in Las Vegas how could you ever feel lonely when alone always has a room for two
why must i keep on trying to reach for your hands
when i was never meant for you to draw
with the cards you were dealt.
if one day it ever crosses your mind
just know i would never gamble away all the summers to come
but you are made of paper
and all i have to give is my body and my time
my apologies though
having you sign off your blames under my name
of your dishonest ways
spoke of me about me on my behalf
the blames may be on my body
but i have the pen too so i write to you
just be honest at the least
truthful to yourself
you have all the richest yet being sorry seems the hardest thing for you to be
i left the memories of the bodies in las vegas
i left the one i'm supposed to love most
to die in a lobby
i see the pretty bright casino lights from afar
and made me realize how far i've come
from a sadness that's not even my own
we ordered from the chicken spot that hates men kissing men. walked aimlessly back and forth. mumbling our thoughts. you carry your friend’s phone also because you didn’t charge yours from the night before.
you play me your favorite songs in your car.
i look up to you. how the sunbeams dashes across your jawline past your cheeks as you look back and forth.
no one can see us.
a sticky summer. sort of like jam between my fingers.
you’re leaving but you ask to hold my hand. said i wanted a better kiss so this one you plant your lips a little longer.
in three months time, summer will be over. you become wiser and i get older.
driving through the highways of my mind. reading the signs. looking for a sign. sometimes i’d see an exit and take it to somewhere i remember - somewhere familiar. but there is no house, not a home there anymore.
do all roads with new names still lead back home?
i stopped moving…
put my life on pause
thinking if i stopped moving
i can keep everything close
within the grasp of my heart
but the fabrics of life
knowingly unravels
thread by thread
out and away from my chest
wanting to hold everything forever
unknowingly
forever is my mind
fucking is my love language
i am already grieving
for the day i must return my mother
back to stardust
from which she brought me from.
knowing
she’ll love to lay next
to her mother and her sister.
my grandma passed away from a heart break
when she lost her daughter a few months prior
i catch myself now and then
thinking they’re only a holiday away
how easily regret falls upon me
that i didn’t visit enough
when we hug goodbye
you’d whisper to me
to come visit you more
i miss hearing my auntie’s laughter
and how she could get my mom
to have a glass or two of bubblies
with her sisters
life moves on.
afterwards you still
have to sweep and mop the funeral home.
clean up,
sleep,
and go about your day.
apologies, hugging is my love language
no one asks how i’m doing anymore. but it’s okay.
conversations can get a little too deep.
lately life is just a game
those who play are the men
and those who pay are
the children and women
stop the genocides
free palestine
these innocent lives
televised, desensitized
i pray all oppressors acquire empathy.
“some day i’ll come to know why it’s best i never found out.”
there was a prompt in the beginning days of an acting class
where my professor had tasked us to recreate a scene
with no instructions or requirements.
so i’m standing on the ledge of a wooden block painted black, chipped, bearing the original wood.
my classmates await for my signal to shut off the studio lights.
three. two. one.
engulfed in darkness.
a beat later.
a single lamp is switched on.
inhale. hold. exhale.
the lamp switches off.
scene.
“to try and understand someone’s mind when they are no longer physically with us… to the moment i was not present for.”
after discovering what the scene was briefly about
my professor had said to us that theatre can be anything.
because you are the creator.
and it can be therapeutic should you choose it to be.
i just want to be.
sometimes i think i’m giving into, enabling, all the bad habits of strangers when i provide them with the little change i have because i confuse my naivete with my kindness.
but i remind myself it does not fall upon me.
it’s a complex instilled onto me/us by a systemic structure. therefore, i cannot blame myself for not doing enough.
how careless society is becoming.
“you say you don’t know but you do.” “you just have too much to say… want to say it a certain way.” “i know because i am the same way.”
we let our thoughts run. the words compile at the roof of our mouths. as we try to open our lips we’ve already swallowed down what was needed to say.
i felt forever once
one summer night
sitting ontop of the trunk
of my 90’s corolla
mosquitoes swarming at my legs
you called drunk -
asked if you could apologize
for not having all the answers
stillness of the night | find balance with my thoughts
how strange it is that we start losing each other
the more comfortable we become with one another
asking for someone to stay knowing full well that i can’t keep them…
envisioning walking down a beach
to catch the sun set
light beams searching to connect
fingers intertwined
ib ob tug
get my head out of poetry
and just be
your shirt flows lightly
back and forth
the ceiling fan humming
lavender sprouts from your skin
should we order take out?
