I don’t think I could tell you of ease
But I see you across from this sea in between
Shifting in your seat, nursing a dull ache
I know that feeling all too well
But I don’t want to tell you about it
In case I may come across insensitive
Because I’m trying not to shift this center of gravity
We both share in desperation
And tip us over the edge
We didn’t dare to wonder about
But I never learned to swim
And this sea in between
is filling up my lungs
When did it get so hard to breathe?
I call after you, under my shallow breath
I see you for everything  
Hoping you see me too
But this heavy air we drink
Settles in your shadow and mine
It spells out gracefully
That the spaces between us
Are built out of love
And so, we go on
Paving distances
For these descending clouds

First I nurse the realization
That this pain will echo
And in all my attempts to grasp it
And keep it close to my lungs
It weaves itself into my breath
And spills out into the open
Seeping into the damp earth
Whistling between the fog
Sinking among the morning dew
And slowly creeping it’s way close to you
My hands are far too unstable
To offer you some peace
I’d give you my bones and everything
That I thought I could be
I would wrap it in the flowers
That we wished for our garden
But this pain it’s too unpredictable
It leaps away from me
It touches anyone who dares
To give me a moment of their time
and when they tell me they are sorry
We both begin our decline
This grief, she sits at the table
It’s never just you and I
This pain it always echoes
Bouncing between your words
And mine

With a voice that fails me
I aim at the lines between your hope and my despair
With a needle, in an effort to achieve precision
To stitch our thoughts together
They’re so similar, so different
You think of October as a warm home
And I see it as a cold houseguest
And we co-exist in this oblivion
This circle of this or that
I admire your willingness to fill spaces
And you question my fear of being heard
You relish in the colours of fall
And I dread the looming winter
How is it that we left September
Hand-in-hand, wishing for rain...

In the context of things unknown
the leaves have fallen far into these doubts roads I travelled on summer's humid days now pinpricked with touches of gold
wheels blast past,
and the remnants of this past year rustle, there is a mystery in the coolness of this air will winter be one we can still bear?

In the context of things known,
I leave memories of all our growth
under the shade of baring branches
as days go by,
they'll be buried under the delicacies of fall until next year,
when the burden of the snow
has shifted their weight
I'll be back to bury more

This language, everblooming
It has so easily poisoned us
But you dust off those empty phrases
Washing stains out of rageful exchanges
This white flag is half in your hand
And half in mine
A haphazard grocery list
Stopped at tomatoes
Continued as a list of those “we would never go there" words
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Written like punctuation in the spills
Now I'm picking up dinner plates off the walls
So many weapons were thrown and old secrets hashed
A mess left with us drowning in the aftermath
I think the salad is now dressed in curses and ill wishes
But despite all that
I think it's your silence that will **** me

This grief changes shapes
It runs and comes back to me in different forms
Sometimes it's angry, sometimes sad
But lately, it's a sweet melancholy
That drifts along with the wind
Carrying the scent of pear trees and spring
It has lost its pain to the December freeze And now, it's a reminder of circularity
And the transience of this little life

I sometimes sit on our old couch in the basement
And think about what we left in its recline
The leather is cold and distant
It is coated with the film of time
Stained with tears, laughter, and secrets Nestled in the crevices is all my growth
When I lay my head against it
1 can hear dialogue from the movies we watched
And faint conversations with ghosts

I've talked to all the ghosts in this room
They speak of memories and grievances
And we revel in how quickly this fog has turned into smoke
It bites at my lungs
And I sit and wait, my eyes on my hands
My ears on the clock
At some point, each passing second
Parallels my heartbeat
There is someone across from me
Saying it is time to let go
But what would be left of me
If this grief vanished, too
At some point, it became all I am

Until you
somehow stumbled into this room
untethering the past from all that I knew

In hopes that this reaches you when you need it most

A message soaked in echoes, reminders, and hope
Lathered with the perfume of nostalgia
Floats back and forth between my mind and heart
Out from the arteries, back through the veins
Shaped and reshaped into paper trains
Thought bubbles and mind maps
All muddled into flashcards
Something in there might say: I have dreams for you
And maybe if in some way
You can decipher all this mess
You'll find the speech bubble, bullet point, and quiz question
written just for you that says in someway:
1 believe, and believe, and go on believing
Everyday
In you.

