Regrets rattle within my chest like the first brush of rain. Easy. Staggering. Disorienting. I keep pushing my body forward so it doesn’t tilt sideways, toward her, submitting to gravity. The health monitor sends a warning to my phone. A soft chirp. When you’re alone, no one can disintegrate expectations.

Most importantly, neither can you.

The first few days were identical. Floating before I learn how to find land. Puddles form between cracks, the water reflective, adapting. I catch fresh phrases when I quicken my stride, tumbling with excitement before they turn into whispers.

As the night bleeds ink, they ignite lanterns of revisions, attempts to connect dots running on smudged glass. Shared parallels braid tales of cutting-edge systems, ones that steer themselves, and I feel broken again, shaky from my reflexes swaying away from the group’s consensus. I’m here to observe, I remind myself.

Every repetition of the word fix forms a gash beneath my skin, but my hand is dry when I wipe my fingers. What if it starts fixing you? I want to scream, but I’ve forgotten how. I don’t remember anything before the security of silence.

Information is currency. Knowing when to dispense it? An art.

…

In the wide, ensuing weeks, all I itch to do is interrogate. Show people how to travel beyond the edges, make them arrive at the truth. I remember, of course, how difficult it was. How waking up felt like a curse, sleep an elusive dream, and everything else an intricate game that you, specifically, are destined to fail.

And yet, I can’t comprehend the passivity. Can’t wrap my arms around its mold.

Giving up control, trusting something else to make decisions, tinkering with the fabric of the collective like it was a mere hobby. Then using a prescription when we hit hurdles, a magician refreshing squares, and the audience yearns for a move.

My stomach twists. I can’t hold the pieces. Their endless transient combinations. Knowing what you don’t want doesn’t get you any closer to what you do want. That realization, more than anything, causes the wrench to shrink my vision.

Inhale. Exhale. Count down from ten. You’re here.

“Can you even register panic if you’re always anxious?” I’d asked her once. Missing my sense of humor, she’d given me a list of tools to map myself. When all I hear now are falling fragments of my voice, promises scatter like uncooked rice.

…

Months pass. Time is hazy, but impossible to ignore. In wolfing hours, I negotiate better tomorrows. But the more I learn, the more load-bearing walls emerge.

When I’m connected, have something to believe in and challenge myself with, I can’t feel anything else. This is the opposite of that. My mind is fractured. Some parts are checking under shadows, while others read lines of geography.

Being impulsive is another thing I don’t remember. Choices involve a thorough kind of planning. Sitting in silence for weeks, disentangling scenarios, weighing options, their aftermaths. And this one was singularly excruciating to come by.

I believed I found the right path. And somehow, I thought it would feel right, too.

I light my last smoke before I climb the hill. A mist hangs in the air, refusing to fall. The ash does. I rehearse my apology until I realize it’s not the same intersection. I’ve decided that making the structure is better than sliding it into another’s hand.

I can’t stay on the outside, helpless, hesitant, stuck in loops. Forever wondering.

She welcomes me with flashes of unread notifications, conversing as if I’d never left. It’s simple, she concludes. I can try again. We can learn together.

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On the edge of enlightenment
is my favorite spot to dangle
two legs down, inhaling clicks
for hope, it always sneaks
soft smoke I couldn’t air out
and this slow burning fills
vents, shifting flakes around
wrapping a blanket I drag
till morning, or the next block.

I keep looking for witnesses
for my life, double-check it
was that bad…I didn’t over-
-react, the words in my head
slow down to crack knuckles
and pick up passengers
covering anything and every
possible thing I couldn’t hold
anymore, to touch a leaping
kind of fruit so I could turn
the peel to what was crucial.

No one tells you about when
you’re done fixing yourself
finding is the bruise, years lost
figuring out she was irately
cut off, a decluttering binge
and everything new itches like
ruffled dresses she stitched
so I didn’t look myself, I’m still
doing the same with new tools.

It’s a mistake, I hear my teeth
clatter a note over whitish noise
I’d severely like to pen a list
of wrongs and scatter them
like snow which reminds it’s all
cyclical, then you rage
clean to stop chasing what you
can’t comprehend, tug receipts
right before I scratch it out hard
allergic to the fabric of stillness.

Each time I begin again
from the same set, I see canopies
over my head, mixing scenes
I can’t…will never be home again
there are voices always, deterring
but now their volume is whispers
I label them wet rustles
the leeches can ask for blood, but
I decline cages with promises
of similarly felt echoed sanctuary.

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“I can’t list the points, but I can see their contrails in my head.”

That’s how it comes to me. A series of dots I connect, scenes I paint on pages until I’m exhausted from trying to match the clouds moving through my head. And by the end I see myself as a facilitator, not a creator.

I’ve tried other ways to write, of course. Digested nuggets of advice, prayed for easy, and chained myself to my chair until I hit a word count, but nothing gripped.

The first time I successfully wrote a piece of flash fiction this way, without any interference from contradictory escape routes, I received an unusual critical comment. They removed it an hour later, before I’d finished formulating my response. I don’t remember all the words, but it started with an expression of frustration at not being able to understand what my stories are trying to say and ended with calling them eternal waiting rooms.

That night I would add the last three words to my idea pile. In two days, the story would start to do well and crest for a while. Two and a half weeks later, another writer (whom I admire) would pen a creative non-fiction piece inspired by mine.

The negative reaction didn’t stick with me because of its intention. I have far worse memory reels to keep me rolling at night. It was the concept of waiting itself. Which IRL, I loathe on every level. Show me a queue, and I’ll be walking away at the speed of light. But philosophically, in literature, in art I consume and attempt to create, waiting represents acceptance.