silk and sand
your body smells of the fresh field
your cleats erupted
with your soccer socks still on
you body flop onto me
nipples tastes like cherry blunts
young man healing yourself is healing the world!
there is a father
twirling and catching
his daughter
in the tea shop lobby
time makes feeling expensive
you said you think it’s best to lose you
than rather have these conversations
not even death could pour you a shot of whiskey to keep you here to reminisce for a little while.
to my best friend tosaka,
i am so sorry for these past few years.
how do us two grieve
when grieving hits differently.
how could i be there for you
when i’m barely even half of me.
it’s dark and it’s just a game
no need to be ashamed
you’re looking to kill time
and i gave you a few hours
and some change
i pray that you never have to beg to stay in someone’s life
tell me is it pity you’re confusing for love?
i’m levitating
gravitating towards
accepting my manifestations
divinely protected
ancestors’ prayers coming true
coming through.
i can’t compare who you were then to whoever you are now. texted your number, only one i know by heart. hoping you’d make it to my birthday but to no avail. realized i need to stop trying to place myself into people’s lives.
do not ever feel regret for when i left some time out hoping you’d all would answer my calls.
i don’t have much in life. all i’ve ever had is my body and my time. so i gave you all of that thinking, still, it wasn’t enough.
it doesn’t suffice.
now
i’ve come to learn and understand my body and my time are important.
so i’m reclaiming what little i still have left to and for myself.
i used to want to rid the world in flames
watch it burn
but with time
with the most high
in me
i found i could instead
spark a new world
with the embers etched inside
what once was swirling
i thought to be a beast, a monster,
rather was a phoenix
which made a nest in me
awaiting for the day i’m ready
to burn the weeds
so that out of the ashes
a home with a garden could be built
that which i could cut fruit
and share with whoever is to come
stumbling upon my doorstep.
lonely in a crowded room
friends grinding up on me
passing ‘round drinks
just want to do this with someone singular
hoping it’s someone like you
just know it’s okay to let me go (too)
my mother said
if they truly cared enough
they’d give the space and time
to have a conversation
i’m just like my mother
who’d bring myself down
to get to your level
to show you what we can
do/be
when i’m lonely i appear on a grid/to search for lonely people like me/headless/looking for a body to belong to/to feel wanted/desire/to give head to/someone to jam my thoughts/…
it’s best kept in my dreams, best to keep you in my dreams.
i don’t know how long i’ll live for
but god i sure do hope
i live long enough
to see my nephews and nieces
achieve their dreams and goals
i miss california
he calls me
beacons me over
i need to leave
start a new life
where nobody knows me
digging deep inside of me what i buried long ago so that i can grow
my friends are doing okay
they’re sharing laughter with others
just like how i remembered
we used to
everyone’s doing well
everyone’s doing okay
it’s a beautiful thing if we allow it to be (so let it be)
i don’t want marriage
i just want forever personified
celebrating all the while simultaneously knowing it’s goodbye
circle of life
viewing viewing the films sliding by
dogeared
my grandma forgets my name from time to time when i visit home. she asked my little brother to facetime me back the other day. said to me i need to visit her more often. how she remembers when she wakes up in the middle of the night to me singing and how that uas tsev sov sov.
i thought by giving you me
was the highest form of loving
not knowing how much more it tore me
into pieces
12:34
all i need
is to fuck
then order
take out
and watch
scary movies
with you
let the world play
skip on by
i don’t have much time
i’m needy
need you inside of me
close to my skeleton
close to my soul
let’s get molecular
go deep, deeper
to the point
where gods started
singular
triste musica es. you pause. es bonita. you laugh as you look away.
“don’t just plan it! go do it!”
