rain before it falls

And I know my love has come to visit me again

As she gives my face a thousand kisses

And a blanket of clouds for my worries.

She softens and cleanses the day

And by night, I fall in the deepest love

With her song that dances on rooftops

As the soil rejoices.

The firs reach out into the singular lights
Arms outstretched and frozen in time
Like the chapped lips of a smile
Ornaments of pine adorn the tree
As Earth rejoices in new life

Humanity’s dissonance

Is the Jeckyl and Hyde

Of psychology and morality.

My skin still sees afterimages
From when it tried to become the mountains
And the wind in between the leaves.
The clay terrain now holds me,
Reborn from the same air that sits in my lungs.

A sky of parchment paper

A jacket of fog

And trees that seem to forever reach to you.

A cataract moon watches over like a vulture

A corvid calls back, somewhere

A call that surrounds your ever-watching eyes.

If the dryness holds my hands,
I will bleed a ballad forever
And if the humidity holds my hands,
I will melt into the ground.
There will come a time
Where something holds my hands
And I feel nothing but the touch of love.

I understand you meant no harm,

That you didn’t know what was behind that jammed door

When your words and tone kicked it down.

Smoke filled the room and younger me ran out

Crying and screaming and curled into herself.

She feels like an egg the size of a pinhead

Singular on a milkweed leaf.

She is a caterpillar who grows up alone

Following her circadian rhythm,

Always hungry.

She is a butterfly in a chrysalis that never got to properly develop

So when it was time for her to emerge,

Her wings were wrong, and she couldn’t fly.

But she flew into my arms

With stinging tears down her face

And a quiet but firm need to be loved.

The highlights of your roots

Feel like the light in between leaves

As I rest my hand on your head,

Feeling your mossy hair between my fingers

But only in my dreams.

You’ve gone away again,

Burdened by the weight of the world,

And I’d forever be patient for you,

Sitting in your chair holding the present I got

For you, and for the house

I hope we can still live in.

But while you’re in between worlds

I sing songs into the night for you

And play the guitar I took with us

And played on the mountain

For you, and for the world.

I hold you,

you and everything you are,

like the jewelry you gave me

that lays around my neck,

sometimes caught in the pulsing

of my everlasting drum of a heart.

Trees freckle the hills,

A terrain that I now call my home.

Were the trees carried as seeds

By the wind, scattered in a storm

Or planted by squirrels

Preparing for winter?

Like the trees, I was scattered

To this new terrain by a wind

I couldn’t have predicted

But love with my whole life

A change in the humidity

Alters the way my hair springs back

When I brush it after a comforting shower.

My skin, too,

Feels a different texture

As a caterpillar sheds its skin

During each instar.

And my lungs adjust to the altitude and cold

My body being born again.

The wind gives you a whirl,
Shudders your windows,
Draws out your ponytail,
Pulls your body in a waltz.
The Earth is begging,
In a whisper, to be heard.

The Beach Boys CD I bought with my best friend
Plays in soft, warm light
As warm as vanilla caramel tea
Or the rooibos chai I bought at the farmer's market,
The heat of that day unforgiving.
Writing about the night,
How the snow fell while I was falling asleep
And how the cold feels light.

When I die, my hands will go first
Purple terracotta with pale bones
As if they were always ready
Waiting for the time I stop warming up
When my knees harden
And my back petrifies
To make a cold coffin
For my lungs and ever-beating heart.
When I die, my body will be clay
To mold once more.

The blessing of centuries
Our evolution's fate
And yet, it's still so beautiful
For your body to find someone else's
Truly human.

There's a little girl in my heart
Who loves the perfume I bought.
She loves her trinket box
Holding jewels that twinkle like the stars
She loves wearing pink
And how her freshly painted nails shine.
She longs to fance in ballrooms
And sip tea at a small table
While gazing at gardens and cats.

I become a pulsar
When falling into nREM,
Becoming a ballet of spacetime
A pulsing geometry of stars
Flowing in my mind
As the waves cradle me
With an intensity of the Universe
And I silently spin;
I am a little green man.