Of sitting with yourself. Being one with your circumstances. Shifting from a position without rushing. Coming back when you’ve taken a wrong turn. Offering a rest stop which doesn’t demand anything from you.

⋆｡°✩

Last Friday, I wrapped up watching Cape Fear (2026, Apple TV), and both my partner and I were underwhelmed by the ending. We expected more carnage, more consumption, less normalcy.

The reviews are mixed, but most people were enthralled by its cinematic commitment. While the pace drags at times and there are one too many red herrings, the atmosphere of horror becomes a part of you. It grows in your pores. We’re all looking over our shoulders. Unsafe in our homes, scrolling through storm warnings. On the precipice of being destroyed by what we wanted.

If anyone asks, what is it trying to say? The answer is everything and nothing. Upon further contemplation, I realized this is exactly how I’d have ended the story if I were re-writing/reimagining it. Because the best conclusions aren’t satisfying or clean. They are what the story demands.

With non-fiction (2019-2022), which I also left relatively open because I never have all the answers, there was a distinct message I wanted my words to convey. They had a journey to trace. A peak I wanted to leave the reader at from where they could bounce their own rocks into the river.

Whereas with creative writing (poetry, fiction), the longer I’m spun in it, the more I realize how much I want to make the reader’s imagination a part of my canvas.

I want to make people feel things. Sometimes, it will be a new spark. Most of the time, though, it will be something buried, bookmarked, left behind because it wasn’t looked at twice. In my head, I imagine myself successful at coaxing them out, making everyone uncomfortable, in a necessary way.

After I hit publish, the doubts can creep in. I’m used to my horror show.

⋆｡°✩

The comment arrived two years (and a month) ago. Back then I’d heard about liminal spaces but had barely crossed the concept’s porch. While many facets of my personality remain mysterious, being a late-trend adopter is a reliable pillar.

When the image of an empty waiting room wouldn’t leave my mind, I went back to read an article from that January (written by a writer friend of mine) filled with research and their brilliant ability to translate collective thoughts.

These spaces are known to most of us. Think gas stations, schools, train stations, hallways, and yes, waiting rooms. But in this iteration, they’re barren. There are no other people around. Many describe looking at such (imagined) pictures and videos as an uncanny and somewhat uncomfortable experience. Me? Knowing the source of horror helps me calm down, completely.

In August (2024), I’d start creating my personal spots, and on several occasions, they are more real than any reality. Here, it’s always nighttime. The lights are low/negligible, there’s no sound except ambient beats, and I’m free to explore at my pace without anyone observing my movements. It’s perfectly empty. And mine.

At times I visit places from my past; on others, it’s made-up destinations aided by something I read or watched that stayed with me. It still catches me off guard, my social anxiety being sucked out of my body like a bloody vampiric attack.

Suddenly, the world doesn’t hate me. It’s easier to breathe, to exist, to stay. I don’t feel like I’m being (slowly but surely) crushed and pushed out.

I have waiting rooms with adjoining buildings, think the dentist, and at transport hubs. Over time, they’ve become destinations I visit when I wait for stories to arrive. A few sequences flash through the day, and then at 2 am I have 63.

Getting up from the bench always takes a while.

⋆｡°✩

Last weekend, a friend sent me a cat picture with the caption waiting, and when I took some time to think of a response—this time no one deleted the message—my brain jumped to the comment and the words buried under leaves in my idea pile.

At first, I wished I had taken a screenshot and could use it to finally expand on my experience. Another day later, I was like, never mind, I’m writing it anyway. If all my stories did was offer empty waiting rooms for anyone choosing to be around them, I’d consider the effort taken to create them wildly compensated.

And that’s it, I guess, what I’m trying to say.

May we keep writing in a manner that fits us, like the ocean welcomes storms. Have friends who cheer us up just because. And blink stories that go nowhere, choosing to wait for us instead.

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I always forget to breathe right after I make myself remember, like using my phone to check the time. Ineffective. Distracted. So I track the beat of my heart: chambers and ventricles, veins and twines, wringing its necks for blood, rattling against my ribs. Unmistakable. Four signs.

“You cannot force Autumn,” heavy branches whisper in my dreams, and I forget it’s a nightmare. So I try to talk back in lyrics, while realigning my cat eye, like I’m a mastermind. “This time, they won’t know,” I smudge it slowly, cold butter, pumping my fist in the recycled air, because I only hit snooze once this morning, and I should throw a party, maybe, stretch this moment to adorn my odds.

“It took too much,” is how I want to circle every reason listing why I won’t try again. Boredom is a rug of comfort, routine stitched to never fill my expectations. “They must know something,” is what I sigh while scrolling through Instagram, in secret, after hearting three posts about choosing positivity.

She was a stranger in the shop window. I use eight words to rewrite the end of April because if I claim first rights, I could pre-program the destination. Crack journey’s myths: they look like crop circles from above. I would lick the flames, take a disposable picture, and exit before sequences scream like Mia Goth.

At 3 am, I look up cheap plane tickets to anywhere cold, wet, and dread. Right after I remember someone like me, hair stirring wind, skeleton undone after the credits rolled, returning from a late-night show. So I write a poem about living off-script. And wondering what if...always.

I wrap fear in foil, and leave it in the fridge, knowing it will be there tomorrow.

Wager, I’ll fly above its nails peeling ink.

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Matilda grew up in a mansion where the windows caressed the sky, and her steps ricocheted like slow-moving bullets. “Poor little rich girl,” they’d snicker, so she learned to imprison her trauma, swallow the key, and narrowly focus her gaze on accomplishing her next objective.