I've somehow stretched every limb
into a series of exhausted yawns
Now the rhythm of this day
Is with you
But it seems,
I am not the only one
With words breezy enough
To make you laugh
Because as I round the corner
I can hear the air rippling around you
And everything becoming lighter and lighter
Until you, a sun in everyone's galaxy
Illuminates the disillusioned
delusional rhythm makers
All here to gift you their love

To fault Tomorrow
Would be wrong
She just sat down
And all she said was
“I'm not sure”
And here we are
Offended
Because Yesterday was certain
But only today did she say anything
About it
And Today, she's been talking for a while.
(We are tired of it)
But Tomorrow thinks she can waltz in here
And sit down
Be mysterious and all
I won’t have it
But then to fault Tomorrow
Would be wrong
When its me
At fault
For thinking too long
Too wide
Too soon
Too late
For thinking and thinking
Until it all collates
And we are in a muddle
A mess
Of a puddle
Bursting in tears
Laughter
And fears
And all my Wondering
She’s blameworthy
I'm the neurotic one
I can't sit still
Until Tomorrow
Doesn’t come back
Dressed as Today
When she will talk
And talk
And talk
And I will wish once again
For yesterday
When she was
All quiet
And obnoxious
And mysterious
All unknown
And we will be back in new roles
New bodies
New tales
All over and over and over and over

To all the mornings that go wrong
1 hope you know
I find my laughter in you
somewhere along the "why mes" and "why nows"
A beautiful summer breeze hit
And I forgot what there was to complain about

"I hope you find ease."

"This discomfort is temporary, and that is the beauty of time. I have found my ease in that mere thought."

"But pain is pain."

"And it passes, like grief, it buries itself deep within, growing its roots and blooming into gardens, disguised as triumphs and memories.”

"I haven't laughed like this in forever."

"Me neither."

The laughter continued reverberating, threading itself into the wind and dispersing across the city glow. A moment of peace followed, and your company was a comfort, with each laugh we exchanged transforming into a life vest keeping me afloat.

"A melancholy grows, and it's swathed in nostalgia.”

"Why is that?"

"With every day that rains, it is September again... the month of endings.”

"Or new beginnings."

Colour blooms
Onto a canvas of black-and-white impressions
Left behind are brush strokes from the blues and greys
Overlayed are the yellows and pinks
Flowers drift left and right
A sunset glows until dark
Transforming into midnight bokeh
With every blink, something new
A painter paints
A thousand places all here at once
A thousand dreams
A thousand wonders
All here, in the colour of you

From the rivers of moonlight
That are flowing through these veins
I hope to light the darkness
That has showered you with rain
Maybe from this light and whatever it may reap
We can weave together a thousand memories
Enough to rival the light of a new day
And if even then, the night is too much to bear
I'll rekindle my friendship with the dawn Asking for favours to keep you under its care

Dear old me
I know how the future seems
As if time has you wringing out every last drop
Wondering if minutes spent are hours worth
But here we are
One crossroad after the other
You've taken paths paved
And those never walked
You've breathed in clouded air
And have gotten lost in the fog
You have climbed mountains
And descended valleys
You've seen clear skies
And cried with the rain
You may never know what's next; not even I do
But no matter where you think you'll go
Every tunnel you'll collide with
Always has a way through
Forwards and onwards
You'll make your way toward me
And I'll keep walking too

