When I’m gone, let my memories scatter like falling leaves, each one a fleeting moment drifting gracefully in the wind. Let laughter echo like the final notes of a song, soft yet filled with warmth that lingers.

legacy left a stain on every shirt i ever borrowed
everything i ever gave came with a smell of loving
of keepsakes and keeping safe

I walk on the remains of my ancestors, down twisted and treacherous paths. I carry the scars of generations slung over one shoulder, pulling me off balance, and on the other I bear the silence of a thousand words unsaid.

In the Early Summer,
I drink sticky gold sunshine and nibble velvet pink roses
and breathe the air of Saturday mornings:
Saturday mornings when I wake up to a tangle of sheets
clock hands at 7:30
window draped in sleeves of sun and the brush of a breeze

You would think that versatility would be appreciated. 
Small forks and spoons for dessert, big ones for entrees. 
There’s a knife equipped for steak, butter, and cheese. 
The amount of money, plastic, and materials used for cutlery is astonishing.

Market spices always made me feel ill. The aroma would go straight to the back of my olfactory cortex, pounding the inner walls of my head.

I look up at the clear sky
Scattered with white dots like a polka-dotted tie
The cosmos,
Filled with rocks and trash, space compost.
If each small star is a sun and our sun is so big
If we are so small to our sun, the smallest of stars.
Then what am I in space?

“You’ve grown”

Your lips are painted red like the roses they make rosaries from. Melting the petals down to
clay and shaping something new,
the way God shaped man from earth,
a modicum of faith is crafted.
They drop a subtle shade of red, like plum wine mixed with vodka at a party where drinks

a bowl of ocean: no bigger than
cupped palms; the same concave
as the deflated iris over
the sightless eye.

long before you cared, the lanterns
became beacons. i find myself
outside, moth-bitten, and
perfectly fine.

I know not how to be an individual,
although biologically, yes, I am my own person.
But still, biologically, I am to form new flesh and blood with no prior instructions.
How to craft a cerulean personality that was to sprout from my own mental illness

It hurts, the hollow throb of losing—losing someone always does. But it was different this time. “It’s not fair!” She wanted to scream a blood soaked cry into the world, one begging for lost time back and just one more chance. Perhaps it wasn’t fair.

Independence is about the freedom one deserves,
a right one must have to live.
A right to breathe, to dream, to write their own story in a world
we call ours.

I watch as the sun sets,
the beautiful descent of a once glorious noon,
falling down, down, down,
leaving in its wake, a bloody path of oranges, pinks, reds,
—a shade of orange reminiscent of a raging fire,
A fire that destroyed a family’s home

The NRA headquarters is blown to smithereens by children holding bombs made of
acrylic paint and shredded OshKosh overalls.

She looked in the mirror and thought about death. Not the depressing and gloomy type, just
the type that meant “farewell.” It felt very diminutive to think about the end. She was standing
there alone looking into her dirty mirror, processing herself. How was it possible that one day

In the mirror, I gaze, a face that is not my own,
A visage of a monster, chilling to the bone.
What defines a monster, but our own perception anyway?
If they were the epitome of beauty, we’d see them in that way.

I was too tired to cook last night. I felt like falling asleep.
I drank coffee for lunch because homework couldn’t stop piling up.
My mind forgets the battles won, the dragons slayed.
All the blood, sweat and tears I had to push through to get to this point.

Your ethos charmed me so
Confidence and ambition laced in every breath
I was struck by cupid’s arrow
You were the one with the wings

I sit here and scroll
A video pops up next
Its subject?
Oh my.

It talks about how grandparents are running our country
And grandchildren on the streets
Waiting to die.

What am I?

The room around him was littered with junk food packaging. Piles of them. Crumbs patterned his desk. His eyes were bloodshot red and his arms stiff, due to days of slim to none motion. His hair was a fury of strands and his soiled clothes unwashed for weeks, both reeked unpleasantly.

Pinch the bridge of my nose—
is it wrong,
too wide,
too flat?
Prepare your rust-covered tools,
bite into my bone,
smooth like your dream ski slope.
Whittle me down
to a shape that’s not my own.

Our shoes are different sizes
Toes curling to fit in the space
Aching pain bites—
Oh, to be included

Piano lessons since birth
But a violinist is yearned for
Tutorials all night—
Oh, to be included

If there were ever any doubt
Than I am wholly and utterly in love with you
It has now been thoroughly expunged from my conscious
The clanging and drilling of your voice
High pitched and shrill and the hollowness of hammer on nail
The ungentle touch of your never rougher hands

The train car is usually empty at
9 am. Blue plastic seats line both
lengths of the train. The seats are
cold and rock solid. They
join together to form one
elongated bench.

The car is empty now and I am
the first in this lonely train car.

Two lives entwined, yet worlds apart
One is forefront and first seen,
A constant pull, a tearing heart
The other is hidden and forbidden,
A true freedom, lying till eighteen

The applewood boughs were once laden with revenant spring,
Pillars of sanctuary to golden finches lost in flock,
Through throngs of feathered wings batting valiantly against turbulent affairs,
One single creature is mottled by solitude,
For it drives him insane to be so isolated,

Never thought I’d be here again
Pining again
Feeling again
Swept up in the moment again
In a smile again
I thought I was over it
Over romance
Over random chance
Over falling into eyes which linger just too long on mine
But no
Turns out that love is young

father never bothered to fix the leaky faucet 
// why fix things that eventually come undone mija? 
so it 
dripped 
and 
dripped 
and 
dripped 
and 
creaked 
and 
creaked 
and 

As you talk I take notes 
The way you hold yourself 
How you talk 
Your facial features 
Everything about you 
I take notes