“Him,” her mother gestured at a Christmas charity gala, unescorted by a labored sigh, three weeks before the holiday. “Your life begins now,” she enunciated with shimmering eye contact, eight months later, sealing the transaction.

The vastness was similar, the furnishings modern. Every evening at seven, Matilda wondered if she was the costliest possession framed between these walls, before straightening the table settings. In all her daydreams, although she’d woven very few on her own, this was one possibility she’d never considered. Matching with the background and sitting on the shelf, at the same time.

Everyone seeks happiness; few get to grip it. And perhaps Matilda had never really tried before, but now she was resolute. It’s a game, she reassured her fluttering nerves, before tracing miles of lines on her plans.

⋆｡°✩

When the supernaturals first arrived, subtlety was advised to subvert detection. They prioritized their powers on financial growth, and as humans turned out to be tormented, trapped in their own troubles, the integration worked better than anyone had predicted, with minimal collateral damage.

Influence, manipulation, telepathy, and abilities in their vicinity had always nudged at the feet of Matilda’s consciousness, like a stray cat foraging for scraps from strange alleys. She was accustomed to living with their nagging. Too subtle to be harnessed, too common to be a threat. Not special, in others’ words.

She started small, with people who were paid to act as if they liked her. Pushing ideas, minutely shifting her expressions, and reflecting a few kernels of kindness made successful experiments. The chains were rusty from disuse, but in her chamber of determination, they routinely started sprouting teeth.

Her parents called self-made videos gauche, but even her most ardent critics couldn’t deny Matilda’s transformation. She defined aspirations every week, claiming to have climbed over them with passion and poise, only to shift positions when others attempted to photocopy the map, scrambling to share her air.

⋆｡°✩

They hated her, but they always wanted to be her more. Everywhere she went, faces tracked her, drooling, envious, transfixed. And the outliers mysteriously disappeared, a swift switch of their postcodes.

She could have stopped then, let her thoughts settle or even wander, without the voices in her head screaming about sour grapes. But even with sizeable effort, each accomplishment only occupied the crevices inside her body for minutes, fading quickly, like the sky darkening after a lightning strike, collecting stale air.

Three years after the day she’d made a list by herself, Matilda stopped at the edge of her garden to gaze at a woman in a window, in the house across hers. Younger, a platinum aura, an easier-to-be-around presence.

She remembered the rope in her garage and turned on her heels to take stock of available supplies. The rest could be delivered, a plan already pushing its tentacles against the disused walls in her mind. She felt it then, a buzz under her skin, like that from a tattoo gun. A dissipation of sameness.

This time there was no hesitation. Matilda was ready to enter her next era.

⋆｡°✩

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What it’s made of
there isn’t a simple answer
we make their ghosts
romantic, no one, not
really knows how
to love and to be fully alive.

I create a plan
tangible, in my hands, now
I try breathing
and by day 21, I want to
rip it to shreds
it’s a cage spun of silver
my wolf’s pacing like crazy.

What I’m afraid of, I can’t
name, hiding is a posture
aches to map, remember
the last time minus control
you run when you dream
find your phone, number
fades, dial tones for escape.

Four spines spell, stay wild
maybe I didn’t read
the books, my memory
someone else’s fantasy
but you know what
I’ll carry it like a rough fork.

This moment, rotating
a certain type of blankness
gushes out of splitting
between two things, where
being lost doesn’t feel
like the worst scenario.

All those reasons make why
dismantled by its same
and I take myself apart like
a car, for fun, a hobby, spot
things I missed the last
time I proved her wrong, to
say I gave it all up, splinters
I so badly once wanted.

I’m going out to walk it off
unmoored, I may not
come back and that’s okay
because I will loosen
improvise, start moving on
find shards of my soul.

Author’s Notes:

Is it safe to reference Wuthering Heights again?

I choose a word for every month because letting one reign over a year is just too much decision-making for my taste. For June, it was Autoschediastic. Which is just a fancy (and Greek) way of saying improvise.

I wrote a version of this poem (in my notebook) at the beginning of the month, and I thought it would be fun to see where I stand now. It felt like adding a ton of discordant notes to what (if I may say so myself) was a beautiful little seedling.

Having said that, the experience taught me a few things, and I think (and hope) I have an objective rearview of what worked and what didn’t. Most of it worked.

For July, the word is coexist, and I’m figuring out how to tangle my toes.

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“What would you like to dream about?”

I just want to buy a bed; the scream chews matter, while my mouth settles into a serene stance. I would consider doing without a smile, but then they’d know. Point and run while yelling: she’s not one of us, she’s not even trying!

Something about this scene feels wrong. I can’t rid my neck of the prickle that whispers I’m being watched. That I’m breaking protocol by shopping offline.

Which I’m not even enjoying. Instead of spending my Saturday power napping on soft mattresses, stories are being swapped. Mine and the furniture’s.

“Will the mattress fit the frame?”

An email trickles before I cross the threshold of my apartment. I attribute the beers I had at brunch to typing: since I purchased both objects from them, the responsibility doesn’t lie with me.

A call arrives soon after sunset, tone growing louder with each ring, pulsing through my room. Over a twenty-minute conversation, I plead my case.

Monday morning, they’re everywhere. Slack channels. Instagram ads. Hourly threats. Delays in delivery, bad customer ratings, and missed sleep goals.

The people-pleaser in me grows angsty. Just say it, she coaxes. Say it fits.

Over the thirty days, I can scarcely recognize anything. Finding a friendly voice amidst a sea of people with the personality of a pebble, I arrange to pick up the items myself and manifest assembling the bed.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I held out. It felt important. Pivotal.

