i dont like the feelings you give me
like discarded gifts with ripped wrapping paper,
a "sorry" and a promise for more later.
anger builds like a carpenter early in the morning
restructuring and stabilizing walls i put up
for people like you, and i knew but here i am.
always relying on the world outside myself
to lend a hand. and *******, can i breathe please?
suffocating on everything you think i should be
where's the spiritual audit?
where's karma?
where's the righteous accounting for being everything i said i was, for not doing the things you think i did, and for not dying.
no cameras to show how ****** up this all is,
no one to hold my hand tightly as they say what i really needed to hear two years ago:
NOT THIS ONE.

the death: beginning

last night
a part of me died
and i hadn't realized it was taking its last final breath
until i finally couldn't feel it anymore

no amount of music, no amount of talking would blur it out
once again, a death in silence
i couldn't even cry or remorse for what i lost

such parts have died before
but this was my last try(i said so)
and it just hurt so much

i slept with a hollow
woke up with overwhelming numbness
feeling so, so blue

like you could hit me, and i'd cry for what of me died
not because of the pain
because it didn't even hurt—just went numb
and by that—
it hurt so much i didn’t have words

i laughed, went for a walk, listened to music, tried to talk
nothing.
it wasn't going to return.
it was gone.

the urge

like when light leaves the dying’s eyes
like when you watch someone take their final breath,
realize it's never going to come back

like a candle flickering for one last time—
the spoiled wax, of no point
like a bulb going out, its ligament being torn
like a child growing up, having seen oh so much—
they just don’t have any dreams anymore

a part of me died
and today i organize its funeral
with no watchers, no stand-bys
just like always

and to think i'd gotten anywhere
with understanding and accepting—
nowhere.
not even with people,
because they're the ones who killed me

the urge to make the call, ask—beg—why’d you **** me like that?
but just—who would even understand?

i can't even see the screen, writing this with a vision so blurry
eyes so swollen—i even breathe funny
i woke up
wanted to sleep
chose to get up
wish i could’ve slept, because i’ve been crying since

it’s been hours
i was lying curled up
begging for someone to listen
to hold—to just tell me that it’s alright
that i still can be loved like i’m whole

and the funny thing—
i’ve reached the number of deaths
no one in one lifetime could have caused them all

but i let people do it—
the same way, the same streaks


the acceptance

no hopes anymore
no positivity—
it’s just difficult
how do you suppose i can just get back up?

i taste the salt in my tears
find my nose runny

i went back to where i fought so hard to get out from
i felt it—
the death

how it went from barely breathing
to not breathing at all

how it went from staying still at the edge of hope
to crashing against all borders and falling off

how it felt like i’d been drowned, thrown, teared through, broken, dissipated
i—i just can’t

i’ll stop crying in a bit
and just go back to living
except with another part of me dead

i don’t even know how i shall mourn her death
too dumb, but she just had hopes

i’ll wipe my nose, wipe away my tears
get the ice-pack to bring down the swelling
for once drained, once it’s all out

either way, i’ll be a shell of what i’ve been all this while
a bit more hollow on the inside

this time it made no noise
the fall seemed to be never-ending
usually i heard it break, scatter—
the fragments and shards—i picked them up piece by piece

but this time—
it just fell
freefall?
i’m barely alive now

as long as this body exists
with the slightest of life on it
there will be no mourners for all the parts of me that are no more


the questioning

i’m a museum of everything i’ve ever loved
and there’s graves within me
of places where i lost a part of me

and often i don’t remember them all
but sometimes, when a situation asks one kind of mine
i step by the graveyard of my own self
and often mourn them myself

i meet people
and i give them some bits of me
ones i didn’t know existed long before i’d met the person in front of me

and then that part stays with them
they decide—often unknowingly—that it’s in their pocket
on their shoulder, in their fist
somehow never close enough to reside in their mind or heart

and yet sometimes
these parts get lost in people
watching them leave

often they’re simply handed back
sometimes they’re killed

and i need no understanding of how i end up giving them out
like handing candies to children on a halloween night
uncaring who gets which one, no favoritism
blindly trusting, i just head straight right in

always unknown what and how much they hold of mine
i didn’t even plan on trusting or attaching
and yet somehow i did
and then i’m left with nothing but the mere spirit

feeling the hollow
and the lost
how do i not cave in to death
and keep going on like a fool?
how do i live on when i'm barely alive anymore?

