Floating through space feels like lounging on a pool float. True, your float is no pool float.
It’s a slab of discarded metal lost in the wasteland of the universe, and it’s pulling you with it, too.
In another time - a whole other life -

(1) every puzzle has an empty space, and a piece that never seems to fit
everywhere.
on the train in november I found
a duality called us (antithesis as mirror) sorry it is colder here than I remembered
and I am tired
of being called a dreamer

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

Under my umbrella,
I watch the clear drops descend.

They hurl, abiding gravity,
As they run, far away,
From the hands of the sky.

It makes sense for the clouds to darken,
To yowl in pain,
And to jolt fear across the land.

the vents in my grandmother's old car blow
cigarette smoke at my left knuckles
and right forearm.
there's something so cold about crawling back to the house and home
where Caroline kicked me out for borrowing her water bottle

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

李白静夜思
床前明月光,
疑是地上霜.
举头望明月,
低头思故乡

This is my dad’s favorite poem.

And I have no idea what it means.

Breaking News - Serial Killer James ‘Smiles’ Hiraeth Suspected for the Murder of a 7-year-old girl. Mother Beth Reiner stricken with grief, medical practitioners dispatched to relocate to local sanitarium

Forgiveness - Beth Reiner

After Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Mother, tell me about the child in your womb.

                                               We shared water &

                                                                             blood &

I ate the placenta and the umbilical cord

(and i ate and i ate).

I tasted the iron on my teeth

(it stained until i swallowed and i swallowed the hydrogen peroxide).

Been sitting still the whole day

Can’t sleep

Thank you trazowhatervthehellyouare

For the frog and the eyes

And the image of my

Ex-girlfriend in the sun and

What am I saying?

What’ve I done?

Graze the lips with concrete and floss with blood

Wintergreen and sharp, pennies in the mouth that

Rattle like bicycle wheels down long hills.

Bandaid sticky, adhesive concealer that fortifies a face

To face the world dripping with bruises, salt, and the momentum

My brother’s just moved into college!

Well, not entirely- there’s still his coffee machine and a box of granola bars, but we’re driving those to him today.

"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

there are years to work out the kinks.

my hands buzzing and my tongue stuck to the back of rusty teeth, i scream to write in an unmarked

language.

but spit wets the page instead.

i want to communicate by destroying our common language.

you are

one of the more lovelier sounds.

i find these days,

i can replicate you if i close my ears enough:

the clash of my spoon with the ice cream bowl,

the kiss my lighter leaves on the body of a candle,

The day I fell out of love with my body—
my capsule,
my shrine—
weakness gnawed away at the palms of my hands,
dissatisfaction consumed my waist,
and comfort withered away like the skin I picked at
day
and night.

I.

My lover is strong for a reason.

I was teasing her neck and giggled when she flipped me

  “play fighting”

hit flat on my back, seeing stars in broad daylight on the lawn

of the private school she would get kicked out of.

The sculptor unveiled a block

A block of marble bought with the

Cents, dollars, kept under lock

Kept under a lock and key.

The sculptor went home again

while rain and lightning poured from skies

Stepped upon the midnight train,

I have wondered why my body
looks the way it does in the sun.
Brow bone glittering, sweat
tricking like the last swill of water
down a glass, blood circulating
like clockwork, a gear so visceral
and rooted in its own

Was it the way the leaves fell,
streamlined, as I burst
bawling onto greenery,

or the first time sunlight peeked
through dark branches overhead—

or the reddish-purple skin
stretched over my sleeping body,
surrounded by fluid? What phantom

Let the Rain Keep Falling

O birthplace rain     I take what I can from

your mouth,    delivering myself

             from spring seeds,

wetting my tongue

                            with your resilience.

And you warm my skin           in segments,

One

It’s half past eleven, so

we find an epileptic street light & swap sweat

before I put my hands in your pockets &

tell you I feel like I’m in Riyadh with a roughcast of redsand on my tongue and camel skin beneath my feet

The deciding factor in

whether or not I’d breach the boundary between binaries

was a gender neutral bathroom sign.

I heard someone belt a show tune in the shower while

another howled. Someone else took off their jeans, stuffed

I will liken the heavy clouds that pass over my land to grey matter

              before my body remembers the practicality of pain

              & blood rushes into my bladder.

              I’ll swallow a scream, or

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 tried on a mermaid dress the other day, and waddled two steps before stripping it off;
I saw how it snagged on my hips and clutched at my chest,

the same way I gripped the towels we tripped in so many years ago—
our hair, stringy and streaming from the community pool

first; to detect a charlatan, check pulse.
             is it too fast? then it’s a fake.
                          body too fat? a fake.
                                         check body temperature. is the skin a frigid north pole, breakable like a stick?