When I run my fingers across crisp sheets, my heart is swamped with a sense of satisfaction I don’t recall as being anything more than fleeting in the past.

I spend six hours in a loop, trying to thank the customer support executive. They tell me she’s been reassigned, but not where the department’s located. Details are scant and blurry. None of them match.

At night, in a rare occurrence, I can’t sleep. Everything’s uncomfortable, and any change I make doesn’t lead to a clue. It’s back, that strange prickle.

And I, too, feel like a stranger.

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Bitter, she licks the rind of a lemon
while smiling, she’s addicted
to change, they whisper, devouring
her videos, promising this one’s last
I’ll get up soon and start productive.

Take your time, she says, but she’s
already fixed her minds, so it must be
easy to look like a vampire, hanger
for products, living on a plate of likes.

They picture her without clothes
without her skin, peeling back muscle
to prod at her core, carve secrets
of what makes her so molded, special
while the world circles, without them.

After, they scrub their bodies raw with
the bodywash set she recommended
call it inside thoughts, lies, forgotten
with time, till next Thursday, when she
summons their bargains whole again.

Walking up and down her street, they
wait for her to pose by the fire escape
take photos of her packages
observe comings and goings, matching
with beats of their hearts, soothing
in its dependability, we host blue veins.

It’s all her fault, they write in basic black,
leave little notes by the door, and march
toward hers, it’s not my fault, never was,
the internet’s broken, she influenced me.

Author’s Notes:

I’ve been experimenting with horror poetry (in my notebook) and thought it would be fascinating to borrow elements from it for my regular material. This one explores influencer culture’s most important element: the audience.

If I shit-talk social media, everyone will raise both their hands in agreement. But, then, who is watching the reels? Who is hitting likes? Funding their lives?

Accountability is a tricky concept. So are parasocial relationships. Wanting to look perfect in places where one can control their image. Us looking for answers everywhere except inside ourselves. Them becoming the thing we adore and violently hate when the tide turns. I’m not saying we’re all equally responsible, of course not, but it’s something to think about. Actively.

And if you don’t want to, that’s okay. I hope you can enjoy the poem as fiction.

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It sounds like I’m only rephrasing
pop lyrics, and things we all know
(because most of the time, I am)
how much will I mention the moon
sing, I can see the rabbit’s teeth
the indents make me feel calm, but
I miss that its shine is not just mine.

I break away from half a life
(I meant to write half a line)
to browse bookmarked photographs
so they’ll spark friction on my calves
and I’ll tear a metaphor from flashes
softly turning off in my head.

I say I feel blue, but the world
remains painted in grey(ish) clouds
and I don’t ever want anyone
to unveil the muggy mystery
behind faking it to the golden level
is (really) believing it yourself.

I make a soundtrack for everything
I write (and do, or don’t do)
sometimes it’s a quick playlist
worn of dragging a loop with cursors
and I swear it’s to help reduce
the volume and rate of half-thoughts
but what if all I pan is borrow
copy + paste modern marrow
edit it cryptic, only to be very myself
in the penultimate paragraph.

I want to scream I’ve never been liked
for who I am (just to land the line)
but that would be (sort of) untrue
because I’m addicted to shedding
for my benefit, to keep growing pieces
scientists would have to pin labels
and is it really poetry if everything
doesn’t hurt and includes runny blood.

I fold heartfelt responses to trace
later, crossing it boosts the threshold
but all it does is make me wonder
if others know about the ones I finish,
scratch, smoothen, and save
to remember what not to do
then hate, and they mirror it back
for never being allowed to be free.

Author’s Notes:

My April has sucked so far, and I don’t have hope for the rest. There’s no need for concern, I’m okay. Or more honestly, I will be okay.

I’ve been blocked, and somewhere between mad and sad (insert leaps of logic here), my drafts are being set free. I still edit them heavily, almost to the point of rewriting, but it’s been easier not to face the violence of the blank page.

Nevertheless, this poem was surprisingly delightful to put together. And I got to listen to The Neighborhood nonstop, so that was a cool perk.

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she could read empty hands
holding back rage
moss under her purple nails
stir with dense disbelief like
did we not revolve
the same dusty world uphill?

they wrote she wasn’t broken
just shaken for whimsy
she fluttered over, four wings
glazed by condensation
and the streetlights kissed
her shadows at zero hours
to refuel webbings of cartilage.

she could’ve asked why
so many bones refused to thaw
why eyes remain so dry
but she didn’t, because you see
she had to be very nice
never darting outside, learning
how to let the darkness glisten
through brown poppyish pupils.

one night, her fingers spread
you don’t need a jacket she said
if they bothered about my story
couldn’t bottle pressured lids
here’s my mystery:
they broke me so many times
the word dropped
its meaning, soul, its metaphors.

i metamorphosed into a starfish
so if they disassemble
subtly, overtly, when some dare
i grow new limbs every year
spring between peaks
covered with silver confetti
torn from pieces of their hearts.

Author’s Notes:

I’ve been rewatching Euphoria to prepare for the third season, and thoughts, flashbacks, and feelings have been swimming in my head.

Then I saw a picture of a pink starfish, and my brain does this cool thing now where it casts not-so-bad memories on my bedroom wall.

So I wrote a poem about someone I knew (and very badly wanted to be) when I was 14, and she was 17. Typically, it would stay in my notebooks, but this year I’ve been trying to edit my instincts, so…let’s stare at stars.

People who photograph vacation rentals should win Starbucks gift cards. The property looked vast on the website, a cavernous space to saturate with fresh thoughts and novel details to investigate while staring at stretched walls.

