of soft tendencies

and how to eat the dark raw

[a-few-tumbles-later]

praying eyes

boring holes into the sky

is there enough heat there

to will the gray away?

tearstreaks upon faces

a silent scream of

it has rained enough

we cannot have the ground

swallow us

faster

[a-few-tumbles-later]

the interval between the aftershocks are longer now as the days yawn into nights.

i can feel my bones and flesh

shudder

before

the ground

does now.

[a-few-tumbles-later]

How many words will I refuse to use

poems I will refuse to write

before I can write

without your

traces on

them

[a-few-tumbles-later]

we don't demand love, we do not bang on it's doors.

we wait quietly outside, and sometimes just pass by

light spills from the cracks beneath it

it is enough, that is enough

to know that someone is inside

and is it not love, is that not love

waiting by the door, however long, the light a soft cradle to the heart

[a-few-tumbles-later]

and yes these branches these leaves these blooms and this bearing, this fruitful. thriving i, stretch myself out wide and oh the world does not have space for such things. i prune myself down small and almost branchless. i unpretty, the long gone leaves reveal the ugly. i am but a trunk of insecurity. fires have consumed my barks and i am a blackened stump of inferiority. in this forgotten wastelands, the sky is far but under oh under i root myself down down down through rocks and sediments and the earth screams no. but i, race against the rotting. i reach wide and stretch down far far far, raging. hope a sliver, a speck, a fire about to burn out, the last ember dying and in the end i stop, succumbing.

and yes these branches these leaves these blooms and this bearing, this fruitful... it was... and then it wasn't.

[a-few-tumbles-later]

sleep evades

and so these thoughts invade

i find my mind locked in a wrestle with my heart

my body is crawling back like muscle memory

ready to relive moments i wished repeated.

this world of ours once cherished

warmth has now perished

hands clenched around the phone

thumbs hovering over a long-forgotten archived conversation

[a-few-tumbles-later]

i am a loud voice underneath the waves and isn't it wonderful to be heard by others? you speak and the world listens and throws its head back to laugh but i drift and drown and sink unmissed. unheard unheard unheard

i scream unheard. too many times and too many words drowned, too many attempts to speak and too many times i am cutoff, overlapped, dismissed and oh yes i have quieted down. i learned it with a knife to my throat and oh it is okay, i say, it is okay. i have been here for too long the waves start to feel like home and i too would choose to hang onto every word you say and throw my head back too at everytime you throw a joke my way. the world listens and the world watches. why look beneath the waves.

[a-few-tumbles-later]

when i pick up the pen to write again. the ink whispers, the long-dead feeling slithers. the words scream, bursting on their own seam. that shouldn't happen. but. who's to blame the consequences your name.

[a-few-tumbles-later]

I'm tugging at shadows

Begging they don't leave

I know the light can be a little too bright

But I don't want anyone to see how I bleed

My love, these days, I crumble a little easily

I keep asking what is wrong with me

A little touch-starved but feeling sick

When I reach out for attention

the light pulls away too quick

[a-few-tumbles-later]

there are different ways to hold on. or is it that you can't let go? for example, a lonely inbox with one name stickied to the top because you know it'll never come up. for example, a porcelain grip breaking off at the wrist yet those hands still clenched around that heart. for example...

[a-few-tumbles-later]

the same room

the same days

click-clacks and dry eyes

and on my lap

is a kitten pile

[a-few-tumbles-later]

is this a competition of

how long the other caves in

who will first make

whose phone ring

or maybe it's all in my head

and whatever is between us

is now dead.

[a-few-tumbles-later]

my dear, what bleak weather. once you look my way, I feel a sun warming inside me. outside there is no light, in here, you create it.

[a-few-tumbles-later]

i am an uneventful day

a head full of repeated conversations

there is a memory i talk to

when i can just ping a message

is this lonely and

do i like it even better now

cicadas fill the silence

when the moon is quiet

there is the bird

for when the sun drops by

resting on the awning

sometimes i think

what will change in this still space

i am a dust existing

fluent in anxiety and overthinking

is that arrogance?

the river is a safe space

that does not stop

but what then when it dries up?

what do we have right now?

everything but

can i be more than

these four walls

a fungi growing out of

the cracks of a fallen tree

what else do I

have to think about?

[a-few-tumbles-later]

You will say

I don't mind

and so I

ramble on random

as you waste your

time on me.

I can be too much,

all at once.

I know this.

You know this.

You don't mind.

I do.

The next day I

keep my silence

but you waste your

time on me again

you ramble

on random too

You know how

I mind me

And I know how

you don't

I pour and run

You hose me down

[a-few-tumbles-later]

i only thought that

it was enough

to have written rawly

about these

years of rot

in me

this holding on

this keeping in

this thriving yet

suffering in the dark

a longing to speak for

to speak to

to be spoken for

give it time

they say and so

i gave years

& years more

and perhaps

the only good thing

out of this

is i can write about it now

even though

it'll be nothing but

ashes later

[a-few-tumbles-later]

waking to the moon

with a skin wanting the sun