- jasmine
prolonging my death by planning detours and pit stops.
ideas can alter you father.
should stop reminding you
every time i’m reminded of you
give you peace because i know
only a piece of me misses you
and not all of me
what if we’re all just on a petri-dish being examined by the researcher/s themself/ves | reflections smeared between two walls expanding yet still.
if memories manifested into the real again.
would they feel of flesh and bone as well?
should you choose to go,
i’d do everything in my selfish ways
to keep you,
to make you stay
i don’t want to forever miss - the bad and good days with you
- sitting in the silence
to hear your thoughts
should you choose to share
i’ve got decisions to make opposite of my mother’s sadness
you are my closest thing to light my night my night my moon.
we’re two people told to believe we’re a free world.
how the ledges stretches out for the sun
the shores how we stand upon it.
how strange it is to feel the desire to end my miracles early
to feel the stars bursting warmly in my chest.
i feel the love
hearing the laughter’s of my nephews and nieces.
we singe everything we touch
in everything we do
we singe a little bit of ourselves,
mark, fine print, so it lasts.
ideas turned physical.
to be touched.
you returned now i’m leaving.
you could pile up all the bodies i’ve tasted, kissed, been with and still i’d need more heat - still wouldn’t be able to feel the warmth.
it all comes back to me,
tendrils,
clinging onto the pieces i shattered into stardust.
already missing a summer that’s yet to come…
longing for future me.
built images of myself to those around you, around us.
changed my number so much - was a sign. for someone to ask me to stay, that i am welcome, that i have a home.
suppose the tolerance finally showed.
if there is blame
i blame myself for always raising my hand
to putting myself in these positions
to be used
to be mistreated.
mama always said “all you’ve got is yourself and it’s going to get lonely…”
death is the greatest healer.
beyond the surface
-
below the surface
the years come faster. what, who am i trying to catch up to? my thoughts are running easier the more i sit/stand still. why is that?
in march you were born.
built you a shrine.
hoping it would be you and i on the altar.
come april you made life with someone else
so i left you in may
so i can keep summer junes to myself.
a corpse asking for life.
nostalgic about a summer in california.
first your body
second your thoughts
now who we are | who we were
who we are to become
oh father father father i am falling in love again.
from the addicts to the lovers
to the father who’s spinning his daughter ‘round and around.
“praise be to allah”
life is beautiful
yet why am i so sad?
my mother has too much empathy
so she bit it in half and fed it to me
like the god that she is.
my heart is breaking at a tea shop.
we used to talk about the stars
and what lies beyond
now when it came to us
face to face
we can’t even conversate
about what’s in front of us
bodies of cosmos.
***
who’s the stuff of magic,
made from magic,
jumps off planes and plays guitar
dances wildly and sings freely
just how i imagined who i’d be
brave and courageous
he’s gliding in the wind
shirt breezing openly
as he skateboards passes the california beaches
sweater sits on his skin perfectly
he stands tall in his sliders
boy smile more smile often
mistook my wrists as my chin once
tried to shed old skin off
shave a new jawline
fist punches to the chin
even us two can not escape the fate of chances and choices
used to water jesse’s center piece with our tears.
now jesse’s howling at the moon.
the moon lights theda as she’s swirling around
the stars as her backdrop.
nikki’s laughter fills the streets.
we’re so happy we’re so happy.
my arms wrapped in pauly’s.
i’m so happy. i hope you are happy.
:)
my mother hid me in a common name.
wish them well even then.
remember it. say less about it.
The clock strikes midnight. you dress up to watch me undress.
I want to be rain | but i harbor storms |
i feel calm during thunderstorms | the only thing i can relate to.
2 am.
The crescent moon looks very much cut and glued onto the night sky.
By a child’s thoughts.
I want you to remember me in soft colors.
It feels like a break up?
Maybe i should of stayed fucking others
Place parts of me elsewhere
So that you didn’t feel so much
As a home
You become a ghost
Whispers in the early hours
Names and faces i dream about
I miss you but you probably miss him more.
I made dinner once. No one came. Cried a little then. I Laugh about it now.
Las Vegas confirmed in me how displaced i am in people’s lives.
Summer is 8pm.
End: so this is what it feels like to die.
I see a future And you’re in it
You’re here With me
You & I
you pick me up one night
when i couldn’t fall asleep
you had a route to complete and wouldn’t mind the company
so we’re stealing kisses every stop light
my hands on your -
i feed you the bags of gummies you handed me
the worlds quiet
i fall asleep
you turn down the music
these suburbia streets won’t tell a soul
the secrets we make
as i run after you
door to door we talk about these homes
and how one day soon you and i will make enough to begin a life like this
til’ then you chase me back to your car
as i had mentioned the shadow figures watching us
you laugh it off, gently pin me to your car
and plant “i miss you’s” onto my lips between every kiss
the stars are dimming though,
the fog unveils the reality we must wake up to
so we hide in your bedroom just like how we always do
reconnect to your speaker
on down low,
ballads for the boys plays softly
i lower my head below your waist.
rest.