I have no reason to be sad today.

Despite my efforts to block out the light,

Sunbeams trickle in and kiss my cheek.

The accousistics of children’s laughter bounce off my walls.

And a wistful smile curves my lips.

My youth was full of blue skies and birdsong.

I’m always retreating back to my memories because, there, everyone’s still alive.

But now my soul is an unwanted visitor in my body.

The r...

June was the longest year of my life.

The Moirai conspired to show me how different paths would play out.

On the day of reckoning,

I stood at the altar,

Calling upon false gods.

My voice turned to hushed whispers,

Then a broken prayer—

God began to sound like my mother,

Tone-deaf lullabies, swaddled in codependency.

Even though the chord had been cut for twenty five summers,

I still cannot breath...

Damsel met Distress in a dimly lit alley,

Pawing feverishly at unclad skin.

Lips interlocked like thorns to the roses stem—

Their eyes, lustful and hungry.

He slipped her a poisoned tongue.

She consumed every last bit of oxygen it took to inflate her lungs into balloons.

A scream died on her tongue—

The one who was meant to break the spell

Couldn’t live up to his promises.

She served him herself...

I

Cannot

Figure out

How to wake her;

Who has been watching

From the depths of the lake

As our bodies mold together?

We are one with the ground and sky,

Crashing into each other like waves.

And out of the blue, you don’t feel the same....

I don’t remember the pain

But rather the panic that set like an unhealed fracture.

The walls are pretty thin—

I hear a commotion downstairs.

Talk of scars that linger; noxious, sulfurous fumes reeking of hidden remains.

I’m an archaeologist of ancient history,

Excavating a plethora of suppressed emotions.

I’d sooner walk over a sidewalk paved with broken glass

Than open Pandora’s box.

My secret...

I used to think in complete sentences.

Now I hold my words for ransom—

Coming to me in blurbs and cartoonish bubbles.

A flash of what I want to spin on paper,

Bare bones of poignancy,

But cannot make it outside of caricatures.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery

Unless it is intellectual property

And then all I have in my possession is a vacancy sign to hang on my forehead:

Artistry forec...

When the storm comes, my compass always points to your arms,

Outstretched like wings on the water,

Making oceans out of puddles.

Belly distended, you engorged on daily bread

And said that means you are a prophet.

The wisdom imparted slaughters my brain cells—

Sounding as logical as television static,

Broken antenna disconnects reception—

Stuck in rotation—

My door revolves around letting you i...

I don’t want to stick out like a weed in a field of wildflowers.

I come from a long line of big mouths.

Like my mother before me.

They say Mesopotamia was quiet until we barreled from the heavens,

Vaporizing the dinosaurs into fertilizer.

My hard-headed ways cracked the sky like a large egg,

So came the Great Flood.

Among the beasts and men,

It is only the beasts who are honest about their hung...

I ask for nothing except your soul intertwined with mine.

Tell me I’m beautiful on days I look in the mirror,

Locking gazes with my reflection,

And lost in my own eyes, unable to prove I once knew my way back to the greener side of the grass.

I colonized the land with drought,

Bearing the gift of a bountiful harvest.

You planted your feet on my doorstep,

Famine aching in your heels.

I have a sof...

Prop me up on the slab.

You’re such a doll!

Open me up, you’ll see how you stopped my heart right in its tracks.

One look at you

And I am as delusional as Cotard.

You saw right through me—

Starting with the arms that reach out to hold you.

Then the legs that run to you when loneliness becomes a load too heavy to carry.

All that remains of me is a stump.

Young lovers rush to carve their initials...