Calamity

There is calm in calamity
the way there's a pip in an olive
lodged right in the middle,
felt at only when bitten into.

Rock heavy

my biggest fear
is that each time I harden
I will turn into a rock

Mission completed

The harsh hand
on your chest, closing in

like an end
it calls onto your senses

love is another way to showcase
violence

package it differently
with roses and determination

wills and vows to change
this is a new mission for you

with that harsh hand
a mission completed

wrapped on a delicate throat.

rejection

Discarded are the hours
you never slept
judged by a mysterious hand

The girl behind the camera

The girl behind the camera
is the one seeing you
not seeing her

it hurts to see the stars
yet only feel their glow from afar

in the bottom of a glass of beer

The world flips, languages change
yet here you are
stood in the bottom of a glass of beer

what continues

what you allow is what continues
this is a case that's almost the truth

cursive painted, how many times have you
stolen kisses in the elevator

called it a love, how many times have you
caught a wrist in the kitchen

grabbing hard the stick arms
bruised, called it another form of kindness

how many times have you told someone
who was uncalled for, it was called for?

what you allow is what continues,
touch, kisses, a word slanting sideways

you are what has been kept happening
a little less kindness, a little less love.

sickness strikes steady

you say it swiftly
like a sword it cuts

a sickness strikes steady
unnamed, a little virus

knocks down a fort
that was being built for five years

in limestone and alcohol
in abstracts and foreign words.

an if clause

if you are satisfied with my pain
don't then think
that there's more space for you

Motherhood

I damned this motherhood
the time I saw you in my arms
lifeless, even in a dream

privilege

is to think with deep considerations
that none of your shoes fit you
when the children of your neighborhood walk the streets barefoot

a cold birthday

Eyes drooping with liner,

Cigarette at hand and her birthday was very cold

Spent moving between the rock and the harder place;

I haven’t been home- she thinks

Because home’s sunshine was the answer

Gender roles

In the kitchen we talk about
the placement of our hands, our forks
speak of the way men sit and women pose
your voice gets louder, blaming me
for the spots on the dishes
while mine grows into yours spotting a cloud in your eye.

solidarity with feeling

The voices that say
you have no space for feeling 

despite having rubble in your lungs
it doesn't matter

this is the truth, no gas
no envy for the shortages 

as if there is enough day
or night to cover the world

bone for bone
a cloud in the day

the voices that chant in marches
you have no space for feeling 

turning a head to me
if only, they read.

bad internet

This is the result of a third world country 
an internet that cuts
mid-song, my chain of ideas

coming your way
your voice is ill-prepared
to the temperament in mine

this is all the result of a bad connection
blame the internet for it
blame us, for not beating our skins enough
to reach one another.

14

is the number of day
for the silence
that fills me when I watch the news

Going back

Going back, I find myself walking backwards to the sea

mixing fact and fiction, stirring tears in tea

going back, I dream of potential lives

various definitions of normalcy:

a radio playing a midnight love poem-

music to replace shrieks,

 stories about dancing bunnies

instead of departures for a child's memory

a piece of orange melting in my mouth

 abstracts beget less blossom in using the right verb

 even the church's bell isn't shy from chiming at mid-day

 I count family members and pray in silence

 use verbs like reduce, to tie my blessings together

that I have language,

 that I breath,

that I have stories

 but I know nothing is normal

and I know the verb return

 is a synonym for stay.

help

is the word we use most
because every day
we look for exits

sleepless in your own bed

Much misery happening in your head
it is a shame
you lay sleepless in your own bed, every night

writer block, once more

Like an ink that's dried out
completely
I run out of words