The hands of time
intertwined with mine
we walk down this street
through puddles of years
in the rain
where minutes fall
onto our heads
soaking our laughter
until it dissolves
and flows down the drain
to the stormwater pond
where the past awaits

but we keep walking
ignoring the ache
to retreat our steps
to what is now a lake

and we journey until we've left behind an ocean

Silence tumbles out of me
this moon, and this sun
this morning and this night
this want for rain
this flicker of hope
the embers, and the sheets of ice
it all in an overwhelming exhaustion
have come to take my breath away
and every time I speak
my words are caught in the wind
circling from everywhere to nowhere
leaving me somewhere in between

Words were left behind
    on top of the soil
    where they buried
    yesterday's bones

2. suddenly, this cold chill
    that has befriended my spine
    is now a sense of comfort
    that I am still alive

3. Grief, it is love, it is every form of love
    From every story I have ever read
    it is hope and despair
    it is the shadow
    of this rain
    that follows me
    home

4. I hope you see
    that this running clock
    moves in circles
    just like we do
                             the beginning of your journey
                             is closer to the end
                             than you could ever imagine

5. If you are looking for me
    I am searching for that old shadow
    we left with the sun for safekeeping
    thinking about burying old love

To heal
To lose
In circles
We float
Losing
Healing
Breathing
Hoping
Fearing

What are we fearing?

You with solemn eyes look to the sun
Lost in its embrace
Wishing to be the clouds
That touch its light and dissipate

"I am afraid that everything I have lost
Will come back and find me
After I have learned to live without it"

And with that, I begin to disappear

My lungs dissipate into this silence
The fires between yesterday and tomorrow
Burn in the back of my throat
I take the words I’ve collected over the years
Store them in jars with pennies and fears
I envelop my breath with rain clouds and blues
Ready to mail it out to the years

Between us are silent sorrows
We’ve only just reunited
And already, a vast sea has made its home
Between you and me
We filled it with our tears
I spoke, you listened, I listened, you spoke
Our heartbeats aligned
Momentarily we breathed
And words flowed out
Drowning us in memories
You make your departure,
Leaving me as I overthink the unspoken

The fire’s put out, but nothing’s left
If you ever return with more things to say
You can count the pennies and words I kept
But I’ll be gone into the void of yesterday
With healing lungs,
putting out the fires you left behind

when you climb mountains
you leave your footprints
in the rigid soil
that feeds into the ground
we once laid on
waiting for the sun to descend
to take our guards down
and prepare our fingers
for pointing at stars

Time leaves us reminiscing
Leaving behind bitter tastes laced with honey
something you liked about coffee
on these notes

I think about the distances between
Who you are and what I hope to be
And I see the mountains you said you'd climb

From the echoes of the future
What would you like to hear?
I hear sea breeze and glittering leaves
Rustling in a wind that has travelled from yesterday
Touched your palms and took you dancing on the moon
Then bid it's farewell to meet you once again someday

If this is all we've left behind
Of fractured conversations broken up by laughs and cries
I hope that somewhere under this broken starlight
You find the strength to dream and feel
And when you sleep, all your prayers reverberate through the atmosphere

We shall meet someday, in a moment of realization
Or in someone's loving daze
We shall watch the sunset and wave our last goodbyes

From: the past
To: the future

It's just you here
With this open wind

And a thought that craves to be embraced
By the arms of a voice daring enough
To bring it out into the open

It's just you here
With a beating heart harmonizing with the sea

Among waves of silenced love
and whispers of forgotten dreams
That colour this terracotta sand

It's just you here
Under the broken sky

A crying heart calls out to you
Looking for consolation
So, you put your hand on your chest.

Reminding it,
It's just you here

And you are alive

I miss the sweetness of writing
When words would untangle these corroded arteries
And bring relief to the pain left behind
By the dying starlight

I dust off recollections of our past
Dressed in all black
Stretching my limbs into a new atmosphere
Remembrance is pinned onto my beating heart

If I ask you to hold my hand
And walk me through this dark tunnel
Would you become the flicker of light
That I dream of at night?