The warm cocoon holds me
Letting my body float
Like in a lukewarm bath.
A single candle dances beside me
A smell only sensed at an intimate distance.
My head is held up
And Cherry Wine by Hozier plays in my head
As I let night pass by
And this peace fills my body and my existence with sweet warmth

Please, I scream
See all that I exist in
See me outside of my body
And my face that I've only practiced
To be a human in my days.
Why do you love the face
And not love the expression
Through words and movement?
See me, I beg
In the stars that came before me
And in my poetry
The world through my eyes

I always thought it easy to lift myself

But not when you’re sleeping in your trust for me

Not when holding your gently breathing body

And listening to your cosmic microwave background.

It’s not easy to get up

When you curl into the crevice of my body

And gaze into my face

As the last thing you see before you sleep.

The tree I visit is now asleep,
Settled down for the winter
And hushed in the ground.

I walk under its web of branches
Resembling neuron pathways in the brain.
I lay against it
And feel the warmth I didn't know it had,
Helping me balance my body
As I breathe away my thoughts.

There is irony in the expiration dates I find

That fall on your birthday

I drink the last of the milk

Pouring it over my cereal

And try not to wake up my roommate

The sunrise blushes pink over the trees

Shy at 6:45am

But later embracing the world

At 7:20am

And everything is still quiet

If I knew how deeply I would love them,

How they’d warm the fire in my heart

Keeping me warm like sleep for the first time in a while,

If I knew how much they would light my days,

Constellations kissed into my heart

That I can always find when I look into the sky,

I would have changed planes

To stay with them for just a little while longer

To hold on to the stars I can see,

Cassiopeia reminding me where the Milky Way is.

But I’m going home a day after what’s done is done

To the humidity and heat of something I got used to,

To the light pollution that always breaks my heart.

I wonder if Orion will help me find Cassiopeia

A lasting wish to hold on to my dearest loves

That I will leave early

Because I didn’t know how much I would need and love them

Because I didn’t know how much they would love me.

I’ll map my heart with the stellar sequences they showed me

So I never forget where to find the galaxy

That is my love for my second family.

The birds fly above my head in a scattered V

Like a violin string, plucked in slow motion.

The sky is a cold grey blanket on a couch

But I pleasantly welcome its gentle embrace.

The carpeted plains bask in the sunlight

Against the backdrop of the greying sky

Like a rug, sitting in a ray of sunlight in my house,

An area that my previous cat napped in.

My bus passes under 96th Avenue

And before I realize it, we’ve passed under 112th.

The cars pass against the oil paintings,

Waiting to be painted

Like waiting at a bus stop.

The diorama trees glance at me as I pass by

And I wonder who planted them --

A squirrel, perhaps,

Long gone after looking for what they buried,

Food for their children for the winter.

The roads wind around the trees

And I wonder which came first

As I pass a dried river bed.

What used to lay there?

What moss dreamt day and night

At the bottom of the gentle river?

And in the middle of it all, cornflower lakes,

Laying at the bottom of hills and barns

Made of beige and red and cream

With only white picket fences and the skeleton trees around them.

Next, a ribbon of Camazotz houses,

Washi tape against the wallpaper sky.

A singular red balloon held up by a red and white garland;

Who put it there?

One side was let go of to make them realize

They didn’t want to let it go.

Spots of golden are illuminated in the carpeted plains

From holes in the blanketed sky,

Scratched out by your cat over the years.

I see the bus side reflected in the glass

And almost read it in French

With the same confusion I felt in precalculus,

Reading Le Petit Prince and wondering why

My teacher was speaking in English.

I breathe against the aftertaste of coffee’s kiss

And think, it wasn’t bad airplane coffee.

It was what they had in the air

Hand-delivered by tiredness.

Boulder is hushed in a deep blue,

The flatirons a whisper in the backdrop

Hand-painted by clouds.

The Sun is a cataract eye in the clouds

Desperately shining on the apartments to my left

That stick up like bristles in a carpet.

The bare trees hold positions

Like skeleton hands, unable to move from the cold.

They remind me of my hands

Purple in body and white in extension.

I watch the trees pass by,

Looking past a man with snowflake eyelashes,

And think that maybe I do have circulatory issues.

The flatirons approach with dark halos at their heads

And as I approach Boulder, they whisper,

Welcome home.

