Do you hear that?

 I turned 22 and it only got worse from there.

I am increasingly relying on sating my hunger by feasting

on the happiest episodes of strangers

on the internet,

but last night when my phone screen lit up,

someone had gone missing, again.

& I rolled over, went to sleep, hungry instead.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

Somedays, I just stare at a picture of me

clicked in the kitchen,

holding the coffee mug with my lover's unshakable stains.

Moonlight was leaking through the window

dominating the wan glimmer of the refrigerator's heart.

& I was not sad

& the flavours of the city I love

lingered in my mouth - my only mouth

which was not yet a graveyard

for all whom I loved and I still had room

under my tongue for anyone who'd love me.

***

do you hear that?

It's the last workday of the month

I and some of my colleagues celebrate the crisp cash

in our bank accounts,

what a shame it is to spend it

on half-baked freedom.

in this town where much of the joy is lost in the need to hold it

in this town where the mailman unfailingly hand delivers my debts

and asks me to consider myself fortunate

enough to just have my name on anything at all.

***

A wave of anger rises with the rising water

that separates my brother and me

and the land between us has grown

more treacherous.

In the blood-soaked earth,

seeds of hope and yearning

for a coveted return to their distant home lands are sown

by reluctant hands.

& nourished by the baptismal waters

of a girl who never returned home

just around the corner.

& tenderly the seeds germinate.

birthing roots of fractured innocence,

and shoots of silenced laughter.

***

I hate myself for letting that poet in the park

(fingers dancing on a typewriter,

choreographing verses with a rhythmic clatter

like of raindrops drumming upon a tin roof

under the skies where children look up

for bombs)

somehow successfully sell me a world

where kids sprint barefoot,

through sun-drenched fields of golden sunflowers,

petals kissed by gunpowder smoke.

their heads swaying gracefully like men in formation

marching in the graveyard, they can't see yet

as the summer breeze carries whispers

of both life and strife,

the air rich with earthy fragrance

and lingering battle cries.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

I hate myself for letting that poet in the park

sell me a world where

no house burns at the end of love,

all surrenders don't end in blood,

and people dance to the sound of

machine gunfire.

where the fragrance of a comet's tail

seduces comatose constellations back to life

and stars are not just stars but

portals that open only long enough

to forgive ourselves.

***

so do you hear that?

the sound of rain

leaving footsteps on my heart

and the way my heart turns them into

heartbeats.

the sound of my back

cracking

as I carry the weight of my deads

as I learn everything about love

through the absence of it.

***