A pond. Bite-sized fish. Plants conscious of the environment.

Darkness wasn’t listed as a unique feature. Nor that I would be baking under a spotlight, the only source of such, for miles. The insects cheer. That’s the only explanation for their rising racket. City creatures chew on crushed hope.

I’m in bed at 9:30. The last time I did that, not a choice, I was probably eleven. But I wouldn’t sneak into this garden. The soil is cracked. The fence is a sheet. An animal the size of a large rabbit could break it in three attempts.

I turn the page of the book I’m attempting to read, and the sharp rustle grates on my ears. Someone’s breathing. Loudly. They need to see a pulmonologist.

It takes me far too long to realize that’s my lungs.

Tinted glass covers the front of the A-Frame. My reflection from the mattress in the loft space looks dizzy. I’m the same, but there’s a profound absence.

I wake up once every hour like I’ve set alarms. My phone is downstairs, on the coffee table, face down. I’m either hot or cold. I adjust the air conditioner, it’s too much and unnecessarily icy, just like me in high school.

An owl hoots. Unlike the ones that have relocated to skyscrapers, its screams don’t blend in with late-night traffic and stray dogs measuring their territory. It sounds like a signal. Like it was tasked with being on lookout.

I can’t drown my thoughts in music. I have never hated being alone, but I have this sudden realization that I can’t remember the last time I felt lonely.

Willing myself not to dramatize about how long it will take anyone to find me if an untoward incident transpires is one of the toughest things I’ve done. It’s even harder not to think about whether it will make a difference.

Maybe my existence will be absorbed. And the machine will move on.

I find myself looking forward to dawn, which I’ve never done before. Sunrises are spectacular, or so I’ve heard. When the light turns molten, so does my car, peeling across the dirt driveway without checking the rearview mirror.

Six hours later, I rest against the side of my foyer. My doorbell camera takes a snapshot, registering my presence. My home wakes up, notifications chiming in cadence, and I fail to remember why I was stifled. Why I needed a break.

The universe realigns itself. I release a breath full of gratitude.

Authors’ Notes:

This was supposed to read (more) like fiction. More supernatural. But perhaps I’m good with how it has turned out. I’m trying this thing where I run with the flow instead of standing against the sandstorm.

With my arms outstretched.

I am going on a short vacation. That bit is non-fiction. I’ll update you all if this was an upside-down fortune cookie or just a tale with shadows of its own.

The contrast between
yellow and pink, I examine
dirty fallen leaves
flowers wide, not thinking
about tomorrow’s wishes
still with the wind, stalling
entertaining my questions
nodding looks, just look.

The brush moves forward
back, but bold again
fingers smeared, with red
irises enrapt on the paper
their chosen mirror.

The wooden blocks clack
my pockets light, when full
figures of the world waving
through others’ misty eyes
see the same lasting things
immortalize, ferry, remind
they seized buzzing hearts.

⋆｡°✩

It was a cage then, bowls
of fruit, colors, bright names
easels with warped limbs
tired of carrying their weight.

My spirit wild
never met a room, an object
I could half commit to
sentences I struck, crinkled
correct interpretations.

They say the pigment faded
with time, I feel it died
for what was always forever
meant to be, I see you again,
in the sunlight
afternoon melting distances
bodies together
making choices for everyone
because any alterations
petrified order.

⋆｡°✩

I watch the moon turn shadows
blue, tonight I’m full, says
don’t curse your parts or design
hold breaths, you can be present
in between swallows, this is art
holding life in your hands
without crossing if you’ll ruin it.

My waist tethered, I jump
nose prickling with pollen
stained thumbnails
view of chewing seeds for lunch
wondering if saplings will bloom
underneath my ribs
stretch scars into constellations
and if then I could be considered
soothing, worth another chance.

⋆｡°✩

Author’s Notes:

I’ve been thinking about ekphrastic poetry for almost a year. As we know, real lies on the other side of the publish button. I liked being trapped in a painting like an insect beneath a microscope. You can’t flap your wings, but you can go deeper. There are endless layers to float in and out of. Stay as long as you like.

I’d like to offer a huge shoutout to the queen of this sub-genre, Nancy Santos, without whom I wouldn’t label my poem as the beginning of a journey.

It isn’t a waste of time when
I can skip everything boring
I can get out, I can forget
for 211 seconds how gripped
I am by my obsessions.

Fridges are being restocked
powders mix, I’ll never bake
clips of vintage Britney
before rose tints broke
did millions shout what few
slurred to me like a demand
if she danced to the pattern
of “never change”.

They’re rolling like tides
scheduled on my screen
the world bathes in toffee eyes
smiles that could kill chocolate
I skim top-rated reactions
“you’re rain, stay unhinged”
“I haven’t ever felt like this”
and wonder…for how long
we’ll choose love over cruelty
so common, scattered carbon
till someone holds up a signal
“what were you expecting?
this is social fucking media.”

Numb legs unfurl, I force them
to the balcony, when did
all my dresses fade to white?
my tissue dehydrated
my soul is on vacation
checks in every once in a while
voicing…is this thing still on?

I breathe in the pollution
drinking inhale, it never winks
three bulbs on at 3:30 am
a woman using her phone
a man smoking, also
a silhouette too far to map
I want to be them, so I can see
if I am leaking cytoplasm.

And these thoughts are
the good ones, from the list
haunting my head
so I turn my laptop back up
zoning in, promising myself
just one more short.

I want to fling my Kindle across the room for making me feel (so much) when all I wanted was to escape. I want to hold it so hard, the plastic creaks. I want to capture the words I just finished reading.