Winter to me is a warm time

One without snow’s white breath lingering in the air

Winter is dark red nail polish

And a pink and brown polka dot scarf from Paris

That I wear only once a year at home

Usually to see the Nutcracker

Because Houston is warm enough.

Winter is eggnog in my grandparents’ house on Christmas Eve,

A gathering my mother and I leave early for

To sing in the Christmas service at our church.

Winter is layering my favorite sweaters

A gentle cocoon to protect me against the biting breath of the chilling Boulder air.

Winter is decorating the family Christmas tree

While listening to Sufjan Stevens’s Christmas album

And to the sky’s deepest blues.

Winter is driving to the market and getting hot chocolate

To drink while we drive around River Oaks

And talk of the gaudy but entertaining decorations.

Winter is the white elephant gift exchanges,

My sister receiving a box of tea that she’ll never drink

So I steal it from her when it’s my turn

Even though we live in the same house.

Winter is still wearing jeans

And the chill of the air not bothering my legs.

Winter is Polaroid pictures and romanticizing dark skies and fog

My morning breakfasts spent gazing to the skies

Like the way I gaze at my friends when they smile

Winter is the gentle snowfall on December third

A month late, but everlastingly beautiful

Blanketing the trees that now sleep

In the whisper of the wind.

Winter is not minding Boulder’s cold,

Feeling comfortable in just a flannel

To the gaping mouths of my Texan family.

I watched you plant that flower in my garden

Neither of us knowing its name

But still you watered it daily

And it shone in a beautiful light

Until you didn’t know how to take care of it

Leaving it to die.

I watched the flower wilt

Debating whether to save it

But realized that it would be pointless

To bring back something that truly died.

I bury the corpse in the garden;

I need to make a space for something new that I can take care of

But every time I go to water my garden

I still ache at the memory of the beautiful flower

In the now-empty plot of soil.

But I know it’s for the better that I buried that corpse

Because recognizing it was dead and that it can make way for something beautiful

Was a healthy realization

And that resentment is a form of moving on.

We dance in song around the fire

My aunt and mother freeing themselves

And letting their hair dance around them.

We sing harmonies of harnessed fire

That engulf our bodies in the smell of smoke.

And I think how wonderful we are

Alive in flames

Our hearts those of witches that could not be burned

And all of our creature voices joining in to yell

In love and in anger

Take in breaths of the cool air,
Turn the oxygen to carbon dioxide,
Grow cold in your lungs
And through your blood
Because soon, you'll be back home
On a 75°F Christmas Day
Longing for that cold intimacy
In your lungs.

I peer out the window of the plane,

A little under two hours since I last looked.

I see my hometown,

Stars in canals underneath an ocean of pure black.

I can’t recognize the canals

But I know I’m home,

An hour later than what my phone reads,

As if it’s holding on to where I live now.

I remember the hugs I gave my friends earlier,

Their bodies warm and sweet in my arms

Our skin holding each other gently but firmly,

And I miss them,

My second family,

But I’m ready to go home

Just for a little while.

I’ll see them again in photos,

Over 1,500 miles away,

Their happiness drifting over the states that sit between us

Like the smell of popcorn in a movie theater.

The sweet breath of pumpkin fills my mouth and throat,
A fantasy that follows into my lungs,
And I remember my love for the pumpkin's warmth,
Like a kiss I forgot about.

The sunset lays itself across the sky,
Its valleys and hills always changing
Like a gift from the Milky Way we can't see
In a fiery symphony
That leaves lasting kisses in the sky

The quiet air is numbing
Against my unknown cramps.
The leaves hum a whisper
As they carry my thoughts away
For just a split second.
The second is split into two,
One of transportation
And one of pure peace.
The trees, older than I,
Breathe against me tidings of peace,
And I forget about my body.

When you held my face with all the stars in the sky
Could you see the Milky Way?
I wanted the galaxies to collide
But time is different on astronomical levels
I wanted to kiss your hand
But instead I held it in all its warmth
Against my starry face,
Faint with freckles

To cry is to know deepness
And for me, it's often grief and guilt
And I don't understand why
My tears have to burn through my face
When my heart has already been torn through my body,
A part of me is ripped away
My cries tear the hole larger
And I scream and curl into myself
Until I feel nothing

I walk in my newfound neighborhood,

One of spike ball and laughter,

One of yellow leaves and pines.

