A Bag of Thoughts

a hurricane of obsessions at its center me a headache of loneliness an inexplicable nausea in my soul hands never clean enough, incompetence and dust always coating them tier lists of trauma   only hindered by my indecisiveness a sea of lessons to be learnt; moments that went not so swimmingly   a nagging within my dreams, like leftovers haunting a fridge emotions undealt with, return in the depth of night the lamplight shivers, something falls footsteps echo, not a spirit in sight the same memory on loop, one moonlit night, one breathless question last words rehearsed, real life imitates song a half-hug, unsatisfied a lifetime of almosts like a bowl of unpeeled tangerines the zest in their peel nothing but an eyesore the citrus eye sting,   bright color an undesirable reminder, bygones not just bygones even if we let them be. an immunity to connection in a wistful cabin in the woods the creaks of its planks conceal no secrets, its windows an invitation to view windows of...

  [not a poem title] staggered poet-breaths   stuffed into the folds of my phone stifled soreness, folded into the palms of my hand sudden emptiness or slow invasion still, gradual decomposition constantly dreaming cloudiness instead of contemplation heavy head, heavy heart light head, heavy heart close by but blurry,   warm fingertips on the verge of losing colour cold. tears on standby,   frozen smiles packaged into tolerable emotion, the threat of time felt like the direct burn of the sun the present under it   curling up like a wet painting dried before we’ve finished breathing it this moment so soon a memory, this happiness so quick a risk   and nothing but words to make stories with worse than a godlessness   is the cruelty of god like a human, content with   flickering lives with the flick of wrist flightful lies, floating ties this tea so soon gone cold this page easily lost this uneasiness quick to settle face forgotten.   sadness br...

It’s been happening again, this abrupt undoing of the reality and my sudden lack of understanding of my place in it. Again? I’m not sure if it’s happened before actually but it’s not unfamiliar to feel so distant from my feet in the ground. After last October, I thought I was prepared for all the loss in the world but no, they really never prepare you to lose friends. Friends who leave, friends who are alive still but never seen again, never hugged again, never for you to love again. No, that’s not true, is it? We can love despite distance — or rather, we can’t not love, despite distance.  I never prepared for the breathlessness in my lungs and the escaping of my tears and the way I swung arms away from myself, clutched tightly in my hand the book that I inscribed my many names onto and now, everyone asks me to not cry. But the colours appear in front me, the colours that became ours and the colours that we became. I realize our story can be told in three: dark blue, green, purple....

   I don’t trust myself with these words  Just like how tomato soups give me     Hiccups,  And how I’m trying to conquer  Everything —  Femininity, the ocean,   I feel like femininity conquered me, too, Jules, Only I was aware of each moment,  cada, bien bien bien. At night, we go cloud-gazing!  You know, it is cold Cold but my jacket is between my hair  And the grass It’s between them to decide, And you know, if I focus on the clouds They move and then I’m  Moving and I’m not Bound by everything anymore because,  you know, These are my last days.  Last Sunday, not last Sunday but  The Last Sunday I was colouring  Everyone in with blue and rojo Because they don’t see my colours, Elongated words, lasting sighs, heavy  gaze. And the last Sunday,  I went  And found myself in pages from my  Past lives— “... and I’d be anything, vulnerable, crying, real, writhing, or golden." An...

  My memory of my time on the hill last year starts with the flapping of a great bird above me. I run with my heart in my hands, my jeans pant against me. I'm being chased, I think. Another recollection I have is of stains. The big red stain on my shirt from the tomato basil pasta, the dull brown stain on my pants from kneeling in the dirt, the big blue stains in my moods. Then there was much yearning. Wishing it would rain. And realizing we sit, we sit across each other and we are so alike each other.   Another recent addition has been airports and all the strangers who are momentarily touched by my presence, becoming studied by me because they cross their legs awfully slowly or perhaps, it is their lingering gaze out the window that intrigues me. But also there is the fact that you can’t paint a scene if you’re still in it. I tried writing about day in the night and only found rage. The next day, I was able to see past the crimson blotches and re-discovered a whole patc...

  I turned 17, the age of ripe existential angst - the kind of age where the epitome of storytelling is through subtitles. The age where I overly fixate on how far I can move from my phone without cutting off the music in my airpods - till the edge of the bathroom area, it turns out and after that, I settle for the leaks. On the insignificant day when I turned this age, I revisited my favorite spots on campus and found myself on a journey. Here is what I wrote that day:  stop 1 —  it is windy. it is rainy. it is raining on me. on my freshly washed hair, on my new peach dress, my eager glasses, and my fingers as i type mindlessly, meaninglessly. this dress will forever have remains of my 17th birthday, i suppose. this is mild. the trees stand proudly far from me. i am not embraced, i am a mere observer. the burnished stone paved underneath me is not warm, but it isn’t cold either. i am not a part of this and i am not an outsider.  it has started raining harder, i cann...