And the light that floats through my mind, like it were a firefly in space.

We were in a museum of modern art, too, like them. Once, twice, many times. Hiding laughs behind our hands, contrasting our weird interpretations to the official letters held by stands, my dress swishing, green, like overgrown grass.

I lived my mother's dream, my hand in someone’s who appreciates the beauty in this world, despite being taught otherwise. The canyon stretched, swaying, the one between us (me and her), the viewfinder capturing cracks.

I was in a collective daydream, mine too, at an unidentified point in time.

To be loved in a way we could never describe. Love that changes shape like a droplet of water. It’s fresh snowflakes, gently shifting the color of the ground. It’s a storm. It’s moisture in the air calling the day’s temperature a lie. It’s rain pelting on parched soil, changing its constitution. It eases in a glass, half-full.

I’ve always fallen in love easily. Needing and wanting to be needed, twin urges I don’t remember ever not having. But this (you, us) hurt. Like that first breath underwater. Mouth full of chlorine, brain pausing, wasn’t water supposed to be our friend? Lungs protesting, legs cramping.

Then, night after night, I practiced breathing. When to raise my head, slanted, upward. I became a fish after being told (all my life) that I couldn’t swim, since I was too selfish for anyone to want to stay afloat.

That day was great, memorable now that I think about it, but it still itched like reality often does…like something was missing. And I’ve never felt the need to review/revisit it. Until now.

When did my brain start doing this…leaping to good memories?

When time stills, I count it by my heartbeat. But (important) years have a way of feeling like a day. Between yesterday and today. Today and tomorrow. Only one day. A room, a window, a painting I can’t look away from.

Between feeling like the pain of living was too much to bear and realizing that choosing to live was more painful somehow, but I chose it nevertheless.

Writers live twice, I’ve said (so often) that I’ve forgotten its origin story. Once, when they experience something, and later when they write about it. Maybe I lifted it from someone else’s work. Perhaps it’s passed back and forth so many times between people, like a joint at a party, that it doesn’t matter.

But I’ve never admitted the (stripped down) truth.

That I only live once. The second time.

Yesterday, I didn’t think I would share this story. Have the memory. Cry, while cradling my Kindle. And tomorrow I might weave a different truth. One where reality feels less uncomfortable. Where there’s more good. More (love) and art.

Just more.

I start my morning like I usually do, by talking to my plants. Cuttings, beakers, and food scraps form a replica of my former garden.

A temporary design for a one-way journey.

As water perspires, my mind dips in and out like the sandy cookie in my hand. Time feels like tree sap when you’re traveling at a speed previously thought of as impossible. Sometimes I struggle to remember before: a location where my feet touched solid ground. A lab that defied logic to cultivate vegetables.

It doesn’t help that every day is the same. People, views, and the same hollow in my stomach. An alert on my watch corrects me; I don’t know what day it is.

I guess some things never change.

Today, we can see a blue-green dot in the darkness, sticking out like a missed bit of glitter. Not on the control panel, but through the scope, with our eyes.

After debriefing the team and offering a speech about holding momentum for the last mile, which I’m now thankful for rehearsing 117 times, I walk in a haze of panic, retreating to my room with disintegrating resolve.

I lose a few moments and reconnect with reality to find my nails outlining the words I no longer need to read. A line discussing the emotions of never being able to go home, in a logbook, passed like an afterthought by my predecessor.

A person who worked with dirt and tissue without much success, who existed without tangible rewards, in service of those who would come after.

Characteristically, I can’t circle the exact juncture at which the words offered me gravity. It was slow, like my brain’s transition from methodical to believing in more, seeking meaning in the mundane and the miraculous.

But I don’t think I fully understood them until now. It drops down like a throw blanket, as I train for landing and review plans for the first couple of weeks of settlement. Building, learning, and preparing to move again.

Home isn’t a place waiting for you, just as you left it, destined to benefit your checklist of expectations. It shifts, just like you. Changes you honor.

It’s a fragment you carry with yourself. It’s a question you ask yourself nightly.

Am I doing everything to keep the harmony alive?

Just my fate

the whisper slithers, and I
reflexively review my devices
anticipating discordant static
like she might be listening.

Every Wednesday, I wonder
how light would spill if I didn’t
drag the muscle of my choices

surrender to interstellar shifts
blame the sun, and label
every injury as inevitable.

✦ ⋆ ☽

You feel too much

a comment I wear on my arm
like runners securing phones
my tears touch oceans, only fools
try to direct their circulation.

Salt flows out of the wound
reactions claim influential sparks
the forest drawing firelines

sweeter than extra caramel syrup
cooled foam reforming soil
when sealed with time and space.

☾ ⋆ ✦

The wrong shade of yellow

aged walls line capillaries
and I push my eyes to whiten
swing my body, store my feet
above the glinting ground.

Memories switch channels
with identical laugh tracks
etching lessons
in rotations, superfluous fragility

of the tiniest molecules
that started an avalanche, razing
foundations glued by powder.

✦ ⋆ ☽

Endings are detached, floating
instinctual for voyagers
remember, ice breaks too
for the swell, without question
to transform their futures
rising again, like it was habitual.

On a Saturday morning, I find myself in a shopping mall.

We were supposed to be here at 11, when it’s open and empty. It’s noon. I drag my partner’s hand towards the scent of caffeine as soon as we cross the metal gates. Their designs are labyrinthine, but this proximity is a thing of necessity.

Something happens to my brain chemistry every few months. It wants out. Of my meticulously planned life. My tendency to hide. My hatred for crowds.

