It’s time to write sad lines, like the one about a midnight sky punctured by stars dying a millennia ago but whose absence touches me tomorrow. I look for them in daylight, but they are lost, and I stop, no longer the same. I will remember it/her/them/you forever but that’s wrong. The structures complicate me, the shape of emptiness, the finitude of loss. Silence being still and certainty tenuous, at twilight, luminous insects light my path.
2020
This way my heart broke
as tides beat the shore
or purple mountains erode
by pebble and stone worn
2022
I bury you, cloaking grief
in gestures that conceal
the soft things about me
some are mine, others yours
like the freckles on my forearm
that look like constellations–
a speckled Galaxy stretching
like cellphone across my skin
bursting stars into silver dust
against a pixilated, indigo
night–
2022
I use to be brave–
in the beginning when I
was softest, not too shy to say
how I feel, before words left
me without balance, before
this mosaic of wounds
before exhaling broken
moments. Regret
sinks like weights in winter
a gravity of grief. Low tide
recedes, abandoning starfish
arms splayed. Shadows
slip away with ghosts
beneath low-hung clouds
stealing wishes I
stutter to say
to myself or you
or anyone
aloud.
2023
I am curious about the human-biting habits of mosquitoes and know only female mosquitoes bite, stimulated by light, body heat, and the scent of skin. On a warm, wet evening, I sit still and wait for one to land on my forearm, sweaty and oily from cheap sunscreen. Carbon dioxide is an an attractant, so I inhale deeply and exhale slowly. When one lands, I watch her penetrate my skin with the thin tip of her mouth, so sharp I can barely feel her biting. Fusing her fluids with mine, her warm, slippery saliva mixes with my blood as she sucks, tingling my sensory nerves. She remains there, her body engorging with blood, ready to burst.