There is a canvas made of broken sky
Covered in dust left behind by the sunset
Pigments swirl in these hopeful hands
I crave to paint, write, and leave behind colorful impressions

But these words have inhabited
The rivers of blood within me
And they flow from thought
To dream
To lungs
To sky,
sea,
and breeze
Then
All the way
Back to me

Let's liberate this silence
Let it blemish with the smoke
Coming off of the cooling coal
That once burned
in the wake of unvoiced promises

Somehow, you and I have managed to exchange dreams,
fears, and beliefs with one simple unspoken conversation

And now words cascade
Down rivers of my arteries and veins
Toward the palm of your hands
Hold them close
(I never intended to let them go)

But it seems that with every nonverbal exchange
A string of understanding ties us together
And there is nothing left in my power that I could do

To save us from the falling sky, splinters of moon,
and blankets of midnight blue

To the distances I could not go for you
I will say a thing or two
Maybe you will find in the vast field of canola
The same sun kissed reasons
For leaving behind the love of all seasons
To tremble in the wake of one

To the white noise we befriended
You hand-in-hand with silence
Wear the stars like midnight bloom
The sun avoids our encounters
And we become the founders
Of bordered misunderstandings

Blooming flowers, spring's demise,
Winter creeps inside your eyes
I would have left everything behind
If it weren't for this unsettled mind
But these vast fields of distances grow
Through the skies and soil above and below

And I, drowning in dreams of tomorrow,
Have lost the map I was meant to follow

Tell those distances I have yet to know
That I'm still learning how to let go

The winds have run away from us
Sailboats and feelings of incompleteness
Are now what we call home
Blue skies kiss the scabs on my knees
I've fallen many times while you were ahead of me
The distance stretches its limbs into the unknown
And I follow the quiet heartbeat
reverberating through my bones

If you listen closely, its reciting those words
And promises I once made to my broken self
It tells me all about my journey across the vast strait
That drains into the storm-loved sea
That bubbles and roars under my skin
I walk through fires and biting forests
As I make my way through everything that I fear

I walk these steps, holding you near
Prayers for you on my tongue
Evaporate into the open breeze
Carrying the hope that you make it through
Everything that obstructs your peace

With an overcast sky, summer warns us
the moon stops by for a brief conversation
before taking its leave, replaced by the sun
I stitch together sheep counts, Z's, and dreams
but these days drag into my subconscious
and streams of melancholy drain into one

You shake your head, watching me
it seems I have mistaken midnight gloom
for rain clouds and thunderstorm doom
Summer's warnings, now clear as day,
everything they were meant to say
I tend to overthink and underthink everything we are

When winter comes,
with endless hours of midnight
maybe then, I will have enough time
to consolidate what we are destined to be
unmistakably

Between you and this dying world
Are boats carried by tidal waves
Built from pieces of love you left behind
You keep moving toward the horizon
As their anchors fall into deep ocean
Strings of forgotten fears hold you back
And prayers, from when you were lost,
Take your hand, tell you stories, and bring you back to where the sun said its final goodbyes
And you, covered in terracotta and blue
Begin to sink in the sapphire gloom
As whatever remains from your dreams
Keeps you afloat and clouds disappear
The stars bloom from midnight grey
Illuminating the way home
All for you

Dream, tell me
what have you heard
from the gossiping stars?
did they let my wishes
fall into the hands
of hummingbird nests?
did the quiet ocean blue
bring waves of things untrue?
Were you deceived by piano keys
lingering songs & eulogies?
Does the sun cleanse your lethargy
or are you like me?
Where it never reaches you in time
before everything fades to a quiet dark
tell me, Dream.

