The air is heavy, dreary, and bleak.
When burdens overwhelm blessings
The exit beckons to me
But I am bound to stay.

Let me take a pill
Obliterate my past.
For a peaceful departure
From this world, I don’t belong
My time is up, I want to go.

What if the tides bent out from the shore;
Waves broke from themselves, curling out
and up, scraping the sky,
rolling back.
They would collide into each other in the middle of the sea
and then fall, plunge
into some slit of darkness, of magma

as the clock strikes the bell tolls
clang
clang
clang
the steeple has never looked as high as it does
when you are standing on the tip
looking down at the cobblestones
there is no room in the temple
for the sinner
who does not repent
the

Wrong
Is how still the air is, standing
Is how grey the sky is, weeping
Is how red the fallen leaf is, dying
Is how green the grass is, living
Living, living, living
A breath in, a breath out
Taken for granted—granted, it’s

Are these the pangs of birth or the aftershocks of death?
What awaits me beyond this shore?
And even now when legs and feet have failed me
The sand shows trails, like serpents, of this fragility
I bleed: the gravel grinds my skin and flesh

"Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never one beautiful, it was just red." - Kait Rokowski

I wanna make poetry out of the way the boy who was my first grade best friend

The boat reeked of fish.

Today I pulled
my grandmother’s body
from the mouth of the river,
unpeeled milkflowers and seawater
from her hair, and knelt over her
the way we bend over our own reflections:
to drink.
Nainai, ni ren shi wo me?*

True silence isn't sealed lips
it's unread texts, deleted history
it's a phone that someone never picks up
The line the dead girl's parents still pay for
even though there is no one to answer it.
the principal is adamant on thoughts

i have never loved another in the way i have found myself to love you.
i have loved you the way the sun loves the dandelions
and the way the tides love the moon.
i simply cannot imagine a world where we didn’t save one another.

sometime before the clock hit eleven,
i thought of you.
i imagined the threat your caressing fingers possess
as they trace targets on the side of my belly.

Even when she was young, Sonya had never been afraid of the supernatural.

bent backs
grasses bent in a tweak of fingers
bent my fingers bent my bones
my toes in
earth sweating dew
digging a way out

sweetness
sucking on a single clover

I will count them all
shards of glass in the mirror

every part of me adds
up to nothing

I’m standing in front of violets
in front of a Renaissance painting
and wondering what do I have

in this town
words hold hostages
not meaning.
if i cry i will
bleed, and i will
lose,
integrity and i will
rip apart the frontdrop that has
made my portraits pretty
for (maybe) minutes on end.

I know
that when I die
I’ll sink into the soil
Be eaten by all the things I’ve eaten
Become the dirt for all to walk upon
I know that my thoughts are just neurons firing
That my heart is a collection of molecules
that happen to beat

Does it end where it all began?
Since the death of my mother
Something inside is broken
from deep deep
within
I feel like I’ve sinned
Thoughts ramble through my head
I feel like I too want to be dead
Yes it’s wrong
it’s not right

On a cold February evening I learned one of life’s biggest lessons: appreciate what you have at present because once it’s taken away from you, all you’ll have left are memories. For me that ‘it’ was my fifteen month old niece, Bano.

Among the freezing breeze of swastikas,
The only awakened robot
Was the word of the innocent.

II

She was of three hearts,
Like a sphinx,
Child, escapist, and thief.

III

Even now that she’s gone they won’t stop moving and knocking, I wanted to say How could you say that you love her when you won’t leave her alone, and Darl knows it and instead he sets fire to the goddamn barn. The goddamn barn.

Falling , falling down to earth
toward the place I was given birth
I close my eyes and count to three
A sad requiem for an unknown dream.
Why is it that people of this nation
Are only in it for the fascination?
Always on the run

The milkman used to come up this way,
Bringing us his creamy milk, and stories, back in the day.
A dusty train followed him, rising up into the sky,
His buggy drove low, but his spirits sang high.
In my mind, I still see his horse-drawn car,

I look at your face,
the flowers in the vase,
I never wanted to be in this place,
As I pace the floor,
Searching for the door,
I realize I miss you more,
So I kneel at the cross,
And pray for my loss,
Wondering why you paid the cost . . .

He woke up shivering, the cold hard floor having been his bed for the night. His brain throbbed as he pushed himself up, making it hard to remember what last happened. He held his head in his hands as he thought it over until an eerie sob bounced off the walls.

There is a stillness in the air
I can feel it everywhere

Heavy darkness
Airy light
Loud silence
Empty night

It seems as though with every
breath
There is a little bit of death

Silent torture works the best,
As if one’s memories were weights,
Weighing down the trudging steps
Echoing as darkness waits.

It’s hard to understand and agree with this quote, unless you’ve experienced a great loss. My friend, Paige Winters, died in a plane crash and it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my entire life.

Her death truly has changed everything.

I wish…
I could run like an Olympian
I could draw without restrictions
I could dance like nobody is watching
I could sing as pretty as a mockingbird
I wish…
I could be a world traveler
I could walk outside with the perfect weather every day

It looked a bit like Lila, but it wasn’t Lila. I don’t know why people say that when someone dies they look like they’re sleeping. Her skin was dull grey and colder than ice. Her long body lay limp and heavy on the stainless steel table. Her clothes were dirty and rumpled.

Whenever I' m alone I miss you
Wish I took that chance to kiss you
I feel shattered and alone
like a dog thats lost his bone 
Remembering your laughing eyes
my life is filled with quiet sighs
Seasons may come and seasons may go