the dreaming

grief is sickening, like long aged sour frosting
numbness woven into it, disturbing and devasting and what not
it breathes like something real, coils in the pit of my stomach leaving my body to ache in silence, to reel, feel, and fear

sometimes i feel like i'm stitched together by borrowed light
but then i ain't any moon—perhaps a starlight?

there's parts of me made of people and moments that weren't even meant to stay
and in return all the pieces i gave of myself
so it would be right to say i'm a mismatched puzzle, always missing, never complete

this light burns, seethes, flickers, garbles, echoes
this grief doesn't scream, it lingers
like the perfume that i once used to wear
and that old teddy bear to hug
on nights when i used to feel hollowed

it wraps around my bones
around my muscles and my organs
especially my heart and my lungs

and it squeezes in tight, like a rope that's being pulled from both sides
the knot just seems to grow in size, blindness coming around my eyes

only i know it exists, this grief—
as it breathes under my laughter, only i can feel it

it splinters every single breath i try to take
ghosts all my memories, makes me want to forget
like a constant static—this pain is immense

i've got invisible bruises, oh so many—
you'd see them clearer if you were to see the way my eyes lie in their residues

the death: end

i carry my dead
like folded crushed paper notes that i don't wanna let go of
from the maybe's to the it's never happening
it seemed to be something, now it's a sad little nothing

oh so broken, everywhere i go
i offer parts of me like i'm a free use and throw tissue
but what can i do?
when they never ask for how i am—
only ask of me, how can i help?

went down the lane of thoughts—one that busied my mind and made the voices stop
they blurred, i held the blade in my hand, even my mind stuttered
you've been away and strong for so long, not again
but the pain was immense

yesterday a piece of me had died
and today i was told to

how could i possibly accept all this sorrow
and feel my heart do the free falls again and again?

i have three cuts
not proper—the blade was too weak
i tried to write 'loser'
got stuck at the e
lost myself
returned to and wondered:
perhaps i've got a thick skin

disgusts me—my own head
i still keep on wondering
why can’t i just be dead





this could go on and on
i live in a paradox
despise, wanting to still be alive
deny, wanting to die, despite my tries
a misfit in the world of those who seem to be natural
at finding their own places
i have no one to call my own
why would anyone even want me as their own?

I cry for countless things
For birds with broken wings
For toys left by growing kids
For discarded wedding rings

I cry for characters on screen
Personas I've never truly seen
Whose stories echo familiar
With wisdom that I might glean

I cry for broken hearts
For unsuccessful starts
For fields of wildflowers
That are staked then ripped apart

I cry for rivers that can't be crossed
I cry for things not yet lost
And even within remarkable love
I cry, knowing what love will cost

I have a friend who cries
For rose-tinted skies
For the first looks given
From a newborn babies eyes

She cries for happy endings
And noble, generous spending
She cries for torn friendships
That are slowly but surely mending

She cries from staggering laughter
Or jumbled kitchen disasters
Or while attempting obscure talents
That we both know she never will master

I think it's something special
To have tears so freely deployed
At the sight of heartbreak and beauty alike
What a gift, to cry for joy.

What I see in her brings tears to my eyes
I crave that untethered jubilee
And in my longing, I realize
The beginnings of it in me

Are we cosmic—
Or chaos in disguise?
Our love burned bright,
Yet so does my sorrow—
Like the stars,
Still shining
Long after
They’ve died.

I look across the street
at the woman walking by.

Her slender form
in bright reds dressed,
a beating crimson heart
against the exsanguinated grey
of dry asphalt.

I look across the street
and dare not move.

Because my mother
raised me undeserving
of the time of someone
whom bleeds life into
an exsanguinated day.

I look across the street
and nothing more.

As my father taught me
to live unremarkable
and let all songbids
fade away from memory...

I could not walk with her.

I lay here
on ashen asphalt
and wait for the red
to bleed out of sight.

I look across the street
and exsanguinate
any hope of lasting love.

the ground freezes in winter

i knock three times on the hardened earth

it knocks back hollow

withered or weathered below

we carry on; sweet and thick and sorrowful

dozens of failed relationships
countless teardrops, going breathless
when will love find me
must I chase, or must I flee
I yearn for love
— to find me