Reckless, in a cloud of bloom
Ocean salt from seeping wounds
Eroded sands and mindless chats
Raised eyebrows, and an empty hand
My pulse, waves of emanating pain
In the troughs, is the space
You placed your absence within

Fortresses of shy encounters
Built around memories of happenstance
My cloudy speech and murmurs of nonsense
Infiltrate the speck of soil that still remains
Barren land, and you, a seedling of perseverance
Have found an impossible way
To grow
In my aching heart

You always carried me home with your gaze
In your laughter I could float freely with all my fears left to drown in the sea of your reassurances
I slept in my dreams clutching the threads of my tears
So that in my wakefulness,
I can embroider them onto the fabric of a forgotten past
To keep the memory of your name within reach
So that when I whisper it into the sea breeze
Everything once cultivated grows inside of me
And a garden scape of indescribable ease
Is complete with streams of water that run
from your heart to my shaking hands

What becomes of these fleeting reunions?
Do they wash away with the sea salted sand
and becomes fragments of a conversation once had
Do they transform into the sugar in your coffee,
or the honey in your tea,
and compel you to never forget about me?
Or do they live in this rustling wind
that picks fights with your consciousness
and leaves you in a state of rumination
between the present and the past?

Here we are at a crossroads
Separated by clouds of silence
We've exchanged laughs, stories, and condolences
You carried your virtues on your back
And I held my shortcomings in my hands
The horizon calls out your name
Waking the moon that sleeps in your eyes
Your light has guided us through the midnight grey
And this trail winds down to a story's end
Fireflies guide you home toward the moonlit sea
Where thoughts and prayers take the shape of water
And boats built from your benevolence
Take you to rest with the roots of your dreams
As I accompany the fog through woven forests
I echo your humming in this silent night
Building the distance that was written to be
I walk, lost in reflection, toward an unknown


And quietly,
my soul follows you home

You have always given me enough space
For my laughter to stretch it's healing bones
I don't have much in the corners where I reside
Besides enough room in this soul of mine
For the both of us to sit and recline

I don't have much space in this beating heart
It's still under repairs and renovations
But I will find a way to stretch it thin
To let it's shadow cast over you
And shield you from the glaring sun

From whatever remains..

I massage the black seed oil into my hair
love the way it reminds me of my mother's fragrant laugh
And the way her soft hands stretch the dough
And she sprinkles kalonji onto it where the melting butter
welcomes the seeds with open arms

I braid this ocean breeze into my itching scalp
Thinking of how she would sit me down
And run her fingers through my knotted hair
After I played outside without a care
And I would shriek in pain with every pull,
desperate to leave her grasp
But she would pour the mustard seed oil onto her palms
And I would be transported into her tough love

Now I think about those moments,
And the pain feels like distant menthol induced haziness
Instead, all I feel is my back against her warmth

—————————————————————
Kalonji - Black Seed/Onion Seed

Here's to the ephemeral nights carried away by the sounds of birds.
While you were tracing constellations in your popcorn ceiling
I was drowning in the midnight blue, thinking of love,
And how the shape of water reminds me of you,
I packed a bag of dreams for the bus ride down your memory road
To keep me occupied in your dreamscape world
as I chased remnants of wished-upon dandelions
back to the backyard where our laughter still circled with the wind
only to find you waiting with our two-handed promises still knotted together
the dreamscapes shed around us
and sunrise glow burned through our souls
shoulders hunched by weighted confrontations
night escaped hours ago, but I, desperate to hang on, drown in day-glow
My memories and dreams have melted into motion blur
And thoughts of you carry them away to the moon.


I am back to where you left me last, taking reality on a walk,
As a long summer day saunters ahead.

