content warning, body horror :3
note that this poem was written a year back

I hope you find your solace.

it's almost
ethereal
how I feel
no sensation
in my legs in my arms in my
dragging myself along the gravely, gritty sand, rubbing against blister and bruise, breaking open and closing as tides of pus and dune, day and night, as the waves and troughs of a tsunami, the gravely, gritty feeling in my throat, dehydrated, solace, oasis in sight? delirious, I can't tell mirage from reality, the lines are blurred and I can't see my hands, my hands, where are my hands? they're gone, who replaced my grippers with stumps, I'm not a tree, I'm not an animal, you can't chop me up and harvest my parts and please, spare me, spare me of the pain, pain, it hurts, can I drink blood? can I fuel myself with my own fluids leaking out of my servered flesh, exposed wiring and casings, a red, moist piñata with no candy inside, just a damp rag, smearing over the floor, creating a maroon, crimson coat lane line, can I find solace fueling myself with my blood? can I be a parasite onto myself, can I be a leech that drinks my own blood? can I, can I, can I find oasis? can I find rest, rest these bones, bones exposed to open air, it hurts, hurts doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling right now, I'm bleeding out and starving of thirst, thirst for rest, for oasis, for let the dead rest in peace, leave me alone, these dunes are my grave, my grace, my tomb of sandstone and perhaps the sands will shift and I'll be laid to rest, engulfed by the moving hills of the living desert. Is this solace? Will you remember

me?

will you chronicle this crawl, this forward breaststroke through the sand? chronical pain follows me, will you detail how I feel or skim over my pain, you aren't me, you don't know the sensation of sandpaper on soft skin, blasting against me, my empty, bony chest, my, my, my soul, will my soul find solace? will I rest in peace? am I on the final stretch, the last pitch? is this the crux, the wall stopping me from resting? is this the dam that blocks my swim forward? is this my grave?

Is this my solace?
Is this my redemption?

My skin, parchless parchment, saltbed, yellowed pages, stiffer then an old tyre, tired, ready to break like bare birch bark, buried bones, brittler then sandstone on suntanned plastic, the layers of fat and meat stacked like a strawberry creme layer cake, dried like chinese roast pork belly, chewy like slow-smoked beef jerky, stiff like expired instant ramen, brittle as peppermint-ginger bark, as hungry, starving, can I cannibalize myself if it keeps me alive? Am I a creature only staying alive for nourishment? Am I another human with no sense of morals or judgement? Am I another suffering soul stuck in a predicament that I can't repent, preventational measures don't have an effect, stuck in a forward crawl with no end in sight, is this the crossing of the Atlantic on only human hands? Is this the crossroads that reinvents the hard work and events that plague my descent? Oasis in sight, the lights get brighter, this struggle is nigh, the final pitch of cliff.

Is this my solace?
Is this my final feast?

Are my eyes tricking me? Are my goals, my dreams, are my needs and wants all a trick of the light, a mirage and nothing more? Is this momentum a stampede for nothing, nothing at all and nothing in particular, are there only shadows and slivers of meaning in the mound of dirt I call my ambition, the nameless but nothing, none? Is the pit that we burn our money in? is this the

sun seething, scratching at surfaces too
burns, breathing seems too hard to
see things, nothing clear anymore, blue
skies teething at my mind, loose
rock and needles stabbing my youth
see me, yelling at the earth, how pathetic it must hurt,
war crimes can't spare a dime, low-ball a nickel for some time
solace something, stillwater surface ripples
TRAN-

sister, why do you fill yourself with such
boring, useless drinks? don't you have a better
use, something else to do with your time?
bland, it lacks flavor, so why do you savor this
drink? why would you shell out savings to
consume, to drink these cans of la croix
which, as always, as meaningless as the last and as
meaningful as the next.

littered with empty cans of la croix, my sister's desk
sister doesn't hobby or skills, sister doesn't chat or flirt
sister does nothing else but drink empty cans of la croix

Charlie Kirk: a bigot, a racist, and now he's dead. Charlie was shot a day ago, September 10th, 2025, during a speech at the University of Utah, and the internet, being the internet, started sharing and posting videos of a bullet piercing his neck and releasing a pool of blood. No dramatic action music, no "get down, Mr. Debater," just a man getting shot. I won't try to justify or support him being shot, nor will I defend people saying that he's just sharing his opinion. This isn't an essay about politics. This is an essay about a man getting shot.

When some of my friends first watched the video, they were shocked. Some felt sick, some couldn't stop thinking about it. They were, for lack of a milder word, traumatized. And I get it - a man getting shot isn't something you see every day.

What did I feel when I saw the video? Nothing. I just kept scrolling. Thought about it for a bit, let a loop while I really picked out the details. Before I saw the video, I had no clue who Charlie Kirk was - blissfully unaware, so I really didn't have any bias in saying, this video really did nothing to me.

I saw Saigon Execution, the photograph, when I was 10. Morbid curiosity got to me, and I found the full video of Nguyễn Văn Lém getting shot and then bleeding out on Wikipedia. I was 10, and being a little ****, I kinda went on with my day. I saw a man getting shot, and I felt nothing. This has happened more than 4 times now. Am I really that desensitized? I didn't have any sort of abusive childhood, and browsed the web moderately often, mostly on kid-safe platforms. I was living free. Maybe it's my OCD, my bucket list of various mental ailments. A man dies, and I don't feel a thing.

Does Charlie Kirk deserve my empathy? Should I share compassion for someone I've learned has been actively fighting against rights for LGBTQ+ people like me? If he knew me, he would hate me, but should I hate this man for expressing his opinions, which he has a right to have?

so you're
hurting.
perhaps your varicose vessels and veins are tangled like twine, unkempt nest of bats inside your pipes, can't afford a plumber so twisted thoughts and tubes take hostage

perhaps every inch, every itch, every itty bitty scratch or scar of skin hurt like a hot iron searing into my fleshly steak, every contact, near miss, every graze stings, like bent needles coated with filth, digging it's way under skin

perhaps your heart bleeds white, your eyes ooze black, chopped in half by a hyperbole, broken and duct-taped together like a shabby old car

so you're
hurting.

Don't worry
left and right and
up and down and here and there and
east and west and north and south and
everyone's hurting.
Everyone's screaming synchronized, some sort of metronome fueled by stabbing and spite
so sing! share your sorrows and sadness, go make some noise
no one's here to hear, we're all too selfish to care, so sing!
be louder than everything. it'll probably fall on deaf ears any
way we can make it out of this prison?
everyone's hurting, so
Don't worry
you aren't so different

have you ever heard
about the waxwing
wanderer
who took the road less traveled
plan B was their plan A
who flew too close too the moon
whose brittle-body and obsidian feathers
shook and shattered
and thus concluded their flight
good night, good morning

standing in the limelight
sunspots on a clear day
shining, sliding, sneaking its squint
onto my skin, myself, my soul
museum piece, masterfully, meticulously
dished, dealt onto a display
every patch, pore, pixel screaming
"look at me, look at me"

I cried to the mirror
blinded by the blankness
the lack of a reply, a darkroom
let me develop, let me see the light of day
let me be blinded by the bright
let me be lost in the high of my life,
let the leaves of the sun flutter on my skin
let me be burned by the moonshine
let this waxwing free of this cage
let me shatter in the moonlight

and the little bird *** away into the brush
It’s wingtips gilded in a dash of gold glimmer
no applause, no curtains close, no limelight, just
an uneventful birdwatching concluded