I stand under a nebula tree,

One of stars of red, orange, and yellow,

And feel all the love of trees

As I watch the stars fall day by day.

If you have the chance to look up at the sky,

You may see clouds of sand scattered,

Sand dunes of water and light meeting.

You may see a coffee sky,

The creamer not quite mixing.

Sometimes, blankets can be seen,

Softening the world around us

And making some depressed.

If you’re lucky, or unlucky,

You’ll find yourself in the sky that’s on the ground

A jacket of fog to go with your morning coffee.

And depending on the light in your area

You may find a freckled sky of stars,

One that resembles your friend's face.

And sometimes, you can look at the sky and see nothing at all

But know that everything is relative

And the blue comes from Rayleigh scattering.

The hungry bees swirl the trash cans

Because their homes have been in a genocide

That prioritizes sameness over biodiversity.

They approach my chamomile tea,

Hoping for something to pollinate,

But I have to go to class.

The university claims to promote biodiversity,

But why, then, am I woken up at 8 a.m.

To the lawnmowers thrice a week?

Why, then, do I see bees circling the fallen leaves

Instead of seeing them circling flower bushes?

Why is my neighborhood full of grass that always looks fake or dead

Instead of bushes that harbor caterpillars and butterflies and pollinators?

Because we humans prioritize profits over life.

We desire authenticity, then kill it for money.

The morning’s breath is chilly,

A wonderful surprise to go with the “dreary” clouds,

Ones that give me a sense of calm rather than depression.

I have no trouble getting up at 6:50 a.m.,

My circadian rhythm following the path even when I don’t need to.

A warm breakfast array greets me,

Scrambled eggs with a sausage

And vanilla yogurt with blueberries, peaches and granola.

The comfort in my stomach is enough to warm my heart in the cool air,

My walk to class seeming longer than five minutes

And I think, I had time to get coffee.

I thought that I would dread writing at 8 a.m.,

My mind falling into sleep at inconvenient times,

But my professor greets us like a warm breakfast each morning

And she insists we call her Ali.

She speaks of narrative writing,

How we are not our writing

And that it exists outside of us.

As I write this I reflect on that lesson,

My writing being created from my mind

But my writing not being my mind alone.

Unlike my usual day, I have no more class until the afternoon

So I think I’ll stop by the cafe

And wish I brought my gloves with me.

The air in the cafe is warm as I read the menu,

Almost as if I’m feeling each drink in the air.

I think I might get a coffee

But I’m smitten at the idea of drinking apple cider again

And as I smell the 8oz cup of love before I put the lid on

One that has my name written in print with an apple above it,

I am transported to Navasota, Texas, in November of my childhood,

The Bluebonnet cabin filling with the smells of hot chocolate and apple cider.

I’m transported to my second grade classroom

To the day that my teacher involved the class in making apple cider,

The hot liquid burning my tongue and breathing warmly down my throat.

I think of doing my homework in the library next door

But all I want to do right now is sit outside in the breeze,

Holding the apple cider warm in my hands,

Like holding the hands of a friend on a cold day.

I want to sit next to the fir trees outside

Unsure of their specific names

And smell the apple cider.

I am sad to leave this beautiful love,

But my hands are cold

And cold hands seldom write calculus well.

The magic starts with a small flame,

Sparking breath into candles waiting to be lit

There are many types of candles

But when all lit at once, they are one fire

The music of the fire encompasses all near it,

The magic working its charm by reaching to the hearts of those with wicks.

The magic is a photon of sound,

And it’s blown out before you realize it as the music comes to a stop.

The matcha breathes into my throat

And I'm in the rain again,

The water whose kisses I welcomed instead of avoided.

This oddness, this beautiful oddness

I find myself falling in a kind of love

With this thing I hold in my hands I once avoided

But now I hold like the kiss of rain water

The weather most beloved in my heart

Lies not in the Sun's kiss that brings out my faint starry freckles

Nor is it found in the fields of flowers that bask in solar life,

Photosynthesizing in love and growth.

