I'm here to both explore and escape.

The first person needed. The last person considered.

Love is patient, but you rushed to replace me. Love is kind, but I tremble when you speak. Love does not envy, but you never clap for me. Love does not boast, but you need to feel superior. Love is not rude, but you hang up in my face. Love is not self-seeking, but only your wants and goals matter. Love is not easily angered, but me opening my mouth makes you so angry you disappear for months. Love keeps no records of wrong, but you remember my mistakes and exclude yours. Love rejoices with the truth, but you lie with me just to lie to me. Love always protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres, but sometimes I have to pray for protection from you, sometimes you make it hard to trust you, most times, I’m left with nothing to hope for. Lastly, love never fails. You failed me. Perhaps, we failed each other.

Another summer bathing in heartbreak’s sin. You, a cool breeze, tempting me to let you in. Just for you to switch things from hot to cold to hot again. I haven’t decided which temperature feels best. The heat from our naked bodies or the volcano in my chest. The gray numbness is a different cold than winter with no sweater. 2.5 years in this climate and I still don’t know the best heartbreak weather.

Not sure when I convinced myself that I don’t deserve good things, but how do I undo it?

He once told me that he did drugs to escape from the chaos and feel nothing at all. I called him an addict for that. I wake up everyday hoping to feel something. I guess I’m an addict, too. One of us is addicted to feeling something and the other is addicted to feeling nothing at all.

My love burns fire. I can’t do lukewarm.

And if I don’t make it through the night, maybe then you’ll think I did something right.

The day has come and I knew it would, where this heartbreak became a phoenix and my freedom stood.

The silence is screaming too loud.

I’ve sung, “I don’t feel anything,” many nights to my lover while my tears moisturized the lie as it fell from my lips. Truth is, I’ve always felt everything. I feel the vibration in the ground from the silence of a pin drop when he asks, “What do you want me to say?” I feel the dryness of swallowing the hope that he’d one day have the perfect retort. I feel the ridges of the knife going in and scraping my spine every time he chooses all things except me. I feel the warmth of the blood shed in battles I’ve lost to the lovers whose feet trample on the neck of feelings for me that he’ll never stand frontline for. I feel the coldness of a winter fling turned blue. I feel the pain of an echo to unanswered questions in a room full of people with the answers. I feel the walls expanding when we share a small space; I’ve never known accompanied loneliness so well.

Mother’s Day 2020

Animal Instincts

A Tune

Still feeling alone in every room accompanied by anyone else.

The goodbyes we didn’t say buried themselves in the walls that had fallen around the bed we once birthed love in. I’ll never forget how your back looked- scarred and scratched; it faced me and said the goodbye your mouth didn’t. My shadow abandoned me to chase after you. My legs forgot all reason to ever move. I’m sorry, I haven’t enough strength to catch you when my heart is falling out of my chest, too.