Fireflies float in lightless rooms,
Spelling out words with fluid constellations
And my heart still tender from afternoon
Drugged up and fussed with the want of rain
Interprets these flecks of dancing
as love letters to pain

I think of dreaming and I think of you
Somewhere basking in summer rain
While I fall for foolish stories
written on the windows of a midnight train
These conversations that go nowhere
heavily soaked in honey stick to my tongue

These whisperings float in pools of ink
Like the daunting midnight sea,
But i'm too far gone into this dream state
Yet ready to drown, before I can hesitate,
In this ocean that you call home

We, birds in pain,
Put our trust in branches
Too weak to hold the weight of these dreams
This saffron grief is too fragrant
For our evergreen pine noses.
The everyday calamity
The everyman dream
Burns through the soil in our lungs,  
Memories of summer are now lost in September rain.
I am here dreaming of mending hearts
That have braved more than they can bear
But these drooping eyelids
Are stuck in endless night cycles
Of listening to the sounds of misery

Little footsteps in this moon dust sand,
I chase my memories as they flee my grasp,
Racing the clouds to embrace the sun.

A heart, content, is left on your doorstep,
I hope, someday, the person you are meant to become will trace back the way I came and exchange the goodbyes we once hung
out to dry.

But until then, here in this momentary stillness
An opportune silence blooms into this heart of mine,
And it seems I've misplaced it in your moonlit palm

You sit here on this night, reclining on the moon,  
Sleep inhabiting your eyes but your stubborn heart still beats the rhythm of a thousand days of recollection,
You dwell on the remnants of departed mornings still beaded onto this horizon line,
Dipping your feet into the sunrise, embracing the coolness of the morning wind,
Nothing stands between you and reality;
Flesh is fleeting, it is memories that house the graves of love.
So, you pick flowers to pay your respect, leaving the stagnant solace of this momentary life behind

Do you remember when tunneling ravines would flow through our stomachs before we spoke out into the open?
And how vigorously tapping our feet felt like the only way to shake the mountains, daring to bury us alive...
or how when cold shoulders felt like judgment harmonized
and yet the dissonance euphonized in our ears as we swept our heads back into the open arms of the universe,
engulfed by inescapable laughter  

Now things are different; you wear your heart on your sleeve, washing the shores of people and things that scare you with your perpetual confidence,

and I proudly observe in wonder and admiration...

Distantly tapping my feet, fighting ravines, and laughing alone.

I reached into my chest
To free these sutures of moonglade
Reaching deep into the pulse
That is sinking into this still water
My boat, tethered to my hands
Cuts its ties, taking this heart
Deep into the moonlit sea

Between us and this dying world
Are conversations and stuttered words
That we left in the hands of midnight breeze
I float in your laughter, too light
to be weighed down by my fears
We lay under this sea of stars
Pointing into the sky
Casting nets into this galaxy of dreams
Calloused hands caress this wind
As stories pour out of our limbs
And we wash away yesterday's storm
Waiting for the sun to rise
Basking in the terracotta sky
Asleep against the coolness of the ground
Smiles still remnant on our face
And in all this was a heavy heart
That you pulled out from my chest
Held it in your palm as you slept
And I existed in your ease

Somewhere in the tremor of this monsoon rain
Your heart itched in remembrance
And denial took its hands away from your eyes
and so, you cried,
you cried a mountain of tears
Enough to fill the gardening pots
When you watered your roses
With salted despondency
And the flowers began to wilt
You realized to set these dreams free
But even then, they were too far within
Like the arteries in your chest
Keeping you alive

Thank you, for everything.
Despite this rain that thunders in my heart
Your sheltering love will never be forgotten
I'll walk down these streets of motion blur
Thinking of you with every streak of light
And when this rain starts to pour on you too
I'll be waiting with my apologies
For this fragile heart is still learning to heal
It tends to scratch at anything new
It hides away when shown some love
And when your sun rays scare it away
It'll come back to hold the umbrella over your head
It might not be everything but it's all it can do
This broken heart will heal for you

These fingers trace dust
that glistens in this fractured light
over old frames
crafted with beads and pink glue
glitter fell onto our laps
as we rattled this earth with our laughs
where did the time go
when we held it so tight?
yet it still disappeared, out of our sight  
now I look for you in bus windows
I listen for you in those youthful laughs
Holding onto these moments
wiping away the ashes
of these burnt recollections
from my shaking hands