The weather that I am forever in love with

Lies in the foggy October mornings in my hometown,

My breakfast cool in my hands as I watch the dark sky.

My dearest love can be found in the rain clouds,

Ready to let go of their heaviness and lie in peace

As well as in the days of gentle cold,

My lungs filling with cool air as I walk in my neighborhood.

The times of the year I treasure the most

Are when the Sun never seems to get enough rest,

Sleeping through the hazy morning and bidding the world goodnight as we eat our dinners.

The weather known as dreary, gloomy and depressing

Is that of which I forever want to bask in.

The comfort of the cloudy days will forever be my home.

The train hums a melody

Alone in the night

The song holds and cradles me in a hush

What does the train think about?

What of it, of the rain?

Do the flowers grow around the train?

It’s 1:41

The train and my solitude

We brush paths and breathe in the night

What burdens it carries,

Alone in its stories

Not ever finding its rest

Maybe the train goes

From places to heart rows

Delivering needs that arose

All of the stop signs

Sit in and wait for the

Train to come and glance by

The slowing rumble of the train tracks

A humming lullaby

I doze off in the hazy evening

The hush enchanting me

Maybe in my dreams

The train will come, and I’ll get on

Knowing that it’s loved

The flowers around kiss its wheels

The train and I sit in the darkness

Watching stars fly by

We hum and sing into the night

Halfway conscious songs

Upon the quilted plains

I feel the flow of life again

The horizon is a faded relative

One cannot truly touch

The change in gravity

Fazes me in and out of existence

The plane holds my motion like a chrysalis

Shielding me from outer physics

A plain in the field of a woman’s body

Reminds me of our Earthly heritage

Thirds are never truly perfect

Cylindrical shapes follow below

The mountains loom over civilization

Proving with unspoken truth

That our home will always be more than we ever will be

A large star exists in front of me, larger than all of us

My original ancestor says to me,

“There’s a reason life is called a cycle,

For I will die and create humanity”

In the static dimension

The grey holds me

The plane lands

And my heart is born again

I land and

A plane flies into the skies like a star

For they are simply stars

Reaching for others of different form

She’s not mine and I’m not hers

But her lips flower in a blossom

All the time my love is blurred

But she held my hands when I cried

A lifelong friend, she is

The sweetest girl I know

Signing each other’s yearbooks

I can’t believe we go our separate ways

But I’ll always love her

In her Instagram stories

And the light she stood in

On Christmas Day

Waking up from a period-woven dream

I don’t notice the blood stains on my bed

I look later and think, “if it does no pain,

Why not leave it there?

It won’t come out anyway”

My mom always told me

The way to clean the blood out of cloth

Is to spit on it and wash it under cold water

Soon after

But if I’m drowsy

And quite lousy

I’ll forget and let myself forget

Drowsiness could never untie the ropes that keep me to my bed

The period blood I’ve lost will always come to faint my head

I try to sit up, to clean up the stains

But I’m left to lay and to stay in the remains

I mentioned you today

A memory of us from a year ago

As I described the memory I felt it all so vividly

And I became aware of how happy I am to have you in my life

How happy I was then, having been your friend for a few months

How happy I am now, in our friendship I never would have expected

You live in my life and in my dreams

And I hope to always have you

Driving through Texas

I’ve been this way before

Listening to all the classics

It feels like home on the road

I remember my friends all back home

We’ve all grown up and are starting new lives

I wonder how long our connection will stay

As I move three days away

But there’s the way the trees kiss the sky

The way the wildflowers smile in the Sun

That makes me feel like home is anywhere

My mom ponders a shopping list

My dad sings along to the song in his head

My sister’s eyelashes make cobwebs

Our little Subaru taking us on a universe adventure

There definitely was something there

I look past the rose-tinted glasses, seemingly seeing everything

I look at our old conversations like leaves on a tree

With the way you keep me in regard I find myself wondering,

Was there something there?

Something forever unspoken between us?

An optic thread visible in the mind’s eye that lightly sewed us together?

I don’t remember when I stopped seeing that thread

I thought I found it again when I saw you again, but what I saw was a wish of a thread

Accompanied by a wish that I could sew with it again

But now I see that the whole time, there’s been another thread

A thread of our friendship

I’m always awake for my nightmares.

