tip toes to an imaginary line
drawn in the sand,
speaks in shadows,

tenderness, raw and sharp.

raised by wolves
she chews to the bone.

kiss the wind
my love is gone.

It’s never easy
starting midstream,
when your joints squeak like old vinyl.

Worse to end just as you begin,
editing hope into bullet points,
buffing your portfolio like a coffin lid.
You kneel to metadata while the holy algorithm decides
if you're human enough to be blessed.

Better to read old Nabokov,
nap in your robe
(the good one with pockets),
wait for the mail like it’s 1998
when catalogs still mattered.
Let purpose dissolve, like the vitamin
you dropped in the sink.

You failed to fail,
which sounds noble
but feels more like
accidentally surviving.

So drift toward the grocery by the newsstand,
nod to the pretty barista with the knife-edge bangs,
pretend the papayas mean something.

You’re the median of middle-aged.
Your knees, both traitors.
Your dreams, reruns.

These lines limp
like your fifth attempt
to rebrand the layoff as a sabbatical.
Don’t derail, just project
your better self on a screen.
Crop the hair, dim the lighting,
hide the existential dread
behind a well-placed emoji.

Let rhyme stutter
like a pull-string toy,
half-broken,
slightly too cheerful.
Feet unsure, eyes fogged
(by pollen, by memory, by news).

There’s no noir here,
no brooding detective,
no dame worth lighting a cigarette for.

Just this:
the echo of effort,
forms half-filled,
where even your name looks uncertain.

So let’s call it.
Let’s bury the draft,
archive the ambition,
delete the app.

End
where we never really
began.

I loved the way you touched me
when my eyes were closed in the sunshine
when it was quiet in the moonlight
and that made it all right

I wish it could’ve last forever
perfection when clothes were laid on the floor
and words were not the language we used.

when you saw me how you wanted me, and how I wanted you too.

but alas,
the day is rarely that bright
or illuminated like that night

so perfection
was met with a curfew
one too short for me
and you

I'm just a poet,
wouldn't you know it
I lace my lines, then boldly throw it.
I spill my ink where silence grows,
twisting truth in rhythmic prose.

I flip the script, I drop the beat,
with crooked rhyme and dancing feet.
I stitch my pain in stitched-up verse,
a soft-spit spell, a velvet curse.

I break the meter, bend the frame,
then tag my thoughts with fire and flame.
I glide through grit and velvet air,
my voice a scar, my breath a flare.

I speak in echoes, glitch and glow it.
I'm just a poet;
Wouldn't you know it?
A wild-mouth priest of streets and skies,
who walks on words and never lies.

It knocked
softly
a breath at the door
but I
bolted the windows
and swallowed the key.

It came wearing warmth,
but I mistook it
for fire,
for teeth,
for grief with a new face.

So I fled,
faster than joy
could reach out its hand
afraid it might feel
like home.

And
I’ll never be beautiful for anyone,
Not even for you,
I will never hide my chickenpox,
Grind me to sand, and I'll shout to the wind,
Wash me! Wash me away!

I’ll never pretend that I am pretty for anyone,
Not even for you,
I’ll let my skin dry like the Atacama desert,
I’ll let the harsh mountain storm bite my face,
The eagles eat my flesh on the tower of silence, so
There is nothing left to dream about,
Not even bone dust for the rain,

I’ll fight like gladiators, not to be beautiful for anyone,
Not even for you,
I won’t let the clouds overshadow my scalp,
I’ll pull right now, one by one, every hair follicle,

What you ask me to be is not beauty, it is a butterfly
That flies and flies around a light bulb
Until it dies

A shadow that weaves white nights,
I will not invent myself to be pretty for anyone,
Not even for you,

If you wish to enter my blood,
You have to swim in the imperishable waters,