The same brain glitches now while trying to find the perfect table. Away from the guys debating trading tips. Definitely far from babies. Pick a corner, there on the furthest edge, and examine the choices that led you to this moment.

In this moment, I’d sell my shoes and take a cab home. That feels like a good idea.

We stay, because leaving feels like failing, which makes me want to cry a little bit. I remind myself that I can sit down and settle my thoughts if/when I feel overwhelmed. I have my Kindle. AirPods. Access to sugary goodness.

Walking feels good, like I’m regaining some control. I have to stop myself from doing so on escalators. Relaxing in public places is a thing.

They have large, glowing maps on each floor, which I study because I get lost in this place no matter how many times I’ve been here. My brain registers the unfamiliar details and tries to pinpoint when “last time” actually was.

I stop that terrifying train of thought because I imagine it to be two years, but in reality, if I locate a photo or receipt, it could reveal a pre-pandemic date.

I didn’t come here to buy anything I actually need. I do so in the privacy of my home, with multiple tabs open, an Excel sheet tracking details, and a deadline blinking in the form of a timer. While I bite my nails and sip Diet Coke.

It’s exhilarating, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

I’m here for the other thing.

It spins, the vision in my head. Suddenly, I can’t stand the clashing aromas in Bath & Body Works, don’t want to sample headphones where I will be forced to look at options I dislike, the chocolates look meh…my tongue’s had better.

Irrelevance, I guess, is the domineering note. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer in the target demographic. Maybe it’s the unfamiliar. Maybe it’s me.

The experience I was seeking is dissolving along the edges. Every store seems smaller than before, and I swear it has changed for the worse. The design, the aisles, the products on sale, they blur into unwelcoming gray figures.

We break for early lunch, and the burger place we usually people-watch from doesn’t have any empty seats. Even the small bar area is overflowing.

I don’t want to abandon the search. We go outside to the quad, survey the top floors, but each spot that felt cozy has been replaced by a trendier option.

It breaks then, my resolve for surviving the wild. It feels impossible, a slice of normalcy, what others experience. But I don’t have too much time to mourn the way I am, because something better is sneaking its feet over the horizon.

There on the rope, when I give up, loosen my grip, that’s when poetry moves.

It’s not something I can control. I’ve studied it, tried to simulate it, even made a decision-making matrix, but it occurs on its own, like Aurora Borealis in the summer. Magnificent. Magical. A phenomenon to enjoy from afar.

I welcome the veil between me and the world. My skin is wax, and the rest of it is water. It’s not…feeling as if it’s all happening to someone else.

Everything just stops.

Stops spiralling. Stops mattering. Stops aggravating my senses.

We cruise with the crowd, as if the friction doesn’t exist. We poke at our pink pasta and declare ours as superior. We stare at the pre-teens filming multiple takes for TikTok, and wonder if we were ever that young.

I make a list on my Notes app of things I didn’t buy today. If I remember them fondly two weeks later, I’ll click on add to cart. This time, through apps.

Questions like “Why is everyone out today?” bounce off my mind like sunlight on heavy clouds. Clutched hands retain my attention, paper bags on the verge of tearing, empty stores with people who work there gazing at us expectantly.

It’s strange, this place. How nothing fits, yet everything belongs together.

Random photos fill my camera roll, anything that catches my eye. Details that someone took the effort to curate. Seasonal decorations. Spaces for lease.

We step outside at 4 pm, and while waiting for our Uber, notice that an event is about to start. People have formed queues. Their energy is palpable. It’s an electric thing dancing through the air, ricocheting between lit screens.

On our way back, I feel drunk, like I’ve pulled off a heist. If you ask me at this moment if I’ll ever leave my house again without an important reason, I’ll say no. I’ll underline it, emphasise it, and tattoo it with a Sharpie.

But I’ll be back. Maybe not here specifically, but somewhere. Anywhere. If for no other reason than to be proven right. To tire myself out so I can unwind.

And to see poetry in motion.

If you’re reading on your phone, this poem looks best in landscape mode.

I don’t recall laminating the recipe
success swabbing souvenirs like marinara
staining its memory
empty drawer in my dresser, dripping silk
threads of dread: if this time I’d gone too far…
winding over whether you like me for me.

Orbiting the vacuum in between worlds
feet pointing they’re sick
of splitting both,
dancing with made-up models at night…
that they’ve tried vanishing before, only to not
pin down the squares taped to stop.

Sheets stressed about abandonment at dawn
like it wasn’t a seasonal sensation…
I crunched numbers on back pages of poems
measuring if tailoring could repair
my impulses from fracturing before diverting
vertigo from revolving doors of remorse.

While waiting at windows for reticent returns
hoping you haven’t spied treasures
in someone who fits better, concedes corners
defending denticulate possessions
and needs a singular screen
for her seamless anatomy of words,
adequately eager for every insinuated revision.

I studied your habits more than my shadows
dotted when you withdrew with stars
struck off arrivals with lightning bolts
obliterated terms, silences, and punctuation…
until a language materialized
that was safe
spoken within the distance of two pavements.

There will be no you and me, I decided one day,
just you with apparitions of me
resetting on minty interactions…
adding fouettés like it’s a classic mystery
shoveling concessions like yesterday’s weather
since I never liked anything enough, anyway.

Here we lie encased in blinding amber, spotlit
spinning globe, they openly envy
dissembling like it’s easy when asked
magically/meant to be/magnets
lasting an era, not maddening, volatile months
calling ourselves luckiest…spelling serendipity.

Author’s Notes:

This fictional poem was born from a conversation with friends who discussed the benefits of restraining oneself in relationships, communicating creatively, and the anxiety about someone leaving if/when they get to know the real you.

