it's an all too familiar, all too ironic situation —
knowing safety, softness —
lingering tastes off darkness' tongue,
now trailing down our skin.

the dark has taught us that
safezone is having the night skies
perched around us
and the moon rises from every touch, slipping,
from every kiss, ending;

and yet, how can something so dim, so obscure
remind me of the sun and its clarity?
darling, these rendezvous have taught me that
you are the lovechild of the night and the day
and i am likened to a vampire
whose fatal flaw is its
longing for the sun.

oh, to see you,
touch you,
kiss you

in the daylight

without burning.
without hiding.
without fears and pretenses.




and yet, we can only be in this all too familiar, all too ironic situation;
we can only be, in the safety of the nightfall —
we can only be, darling, in safety of the dark.

This is an apology to my younger self
for letting her forget the ixora bracelets
tucked in her tattered notebooks;
for letting her blur the outline of Artemis’ body
resting the edges of a waxing moon.
This is an apology for the poetry
and the songs she tuned out
that could’ve saved her life.
This is an apology for allowing her
to stop hearing the midnight stories
of the souls who get lost in unknown towns
concealed beyond
the gaps in their ribs;
for allowing her to stray too far
from mountain-and-sea sunsets
that she can no longer smell
the salty air
and remember the color
of the twilight skies.

This is an apology for allowing her to fall out of love
with the things she wanted
to stay in love with —
for allowing her to fall out of love
with the things that kept her alive.

This is an apology —
for peeling the tattoo scabs
between the drags on a cigarette,
for sleeping drunk on a pile of ***** laundry,
for wanting to keep
the dreamers in the rye,
and yet falling off the cliff
two pages before the ending.
This is an apology for writing her dreams
in a bottle and throwing it out
into the open ocean;
now those dreams
are nautical miles away,
lost in the domes
of a sunken city.

This is an apology to my younger self
for all the things she wanted to be
that I never became —
and an apology
for all the things I am
that she never wanted to be.

And yet, this too is a promise to her
that it’s okay:
it’s okay to lose yourself
in places you don’t like.
It’s okay to wake up and find yourself
confined in a body
you no longer seem to know.
It’s okay, darling;
someday, you’ll find your way back.

I’ll find my way back.

We’ll find our way back
to who we’re supposed to be.

And it’ll be home.

his lips would remind you of cold tuesday afternoons made for coffee and falling apart. he never really kissed with so much intimacy but he kissed me nonetheless, and maybe those were enough — those steady, demanding kisses, until all i'm left with are sighs and shoulders carved with his name. my fingers, lost in his hair, like withered roses catching fire. my lips, swollen and red, like sunsets begging for the night to come home. my heartbeats, carelessly, hastily stitched inside the hem of his sleeves.

but i stayed in his apartment, slept in his bed, and wore his clothes; like an incoherent word misplaced in a haystack, like a poem, half-naked on the kitchen sink, unraveled by the faintest brushes of skin. slow and claiming. fast and rough. he never really held me close enough, tight enough, but he held me nonetheless, and for a while — just for a while, i could pretend that he wasn't the embodiment of all the things i got to hold but could never get to keep.


he never really looked at me with love or with an intensity that burns, but he gazed nonetheless — almost lost and lust-hazed; calculating and restrained, like i was every poetry he wasn't supposed to write but had written anyway. and i gazed back, at my hands resting against steady movement of his chest, at his dim-morning eyes, at the slight part of his lips.

and his lips — i know they would remind you of cold tuesday afternoons, made for coffee and falling apart. and i know that it wasn't love.

it wasn't love,
but it's pretty close.

An ocean of fire
Baptize me
In your desire