Letters (pt. 2)

my love,

mother sobs on the phone
curls inside a single bed
of fatigued prayers
with a tongue
half-eaten with regrets
& apologies like dry leaves
shuddering
an empty street

my love,

sister came by the house
& prepared a bath of rosewater
buried me within the softness
of her touch
washing & weaving
my body
my skin
my pit
of purple blackened blood
i heard her weeping
my name
in a hidden breath
of sadness

my love,

the sky is pouring
all the cries i held back
my mind dissolves me
into strangers'
stretched glances
lurking from the outside
anger penetrates me
so cruelly
anger is burning me alive
i am alienated
in-between
& anger alone remains
for me

my love,

in intimate nights
i collapse
into violent devotion
& i write letters
cursed with
denial
come back to me 
come back home to me 

To My Brother / A Thank You

my brother's bursts of laughter
were like water bottles
to a heavy grief
he who carried
the lives
and rescued joy
from the ruins of skeletons
i wish i knew how to thank him
for the words
falling
like discolored confetti
in an empty room
i wish i knew how to thank him
for the prayers
soaked in tears
no one knew about
for the prayers
that sheltered me
the ones
he prayed for me
i wish i knew how to thank him
for standing, like the earth;
tall & bearing
each moment
collapsing over his shoulders
with the
salt & bitterness of an ocean
i am sorry
for leaning so hard
for sprouting away from you
from our mother
forgive me
i never learned to say thank you
for saving me 

The Promise of Home

I thought I heard the sound of the rain sobbing, in faithful trust I stood to hear the whispers settle in the night;

'This is only a paragraph, darling, written upon a page you can turn, sometimes darkness is other people who fill our lungs with the mist of loss

You can not dedicate yourself to hungering emptiness; this hole in your stomach, not a drop of the ocean will ever be enough for it

But the longing for God is wet upon your tongue, sobering, sobering you for the life that is yet to come.'

In The Ruins

I write to you, may you understand what it is I couldn't, this strangeness of the soul confronts me, like, like a falling about to happen; a violent downfall into the blade of ruins.

At the late discreet hour, my body is a glove of sorrow, heavy in quivering bareness; a bitter piece of flesh & bone sinking in private ruins.

Conceal my soul, abandon me, un-write the very image of self that escapes me; the lost purity my mind can't make up for, the purity I am no good to reach for.

Un-write me as I am;
Growing older
trembling  
trembling 
In the ruins. 

Seasons

& I have loved you in all four seasons

It was summer when sunlit, quiet flowers grew inside my mouth, happiness brought the world to my eager hands and I held you, there.

Then autumn came like every fallen leaf I was forgotten; sour and terrified, my restlessness washed me off, death occupies my life, it is too late for you to come back.

Winter; with daggers of silence that cut me with glimpses of you leaving, I was too much for you, I am too much for you, every night my voice shakes, incomprehensible, beyond the cries.

It is spring and my mother is brushing my hair with her fingers, there is a space where the birds don't sing, a dark space the poems can't reach, I am emptied of you there, I am empty, there. 

Blue Moon

I ran away to the moon, too many times, that my shadow and his now share a special song.

I wrestled the moon for answers, he hummed a tune for so long, I watched him dress the night in his light, underneath him, I became a memory.

The moon; my dearest friend and oldest love, tell me; when will your soft tides soften these hard edges in me?

Fallen

Women carry bodies of poetry within

A cruel wrench in the belly, of unspoken words, words like paper cuts, at the edge of their full tongues  

Women know that poetry is like surviving a war, of this fault of society that was built to break them, into always forgetting that the most beautiful of stars are the fallen ones

Forgetting that the sky whispers in the dead of night, and sends the moon down, to pray for every heart heavy with apologies; apologies of being good in a world so hideous

Forgetting that the devil is made of flesh, and lives in the crowd of other men

Forgetting that the wild air and sunshine will always breathe for them, in days where it takes more than a few muscles to survive

Little girl,

Your memory betrays me, and I'm too weak; I'm too weak, each and every time I remember you, the present holds the weight of the past, and the blame is never too far off my fingertips, to move on

The night I held your lifeless body, I couldn't even quite recognize it, with the scary haunt of darkness, that crushed the sun in you, turning my entire world pitch black

your body that clung to my arms like a last cry, thrown in the dirt, turned inside out, I crouched down on the cold floor, to scrub every bleeding scar underneath your skin

I thought if I scrubbed enough, id make the haunt go away, that my embrace is enough to warm you, into bringing you back to me, into believing that everything will be okay  again

... Till this day I don't think I've scrubbed enough

No, no, this is not the you I know, not the one who dimmed the light of my existence, one winter-night, brought home to me, forgotten; a poor victim of hate

How could hell consume a soul so young?

Stranger's hands claimed your honey his, as he stripped you off all the colors that God had painted your pure beauty with

He sucked the violet from the lightness of your skin, with eyes of piercing blood, that starved the innocence from your roots

He thrusts himself into your boundaries, pushed himself into the depth of your shivers, irrupting the flow of your waters, with one stolen touch

Then puffed you into nothingness

Little girl,

Rage is that fire burning within, always there, always there to remind me, of all that could have been of you, you: are the longest sigh deep in the ruins of my being

I fell under the blur of life, the night they covered your broken parts, to take you back to earth, that night;  shadows became my only weather

I know, the angels must've cried for you, as they pulled you on their wings, like a ghost memory, soon to be washed with the wind, that carried the evil sins of other men

Nobody knows the drops of pain poured, late in the silence of nights, of a mother who failed to protect her only child

Nobody knows the sorrows, she seeks refuge in, to torture herself with, shrinking slowly along the guilt that kills

Nobody crumbles into dust faster than a woman, carrying a stone-burdened heart, within

Little girl,

I write to extend my hand for you, and I know under the care of earth, you are protected, and loved better than anyone could ever be

Sometimes I wait in my sleep for you, and I dream of you, dancing far, far away, in a galaxy, lost in an eternity of salvation, no longer longing for yourself  

There I find you; alive, forever in peace 

Nights

This unfurling of the mind chases away the light in solitary places, thoughts tell too much in the dead of night

Out of nothing, another world is squeezed into being, and what was once absent, marches into space for explanations

'Nothing' bears an undetectable deaf noise; loud thoughts with thorns in it's mouth, burning quietly in the dark, to dissolve into bitterness

Thoughts wrestle peace in the night air, lighting a match for memories, to settle in a space of sadness

Ghost

You are the remains of beauty, you've mimicked so skillfully, the literature I once sought and clothed myself with, now I undress books only to find another part of you, a part you lost behind, words pull me to weep for you, and I resist to hand you more of my feelings, I leave my books open with their bare bones for the winter night to crowd them, and in that moment a shadow-memory strikes me; all these unfinished metaphors terrify me, they sound like my heart when it's slopping a hangover, when it keeps coming back again, when it stops here again, to fall apart again, hoping to bleed an ending to a story that no longer carries your name.