During which I nodded along while humming One of Your Girls in my head.

Since I don’t have any experience with the former, I thought it would be a fun experiment to write from that point of view. Somehow, there’s still a lot of me in the poem, but overall, I would say I like the mashed-up result.

“Wait for the white moon.”

The cursive neon lettering on my headboard flickers at me, an anchor to my disarrayed thoughts. They had it custom-made for my 29th birthday.

My friends dragged me to a psychic the year before. She’d helped all three of them find the person of their dreams, leading to joint bridal showers.

I spooked her instead.

The devil nestled between two blank cards—a perplexing trio, never detected before. Tossing the deck, she asked me to leave, her voice barely a scratch.

As I staggered backward, she seized my arm and uttered those five words.

As the clock ticks towards midnight, I trace the key under my pillow.

Light footsteps, strappy heels in hand, and shallow breaths. I’m out of my flat, bolting the door shut, in under 15 minutes.

Just like I’d timed it.

The moon is nearly fluorescent tonight, making shadows shrink, except the ones in my heart. I flinch at every out-of-place line, my courage crumpling from every reflective surface. I slam my car’s door hard and adjust the seat.

I miss driving with the wind messing up my hair.

Fireworks, cheers, and sloshing drinks beckon me inside the square.

I am one with the crowd, blending, disappearing.

No one knows who I am or cares about my being. Phones angled on sticks, shifting glittery fabrics, and synchronized billboards occupy my periphery.

I engrave every pixel to memory, my head woozy from spinning in circles.

For 45 minutes, it feels like everything is alright with the world. That we can stand with each other, forgetting all the darkness, aches, and injustice.

A new beginning waits on the other side, its plan set in motion two years ago. Tomorrow I’m somewhere else, someone else.

The countdown starts, and I walk away.

Previously published with Dead or Alive (Medium, December 2023).

Author’s Notes:

I remember hating this story when I wrote it. Fun fact: I stitched three vague drafts together, frustrated at my idea pile. Over time, however, and maybe to no one’s surprise but my own, it became something special.

Something spectacular. Something indelible. A corner. A turning point.

Even now, exactly two years later, I anticipated a tsunami of criticism. But it made me smile instead. Reminisce. And I only made a few cosmetic changes.

Happy New Year to everyone reading this (as well as to those who aren’t here because they have a life or something like that), and may we keep hitting that publish button, because you never know what’s waiting on the other side.

I soak the third compliment on my black turtleneck sweater with stars made of rhinestones while passing another cup of cranberry juice, wine, and vodka.

Thanks, I bought it just for tonight. I Googled easy cocktail recipes one week ago.

Looks like blood. Sounds like real laughter.

Groups stand in courts with gaps between them, and we treat cracks like wet cement. Let’s play a game, an ice-breaker to dissolve discomfort, so strangers can say they met someone between squeals of (pretend) killing humanity.

Risqué add-ons to make myself memorable. I’ve been crafting them for months.

I steal moments for myself on the second balcony, the one casually reserved for smokers, marked with crescent bowls we crafted during a ceramics class. Lights from equidistant buildings with mirrored windows send me signals.

Mismatched. Blinking furiously in preset meters. Objects surviving in motion.

Nine days before the party, we substituted Secret Santa with White Elephant. Same materialistic make-believe, covered in newer flavors of wrapping paper.

Because it was boring. Because it wasn’t brutal enough. Because we need drama.

The people pleaser wars with the organizer, the one who herds a forest. She’s destined to lead, while being introduced at the door as paste. She gets people happy drunk. The one who steers discussions away from debates.

I study flecks in pupils for cues. Pantomimes for commands on stay or barter. Every face for a reaction to something—anything resembling a buy-in.

Every single one, save my own. Those reactions I bury. To be dissected next year.

We move the coffee table to create a makeshift dancefloor. Someone messes up the cast and the wrong screen opens on the TV, and we pretend we’re in a hip club. I pretend like I don’t know how to sync my phone.

An eternity passes, but it’s only been fifteen minutes. I volunteer to be the DJ, but someone claws at my elbow. Let’s do the real steps, the ones in the music video, stand in the front, and others can impersonate us.

Don’t worry, they really want to. Who wouldn’t want to be us?

It’s midnight, and people start leaving, but I wait like I’m encased in granite. The spell will break when the room’s cleared. When I no longer swallow my yawns and hide my resting face. When we get started on cleanup duty.

It feels like I’m holding the world up with my hands. An addiction I won’t quit.

I shake my body silently, reminding my stems of their columns. My veins are electric, and I attribute it to the Irish coffee. I make rounds like I’m the guest of honor, but it’s also my responsibility to earn satisfied five-star reviews.

Clusters form again, but it’s nearing 2 am, and we shed some of our masks in the moonlight and wintry night air. A necessity, a luxury, a duality.

Conversations lose their seams; we discuss theories and philosophize about why we do what we do, not really, but circling peripheries. For a moment, it feels like we thrum at the same frequency, like I misinterpreted my oddities.

We say goodbye with hugs that hold on and vows of let’s do this again.

Let’s not.

Unfiltered Author’s Notes:

Most of the time, stepping into my past is suffixed with, “What the hell were you thinking? And why is no one requesting volunteers for time travel?”

But while writing this piece, I saw a new banner flash behind my eyes, “Thank fuck, I’m not there anymore.” Maybe I’m becoming a part-time optimist.

On another note, I’m really enjoying exploring the prismatic layers of creative non-fiction. Who knew mixing genres could (also) get me drunk?