THE
PIECES

[1] preach an ode to once again [2] reach past the golden abyss, towards the edge of summer’s visceral embrace: where we were Few perhaps Singular; in a World engulfed in a curtain of Binary [3] for the echoing Past that forsook you; You blackbird; my vestige, You reek of cinders; acidic Herbicides aiming to pluck vitality off the tree of sin and draw the noose that shapes your undoing into our twin fruits into our twin hearts into our ultraviolet stars so you choke up the ju

When I see you I think of that boy from college years ago: I’ve seen his old college journals, the space between lines filled with pressed flowers from the corners of campus. I’ve heard stories about the brevity of his wit, or how he dipped his head each time he were polite His father eloping with another woman, mirrors that fogged up with water marks, Aged pages of books, coffee stains on cuffs, the faded polish on the desk, Every passage in his favorite book, marked margin

Apple of the twisted vine, bring me back to a time before childhood, when everything dear was seven heartbeats away. When I close my eyes and slice into your flesh, it feels the same as my own, but when I grip your skin it feels like the hands of my mother, her tender palms an island of familiarity. I’ve forgiven you, so just come home, she whispers, as my knife’s silver smile dissects your chewy, fibrous core, laying bare your seeds before plunging you in murmuring water. I

I am stuck in a cell phone. My fingers are trapped between search bars, searching for freedom from the internet. Or to the internet? Dear Internet, Free me. >>>ERROR: Query not supported.

Sit still. Why are you so restless, cutting class again? Do you always need something to do, somewhere something to be? The air is pale and rhythmless here: where you drift through the halls, playing mindlessly with a silver charm necklace, kneading your luck between your fingers; where you press your nose against classroom windows, looking in like looking out of a train car, breathing wisps of clouds lingering on glass cool and hard as glass

A Winter Day Blink. A pervasive winter chill encases the only window. Ensnared by ice, the glass burns his fingers. Blink. Shifting to the wooden frame, he notes the condition of the window sill outside. There's cracks in the gentle slope, thin, bone-deep, slitting through the marrow and out the other side. A gentle wind now whistles through the sliver, breathing in new air. It has been long since the snow was last cleared off; the fissures, inflamed by the wet weight, pulse

within the ossuary’s crypt’s wet breath, this architecture of ivory; calcium scaffolding. not an elegant border, but a cage of yellowed lace, desiccated and frail, it rattles when encountered by gauche elbows and curious hands. it is the formal, final deathbed of absence; the negative space where marrow once worked in thickness and privacy. now a residence of other tenants: infested by soot, a home of larvae and nematodes, a canvas, engulfed by the graffiti of phosphorescent

the swimming pool drinks the twilight sky when sun’s fire yields to fireflies, and late summer smog chooses to rest its head on his shoulders, its breath the smell of chloromine. when he yawns you can see his ribs hold up his flesh like the water did: he were reed stalks drunken in the open breeze when his bare legs swung over the concrete rim and he are white sails shivering against his spine as he floats and watches the older boys dive, their bodies soar overhead like cigar

At 2:13 a.m. on April 15th, the vault door of Western Union Bank released its locks and swung upon. There were no shattered windows, no smoke-bomb theatrics, and no mysterious silhouettes working to disarm alarms. The doors surrendered with tranquil obedience as the locks– designed to withstand force and tampering– had seemingly complied. The night staff would later describe the event as peculiar, straying far from the safety protocols put in place. By sunrise, they had begun

See / Sea *a contrapuntal See, Sea, The underbelly of the ocean, Wispy whitewash Crass with barnacles, Cool like foxtail. I am The joy you gave birth to, singing in the fields we played in, Chasing after my ruin, melodic like honeydew You always ran ahead I followed your image, every night The grass turning into your voice; Beating me, punished by my love. Your hatred When you looked back, I can no longer make out the shape of The wind blowing your hair against your

the color of my hunger is red. and obviously, to become a girl is to understand all the hunger oscillating inside your body. to turn eighteen and there comes the girlhood spectrum where you can’t be your mother’s daughter or a friend. you only belong to yourself without sacrifices and a deal. when you’re a girl, you are born with an innate hunger for validation, for being complex and being seen. here is my mouth and i feed myself a sense of identity, my girlhood, and my worth

The world looks at you and sees A light suddenly switching on in a dark room A brightness that burns so intensely they forget That you were also standing in the darkness too … When you cry you look like an angel it’s as if sadness was made for you stitched into the corners of your mouth before you were born Like the way it is for the dead deer heads mounted glassy-eyed on the wall of my white friend’s living room Their lives, framed and bragged about as ones so easy to take

Have you heard, darling child, of the girl who lives in the sun? She didn’t always, of course. It must have been, what, only a few years ago, when she moved in. How did she get there? Well, once upon a time, she was just a girl like you. She lived in a slightly above average sized house with a slightly above average sized family. She was young, always told how her future was waiting for her. She was scared, though, always hiding behind her smile and her cold hands. She

Dark seams of water thread between cracks and curb, Rivulets running deep within, as if an emphasis to The weary state where you stand. The air hangs heavy with wet earth, only A reminder that water still hangs in the air. A leaf painstakingly sticks to your sole hitting the pavement Right before you, everytime. A worm is pathetically laying drowned in water, Rightfully curled like a question no one bothers to answer. The sickeningly constant plip of water dripping from Erra

Transient and fleeting, the human condition is never complete without experiences of the flesh. That the spiritual is only accessible by the carnal is but a simple truth. After all, what is more fulfilling than watching a tear in the heavens drip crystallized ichor, or hearing the solemn slick oozing from a stray thought? What is more satisfying than wading through a sea of wanton sensuality and watching the field of sacrosanct snow expand before the eyes? Or perhaps, sinful