They rarely come to me in my dreams,

Sticking to plaguing me during the day

And tearing me from reality.

In my nightmares, my sister dies,

Killed in a school shooting

Or molested by a group of cops.

My friends die, too,

Their bleeding bodies in my arms

Sitting like unfinished paintings.

I die in my nightmares sometimes,

Where I am the one bleeding in a friend’s arms,

Where I am the one in a hospital bed

Or where I view my friends reading my diary

In my room after I died.

In my nightmares I see my mother

Screaming in pain in the bathroom after a cyst popped

And I see myself in her

Because God knows we have the same design of our reproductive organs.

I see in my nightmares my friends leaving me

Which hurts as much as them dying.

And all the time these nightmares

Always find me when I am awake.

The beauty that is within us as humans

Is the beauty of gods and goddesses

I wonder why the puzzle pieces don’t fit

Why I cannot define the edges

I have everything here, so why does nothing fit?

I have the individual pieces, but I don’t know how to put them together

In my naïve state, I don’t recognize their connections or the picture they make

You once told me that everything I touch turns to gold

An expression of beauty, of your love for me

But I’m afraid I’ve touched your heart to gold

Because your heart has grown heavy with the truth of my touch

I had a dream that you painted my face in my kitchen

It was nothing major but it made me happy just to be with you again

Your brush strokes on my face didn’t tickle, they felt smooth and soft

I never found out what it is you were painting on my face, but I think I know now

That it was happiness

You drew on your hand with red ink,

Bringing to life lines of space and fabric

So I drew on mine with blue ink,

Stars for your space,

In hopes that we can share them

Share space, share stars, share hands

I admire the freckles on your face

I grasp quick glances into your speckled galaxy,

Blue light swimming through your veins

I imagine connecting the stars on your face,

Traveling through your quilted mind

In your heart a door opens

Your soul’s ribbon dances a gentle waltz

I feel the waltz as I wander through a labyrinth of roses

Your ribbon’s waltz entangled with mine

I feel the newborn dance birth its horizon

As I place a soft kiss upon a withered rose

As we met in the hallway, you seemed to already know I was there

Maybe you did already know

Do I know that you knew?

Anyway, you approached me and waved to me

You left a trail that I could join whenever, the notion of an invitation that you knew I would accept when I was done talking to my friend

You knew

You knew and you allowed happening

You seemed to reach out your hand

And I was pulled into a movement that you orchestrated with your gentle, subconsciously encompassing music

I was pulled into your waltz

And then we were alone together, despite being surrounded by people

The notion of a dance was ours as we walked in the hallway, lightly leaning against each other on-and-off

Our faces were inches apart

And maybe you knew

Maybe I knew, too

A photon does not experience time, yet when it is emitted it lasts for eons

That moment of our faces turned towards each other will forever last in my mind

There’s an echo that I can hear but it’s from the future

Something was different this time that I looked over at you

You were already gazing back

Out of the many echoes I sent out, one came back to me, reflecting off of your eyes that were gazing at me

Maybe you have been sending me the same echoes and I have only received a few

To connect is to feel the pulse of blood through your fingers.

Take a moment to focus on your heartbeat.

Feel the wavelengths crashing against your rib cage, adjacent to your breathing.

Even as my heart beats and the blood pulsates through my body it has no effect on the still wind of my world.

Even as I feel the resounding vibration of the wavelengths in my lungs, I feel no wind.

The wind is separated from me by a glass wall.

A wall, built by my conscious.

It holds invisible hands with my ephemeral existence, disconnecting me.

You were my first word

The first one I ever tried to say

A breath of sounds and lovely vowels I hardly understood

But my parents knew all the while

That my love for you was deep enough to put a word for you

Even before I said mommy or daddy

You never understood my childish behavior but you loved me all the same

Sitting with me in my room as I annoyed you with affection, how did you put up with me?

This arrow is removed from my body

But this wound will leave a mark on me forever

If I could turn every blue leaf into orange again by picking the grains off one by one,

Would anyone notice the change?

The stars are long gone

But we can still see their glow

Long after they've skidded off into oblivion.

The colors are vibrant

But the greys tell the truth