Paint the Dots | Poetry Breakdown

Wheels to rails – a grinding and shaking
as sceneries pass by in a blur
melting all the greens and browns together
in a fluid paint stroke. 

Strangers sharing seats, conversations exchanged
and memories filed away as a positive chance encounter,
like water droplets on separate paths
accidentally merging together. 

Your shoulder on mine, 
connecting all the way to the fingertips. 
As time continues to pass, our minds sync more.
Unbroken bonds manifested in a pulse, a squeeze, a gaze
like a blend of pigments mixing to a new color. 

Tiny Warmth | Poetry Breakdown

I want you to hold me like I’m a baby bird you found on the ground.

Practically weightless

Fluttering heartbeat

Radiating tiny warmth

Curious yet fearful eyes.

I am so small but the weight of a life

is nothing compared to anything you have felt before.

How long until I learn to fly,

until my eyes are no longer filled with anxiety?

How long until I learn how to build a nest

and make it my own?

Please take care of me, but

please don’t hold me back when you should let go.

Don’t Wait for Me Please | Poetry Breakdown

I wish I was a wallflower on the walls wherever you are.

I just wonder what you think of me,

if something ever reminds you of me,

or am I just a faded memory even though

I saw you last month.

I’m just trying to say that I have my regrets

of not saying what I should’ve at the time,

but what can I do now?

I just wish everything would stop

so I could catch my breath,

feel the sun’s warmth,

hear my heart beating,

and freely speak.

My mind won’t stop wondering and wandering

even though I’m bumping into walls and corners.

Such foolish wishful thinking

as I watch you get further

as you get smaller.

Loose and Tight | Poetry Breakdown

Sometimes I feel like time takes a detour

around me but light gives me a motherly embrace ­–

making sure my eyes open & close, I rise & fall,

stay out or in from the pesky rays.

While the night approaches like a loose noose, loose vice,

the devil’s kiss where time comes to stay,

reminding me of the hollowness within my mind

ready to be filled with the expansion of hollowness

until light approaches again.

Among the Mess of it All | Poetry Breakdown

How do you even think about resuming life
in the midst of everything going on?
And by everything, I do mean, it all.
Once you allow it to settle,
it overtakes you like a storm, but
lingers like dust.
It only seems fair if you’re given the opportunity
to digest it all, but life allows you to choke
and sputter on the mess of it all.
There’s no solution to it even though
some may say there are.
You could sweep it under the rug,
allowing it to fester until you couldn’t walk past it anymore, but
by then, it’ll only have grown unrecognizable from its original form.
You could throw things at it –
A dash of this, a splash of this, but you’d notice that to no avail,
the form remains the same.
So take a little peak and
you’ll see that it’s not any bigger than your hands.
You can cup it into the palm of your hands
and feel the heartbeat, the quivering soul,
and you’ll see that it’s just as fearful as you are.
Eye to eye you see,
Heart to heart you feel.
It may not be okay in the long run,
but it’ll get there and life will soon feel
okay to resume again.

Complicated | Poetry Breakdown

How are you?
Good? So-So? Meh? Bad?
There’s plenty to be sour about,
plenty to be happy about.
But with goodness being the reason for badness’ worth,
does it always feel like it needs to balance out?

So, how are you?
That’s the question of not how you really are
with your complex emotions and feelings stacked on a schedule.
Each time they ask you this complex three worded question,
you feel the cracked masked pull out from beneath your teeth
because if you’d even let slip that you are anything
but who you lead on to be plus what’s expected of you,
then you’d automatically be considered unusual.

But dare you say that “you’re great” for too long, they’ll think
you’ve got it too much under control & you may have the capacity
to overrule them because heaven’s forbid
they don’t feel fine.
Then what’s what –
we’re all just living a lie and convincing ourselves
that it isn’t a lie to appease everyone else besides yourself.

The moral of the story is to not smile at
your cracked reflection
only to see the solid bits and pieces,
just to say you’re whole.

A Place of My Own | Poetry Breakdown

I have never yearned for a space of my own as much as I do now.
To have a space I could call mine
is an understated privilege.
Meanwhile, I hear the clinking and clanking in the kitchen,
the shouts in the next room,
and feel it echoing through the chambers of my heart.
I try not to let it get to me,
but sometimes it does.

But how come adulthood is defined with how much you can do
in the least amount of effort and time?
I understand that time can be considered as a valuable transaction,
but how about the joyful weight on your soul
after meandering the dimly lit streets with people
who could almost be your lifeblood?
I suppose the value of human life is how well you are able to churn out
what’s asked of you
but while you’re on break and you’re scrolling through your newsfeed,
you see a heartwarming story, so you think to share it.

One day I’ll have my own space – a place I can come home
to unwind after a long day of work,
feeling this empty space and resounding quiet
as the muffled voices still make their way through.

And So, Life is Messy | Poetry Breakdown

Life is so messy.
You feel like you can just form it into your perfect shape,
but at the end of the day,
it will bend you to how it is, snapping you with it.

Because sometimes when you’re walking down the street
and you make eye contact with a homeless person asking for spare change
and you feel your cash burning in your wallet –
and so, you walk on.

Because sometimes when you turn on the radio,
expecting to hear America’s Top 40,
you hear the news;
you hear politics, debates making your mind bend and sway with the crafted words.
You hear climate change, the fight between nature and man, deniers and science, a fight for life intertwined with proof for the fearful.
You hear protests around the world, their shouts and how it echoes and rattles your heart, even if it is thousands of miles away.
And so you change the radio channel.

Because sometimes you hear about someone else’s heartbreak & heartache
and how much it has altered their life,
so you just think about your own & put them in your shoes.
And so, you turn your ear.

Life is messy – is that what it is?

Quirky | Poetry Breakdown

If you had a word to encapsulate all that is, me,
then the first word I can think of is
quirky.
It leaves a sharp taste in your mouth,
unlike the crunch of the leaves fallen from fall,
but the sharpness of a furrowed eyebrow
as I am unable to fit into the mold.

Quh
Urk
EE

It’s still not quite right, a six lettered word, offering itself
as the definition of all twenty-three years of me.
I rather not be shoved and pushed into the deepest corners
of the curly Q and back and forth into the K,
finishing off into the drooping Y.

I don’t feel as though I am defined as:
“having or full of quirks”
“characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits”
“unusual in an especially an interesting or appealing way”
It’s not fair to all of the moments where I’ve felt
happy or
sad or
angry or
everything all of once, just feeling with no words.

If you shake my hand and say hello,
do you feel the words coming out of my mouth or
do you only hear the words and nothing more?

Blink Fast & Breathe Slow | Poetry Breakdown

It’s easy to forget why you love
after a night filled with anguished tears and hurtful questions.
You hold the “why” for love
tenderly in your hand and struggle with keeping it still.
You remember all the times of anger
all the times of sorrow
all the times of pain
and forget about the beauty.

You think to yourself,
“What if there wasn’t any more love between us?”
And you loosen your grip a little, playing with the fates of time,
teasing the what if hovering above your heads.
Careful with your touch on fate,
too strong and you’ll lose grip on it forever
too weak and it was as if it never existed.

It can happen in a blink – one moment you’re there
unaware of your current state of bliss
and the next moment you can be at a standstill
wondering what went wrong and if those questions
actually had any weight in them.

Blink fast and hold on tight.
Breathe slow and time flows.